“Here it is, Giles, Mrs. Borwick’s dowry for her old age.” The two men sat on one of the grain bins and investigated the money bag, closely packed with currency notes, silver, and even some golden sovereigns.
“The old chap must have hidden those sovereigns away over forty years ago,” said Giles Hoggett, “and he never dreamt they’d be used ‘to right a wrong.’ You used the word ‘dowry’ just now. When Nat Borwick got married after his father died, he married Sally Newby, and Sally owned a farm which her father had left her. Nat Borwick sold that farm—it was Helbeck in Littledale, and poor Sally never saw a penny of the money. Nat just hid it. Well, if this little packet is the proceeds of Nat’s last sale, it will just about repay Sally for what that old skinflint robbed her of long ago.”
“What a lot you do know about folks in these parts,” said Macdonald. “Did you know Sam Borwick as a lad?”
“Not to say know him, but I knew him; everybody did, he was known in every village shop, every bar, every farmhouse. The shopkeepers knew that if they didn’t keep their eyes on him, he’d get away with something, sweets or smokes or something he couldn’t get at home. The farmers’ wives would say ‘be off with you and don’t hang around here.’ Folks were sorry for him in a way, because they knew about his father and how his father treated the old lady. Sam was a thief from the time he could toddle: we all knew it.”
Macdonald drew a photograph out of his pocket. “Can you recognise this face?”
“Aye,” said Giles Hoggett placidly, “though I haven’t seen him for years. This was Tom Martin, the Irish lad who worked at Langton’s Farm before the war. That’s over towards Barbon, Langton’s Farm is, up in the Westmorland fells, across the county boundary. Tom Martin, he was a good worker and Richard Langton was right sorry when he left.”
Macdonald asked, “Would Martin have come across Sam Borwick?”
“Likely enough, down by the river. Sam was a clever poacher. Maybe he taught Tom how to tickle trout: all the boys play tricks like that.”
Macdonald sat with Tom Martin’s photo in his hand. “Did you ever see this photograph in the papers, Giles— the convict who escaped from Dartmoor?”
“No. 1 didn’t, but then I’m not very observant of pictures in the papers. My wife might, have, I don’t know, she’s much more observant than I am, but I don’t think she’d have said anything even if she did see it. It isn’t easy, you know, although we’re both law-abiding people, it goes against the grain to help in hounding down a fugitive, especially if you’ve known that fugitive as a boy and liked him, because he was a good hard-working boy. Kate never mentioned that picture to me, but if she saw it I expect she hoped that Tom would get back to Barbon and work on one of the hill farms up there again.” Giles looked at Macdonald rather sadly: “When you catch Tom, you’ll send him back to Dartmoor?”
“I’ve caught him. He’s got to work off his prison sentence. After that, I hope to get him started on something to keep him straight. Have you ever heard of Don Whelpton?”
“Aye, I’ve heard of him, read his books and heard him lecture. Explorer, sailor, naturalist, mountaineer—not much he hasn’t done in the wilder parts of the world.”
“And he’s taken a few wild characters with him on his jaunts and taught them a little sense. If I go to Don Whelpton and tell him about your Tom Martin—Rory Macshane, I think Don would be interested. Rory escaped from a P.O.W. camp in Lower Silesia and got clean away, he walked to Switzerland, all by himself. He escaped from Dartmoor and he walked to Lunesdale—‘living off the country’ as he calls it. I know he’s been a thief, but he’s never been brutal or violent, and he’s got some good stuff in him. It seems to me that to keep him straight he’s got to have an objective, the tougher the better. Once it was the Swiss border—and he made it. Once it was Lunesdale—and he made it. If Don has some objective, sufficiently tough and far away, I think Rory would be worth his place in the crew.”
“Crew,” said Giles. “I know that Whelpton’s bought a schooner and he goes sailing these days, but Tom Martin’s a countryman.”
“Maybe, but he was born in a village not far from Belfast and he played about in small boats from the time he could toddle. He’ll be worth his place in a crew if Don will take him and J think Don will.”
Chapter Fourteen
BALANCE
SHEET
“To WHAT END? What’s the good, who benefits?” asked Don Whelpton, shooting out his rhetorical questions at Macdonald with perfectly good temper. “Climbing Everest, camping at the poles, extending our knowledge of the most barren areas of the world’s surface, the places which make life impossible without aid from all the elaborations of this mechanical era. What good does it do to anybody? I’ve been asked those questions again and again, and it isn’t always easy to find convincing answers if the questioner is an honest humane chap, as he often is.”
“Striking a balance sheet,” said Macdonald, “we all have to do it sometime. While I could supply my own answers to your questions, I should be interested to have your answers. You have spent many years in conditions of intolerable discomfort, of danger and privation in forbidding parts of the earth, so you must have a sanction which answers your cui bono?”
“Yes, first and foremost it’s the personal satisfaction I gain from overcoming difficulties—the harder the struggle, the greater the sense of achievement. Nothing very worthy about that, no
