Chapter 24

“Climb down, ye thief,” said the grim, slow voice again. I looked once more into the mouth of the blunderbuss. I decided to climb. If I had had my two feet square on the ground, I would have taken a turn with this man, artillery or no artillery, to see if I could get the upper hand of him. But neither I nor any of my ancestors could ever fight well in trees. Foliage incommodes us. We like a clear sweep for the arm, and everything on a level space, and neither man in a tree. However, a sensible man holds no long discussions with a blunderbuss. I slid to the ground, arriving in a somewhat lacerated state. I thereupon found that the man behind the gun was evidently some kind of keeper or gardener. He had a sour face deeply chiselled with mean lines, but his eyes were very bright, the lighter parts of them being steely blue, and he rolled the pair of them from behind his awful weapon.

“And for whom have you mistaken me, rascal?” I cried as soon as I had come ungracefully to the ground and found with whom I had to deal.

“Have mistaken ye for naught,” replied the man proudly. “Ye be the thief of the French pears, ye be.”

“French pears—French—French what?” I cried.

“Ay, ye know full well,” said he, “and now ye’ll just march.”

Seeing now plainly that I was in the hands of one of Lord Westport’s gardeners, who had mistaken me for some garden-thief for whom he had been on the look-out, I began to expostulate very pointedly. But always this man stolidly faced me with the yawning mouth of the blunderbuss.

“And now ye’ll march,” said he, and despite everything I marched. I marched myself through the little door in the wall, and into the gardens of the Earl of Westport. And the infernal weapon was clamped against the small of my back.

But still my luck came to me even then, like basket falling out of a blue sky. As, in obedience to my captor’s orders, I rounded a bit of shrubbery, I came face to face with Lady Mary. I stopped so abruptly that the rim of the on-coming blunderbuss must have printed a fine pink ring on my back. I lost all intelligence. I could not speak. I only knew that I stood before the woman I loved, while a man firmly pressed the muzzle of a deadly firearm between my shoulder-blades. I flushed with shame, as if I really had been guilty of stealing the French pears.

Lady Mary’s first look upon me was one of pure astonishment. Then she quickly recognized the quaint threat expressed in the attitude of the blunderbuss.

“Strammers,” she cried, rushing forward, “what would you be doing to the gentleman?”

“‘Tis no gentleman, your la’ship,” answered the man confidently. “He be a low-born thief o’ pears, he be.”

“Strammers!” she cried again, and wrested the blunderbuss from his hands. I will confess that my back immediately felt easier.

“And now, sir,” she said, turning to me haughtily, “you will please grant me an explanation of to what my father is indebted for this visit to his private grounds?”

But she knew; no fool of a gardener and a floundering Irishman could keep pace with the nimble wits of a real woman. I saw the pink steal over her face, and she plainly appeared not to care for an answer to her peremptory question. However, I made a grave reply which did not involve the main situation.