The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions by William Hope Hodgson Read Free Book Online

apron-strings.” Yet the over-youthful Jem need not have troubled; his comrades neither thought nor cared one way or the other about the new arrival, except, it might be, to envy him the possession of a competent house- keeper and cook in his little, rough shanty. And, as I have said, though a wayward, sullen youth, his affection for his mother was genuine and curiously intense, after its own peculiar fashion.
    But of all this Mrs Judge Barclay was unaware. It is to be doubted whether she even realised that the youthful thief and murderer (for these were the counts on which he was standing his trial) so much as possessed a mother—whether, indeed, such a dreadful creature could possibly have been born of woman! If she herself had borne children, she might have understood many things, and she would not have been sitting there. As it was, she sat there, calm and logical and utterly impatient of the “sentimentality!” of her husband’s expression as he viewed the sodden-looking young reprobate before the Court.
    And young Jem Turrill was in very sore trouble, indeed; though far less a guilty-souled man than the woman or the Court believed him. Indeed, by the woman and the Court, he was already foredoomed to condemnation; but Judge Barclay saw a little deeper, and was striving, somewhat inefficiently, to elicit such replies from the prisoner as should present his case in a less dreadful light. But young Jem only stood like a clumsy oaf, protesting with sullen earnestness his innocence to the old Judge who desired to believe him; and to the Court that entirely disbelieved him. Once, in the m idst of his protesting of innocence he stopped, and looked suddenly at Mrs Judge Barclay—the one woman in the court—as if he had an abrupt thought that she perhaps might understand that he was innocent of the worst. The action was born of a sudden, rather hopeless instinct, that became instantly wholly hopeless, as his look met her grim, unfaltering gaze, as merciless as that of any man present. And with a hopeless little half-drunken shrugging of his shoulders he had turned from her, and once more faced the old Judge, whose leaning towards mercy he perceived dimly.
    The details were brief enough. He had been up at the shanty of one Duncan Larsden, playing cards, during the past night (it was early morning still). Pistol shots a little before dawn had brought up the sheriff and a couple of his men, who found Larsden dead, with a bullet-wound in his head. Young Jem Turrill was gone, and with him, as was shortly proved, at least two hundred ounces of Larsden’s gold. The sheriff took up the hot trail, and ran the young man down within two hours, and already he was in the Court, being tried for his life. Indeed, so speedily had events moved that his old mother at that very moment awaited him in the shanty with a newly cooked damper, and a freshly opened tin of salmon, all unaware of the dreadfulness that was falling.
    As I have said, Jem sullenly but vehemently protested his innocence. When caught by the sheriff he was found to have on him a one hundred ounce bag of gold-dust, in addition to the nuggets of the dead man. The gold dust he was easily able to prove as his own property; at least, it had been his on the previous evening. His version was that Larsden had lost his two hundred ounces of nuggets to him, and had then staked his claim against the three hundred ounces of gold that Jem held. Larsden had won, but even as he declared himself winner, two aces had dropped out of his sleeve, and Jem had rounded upon him as a cheat—a swizzler. At the accusation, Larsden had drawn on him, but his “gun” had missed fire, and Jem had got home a good useful shot before the other man had time to pull the trigger a second time, and Duncan Larsden had slipped out noisily into the twilight of life. Jem had then got a sick fright that the affair might look bad for him, and, like a silly young fool, had proceeded to make it immediately ten