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Letters from divers hands, which will absolve Ourselves from long narration. Tanner of Tyburn. One morning about a fortnight after Talbot's death, Clarence was sitting alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following letters were put into his hand:
"Concerns you all," said Sybil; "and every minute is of the last importance." "I should like to have gone with you myself, and then there could have been no mistake," said Tanner; "but that can't be; we have a meeting here at half-past eight in our great room.
'Well, I can speak for meself, replied Harlow amid laughter. 'It takes me all my bloody time to pay my rent and other expenses and to keep my little lot in shoe leather, and it's dam little I spend on beer; p'r'aps a tanner or a bob a week at the most. 'A single man can save money if he likes, said Slyme. 'I'm not speaking of single men, replied Owen.
I shan't stop." There I paused to fight with other ideas. "Tanner and Blacksmith will laugh at me and think I am a coward. Well, let them," I said to myself at last. "It isn't cowardice not to wish to see such a horror as this. I didn't feel cowardly when they were shooting at us down in the creek, and it would be far more cowardly to sit here against my will without speaking.
Tanner secured permission to bury him in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the corner reserved for suicides, heretics and unbaptized infants. Thus ended in blood, the first effort to establish a Protestant mission in the Pembina country. June 1, 1853, a band of Presbyterian missionaries arrived at St. Joe.
He followed to walk the floor of his room all night, struggling against the impulse to break in, and kill Tanner, and damn his own soul by meddling with the man who had been ordained by the Prophets to a wholesale polygamous prerogative. He had kept his hands clean of blood, but he had been living ever since with murder in his heart.
And during that first day we had no need to meddle with our store at all; for as had been settled before we left home, we lay that night at Dunster in the house of a worthy tanner, first cousin to my mother, who received us very cordially, and undertook to return old Smiler to his stable at Plover's Barrows, after one day's rest.
The idea struck me of getting off at West Tanner and walking over. The old mare went lame and I didn't want to give her any more work to-night.... Then the storm broke and I took refuge in an empty ice-house." Conscience said suddenly: "But, Eben, you are soaked and if you've been wandering about like that, you can't have had any supper." "No," he shook his head. "I haven't and I'm starving."
"Say afraid again, you miserable insect, and I'll flatten you." "Couldn't with that hand," I said, and I caught his wrist. "Oh, don't! Murder!" he roared. "I say, you shouldn't. It's like touching one's arm with red-hot iron." "Then be civil," I said. "Ah, only wait. I say, Tanner, our day's coming. As soon as we're both quite strong he has got to pay for all this, hasn't he?" "Oh, bother!
"He probably had a good thorough briefing from Black Doctor Tanner before he got the assignment," Tiger said grimly. "Maybe but somehow I don't think he cares for the Black Doctor much more than we do." But whatever the reason, much of the tension was gone when the Lancet had left the Moruan system behind.
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