And that, for the moment, was as much as Mansel said: but, as later that night I sailed through the sleeping country towards St. Martin, I could not help wondering whether I was not making this now familiar journey for the last time, and, though the next day was fair as a day can be, I had no pleasure in it, and the pastime of fishing seemed to have lost its savour. Yet, I might have spared my concern; for, when I returned to the dungeon, it was to find all well, and throughout the relief we seemed to have the world to ourselves.
That night Mansel and Hanbury visited the track below the combe, but found no sign of water drawn out of the well. When Bell and I were come, we began to take in more wood: by dint of working till cockcrow without a break, we carried all that was left, to our comfort more of mind than of body, for, when it was all underground, we could hardly move.
While we were thus engaged, some fifteen yards of our tunnel started to bulge and had to be shored up before we continued the shaft.
The next day Mansel visited Lerai and ate his lunch at the inn. The landlord’s wife proved only too willing to talk, and the first thing that Mansel learned was that her husband seemed to have thrown in his lot with the thieves, though what in the world they were doing and where they were she could not tell. With that, she had wrung her hands and presently thrown her apron over her head, declaring with tears that, if there was rogues’ company to be had, her lord would be sure to find it, though it lay a day’s journey off: for his mother had been a Roman, and, though she had died at his birth, the blood of lawlessness was in his veins. Then Mansel drew a bow at a venture and, observing that he would have thought that rogues in Carinthia were few, casually spoke of a tanner as the one rustic we had met that had worn the look of a knave. At once the hostess had let out a gush of abuse, avowing that the man and his brother were the black sheep of that part of the land, that her husband knew them well, and had harboured one for a fortnight when a warrant was out for his arrest. On the last two days, she added, the tanner had come to the inn, and, despite her insistence that her husband was away on a journey, had each time stayed for some hours, as though in a hope of his return. But on neither of those two days had the closed car come, as it did from time to time, to take up all manner of food. And here she fell to raving about the strangers’ score, by now amounting to some seventy English pounds, of which not one penny had been paid, declaring that here was the proof that her husband’s union with the thieves was something sinister, for that he was strict as a bailiff where debts were concerned. “However,” says she in the end, “no wind’s so ill that it blows no scruple of good: for the strangers’ ways may be evil, but the tanner’s are worse; and, at least, my husband is out of some villainy, for, now that the tanner has twice gone empty away, I do not think he will return.”
Herein we hoped very much that the woman was right: for, if the tanner’s discovery came to the knowledge of the thieves, our valuable system of reliefs would certainly be imperilled, if not destroyed, to say nothing of the fact that they would instantly know that we were driving a shaft.
I have shown already that, since our brush with the tanner, we berthed the car each night at some different place: but Mansel was not satisfied with this precaution, and presently determined that the relief should always begin at eleven o’clock, and that, from ten o’clock onward, one of the four in the dungeon should watch as much as he could of the opposite shore. This may appear to have been an idle exercise, because the sentry was too distant to see or hear any movement which was made in the danger zone: and I must confess that I did not myself account it worth the expense of a workman—for nowadays we laboured to all hours: but Mansel had given the order, and so it was done.
We had always kept in the dungeon a supply of tinned food, sufficient to last us some days: but this stock we now increased, until, if the worst came to pass, we could live for full three weeks without leaving the oubliette.
However, the days went by and no one troubled us: if the tanner watched us again, we never saw him: the soil at the foot of the gutter was sometimes drenched, but never the marsh we had made it: and, while the enemy’s labour was fitful, and they had, I think, no concerted plan of action, except to deny us the well, we continued to drive our shaft forward with all our might.
And here let me say that we were by now the owners of Wagensburg: for Ellis had let go his option, and Mansel had purchased the place. But I doubt if seigniory was ever so strangely enjoyed—the freeholders having their being, like rats, in the bowels of the earth, and in constant dread of their presence being observed, and their enemies in possession and coming and going and doing just as they pleased.
It was thirteen days to an hour since Tester had
