Read Online Across the River by Alice Taylor - Free Book Online Page B

his hand to comfort him. As he walked up the field, he thought of Nellie and felt that in some way she was very close to them this morning.
    They were glad to come into the warm kitchen. Martha put on the kettle and laid the table without a word, stirred up the porridge on the Aga and pushed a tray of bacon into the oven. Then she looked at Jack wordlessly, went to the parlour and came down with a bottle wrapped in brown paper. She poured some of the contents into a mug and added sugar and water from the boiling kettle.
    “Drink that,” she instructed.
    He was glad when it scorched down into his stomach and got the blood warming in his veins.
    “You needed that,” Davy told him. “You looked like a fellow headed for the big brown box until you got that inside your shirt.”
    “God bless you, Davy, but you’re gifted in your choice of words,” Jack told him.
    “Sit down and have the breakfast,” Martha instructed.
    When they were all seated around the table, they were silent for a few moments, busy getting warm food inside of them.
    Then Peter voiced what they were all thinking.
    “Well, what are we going to do?” he asked.
    “Maybe the proper thing is to report it to the Guards,” Mark suggested.
    “Waste of time,” Davy maintained. “Hours of questioning, measuring and checking times, and by the way, Mark, what time did you notice that we were on fire?”
    “About half two I’d say. I was painting and I happened to glance out the window. I couldn’t believe what I wasseeing down the glen. I might as well have stayed at home for all the good it did. There was nothing to be done.”
    “No,” Jack agreed, “once dry hay gets going there is nothing can stop it, and anyway no cow would touch it after the smoke.”
    “Conway must have been watching from under some bush across the river having a great laugh at our expense,” Peter said bitterly. “We can’t let him get away with it.”
    “We should burn him out,” Davy decided.
    “But what about Danny and Mrs Conway?” Nora protested. “They would suffer then, and I’d say that they have an awful time with him.”
    “How do you know?” Peter demanded.
    “Well, she looks so sad,” Nora told him, “and Danny is always looking after her.”
    “If he was any good, he’d have that old bastard shot or knifed by now,” Peter declared.
    “Peter, don’t say things like that,” Mark protested. “Nora is right: we can’t harm the rest of them.”
    “So you think that the Guards are the only solution?”
    Peter asked. “I don’t have much faith in doing it that way, because he’ll deny everything and we have no proof. They never got him for any of the other stunts he pulled.”
    The argument went back and forth around the table, with Peter and Davy wanting to take the law into their own hands and Mark and Nora urging restraint. Jack was too tired to argue, and no solution would bring back his fine fields of hay. Martha said nothing, and Jack watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was holding her powder until they all had argued themselves to a standstill. He knew that she had decided on her plan of action down in the meadow as she stared across the river at Conways’.
    She rose from the table, and all eyes swung towards her.
    “We will do nothing. The time is not right. And don’t any of you two do anything stupid,” she warned Peter and Davy. “Now it’s time to milk the cows.” With that she started to clear the breakfast things off the table to growls of protest from Peter and Davy.
    “I’ll bring the cows,” Jack told them, moving out of the kitchen.
    The day passed slowly, and Jack was relieved when evening came and he made his weary way home. It seemed like months since he had walked up here last night with a satisfied mind. It would be good to sit by the fire and have a snooze. The hens and ducks were locked up for the night, and he was glad to go into the kitchen and find the fire lighting. Sarah was a great neighbour.