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The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.

"Here, take me away – I've had enough of this."

"Listen. I have something to say to you – something to do for you, too."

The convict broke afresh into a laugh.

"Take me away, will you?"

"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.

"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.

Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid. There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:

"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings – "

Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.

"Remember that others – one other – may be suffering with you."

The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.

"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come to torture me – that's all!"

"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and mine."

The convict paused, and said more quietly:

"Then it's your policy to undo it."

Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.

"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."

The convict's face lightened.

"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me for your contrition also. Guards, let me out – let me out, I tell you!"

The governor interposed:

"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."

"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said the convict.

"Take him away," said the governor.

"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the arms of the guard.

"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.

An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet enough now.

"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."

The convict bent his head and went out in silence.

CHAPTER XV

Paul Ritson – let him be known by his official number no more – was not taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his approaching departure.

"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"

"What's your message?"

"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of keys as she wants partic'lar."

"Write her yourself, my man."

"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a straight man, you are."

A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.

A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one of his boots.

"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter into Paul's hands.

It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.

The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the exact place where it was recorded.

He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he looked, and what fine times he had of it – "just to keep up their spirits, you know."

"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head – the same whose conversation was overheard in church – "I hear as you're a employer of labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation. Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number – same as a wild beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same pride in my pussonal appearance."

At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed and the warder armed. Then they set out.

On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a brass band played on the bridge.

Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood before the carriage and peered in at the window.

Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him – see the blue cap?" "What an ill-looking fellow – to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."

Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain? Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a first-class carriage.

The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to this.

Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's disgrace.

Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.

He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.

Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform, and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!

Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o' 'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker, look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to suppress such jesting.

Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.

Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.

The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.

They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket, and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look, he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had attracted.

Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread, with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.

The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only required this cruel torture to crush it forever.

In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now? Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her delicate fingers was now on his hands – the hard hands that wore the irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and frightful oaths.

He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could be no disguising the truth – he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble. Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.

They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were indifferent – only some casual message – but they were spoken in the broad Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise to his throat.

The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him. His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses. Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in the beck below.

Everything came back upon him like a memory of yesterday. He stood up and thrust out his head, and did not think of his gray jacket and blue cap until a carter who watered his horses at a pool near the railway lines started and stared as if he had seen a "boggle" at noonday.

Then Paul Ritson remembered that he was still a convict, that his hands wore irons, that the man who lay sleeping on the seat of the carriage was his warder, and that the steely thing that peeped from the belt of the sleeping man was a revolver, to be promptly used if he attempted to escape.

But not even these reflections sufficed to dissipate the emotion that had taken hold of him. He began at length to think of Hugh Ritson, and to wonder why he had been brought back home. Home! – home? It was a melancholy home-coming, but it was coming home, nevertheless.

CHAPTER XVI

Two days later the gray old town-hall that stands in the market-place of Keswick was surrounded by a busy throng. The Civil Court of the County Assize was sitting in this little place for the nonce to try a curious case of local interest. It was an action for ejectment brought by Greta, Mrs. Paul Ritson, against a defendant whose name was entered on the sheet as Paul Drayton, alias Paul Ritson, now of the Ghyll, in the Parish of Newlands.

The court-room was crowded. It was a large, bare room, with a long table and two rows of chairs crossing the end, the one row occupied by the judge and a special jury, the other by the lawyers for the prosecution and defense. The rest of the chamber was not provided with seats, and there the dalespeople huddled together.

A seat had been found for Greta at one end of the table. Her cheek rested on her hand. She dropped her eyes as the spectators craned their necks to catch a glimpse of her. Behind her, and with one hand on her chair-back, stood the old parson, his Jovian white head more white than of old, the tenderer lines in his mellow face drawn down to a look of pain. Immediately facing Greta, at the opposite end of the table, Hugh Ritson sat. One leg was thrown over the other knee, and the long, nervous fingers of the right hand played with the shoelace. His head was inclined forward, and the thin, pallid, clean-cut face with the great calm eyes and the full, dilated nostrils was more than ever the face of a high-bred horse. None would have guessed the purpose with which Hugh Ritson sat there. One would have said that indifference was in those eyes and on that brow – indifference or despair.

Near where the rustle was loudest and most frequent among the spectators, Drayton sat by the side of Mr. Bonnithorne. He was dressed in his favorite suit of broad plaid, and had a gigantic orange-lily stuck jauntily in his buttonhole. His face was flushed and his eyes sparkled. Now and again he leaned back to whisper something to the blacksmith, the miller, and the landlord of the Flying Horse, who were grouped behind him. His remarks must have been wondrously facetious, for they were promptly followed by a low gurgle, which was as promptly suppressed.

The counsel for the plaintiff opened his case. The plaintiff sued as the owner in succession to her husband, who was at present dead to the law. She contended that the man who now stood seized of the Ghyll was not her husband, Paul Ritson, but Paul Drayton, an innkeeper of Hendon, who bore him a strange personal resemblance, and personated him. The evidence of identity which should presently be adduced was full and complete in the essential particular of proving that the defendant was not Paul Ritson, by whose title alone the defense would maintain the right of present possession. Unhappily, the complementary evidence as to the actual identity of the defendant with Paul Drayton, the publican, had been seriously curtailed by the blindness, followed by the death, of an important witness. Still, if he, the counsel for the plaintiff, could prove to the satisfaction of the jury that the defendant was not the man he represented himself to be, they would have no course but to grant the ejectment for which the plaintiff asked. To this end he would call two witnesses whose evidence must outweigh that of all others – the wife of Paul Ritson, and the clergyman who solemnized the marriage.

Greta's name was called, and she rose at the end of the table. Her bosom heaved under the small lace shawl that covered her shoulders, and was knotted like a sailor's scarf, on her breast. She stood erect, her eyes raised slightly and her drooping hands clasped in front. After the customary formalities, she was examined.

"You are the only child of the late Robert Lowther?"

"I am the daughter of Robert Lowther."

Drayton threw back his head, and laughed a little.

"You were married to Paul Ritson in 1875 at the parish church of Newlands, the minister being the Reverend Mr. Christian?"

"I was."

"On the day of your marriage you accompanied your husband to London, and the same night he left you at the Convent of St. Margaret, Westminster?"

"That is quite true."

There was a buzz of conversation in the court, accompanied by a whispered conference on the bench. Counsel paused to say that it was not a part of his purpose to trouble the court with an explanation of facts which were so extraordinary that they could only be credited on the oath of a person who, though present, would not be called. At this reference Hugh Ritson raised his languid eyes, and the examination proceeded.

"Three days afterward you received a message from your husband, requesting you to meet him at St. Pancras Station, and return with him to Cumberland by the midnight train?"

"I did."

"Who took you the message?"

"Mrs. Drayton, the old person at the inn at Hendon."

"You went to the station?"

"Oh, yes."

"Tell the court what occurred there."

"Just on the stroke of twelve, when the train was about to leave, a man whom at first sight I mistook for my husband came hurrying up the platform, and I stepped into the carriage with him."

"Do you see that man in court?"

"Yes; he sits two seats to your right."

Drayton rose, smiled broadly, bowed to the witness, and resumed his seat.

"Were you alone in the compartment?"

"At first we were; but just as the train was moving away who should join us but Parson Christian."

There was another buzz of conversation, and counsel paused again to say that he should not trouble the court with an explanation of the extraordinary circumstances by which Parson Christian came to be in London at that critical moment. These facts formed in themselves a chain of evidence which must yet come before a criminal court, involving as it did the story of a conspiracy more painful and unnatural perhaps than could be found in the annals of jurisprudence.

"Tell the court what passed in the train."

"I perceived at once that the man was not my husband, though strangely like him in face and figure, and when he addressed me as his wife I repulsed him."

"Did Parson Christian also realize the mistake?"

"Oh, yes, but not quite so quickly."

"What did you do?"

"We left the train at the first station at which it stopped."

"Did the defendant offer any resistance?"

"No; he looked abashed, and merely observed that perhaps a recent illness had altered him."

Counsel for the defense, at whose left Mr. Bonnithorne sat as attorney for the defendant, cross-examined the witness.

"You say that on the night following the morning of your marriage your husband left you at a convent?"

"I do."

Mr. Bonnithorne dropped his twinkling eyes, and muttered something that was inaudible to the witness. There was a titter among the people who stood behind him.

"And you say that Mrs. Drayton took you the message of which you have spoken. Did she tell you that your husband had been ill?"

"She did."

"We are to infer that you visited the house of the Draytons at Hendon?"

"A railway accident drove us there."

"Did any one accompany the defendant to St. Pancras that night?"

"My husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, was with him."

"Tell the jury where your husband now is, if he is not at this moment in court."

No answer. Amid a profound silence the plaintiff's lawyer was understood to object to the question.

"Well, we can afford to waive it," said counsel, with a superior smile. "One further question, Mrs. Ritson. Had you any misunderstanding with your husband?"

"None whatever."

"Will you swear that your voices were not raised in angry dispute while you were at the inn at Hendon?"

Greta lifted her head and her eyes flashed. "Yes, I will swear it," she said in a soft voice but with impressive emphasis.

Mr. Bonnithorne reached up to the ear of counsel and was understood to say that perhaps the point was too delicate to be pressed.

Parson Christian was next examined. The defendant in the present action was not the man whom he married to the plaintiff. He had since seen Paul Ritson. Where? In the convict prison of Dartmoor. In cross-examination he was asked by what name the convict was known to the directors of Dartmoor. Paul Drayton.

"Then tell the court how you came to identify the defendant as Drayton."

"There were many facts pointing that way."

"Give us one."

"On the morning of the marriage I found a letter lying open before the fire in my vestry. It was from Mr. Hugh Ritson to Mr. Bonnithorne, and it mentioned the name of Drayton in a connection which, by the light of later revelations, provoked many inferences."

Mr. Bonnithorne was unprepared for this answer. Counsel looked at him inquiringly, but the attorney glanced down and colored deeply.

"Can you show us the letter?"

"No; I left it where I found it."

"Then it can hardly be received as evidence."

The attorney smiled, and the tension of Drayton's face relaxed. There was a slight shuffle among the people; the witness had stepped back.

Counsel for the defense opened his case. They were asked to believe that the defendant in the present action was Paul Drayton, in the teeth of the fact that Paul Drayton was at that moment a convict in a convict prison. The incredible statement was made that a newly married husband had placed his young wife in a convent on the night of their marriage, and that when they should have rejoined each other an interchange had been made, the husband going to prison in another man's name, the other man coming to Cumberland to claim the place of the woman's husband. Moreover, they were asked to believe that the husband's brother, Mr. Hugh Ritson, had either been fooled by the impostor or made a party to the imposture. Happily it was easy to establish identity by two unquestionable chains of evidence – resemblance and memory. It would be shown that the defendant could be none other than Paul Ritson, first, because he resembled him exactly in person; second, because he knew all that Paul Ritson ought to know; third, because he knew nothing that Paul Ritson might not know. No two men's lives had ever been the same from the beginning of the world, and as it would be seen that the defendant's life had been the same as Paul Ritson's, it followed that Paul Ritson and the defendant were one and the same man.

Dick o' the Syke was the first witness examined for the defense. He swore that Paul Ritson was active in extinguishing a fire that broke out in the mill two years ago; that he had climbed to the cross-trees with a hatchet; and that within the past month the defendant had described to him the precise locality and shape of the gap made in the roof by the fire. No one could have known so much except himself and the man who stood on the cross-trees. That man was Paul Ritson, and he was there and then recognized by many spectators, among whom was Parson Christian.

The next witness was Mistress Calvert, of the Pack Horse. Paul Ritson had slept at their house one night two years ago, and a few days since the present defendant had pointed out the bedroom he occupied, and recalled the few words of conversation which passed between them.

Natt, the stableman, was called. His sleepy eyes blinked knowingly as he explained that one winter's night, when the snow fell heavily, Mrs. Ritson, then Miss Greta, was startled by what she mistook for the ghost of Paul Ritson. The witness had not been so easily deceived, and the defendant had since described to him the exact scene and circumstances of what the lady had thought to be the ghostly appearance.

Then followed John Proudfoot, the blacksmith; Tom o' Dint, the postman; Giles Raisley, the pitman; Job Sheepshanks, the mason; and Tommy Lowthwaite, the landlord of the Flying Horse – all swearing to points of identity.

One recalled the fact that Paul Ritson had a scar on his head that was caused by the kick of a horse when he was a boy. The defendant had just such a scar.

Another remembered that Paul Ritson had a mark on the sole of his right foot which had been made by treading on a sharp piece of rock on Hindscarth. The defendant had exactly such a mark.

A third had wrestled with Paul Ritson, and knew that he had a mole beneath the left shoulder-blade on the back. The defendant had a mole in that unusual place.

Counsel for the defense smiled blandly at the special jury, the special jury smiled blandly at counsel for the defense. Was it really necessary that the defendant should be called? Surely it was a pity to occupy the time of the court. The whole case was in a nutshell – the lady had quarreled with her husband. State of affairs would be promptly gauged when it was explained that this action had been raised to anticipate a forthcoming suit in the divorce court for restitution of connubial rights.

The counsel for the plaintiff smiled also, and his was a weak smile of conscious defeat. He stammered a desire to withdraw – said he had been promised more conclusive evidence when he undertook the case, and sat down with an apologetic air.

There was a shuffle of feet in the court. Drayton had risen to receive the congratulations of his friends behind him and the cordial nods of some of the superior people who had been favored with seats at the right hand and left of the judge. He was answering in a loud tone, when there was a sudden lull of the buzz of gossip, and all eyes were directed toward one end of the table.

Hugh Ritson had risen from his seat, and with a face that was very pale, but as firm as a rock, he was engaged in a whispered conference with the plaintiff's counsel. That gentleman's eager face betrayed the keenest possible interest in what he heard. Presently he lifted his arm with an impatient gesture, and said:

"My lord, I have unexpectedly come into possession of new and most important evidence."

"Of what nature?" asked the judge.

"If it is conceivable," said counsel, "that in any question of personal identity the court will accept the evidence of all the tinkers and tailors, the riff-raff, the raggabash of the country-side, and reject that of the wife of the man whose estate is in question, perhaps it will be allowed that there are three persons who are essential to this examination – the brother of Paul Ritson, the defendant who claims to be Paul Ritson, and the convict who is suffering penal servitude in the name of Paul Drayton. I might name one other whose evidence might be yet more conclusive than that of any of these alone – the mother of Paul Ritson; but she is unhappily dead to the world."