"I'll follow him," Guy exclaimed, growing more excited than ever,
now this quarry was almost well within sight; "I'll follow him till
I find him, the confounded rascal. I'll follow him to his grave.
He shan't get away from me."
The landlord looked at him with a dubious frown. That one could
smile and smile and be a villain didn't enter into his simple rustic
philosophy.
"He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman is Maister McGregor," the honest
Devonian said, with a tinge of disapprobation in his thick voice.
"What vur do 'ee want to vind 'un? That's what _I_ wants to know.
He don't look like one as did ever hurt a vlea. Such a soft zart of
a voice. An' he do play on the viddle that beautiful--that beautiful,
why, 'tis the zame if he war a angel from heaven. Viddler Moore,
he wur up here wi' his music last night; an' Maister McGregor, he
took the instrument vrom un, an' 'Let ME have a try, my vrend,'
says he, all modest and unassoomin'; and vi' that, he wounded it
up, an' he begun to play. Lard, how he did play. Never heard nothing
like it in all my barn days. It is the zame, vor all the world,
as you do hear they viddler chaps that plays by themselves in the
Albert Hall up to London. Depend upon it, zur, there ain't no harm
in HIM. A vullow as can play on the viddle like thik there, why,
he couldn't do no hurt, not to child nor chicken."
Guy turned away from the door, fretting and fuming inwardly. He
knew better than that. Nevitt's consummate mastery of his chosen
instrument was but of a piece, after all, with the way he could play
on all the world, as on a familiar gamut. It was the very skill of
the man that made him so dangerous and so devilish. Guy felt that
under the spell of Nevitt's eye he himself was but as clay in the
hands of the potter.
But Nevitt should never so trick him and twist him again. To that his
mind was now fully made up. He would never let that cold eye hold
him fixed as of yore by its steely glance. Once for all, Nevitt
had proved his power too well. Guy would take good care he never
subjected himself in future to that uncanny influence. One forgery
was enough. Henceforth he was adamant.
And yet? And yet he was going to seek out Nevitt; going to stand
face to face with that smiling villain again; going to tax him
with his crime; going to ask him what he meant by this double-dyed
treachery.
The landlord had told him where Nevitt was most likely to be found.
He followed that direction. At a gate that turned by the river-bank,
twenty minutes from the inn, a small boy was seated. He was
a Devonshire boy of the poorest moorland type, short, squat, and
thick set. As Guy reached the gate, the boy rose and opened it,
pulling his forelock twice or thrice, expectant of a ha'penny. "Has
anybody gone down here?" Guy asked, in an excited voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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