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Updated: June 10, 2025
In a moment, as it seemed, we were past the houses, and over the rocks by the brook-mouth; and there, with a groan, Marah's horse came down. Marah was evidently expecting it, for he had hold of my rein at the time, and as his horse fell he cleared the body. "Get down, Jim," he said. "We're done. The horses are cooked. They have had six miles; another mile would kill them.
Some one cried "Sh," and "Still," and in the silence which followed, the "Hoo-hoo" of the owl called again, with a little flourishing note at the end of the call. A man cried out, "Mount and scatter." Some one else cried, "Where's Marah?" and as I lay crouched, some one bent over me and touched me. "Sorry, Jim," said Marah's voice. "I knew you'd try it. You only got your clothes wet.
The confession may be briefly summed up as follows: The first item was that he had sought to win the affections of Marah Rocke, the supposed wife of Major Ira Warfield; he had sedulously waylaid and followed her with his suit during the whole summer; she had constantly repulsed and avoided him; he, listening to his own evil passions, had bribed her maid to admit him in the dark to Marah's cabin, upon a certain night when her husband was to be absent; that the unexpected return of Major Warfield who had tracked him to the house, had prevented the success of his evil purpose, but had not saved the reputation of the innocent wife, whose infuriated husband would not believe her ignorant of the presence of the villain in her house; that he, Gabriel Le Noir, in hatred as well as in shame, had forborne until now to make the explanation, which he hoped might now, late in life as it was, bring the long-severed pair together, and establish Marah Rocke and her son in their legal and social rights.
In the sunny evenings of April we used to sail our fleets, ship against ship, upon the great freshwater lake into which the trout-brook passes on its way to the sea. Sometimes we would have a fleet of ships of the line anchored close to the shore, and then we would fire at them with the gun and with one of Marah's pistols till we had shattered them to bits and sunk them.
We heard the sergeant unbuckling the girth. "By the way," said the captain, "you're sure the third horse was led?" "Yes," said the sergeant. "Two and a led horse there was, sir." "H'm," said the captain. "I wonder if they have dismounted. They might have. Look about among the rocks there." I saw Marah's right hand raise his horse-pistol, as the sergeant stepped nearer.
Looking back, we saw one or two men getting up from the road, and then half-a-dozen guns and pistols flashed, and Marah's horse screamed and staggered. There was a quarter of a mile to go to Tor Cross, and that quarter-mile was done at such a speed as I have never seen since. Marah's horse took the bit in his teeth, and something of his terror was in our horses too.
In one moment a hope would surge up in me that the men would not be dead; but perhaps only gagged and bound: so that I could free them. In the next there would be a feeling of despair, that the men lay there, dead through my fault, killed by Marah's orders, and flung among the gorse for the crows and gulls.
As I stepped out, the adventure, the fight, Marah's wound, all the tumult of the battle, seemed very far away, and as though they had happened to some one else who had told me of them. If my head had not ached so cruelly from the blow which the soldier gave me, I should not have believed that they had really occurred, and that I had seen them and taken part in them.
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