The Argosy — page 384: what you’re looking at

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

The Village Blacksmith. 363 covered himself to attempt to pursue him, Freeman was running down the hill at a break-neck pace, leaving the wig and beard on the gate. As a drowning man will catch at a straw, so Mark seized the false hair. It was the straw which might save him. In it he might be able to escape from Woodford before his case was opened the next day ; for escape he must or be committed for trial for perjury since Freeman was going to turn Queen’s evidence against him. He was an arrant coward, and the prospect of penal servitude which might well have alarmed a braver man, terrified him. Submit to it he could not; escape from it he must. He seized the wig and beard, and taking off his cap, put it on his red head, and then walked down to the canal to see by his reflection in the water if the disguise were suffi- cient protection. Hecame to the conclusion that it was. No one, he thought, would recognise him, and his first impulse was to throw down his broom and start off then and there across the country to a distant station and there take a ticket for London. He had just sufficient money in his pocket to take him there. But then he remembered he had four or five pounds at the Rectory, and desperate as his case was, he was not inclined to sacrifice that ; he loved money too dearly to part with it so easily. No, he would escape, but he must go back and get his money and as many of his belongings as he could carry with him; so he put the false hair in his breast pocket and returned to finish his work. The servants all watched him too closely for him to hope to escape until night, and even then he would find it difficult, for by the Arch- deacon’s orders the butler now slept in his room, and always took the precaution of locking the door and putting the key under his pillow. However, Mark knew the servants had all sworn he should not run away and forfeit his bail if they could help it, and he was given to understand that the Fuchsia-bells, Holmes and the kitchen-maid took it in turns to watch for so many hours each night lest he should evade the butler’s guard. This was decidedly awkward ; but as Mark went home to supper with his wits sharpened by fear, he hit upon a vlan by which he trusted to render his self-constituted gaolers incompetent, to fulfil their task. He would drug them. This would not be difficult, for it was’ his duty to draw the supper beer for the kitchen, and he knew*there was a bottle of laudanum in the Archdeacon’s dressing-room. When he got to the Rectory he found, as he expected, all th® servants busy, for it was the dinner-hour; the butler and Mary were waiting at table, the cook dishing up the dinner with the kitchen-maid’s assist- ance, and Holmes was as usual, at this time, out in the shrubbery with a lover; so Mark had no difficulty in going upstairs unobserved”. . and getting the laudanum. He then went to his own room, pait all his money in his pocket and packed his best suit of clothes aad few other things into a bundle, which he hid under his-bed to..be teady for him when he started that night. Then he changed his asl « ® GOnie JOO) KS