Neither Captain Faunce nor the Dymchurch Preventive Officer were the men to ignore the information they had gleaned about the Scarecrow's proposed “run” on the night of the full moon, and three days before, the village looked on with secret misgivings at the arrival of Colonel Troubridge, who had personally led a full squadron of Dragoons from Dover Castle, to augment the little force already commanded by Captain Faunce.
They commandeered the big field that lay between the sea-wall and the Ship Inn, and here they set up camp, while Dr. Syn was inspecting Charlotte Cobtree's new black hunter in the squire's stables.
“And will you tell me, Charlotte, why you have not only bought this glorious animal when I know you were more than satisfied with Sirius, but also why you purchased for two guineas that old suit of poor Mipps? For I believe I see the semblance of a connection between the two purchases.”
“And that semblance is?” she asked.
“Why, the Scarecrow,” he replied. “The ragged black suit, and the magnificent black horse.”
“How clever you are, Doctor,” she answered. “Yes, you are quite right, but I trust you will keep my confession and your guess to yourself. It this Scarecrow will not tell me who he is, I am curious enough to take the pains of finding him out. You remember he is one of my heroes. He, and Clegg and yourself.
Perhaps I may even have the privilege of helping the smugglers as the Scarecrow did. At all events, I'll satisfy my woman's curiosity. There is, at least, one who can ride safely on the Marsh at night—the Scarecrow. Well, I have the horse and I have the clothes, too. If the Scarecrow cannot trust me and say 'I am the Scarecrow', why, I can ride out as he does until I can say: 'Ah, so you are the Scarecrow'.”
“I beg of you, Charlotte, not to undertake any such rash adventure,” said Dr.
Syn sternly. “You don't realize your danger.”
“My dear Doctor, when you ask me to marry you, why, then I promise you I will mend my ways, but till then I must do as I think best.”
“If I could ask you, you know that I would,” he answered. “But for you and your future, I can still be unselfish, I pray God.”
“Honourable men are so often most selfish in their very unselfishness,” she answered.
He might then and there have demanded an explanation. He might even have made the confession that had been in his heart to make to her for some time, but the squire joined them, full of indignation that the Dragoons had been so greatly increased in numbers.
“I'll not brook this interference from the Dover military while I am magistrate upon the Marsh,” he cried. “Captain Faunce is a nice enough fellow, I admit. His behaviour has always been most respectful towards me as Lord of the Level, but this colonel is as red in his temper as his face. I could find it in my heart to wish that this Scarecrow fellow would give him a good fooling.”
“I shouldn't be at all surprised if he does, Father,” said Charlotte, with a mischievous glance at Dr. Syn.
“I shouldn't be at all surprised either, my dear,” replied the doctor solemnly.
The worthy squire would have been very much surprised had he read what was passing in his vicar's brain. And sure enough, the “fooling" that the squire wished for took place that very night.
Since there were three nights before the full moon, and the proposed “run", Colonel Troubridge thought it highly strategic on his part to allow most of the men village leave till eleven o'clock, and they were all instructed to keep their ears open for any information that might be dropped from garrulous villagers in the bars. But Mr. Mipps was equally strategic, and he trotted from bar to bar and back again, the picture of injured innocence in the eyes of the troopers, but seeing to it very ably that the villagers kept their mouths shut.
Certain hints about the full moon “run” he allowed to get about, but no one gave away the important fact that thousands of barrels were only awaiting the signal from Aldington to be landed on Jesson Beach and carried to the hills for hiding.
The Upton brothers had been instructed to stand by their beacon after “lanterns out” had been sounded by the Dragoon trumpeters. Then they were to wait two hours by Monty Upton's great turnip watch, which could be relied upon, and then the beacon was to be fired.
An hour and a half of this allotted time had gone. The Marsh lay black and ominous; a vast stretch of mystery and dark horror to the Dragoon sentry who stood guard upon the sea-wall.
And then suddenly the Marsh changed. With a suddenness he had not expected, the moon came up over the Channel. It flooded the Marsh in its eerie light. He could see the black shadows of the dyke hollows. Were there corpses there? It was easy to imagine so in that still silence. He did not know that those dykes were filled with crouching, waiting men. It spoke well for the Scarecrow's preparation that the sentry thought he had never seen a vast track of land so desolate. So destitute of life. If only he could just see one living man.
He did not know that his eyes were travelling over hundreds of hidden heads.
He turned to the sea for comfort. He looked first in the direction of Folkestone and the increasing moonlight showed him a sight that made him gasp. A lugger had been run ashore some two hundred yards away. There were men sitting upon barrels. They had their backs to him, but they were facing the lugger and a man who leaned against the mast with one hand steadying himself in the rigging.
What were the orders for the Regiment? “And any rank meeting with a man dressed as a scarecrow may shoot to kill. Death to the Scarecrow.” The sentry forgot this terror of the sexton's yarn as he dropped down beneath the sand-hill that crowned the sea-wall. He was shaking with excitement. The man standing on the lugger was obviously dressed as a scarecrow. He sighted his carbine upon the Scarecrow's chest. He must wait till he could keep his sight steadier. Damn that sexton whose story had made him jumpy.
As he dropped, the sexton whom he had already damned, slithered upon his stomach immediately behind him and wriggled down the slope of the sea-wall.
With the silence and skill of a Red Indian from whom he had learned much, Mr. Mipps, a sharp knife in his teeth, crawled towards the horse lines guarded by the two drunken and sleepy Dragoons.
Along the lines he crawled, noiselessly severing the picketing ropes.
The sentry took his time, steadying his aim. “Death to the Scarecrow”. Well, he must not, would not miss; and behind him crouched two fantastically dressed men with their faces smeared with tar, waiting for him to shoot. But the sentry took his time. It was not pleasant to kill a man in cold blood. And yet orders protected him. The blame would not be his. He wished to kill and yet he wavered, and in the interim he slowly steadied his aim.
Behind him, under the shadow of the sea-wall, Mipps crawled silently and went on with his cutting. To two horses out of every three he gave unconscious freedom.
Suddenly one horse stampeded down the lines.
“'Ware horse,” cried an awakened guard.
The noise acted upon the nerves of the sentry's slowly squeezing finger.
With a sharp crack his carbine fired.
Immediately there arose pandemonium from the sleeping camp. The sentry heard it for a few seconds only, for a heavy weight seemed to drop upon him from the sky. He was bound round the legs and arms with cord. He was lifted by two strong and dreadful-looking men. They swung him backwards and forwards and then he was flung out from the sea-wall upon the sand beneath.
As he went through the air he remembered that the man who had been his target had fallen forward over the bulwarks of the lugger. He had fired and hit.
Had he killed the Scarecrow, and would the smugglers now seek full retribution? Heavy in cuirass and helmet, he fell hard, and for a time remembered no more.
In the awakened camp everything was in wild disorder. The majority of the horses which had been freed by Mipps stampeded past the Ship Inn and out upon the high road, where they were goaded into a full stretch gallop by a dozen or so of wildly caparisoned horsemen, who, in fantastic costume and waving lighted jack-o'-lanterns above their heads, encouraged the frightened horses to make their escape, with wild yells and howlings.
The remaining horses added even more to the camp's discomfiture, for dragging the damaged lines and pegs behind them they galloped this way and that, became entangled in tent ropes, and upset the piled stacks of carbines.
Men awoke into a cursing confusion. The colonel, in night attire, shrieked and swore and shouted for Captain Faunce to turn out the guard.
“Stand to your horses, you fools,” he roared.
But there were no horses that his men could stand to. They were a struggling mass of entangled rage—those that were left, and already two-thirds of the fine animals were heading in wild stampede towards Hythe.
Swearing as became a colonel of Dragoons, he pulled on breeches and boots, jammed his brass helmet on the top of his tasseled nightcap and buckled on his sabre over his white flapping shirt.
In this incongruous costume he dashed out of his tent.
The sight which now met his infuriated gaze would have been enough to irritate a saint, much less a roaring Dragoon. Tents were collapsing on all sides, smothering men in a writhing mass. The canvas of his own tent was being ripped by the lashing hoofs of an entangled charger, while such of his men who were in the open were rushing this way and that, some to save their own skins, and others more dutifully trying to catch the maddened animals.
It was then that a strange apparition galloped at full speed through the camp.
A snorting black horse on whose back sat the fearsome figure of a man dressed as a scarecrow.
With dreadful cries of “Over, Gehenna", which seemed to lift the great animal over such embarrassments as piled saddlery and accoutrements, the figure passed within a few yards of the colonel's swaying tent. Turning in his bare-backed seat as he passed, he laughed derisively in the colonel's face, and in bravado fired off a pistol above his head.
“Catch him. Kill him,” shouted the colonel, drawing his sabre and running after the galloping horse. “Death to the Scarecrow. A hundred guineas to the man who brings him down.” But the Scarecrow had gone through the camp like a great black thunderbolt, and with a piece of incredible riding dashed straight up the steep bank of the sea-wall.
A few stray shots were fired, but they were wild and went whistling out to sea. “Get me a horse. Get me any horse, and I'll ride him down myself,” yelled the colonel, running at top speed for the sea-wall.
High above him sat the laughing Scarecrow, checking his horse to enjoy the confusion, but when the sweating colonel was half-way up the bank, he turned his horse towards the stone groyne, rode down it and galloped away over the hard sand towards Jesson.
“Bring me a horse and I'll catch him yet,” shouted the colonel. “Where's the sentry? What the hell was he doing?” The sentry in question was by now sufficiently recovered from his fall to move. The sound of his colonel's voice brought him back to his wits. He cried out from the sands: “I've shot the Scarecrow. And the others are too scared to move. There, sir. There.”
The colonel peered down at the huddled sentry who was struggling to free himself of his cords, and then he saw the group a hundred yards away.
“There they are, some of 'em. Come on, men. We'll capture them, and the lugger. Look, smuggled goods, too! Forward, my men. Come on.” Followed by some half-dozen half-dressed Dragoons, the gallant colonel climbed down the steps cut in the sea-wall and with drawn sabre ran towards the group of smugglers.
“Surrender, damn you,” he shouted. “You're under arrest. You'll all swing.
Hands up.” Exasperated that not one of the sitting men deigned to move, he delivered a resounding smack with the flat of his sabre against the back of the nearest smuggler, who just lopped forward and fell face downwards on the moonbathed beach.
“Hi—you,” he shouted—and then added in a hoarse whisper: “What the hell?” Hell, indeed—for so gallant a colonel to hear the laughter of six of his troopers when the laugh had been raised against the said colonel.
The six smugglers and their leader who were was lolling over the bulwarks of the lugger by reason of the good shooting of the sentry, were but effigies.
Dummies of straw-filled clothes. And the barrels on which they sat were not dummies. Six barrels of excellent liquor. Smuggled liquor from France, and chalked around their hoops, the following messages: “To our gallant Dragoons from the Scarecrow. Drink, tomorrow we die. Drink, boys, to the Scarecrow and his Nightriders.” And then on two brandy kegs inside the lugger: “With respexs to Colonel Troubridge” on one, and “For our gallant Captain Faunce” on the other.
“Take this stuff to camp,” said the colonel. “And in it we'll drink damnation to this impertinent fellow. We'll drink to him as he swings on a local gallows.”
“Look, sir,” whispered one of the troopers.
The colonel looked and swore a mighty oath.
A huge beacon burned on Aldington Knoll. From its base and right across the Marsh were “flashers” signalling. The flying black horse of the Scarecrow was approaching Jesson Beach, which, in place of its desertion a minute before, now literally swarmed with men. The colonel estimated that there would be at least two hundred on the beach alone, but more irritating still was the object of their watch. Under full sail and driving in with perfect formation was a fleet of some twenty boats, luggers and smacks. The organization was perfect. The men on the beach divided into groups and waded out into the sea, waist high, to meet the grounding fleet.
The colonel shouted for horses (for he had every intention of attacking the superior force, though he guessed they would be armed to the teeth). He compared the confusion of his own camp with the strict precision and organized methods of the Scarecrow, and his shame only drove him into a greater fury.
Waving his sabre, they set out hell-for-leather through the straggling village street and out on to the winding Marsh road, hoping to cut in inland and arrest the procession of pack ponies making for the cover of the hills.
To make matters more difficult, the yokel who had been pressed for the services of guide was either a knave or a fool, for the troop began to realize that they were riding in circles; so on the advice of the colour sergeant, the officers agreed to tie the yokel to a five-barred gate, and with the promise of a sound thrashing on their return, the colonel left the roads to their exasperating windings and led his men across country in the direction of the knoll.
The yokel, who was no fool, watched them blundering into the wreaths of mist that arose along the many intersecting dykes, and listening to their splashes and curses, he grinned for his own satisfaction. When he considered that the soldiers were too far off to bother about him, he let out at the top of his voice three piercing screams like a screech-owl, which, had the Dragoons only known, had been the sexton's instructions to him, when he could no longer delay the Dragoons' attack.
But there was nothing to attack. By the time they reached the hills and climbed up the ridge that swept along to the Knoll, they could see nothing moving on the Marsh beneath, but the fleet were already far out in the Bay and tacking for Dungeness.
When they scoured the Knoll for hidden men, they found nothing but one keg of brandy, standing beside the dying beacon. The message in chalk around its sides did not improve the colonel's temper. “A noggin for all ranks prevents Marsh colds. Scarecrow.” They took his advice. They broached the keg upon the spot and served the noggins round, and then dejectedly rode back to give the yokel his hiding.
But they never found him. There were too many five-barred gates upon the Marsh, and too many twists to the Marsh road, and at every gate encountered, opinion was divided as to whether it was the gate in question or whether it would have been possible for the yokel to have slipped his cords and vanished.
It never occurred to them that the Scarecrow's watchers had covered the whole Marsh and that within a few minutes of those cries from the screech owl, a smuggler had crawled out of a handy dyke and set his colleague, the yokel, free.
The success of this “run", with the enormous profits which it entailed, added to the discomfiture of the military, and the heroic reputation of the mysterious Scarecrow.
For the next two days Colonel Troubridge raved and swore; blustered and quarrelled with the squire, and was eventually only calmed down by the tact and persuasiveness of Dr. Syn, who came forward with the only practical suggestion of dealing with the Scarecrow.
“Since the good name of Romney Marsh is at stake,” he declared, “I intend to preach from my pulpit this very Sunday upon Law and Order, and I am going to make an appeal for volunteers who will help your good fellows to rout out this Scarecrow discover the 'hides' into which the contraband must have been placed.” Sunday was the eve of the full moon, and the morning service was packed to the doors. With great eloquence the doctor appealed to all good men and true to stand by the Law, and as the congregation filed out after the service, names were taken by the sexton of all those who would help either in supplying horses, arms, or other support.
To each man who was enrolled in this band of volunteers was presented a white armlet to be worn on the sword arm, and on that very Sunday evening Dr.
Syn rode out upon his white pony to review a hundred and fifty Dymchurch men who had answered to the call. This astonishing response was due to the fact that Mipps passed the word from the Scarecrow himself that every smuggler was to wear the armlet of Dr. Syn. In short, they were to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
Colonel Troubridge was impressed. He admired the quiet way in which the vicar handled the difficult situation. It was an honest effort to regain the good name of the district.
This ill-assorted regiment of civilians was divided into three parties of fifty strong and by a general vote each party was commanded by one of the three Upton brothers respectively.
They were a good and obvious choice, for each brother possessed the necessary swagger to carry things off, and their popularity with the women and girls of the neighbourhood added to the general enthusiasm for recruiting.
This voting had also been assured by special orders of the Scarecrow, and although many of those grim-faced farmers felt a meanness in thus working against their good vicar, the profits which they had already received from the Scarecrow easily bought their disloyalty to Dr. Syn and their loyalty to their capable and mysterious leader.
Not so the Uptons. They were better informed than most, and they realized that what Dr. Syn did, his cloth compelled him to, and they more than suspected that the reverend gentleman would be very grieved did his measures help to bring “Death to the Scarecrow”. Besides this, they always took the side which promised adventure, and there was no doubt about adventuring when serving the Scarecrow. So they obeyed his orders, pretending to obey the vicar's, but well aware that if the Scarecrow escaped capture no one would be more relieved than the sympathetic Dr. Syn.
But the doctor was in full agreement with the squire for causing broadsheets to be printed with “Death to the Scarecrow” set out in bold type. The belief that the wanted man was none other than James Bone, the notorious highwayman, was printed beneath this heading and called upon any who possessed information which would lead to his capture to lay it at the Court House.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” The rhythm ran in Mipps' head that Sunday night and communicated itself to his hammer as he hit in the nails which formed the name on the lid of a fastened coffin.
“Death to the Scarecrow,” said Mrs. Waggetts, as she watched him perform this sad operation, for the coffin contained the landlord of the Ship Inn. Slowly sinking, he had passed away during the stampede of the Dragoons, and Mrs. Waggetts blamed the Scarecrow in her grief.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” Captain Vic kept reading it from the broadsheet stuck on the wall in Meg's bar-parlour, and he set out on horse-back to see his colleague, Colonel Delacourt, at Rye. He had a good deal to discuss with the colonel, for not always having been as drunk as he looked, he had listened to whisperings that had gone on in the bar, and he knew very well that Jimmie Bone was not the Scarecrow. Indeed, he had hit upon a theory which he was anxious to convey to his colleague. Dr. Syn was Clegg. There was no doubt about that. He knew it, and so did the colonel. But what if Clegg were the Scarecrow? A man of brains and a man of courage and quick invention, safely hidden under the parson's cloth. The more he thought of it, the more certain he believed it to be true.
He found the colonel sober enough, but irritable. His wife, while sinking slowly, had kept asking her husband to allow her a visit from Dr. Syn. She was desirous of making her peace before dying.
“She don't seem to see my danger,” scowled the colonel. “Should this scoundrelly parson set eyes on me—well, it's one or both of us.”
“Get me a bottle of wine and I'll set your heart at ease on that score,” laughed Captain Vic.
Merry was sent for, and the wine was brought.
“Come, Merry,” he laughed, clapping him on the back, “you shall sit down with us, for I owe you a good drink. I have married your Meg, and I ain't giving her up to you yet a bit. All depends on how friend Bone succeeds tomorrow. If he's caught and splits, we may well have to run for it, and if so I ain't showing my face for any woman in a run like that. In which case, she's yours. If Bone succeeds though, well, she's yours when I tire of her.”
“Oh, so you'll run, will you?” scowled the colonel. “And what about me?”
“Why, you'll run too, my buck,” replied Captain Vic. “If your wife won't mend and won't die, you must leave the obstinate baggage.”
“But the child! I'll not leave the child.” Captain Vic tilted himself back in his chair and laughed at the ceiling. “A couple of bearded bucks running round the country with a baby. That would be a fine sight! No, you'll leave it with the woman here. She'll be glad of the good pay you'll give her. As to your dying madame, why not return the property you stole from Dr. Syn, eh? From what Merry tells me, he's sweet on that pretty piece of baggage, the squire's daughter. He can hardly marry her with his wife alive.”
“He could divorce her, fool. God knows he has cause,” replied the colonel.
“Besides, I've no wish to identify Colonel Delacourt with Nick Tappitt.”
“Nor shall you, my buck, for I tell you we're talking round the mulberry bush, and things is going to happen very different from what you think. First, give me a sheet of paper, for I have need to send a letter to this baggage, Charlotte Cobtree.”
“What about?” asked the colonel. “We've got to go carefully, my friend, or we'll have Clegg on our track.”
“Say rather he'll have us on his,” replied Captain Vic.
“You know something,” said the colonel.
“What is it? Lay your cards on the table, for God's sake.”
“There you are, then.” Captain Vic produced a paper from his side pocket and slammed it down upon the table.
The colonel grabbed it, while Merry stood up, the better to see. They read it together.
“Now don't imagine that I've done nothing but make love to Merry's Meg, or rather to my legal wife, as I should say. No, colonel. I've listened, and I've got Meg to listen, too. She's mad about me, and does whatever I tell her. Aye, no one can say that Captain Vic hasn't a way with the women. Tomorrow night this Scarecrow is going to 'run' again. Colonel Troubridge of the Dragoons maintains he will not dare. The squire agrees with him, so does Dr. Syn and the Preventive Officer. But knowing Clegg, I say he will. He's never wanted in daring.”
“Clegg?” repeated Colonel Delacourt.
“Clegg,” repeated Captain Vic. “For, believe me, Clegg, Dr. Syn and this Scarecrow are all one and the same. An unholy Trinity, if ever there was. On the way here, I rode by Aldington Knoll. There was the burned-out beacon that so fooled the Dragoons. There was also an idiotic yokel, piling up wood lumps in readiness. For what? A 'run' tomorrow night, and take it from me, it's to be the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow only that is to fire the beacon.”
“Well? What then?” asked the now excited colonel.
“Why, we three will wait for him,” whispered Captain Vic. “Merry is with us in that we all desire the death of Dr. Syn. If he's an unholy Trinity, why, so are we. There's plenty of cover there on the Knoll. We take it. We take firearms. Muskets or pistols as we shall elect. We get dead on our target before he comes along and as he fires the beacon, why, we fire to kill at point-blank range. 'Death to the Scarecrow', says the Law. It will not be murder.”
And at the same time, back in Romney Marsh, Colonel Troubridge and Captain Faunce rode together. They were exercising their chargers, and passing the “Shepherd and Crook” they halted for a drink. They remained in their saddles while the pot-boy ran to serve them, and the colonel pointed to the broadsheet on the door, “Death to the Scarecrow”.
“Is the wager on, then, Faunce?” he asked. “Two hundred guineas to you if the Scarecrow 'runs' tomorrow night.”
“Right,” replied Faunce. “And I tell you, sir, you are throwing your money away. I have met the man twice. Twice he has scored off me by brave effrontery. Believe me, sir, he'll ride again tomorrow night, and I trust that your loss to me will be made up in the glory you will have in taking him.”
“Death to the Scarecrow, then,” whispered the colonel as he drank in his saddle.
“Aye, sir. We hope so, but I add to him my best respects,” and Captain Faunce drank too.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” It was read and spoken of all that Sunday night in bars and parlours, in kitchens and bedrooms.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” The words went round and round in Charlotte Cobtree's brain.
It was Monday night, and she sat through dinner next to Dr. Syn and listened to Colonel Troubridge telling him and the squire exactly where he would be patrolling in a few hours' time for the Scarecrow.
The squire kept asserting that there would be no 'run', and in this he was supported by his wife, his younger daughters and Dr. Pepper. But Charlotte would offer no opinion, even though she was urged to do so by Dr. Syn, who agreed with the colonel that they had been wise to set their preparations against it.
“I should think so, indeed,” said Colonel Troubridge. “I agree with Captain Faunce that the fellow is so flushed with success that he'll attempt to show his superiority once more. If he does, and I hope he will, well, it's my opinion he'll over-reach himself. Faunce has given those brave Upton lads their orders. In about an hour they'll ride off to their allotted posts. That means that when all is favourable for the Scarecrow to signal in his luggers the Marsh will be hiding on hundred and fifty resolute men with white bands upon their arms. Then I shall ride out with my men and keep patrol under the hills. Our signals are arranged, and at the first sight of the Scarecrow anywhere, we shall rally and charge.”
“Poor Scarecrow,” sighed Dr. Syn. “If he's arrogant enough to show himself he'll have a great run for his pains.”
“Run?” repeated the colonel. “He'll not run far, for I promise you he'll never get through the ring we are setting round him.”
“You certainly have not left anything to chance,” said Dr. Syn. “The only point on which I disagree with your methods is the way you are wasting your best man—Captain Faunce.”
“Well, it's his idea and he's so set on it that I gave way,” replied the colonel.
“I never like anything that is unjust,” said Dr. Syn.
“Why, what is Captain Faunce doing?” asked the squire.
“As I told Dr. Syn,” explained the colonel, “Faunce suspects that facetious little sexton Mipps, and he thinks he will do more to hinder the Scarecrow or even to find the Scarecrow by setting himself the task of watching him and his precious coffin shop. He is taking his galloper with him and another trooper.
Although of course there is no thought of arresting Mipps—”
“I should think not, indeed,” put in Dr. Syn.
“Yet,” went on the colonel, “he will be guarded, and should he stir abroad, followed.”
“How amused poor little Mipps must be,” laughed Charlotte Cobtree.
“The rascal will now think more of his own importance than ever,” chuckled the squire. “However, I agree with the vicar. Captain Faunce has got the wrong bee in his bonnet this time.”
“By the way, Squire, have you guarded your stables tonight?” asked Dr. Syn.
“Now, if that hadn't completely slipped my memory,” he replied. “But there's time to rectify that, for it is not dark yet. I recommend a stroll before we take to our port. Let us walk as far as the stables. The air will do us good.” The squire led the way out into the garden to the stables, with the colonel and Lady Cobtree, Charlotte and Dr. Syn following. The two younger girls stayed behind to tease Dr. Pepper, who declared that he preferred looking at god wine to empty stables.
Sure enough, the stables were empty again. The ostler in charge maintained that he had only left them once in order to prepare a poultrice in the loft for a lame horse. True, he had heard a stamping beneath him, but never dreamed anyone would be so bold as to “borrow" the squire's horses in broad daylight.
Some of them had already gone with the volunteers, but the squire had lent those willingly, and now wished he had lent the best animals instead of having them commandeered by the Scarecrow's men.
“Which shows that the rascal means to run his cargo,” cried the colonel triumphantly.
The only animals left were the horse that needed poultricing and Charlotte's two hunters. There were the chalk crosses marked upon their stalls.
“Whoever the Scarecrow may be, it is evident that he is fond of me,” she said to Dr. Syn.
“And who could help being fond of anyone so beautiful?” asked Dr. Syn.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” The cry went out from a hundred and fifty throats as Dr. Syn's volunteers rode out with white armlets and such weapons as they could assemble.
After them rode Dr. Syn upon his fat white pony.
“Bring back Charlotte's admirer—this Scarecrow, Doctor,” laughed the squire, “and we'll place him in the Court House lock-up to await his trial.”
“Death to the Scarecrow.” Charlotte Cobtree wondered how many of those volunteers really wished those words to come true.
On condition that they retired to bed by ten, the squire promised to arouse his daughters when he received news of the Scarecrow's riding.
“I still maintain, however, that he is not the fool to try.”
“Death to the Scarecrow.” Charlotte Cobtree, realizing the dangers against him, hoped to be for once disappointed in her hero, for if he rode, it seemed he must be caught. She went to her room and sat before her dressing-table. Then she saw the sealed package, bearing her name and leaning against the mirror. It had not lain there when she had dressed for dinner. Who had put it there? She would ask the housekeeper to find out, but first she would see what it was all about. She broke the seal, and Fear with his icy fingers clutched at her heart.
“Death to the Scarecrow.” It was one of the broadsheets, but there was writing upon the back. The handwriting was that of an educated man. She glanced at the signature—Vicosa—some-time captain of the Santa Maria of the Port of Spain. So Meg's husband had been a sailor.
Honoured Madame, A gentleman now residing at Rye, and for whom I am acting as agent, has given me certain information with instructions to act upon it in his interests.
We are in a position to vouch for the most important truth of what I am now about to tell you, and for the rest it is based on supposition. For instance, since no gentleman can with any certitude vouch for what is in a lady's heart, however glaring the circumstances (as in your case), we presume to suppose that you are in love with Dr. Syn, vicar of Dymchurch. If this is so, then you will do well to do what this letter instructs you, or you will see your reverend lover upon a common scaffold. He is wanted by many Governments in order to answer his crimes with his life, and by England not the least, as you will fully appreciate when I tell you that he is none other than the notorious pirate, Clegg.
Furthermore knowing that the man called the “Scarecrow” is not Mr. James Bone, the highwayman, as everyone foolishly supposes, it occurs to us that the one person of genius in this neighbourhood who is capable of carrying out these daring “runs” of contraband might very easily prove to be Clegg, or shall we say, Dr. Syn?p
Certain it is that the gentleman instructing me to approach you has made up his mind to get the reward for denouncing Clegg, and if he also earns the extra reward for securing the Scarecrow too, he will be all the more compensated.
Then why do we hesitate, you may ask? Say it is that we admire a pretty girl who we feel sure will help us to help her lover. You have only to bring us this afternoon the string of pearls which Dr. Syn took from the figure-head of the City of London wreck and gave to you, and the gentleman for whom I am agent will undertake on his word of honour to keep his knowledge to himself. Bring them to me before your dinner without fail at “The City of London", and make no mention of it to my wife, Meg, for women chatter most abominably, and that you would not wish.
Failing the delivery of the pearls, Dr. Syn will be denounced as Clegg to His Majesty's officers here in Dymchurch this very night, where no doubt he will be riding on his Scarecrow business.
I am, Madame, Your obedient servant, Captain Vicosa.
P.S. Understand, Madame, your pearls or Death to the Scarecrow, Death to Captain Clegg, and Death to Dr. Syn.
