The Argosy — page 217: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

200 Up on the Moor. ingly strong language. But apparently there was something in the grim humour of the situation which suited a Highland sense of the ludicrous, for after a minute’s dismayed gaze at the novel style of attire offered for his adoption, Aleck burst into a laugh so loud and long that the widow in her turn thought her guest had taken leave of his senses. But when the laugh was over, Mr. Fairburn spoke gravely enough. “Come, guidwife, a joke’s a joke, but you must give me a more lucid explanation than this if you don’t want to see the inside of Exeter gaol. What the dickens have you to do with Black Jan, who so liberally places his wardrobe at my disposal? And why didn’t you at least give me the chance of a tussle with the scoundrel ? ” Betty Trownson was plainly immensely relieved that her tidings had resulted in nothing harder than words. “Oh, zir, do ’ee be thankful that ’ee be spared zafe in life and limb to zee the light o’ this blessed day, instead of a lyin’ in there a mangled corpse! ‘There bain’t a more desp’rate villain alive than Black Jan wan the blid of ’un is up, an’ he wouldn’t ha’ stopped short © murder last night if so be he couldn’t ha’ got they cloze any other way.” The allusion reminded Mr. Fairburn of the decidedly incomplete nature of his present attire, and led to a hasty adjournment to the inner apartment, where, seated on his mattress and wrapped in his patchwork robe de chambre, he listened to his hostess’s rambling narrative. It appeared that she had known ‘ Black Jan,” alias John Hearn, from his boyhood, he having been born and bred on the moor. While still a youth he had fallen into evil company and evil ways, and at length on a charge of housebreaking he heard a sentence of ten years’ penal servitude pronounced against him. ‘Then, naturally, he had vanished froin the sight and hearing of honest folks ; until as the solitary widow sat dozing over her fire the previous afternoon, a man in convict dress had stood suddenly before her, panting and exhausted froma run of many miles—“Black Jan” himself, who, having escaped under cover of the fog from one of the gangs at work on the moor, now half-besought, half-threatened the lonely old woman into afford- ing him a temporary shelter. ‘Then the scoundrel was actually in the place when I knocked yesterday afternoon!” interrupted her auditor. ‘“ Ees fay, he was! An’ both of us thought zure ’twas the sodgers after un, though he’d a made me put out my bit o’ vire vor vear it might sarve ’um vor a guide. I’d o’ny jist a vinished a hidin’ of un in the peat-stack, out at the back, wan ’ee brock oppen the door in that vashion, zir, an’ I was jist vair mazed wi’ terror.” ‘‘Small wonder you were so anxious to turn me out on the moor again! But how came you to change your mind, guidwife, and become so hospitable all in a hurry ?” CONNIE DOO! KS (E() m