Stories with a Vengeance — page 20: what you’re looking at

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16 “Dear me! this is very shocking!” re- turned Jack. “ But you mustn’t take on so, my good lady. We must see whether we cannot rig you out with something neat and handy in the ready-made line. Why, where the dickens,” he continued—“ where the'dickens is my purse P” He searched and researched one pocket after another for his little canvas bag, but all in vain. With the exception of two half-crowns which remained in one of his trousers’ pockets, all his money was gone ! “Tt must have been that villainous little nigger in the smock-frock !” he exclaimed. “The ungrateful young imp must have picked my pocket while I was tipping him with one hand and patting his confounded woolly pate with the other. If I can only a him, I won’t leave a whole bone im his skin |” ‘Now, look you here, mother,” the dis- consolate Jack continued. “Some vagabond has just robbed me of my purse. I thought they had better manners in the rural dis- tricts, but I’m afraid they’ve been demo. ralized by the electric telegraph and the penny newspapers; and as things stand at present, I’ve only. five shillings in the world, but that I’m quite ready to share with you.” “Youre a dear, good ’ansome young man; bless yer ’art, and ’Evin ’ll reward you!” mumbled the harridan inthe counter- pane. “But ’alf a bull’s too much. Give us a silver sixpemee. A tanner ’ll buy mea meal o’ wittles.” ‘‘ Nonsense!” said Jack; “there is no spending in sixpence. The price of butchers’ meat is so shamefully high. I must insist upon your taking half a crown. As for myself, I’ve got two-and- sixpence and my pipe and plenty of baccy, | all I’ve got to dois to walk to Guildford and telegraph to London for some money. Perhaps the Guildford police will put me on the scent of that atrocious young varmint from the Congoes, who lives with Parson Clay. Perhaps, my good lady, you wouldn’t mind telling mejhow far I am from Guild- ford, and which is the way there. So far as I can make out, I seem to have been walking in a circle ever since I left the ‘Lamb and Tarbrush’ this morning.” For all reply, the hag in the counterpane extended her skinny right arm and clutched at the proffered com. Then she drew herself up to her full height—she proved to re a very tall old lady indeed—she said,— “The road to Guildford ? TI tell-you, old bloke. Fs straight down the crooked road and right round the square.” With which 99 Google THE STORY OF JACK THE PAINTER. enigmatical and, to all appearance, ironical utterance, she took to away as thoughthe Landlord of the “ Punch- bowl,” to which reference has been more than once made, were after her. “How she scuds ’cross country!” mused | Jack, watching the flying form of the hag | in the counterpane. “Is she a humbug, I wonder? It appears to me that I’ve met a good many humbugs this morning. These sharp country folk are too much for us un- sophisticated cockneys. Perhaps she only ran away because she was hungry. ]’m getting as hungry as a hunter myself. I must have some lunch. I wonder how far it is to anywhere. I’m beginning to think that I’ve got lost in Wonderland. Well, at all events, we’ll have a pipe over it.” Slowly walking along—he was on the verge of a steep declivity, thickly wooded— he produced his beloved briar-wood pipe and his tobacco-pouch. He carefully filled the pipe, and was placing it between his lips, when his foot coming in contact with a stone, he stumbled, and nearly fell. Rapidly recovering his footing, he found that he had dropped his pipe, and could see it rolling down the precipice of underwood, till its progress was arrested by a stone ledge about four feet down from the verge. “ Provokin !” muttered Jack. “Clearly I’m not in luck’s way to-day. But I'll soon. have Master Briar-wood in safe custod again. Steady’s the word—steady. I hold on by the remarkable specimen of vegetation before me.” | his was a dwarf oak on the very brink of the declivity, a weird and ghastly little tree, one branch of which protruded like the arm of a gibbet over the gulf. Jack caught hold of the branch, thinking to swing easily down to the stone ledge where . he could see his briar-wood lying. But the treacherous branch snapped, aa though it had been the merest twig, in twain, and Jack the Painter went rolling down the steep sides of the gorge. “fm in for it,” he thought. “If this isn’t the Devil’s Punchbowl, it must be his tobacco-yjar !” Did you ever dream that you were falling, say, at the rate of several hundreds of feet every minuteP Of course you have had such a dream. Well; Jack Halstead was wide awake. Of that circumstance there can be no reasonable doubt; for he pinched himself, tugged at his hair and beard, and er heels, and ran — rubbed his eyes several times, to make sure | that he was not asleep. Yet the sensation of fallmg which he was undergoing pre- cisely resembled that which we ae pnene in a dream. He was not at all giddy, nor (Clo) 5} . OO) S CO)