As I turned the fellow over, I was full as I could hold of everything
stuck-up--as arrogant as a jack sparrow after his first fight. He had
hurt his head rather, hitting it hard as he fell. The dawn had come up
clear by that time. I tell you I gasped. I give you a hundred guesses
to tell me whose face it was I saw.
It was that of Mr. Ablethorpe, the Hayfork Parson.
* * * * *
Well, I know now how it feels when the world comes suddenly to an end;
when all that you had counted upon turns out just nothing; when what
you believed true, and would have staked your life upon, is proven all
in a minute the falsest of lies.
It was enough to drive any one mad. And indeed I think I could have
stuck the steel hook into Mr. Ralph Ablethorpe, as he lay there in his
High Church parson's coat with the tails nearly to his feet, his stiff
white collar and the big gold cross--real for true gold--swinging as
low as his hair watch chain. Yes, I would--but for one thing. The
Hayfork Minister lay with his mouth open, his temples bleeding a little
where he had hit a piece of stone, and he looked dead--painfully dead.
If he had looked a bit alive, I wouldn't have minded sticking the hook
into him. Just think of all that chase, and his pretending to hunt the
murderers of poor Harry, and sending me up that drain pipe--and all in
the interests, as was now proven, of the murderers themselves. It was
enough to make a Quaker kick his mother.
There was also, though I had not noticed it at first, one thing more.
The portfolio that I had supposed to contain my father's stolen papers
and the proofs of the crime--well, there it lay, with the lock broken,
and ready for me to find all about the foul treachery of the Hayfork
Minister.
I was sure I should trap him now. I tell you I was so mad that I began
to think of his being hung. And how glad I would be to see the black
flag go up over the jail at Longtown. I meant to go there to see and
cry "Hooray!"--I was so mad at his taking us all in. But, at any rate,
I had a right to look, if only to search for my father's papers. It
was I who had caught him, as it were, in the act.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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