As this gaunt figure stepped down to the water’s edge a sound of clicking that Titus could in no way account for floated over the bright waters. It appeared to break out at his every step like a distant musket shot or the breaking of a dry twig, and to cease whenever he stopped moving. But Titus soon forgot about this peculiar noise, for the man on the opposite bank had reached the river and waded out to where a flat, sun-baked rock the size of a table basked in the midstream.
As he extracted from among his rags a length of line and a hook, and as he began to fix the bait, he glanced about him, comparatively carelessly at first and then with a dawning apprehension, until finally he dropped his line upon the rock beside him and, sweeping the opposite shore with his eyes, he focused them on Titus.
Partially shielded behind a heavy branch of leaves, Titus, who had made no sound, was horrified at being so suddenly discovered and the blood rushed into his face. But he could not take his eyes from those of the emaciated man. He was now crouching on the rock. His small eyes, which had burned beneath his rock-like brows, now glittered with a peculiar light and all at once his hoarse voice sounded across the river:
‘My Lord!’ It was a sharp, rough cry, with a catch in the throat as though the voice had not been sounded for a long while.
Titus, whose instincts had been torn between flying from those hot wild eyes and his excitement at finding another human being, however emaciated and uncouth, stepped forward into the sunlight at the river’s edge. He was frightened and his heart beat loudly, but he was famished also and deadly weary.
‘Who are you?’ he cried. The figure stood up on the hot rock. His head was thrust forward towards Titus; his tall body trembled.
‘Flay,’ he said at last, his voice hardly audible.
‘Flay!’ cried Titus. ‘I’ve heard of you.’
‘Aye,’ said Flay, his hands gripped together … ‘likely enough, my lord.’
‘They told me you were dead, Mr Flay.’
‘No doubt of it.’ (He looked about him again, taking his eyes from Titus for the first time.) ‘Alone?’ His interrogation sounded hoarsely across the water.
‘Yes,’ said Titus. ‘Are you ill?’
Titus had never seen so gaunt a man before.
‘Ill, lordship? No, boy, no … but banished.’
‘Banished!’ cried Titus.
‘Banished, boy. When you were only a … when your father … my lord …’ He ended suddenly. ‘Your sister Fuchsia?’
‘She’s all right.’
‘Ah!’ said the thin man, ‘no doubt of it.’ (There was a note almost of happiness in his voice, but then, with a new note): ‘You’re done, my lord, ’n windless. What brought you?’
‘I escaped, Mr Flay – ran away. I’m hungry, Mr Flay.’
‘Escaped!’ whispered the long man to himself with horror; but he gathered and pocketed his hook and line and withheld a hundred burning questions.
‘Water’s too deep – too fast here. Made crossing – boulders – half mile up stream – not far, lordship, not far. Follow your edge with me, follow your river edge, boy – we’ll have a rabbit’; (he seemed to be talking to himself as he waded back to the bank on his side of the river) ‘rabbit and pigeon and a long cabin-sleep … Blown he is … son of Lord Sepulchrave … ready to drop … Tell him anywhere … eyes like her ladyship’s … Escaped from the Castle! … No … no … mustn’t do that … No, no … must send him back, seventy-seventh Earl…. Had him in my pocket … size of a monkey … long ago …’
And so Flay rambled on as he strode along the bank, with Titus following him on the opposite shore, until after what seemed an endless journey by the water’s edge they came to the crossing of boulders. The river ran shallowly at this point, but it had been no easy work for Flay to shift and set the heavy boulders in place. For five years they had stood firm in the rushing water. Flay had made a perfect ford, and Titus crossed at once to him. For a moment or two they stood awkwardly staring at each other; and then, all of a sudden, the cumulative effects of his physical excitement, the shocks and privations of the day, told upon Titus and he collapsed at the knees. The gaunt man caught him up in an instant and, putting the boy carefully over his shoulder, set off through the trees. For all his apparent emaciation there was no question as to Mr Flay’s stamina. The river was soon left far behind. His long, sinewy arms held Titus firmly in place across his shoulder; his lank legs covered the ground with a long, thin, muscular stride and, save for the clicking of his knee-joints, with peculiar silence. He had learned during his exile among the woods and rocks the value of silence, and it was second nature for him to pick his way over the ground like a man born to the woods.
The pace and certainty of his progress testified to his intimate knowledge of every twist and turn of the terrain.
