THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 June 1939, Page 10

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

(PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.) (COPYRIGHT.)

By

JOHN BUCHAN

(Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada.)

CHAPTER V. (Continued). Thank God it was a black night. The moon was well on its last quarter, and would not rise till late. My thirst was too great to allow me to tarry, so about nine o'clock, as far as I could judge, I started to descend. It wasn’t easy, and half-way down I heard the back door of the house open, and saw the gleam of a lantern against the mill wall. For some agonising minutes I hung by the ivy and prayed that whoever it was would not come round by the dovecotj. Then the light disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I could on to the hard soil of the yard. I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone dyke till I reached the fringe of trees which surrounded the house. If I had known how to do it I would have tried to put that aeroplane out of action, but I realised that any attempt would probably be futile. I was pretty certain that there would be some kind of defence round the house, so I went through the wood on hands and knees, feeling carefully every inch before me. It was as well for presently I came to a wire about two feet from the ground. If I had tripped over that, it would doubtless have rung some bell in the house, and I would have been captured. A hundred yards further on I found another wire cunningly placed on the edge of a small stream. Beyond that lay the moor, and in five minutes I was deep in bracken and heather. Soon I was round the shoulder of the rise, in the little glen from which the mill-lade flowed. Ten minutes later my face was in the spring, and I was soaking down pints of the blessed water.

But I did not stop till I had put half a dozen miles between me and that accursed dwelling.

I sat down on a hill top and took stock of my position. I wasn’t feeling very happy, lor my natural thankfulness of my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned me, and the baking nours on the dovecot hadn’t helped matters. I had a crushing headache, and felt as sick as a cat. Also my shoulder was in a bad way. At first I thought it was only a bruise, but it seemed to be swelling, and I had no use of my left arm.

My plan was to seek Mr Turnbull’s cottage, recover- my garments, and especially Scudder’s notebook, and then make for the main line and get back to the south. It seemed to me that the sooner I got in touch with the Foreign Office man, Sir Waller Eullivant, the better. I didn’t see how f could get more proof than I had got already. He must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him 1 would be in better hands than those devilish Germans. I had begun to feel quite kindly towards the British police. It was a wonderful starry night, and I had not much difficulty about the road. Sir Harry’s map had given me the lie of the land, and all I had to do was to steer a point or two west of south-west to come to the stream where I had met the roadman. In all these travels I never knew the names of the places, but I believe this stream was no less than the upperwaters of the River Tweed. I calculated I must be about eighteen miles distance, and that meant I could not get there before morning. So I must lie up a day somewhere, for I was too outrageous a figure to be seen in the sunlight. I had neither coat, waistcoat, collar nor hat;- my trousers were badly torn, and my face and hands were black with the explosion. I dare say I had other beauties, for my eyes felt as if they were furiously bloodshot. Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fearing citizens to see on a high road. Very soon after daybreak 1 made an attempt to clean myself in a hill burn, and then approached a herd's cottage, for I was feeling the need of food. The herd was away from home, and his wife was alone, and no neighbour for five miles. She was a decent old body, and a plucky one, for though she got a fright when she saw rne, she had an axe handy, and would have used it on any evil-doe;-. 1 told her that I had nad a faff —I didn’t say how —and she saw by my looks that I was pretty sick. Like a true Samaritan. she asked no questions, but gave me a bowl of milk, with a dash of whisky in it, and let me sit for a little by her kitchen fire. She would have bathed my shoulder, but it ached so badly that I would not let her touch it. I don’t know what she took me for —a repentant burglar, perhaps; for when I wanted to pay her for the milk and tendered a note, which was the only change I had, she shook her head and said something about "giving it to them that had a right to it." At this I protested so strongly that I think she believed my honesty, for she took the money and gave me a warm new plaid for it, and an old hat of her man's. She showed mo how to wrap the plaid round my shoulders, and when I left that cottage I was the living image of the kind of Scotsman you see in the illustrations of Burns's poems. But at any rate I was more or less clad. It was as well, for the weather changed before mid-day to a thick drizzle of rain. I found shelter below an overhanging rock in the crook of a burn, where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable bed. There I managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped and wretched, with rny shoulder gnawing like a toothache. 1 ate the oat-cake and cheese the old

wife had given me, and set out agan just before the darkening.

I pass over rhe miseries of that night among the wet hills. There was no stars to steer by, and I had to do the best I could from my memory of the map. Twice 1 lost my .way, and I had some nasty falls into peat bogs. I had only about ten miles to go as the crow flics, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was completed with set teeth and a verylight and dizzy head. But I managed it, and in the early dawn I was knocking at Mr Turnbull’s door. The mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could not see the high. road.

Mr Turnbull himself opened to me —sober and something more titan sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient, but well-tended suit of black. He had been shaved not later than the night before; he wore a linen collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At first he did not recognise me. “Whae are yet that come stravaigin’ here on the Saboath mornin’?” he asked. 1 had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the reason for his strange decorum. My head Was swimming so wildly that I could not frame a coherent answer. But he recognised me, and he saw that I was ill. “Hae ye got my specs?” he asked. I fetched them out of my trouser pocket, and gave him them. "Ye’ll hae come for your jaiket and westcoat," he said. Com in-bye. Losh, man, ye're terrible dune i’ the legs. Hand up till I get ye to a chair.” I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a good deal of fever in my bones, and the wet night had brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects of the fumes combined to make mo feel pretty bad. Before I knew Mr Turnbull was helping me off with my clothes, and putting me to bed in one of the two cupboards that lined the kitchen walls. He was a true friend in need, that old roadman. His wife was dead years ago, and since his daughter’s marriage he lived alone. For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nursing I needed. I simply' v,'anted to be left in peace while the fever took its course, and when my skin was cool again I found that the bout had more or less cured my shoulder. But it was a baddish go. and though 1 was out of bed in five days, it tool: mo some time to gel my legs again. He went, out each morning, leaving me milk for the day and locking the door behind him; and came in the evening to sit silent in tne chimney corner. Not a soul came near the place. When I was getting better he never bothered me with a question. Several times he fetched me a twodays’ old “Scotsman” and I noticed that the interest in the Portland Place murder seemed to have died down. There was no mention of it, and I could find, very little about anything except a thing called the General As sembly—some ecclesiastical spree, I gathered. One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer. “There’s a terrible heap o’sillcr, in’t,” he said. “Ye'd better coont it to see it’s a’ there."

He never even sought my name. 1 asked him if anybody had been around making inquiries subsequent to my spell at the roadmaking. “Ay, there was a man in a motor cawr. He speired whae had ta’en my place that day. and I let on that 1 tliocht him daft. But he keepil on at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o’ my gude-brither fro the Clench that while lent me a haun’. He was a wesh-lookin' sowl, and I ciiuldiia understand the half o’ his English tongue.” 1 was getting pretty restless those last days, and as soon as I felt myself fit I decided to be off. That was not till the twelfth day of June, and as luck would have it a drover went past that morning taking some cattle lo Moffat. He was a man named Hislop, a friend of Turnbull's, and he came in to ills breakfast with us and offered to take me with him.

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and a hard job I had of it. There never was a more independent being. He grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy and red, he took the money at last without a thank *you. When I told him how much 1 owed him he grunted something about “ae guid turn deservin’ anithcr." You would have thought from our leave-taking that we had parted in disgust. Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all the way over the pass and down the sunny vale of Annan. I talked of Galloway markets, and he made up his mind I was a “Packshepherd," from those parts—whatever that may be. My plaid and my old hat, as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical Scots look. But driving cattle is a mortally slow job. and we took the better part of the day to cover a dozen miles. If- I had not had such an anxious heart I would have enjoyed that time. It was shining blue weather, with a constantly changing prospect of brown hills and far green meadows, and a continual sound of larks and curlews and falling streams. But I had no mind for the summer, and little for Hislop’s conversation, for as lhe fateful fifteenth of .Tune drew near I was over-weighed with the hope-loss diffi cutties of my enterprise. (To be Continued.)