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5	THE PRINCESS.	While they were thus busied, Ian, with his face to the wall, in the dim light of the candle by which he was making his first rough sketches, began the story of his flight from Russia. Long ere he ended, Alister came close behind him, and there stood, his bosom heaving with emotion, his eyes burning with a dry fire. Ian was perfectly composed, his voice quiet and low. I will not give his tale in the first person; and will tell of it only as much as I think it necessary my reader should know. Having accepted a commission of the Czar, he was placed in a post of trust in the palace. In one apartment of it, lived an imperial princess, the burden of whose rank had not even the alleviation of society. Her disclosure of a sympathy with oppressed humanity had wakened a doubt as to her politics, and she was virtually a prisoner, restricted to a corner of the huge dwelling, and allowed to see hardly any but her women. Her father had fallen into disgrace before her, and her mother was dead of grief. All around her were spies, and love was nowhere. Gladly would she have yielded every rag of her rank, to breathe the air of freedom. To be a peasant girl on her father's land, would be a life of rapture! She knew little of the solace books might have given her. With a mind capable of rapid development, she had been ill taught except in music; and that, alone, cannot do much for spiritual development; it cannot enable the longing, the aspiration it rouses, to understand itself; it cannot lead back to its own eternal source. She knew no one in whom to trust, or from whom to draw comfort; her confessor was a man of the world, incapable of leading her to any fountain of living water; she had no one to tell her of God and his fatherhood, the only and perfect refuge from the divine miseries of loneliness. A great corridor went from end to end of one of the wings of the palace, and from this corridor another passage led toward the apartment of the princess, consisting of some five or six rooms. At certain times of the day, Ian had to be at the beginning of the corridor, at the head of a huge stair with a spacious hall-like landing. Along the corridor few passed, for the attendants used a back stair and passages. As he sat in the recess of a large window, where stood a table and chair for his use, Ian one morning heard a cry--whence, he never knew--and darted along the corridor, thinking assistance might be wanted. When about halfway down, he saw a lady enter, near the end of it, and come slowly along. He stood aside, respectfully waiting till she should pass. Her eyes were on the ground, but as she came near she raised them. The sadness of them went to his heart, and his soul rushed into his. The princess, I imagine, had never before met such an expression, and misunderstood it. Lonely, rejected, too helpless even to hope, it seemed full of something she had all her life been longing for--a soul to be her refuge from the wind, her covert from the tempest, her shadow as of a great rock in the weary land where no one cared for her. She stood and gazed at him. Ian at once perceived who she must be, and stood waiting for some expression of her pleasure. But she appeared fascinated; her eyes remained on his, for they seemed to her to be promising help. Her fascination fascinated him, and for some moments they stood thus, regarding each other. Ian felt he must break the spell. It was her part to speak, his to obey, but he knew the danger of the smallest suspicion. If she was a princess and he but a soldier on guard, she was a woman and he was a man: he was there to protect her! "How may I serve your imperial highness?" he asked. She was silent yet a moment, then said, "Your name?" He gave it. "Your nation?" He stated it. "When are you here?" He told her his hours. "I will see you again," she said, and turned and went back. From that moment she loved him, and thought he loved her. But, though he would willingly have died for her, he did not love her as she thought. Alister wondered to hear him say so. At such a moment, and heart-free, Alister could no more have helped falling in love with her than he could help opening his eyes when the light shone on their lids. Ian, with a greater love for his kind than even Alister, and with a tenderness for womankind altogether infinite, was not ready to fall in love. Accessible indeed he was to the finest of Nature's witcheries; ready for the response as of summer lightnings from opposing horizons; all aware of loveliest difference, of refuge and mysterious complement; but he was not prone to fall in love. The princess, knowing the ways of the house, contrived to see him pretty often. He talked to her of the hest he knew; he did what he could to lighten her loneliness by finding her books and music; best of all, he persuaded her--without difficulty--to read the New Testament. In their few minutes of conference, he tried to show her the Master of men as he showed himself to his friends; but their time together was always so short, and their anxiety for each other so great, seeing that discovery would be ruin to both, that they could not go far with anything. At length came an occasion when at parting they embraced. How it was Ian could not tell. He blamed himself much, but Alister thought it might not have been his fault. The same moment he was aware that he did not love her and that he could not turn back. He was ready to do anything, everything in honour; yet felt false inasmuch as he had given her ground for believing that he felt towards her as he could not help seeing she felt towards him. Had it been in his power to order his own heart, he would have willed to love, and so would have loved her. But the princess doubted nothing, and the change that passed upon her was wonderful. The power of human love is next to the power of God's love. Like a flower long repressed by cold, she blossomed so suddenly in the sunshine of her bliss, that Ian greatly dreaded the suspicion which the too evident alteration might arouse: the plain, ordinary-looking young woman with fine eyes, began to put on the robes of beauty. A softest vapour of rose, the colour of the east when sundown sets it dreaming of sunrise, tinged her cheek; it grew round like that of a girl; and ere two months were gone, she looked years younger than her age. But Ian could never be absolutely open with her; while she, poor princess, happy in her ignorance of the shows of love, and absorbed in the joy of its great deliverance, jealoused nothing of restraint, nothing of lack, either in his words or in the caresses of which he was religiously sparing. He was haunted by the dread of making her grieve who had already grieved so much, and was but just risen from the dead. One evening they met as usual in the twilight; in five minutes the steps of the man would be heard coming to light the lamps of the corridor, his guard would be over, and he must retire. Few words passed, but they parted with more of lingering tenderness than usual, and the princess put a little packet in his hand. The same night his only friend in the service entered his room hurriedly, and urged immediate flight: something had been, or was imagined to be discovered, through which his liberty, perhaps his life, was compromised; he must leave at once by a certain coach which would start in an hour: there was but just time to disguise him; he must make for a certain port on the Baltic, and there lie concealed until a chance of getting away turned up! Ian refused. He feared nothing, had done nothing to be ashamed of! What was it to him if they did take his life! he could die as well as another! Anxious about the princess, he persisted in his refusal, and the coach went without him. Every passenger in that coach was murdered. He saw afterward the signs of their fate in the snow. In the middle of the night, a company of men in masks entered his room, muffled his head, and hurried him into a carriage, which drove rapidly away. When it stopped, he thought he had arrived at some prison, but soon found himself in another carriage, with two of the police. He could have escaped had he been so minded, but he could do nothing for the princess, and did not care what became of him. At a certain town his attendants left him, with the assurance that if he did not make haste out of the country, he would find they had not lost sight of him. But instead of obeying, he disguised himself, and took his way to Moscow, where he had friends. Thence he wrote to his friend at St. Petersburg. Not many letters passed ere he learned that the princess was dead. She had been placed in closer confinement, her health gave way, and by a rapid decline she had gained her freedom. All the night through, not closing their eyes till the morning, the brothers, with many intervals of thoughtful silence, lay talking. "I am glad to think," said Alister, after one of these silences, "you do not suffer so much, Ian, as if you had been downright in love with her." "I suffer far more," answered Ian with a sigh; "and I ought to suffer more. It breaks my heart to think she had not so much from me as she thought she had." They were once more silent. Alister was full of trouble for his brother. Ian at length spoke again. "Alister," he said, "I must tell you everything! I know the truth now. If I wronged her, she is having her revenge!" By his tone Alister seemed through the darkness to see his sad smile. He was silent, and Alister waited. "She did not know much," Ian resumed. "I thought at first she had nothing but good manners and a good heart; but the moment the sun of another heart began to shine on her, the air of another's thought to breathe upon her, the room of another soul to surround her, she began to grow; and what more could God intend or man desire? As I told you, she grew beautiful, and what sign of life is equal to that!" "But I want to know what you mean by her having her revenge on you?" said Alister. "Whether I loved her then or not, and I believe I did, beyond a doubt I love her now. It needed only to be out of sight of her, and see other women beside the memory of her, to know that I loved her. --Alister, I LOVE HER!" repeated Ian with a strange exaltation. "Oh, Ian!" groaned Alister; "how terrible for you!" "Alister, you dear fellow!" returned Ian, "can you understand no better than that? Do you not see I am happy now? My trouble was that I did not love her--not that she loved me, but that I did not love her! Now we shall love each other for ever!" "How do you know that, Ian?" "By knowing that I love her. If I had not come to know that, I could not have said to myself I would love her for ever." "But you can't marry her, Ian! The Lord said there would be no marrying there!" "Did he say there would be no loving there, Alister? Most people seem to fancy he did, for how else could they forget the dead as they do, and look so little for their resurrection? Few can be said really to believe in any hereafter worth believing in. How many go against the liking of the dead the moment they are gone-behave as if they were nowhere, and could never call them to account! Their plans do not recognize their existence; the life beyond is no factor in their life here. If God has given me a hope altogether beyond anything I could have generated for myself, beyond all the likelihoods and fulfilments around me, what can I do but give him room to verify it--what but look onward! Some people's bodies get so tired that they long for the rest of the grave; it is my soul that gets tired, and I know the grave can give that no rest; I look for the rest of more life, more strength, more love. But God is not shut up in heaven, neither is there one law of life there and another here; I desire more life here, and shall have it, for what is needful for this world is to be had in this world. In proportion as I become one with God, I shall have it. This world never did seem my home; I have never felt quite comfortable in it; I have yet to find, and shall find the perfect home I have not felt this world, even my mother's bosom to be. Nature herself is not lovely enough to satisfy me. Nor can it be that I am beside myself, seeing I care only for the will of God, not for my own. For what is madness but two or more wills in one body? Does not the 'Bible itself tell us that we are pilgrims and strangers in the world, that here we have no abiding city? It is but a place to which we come to be made ready for another. Yet I am sure those who regard it as their home, are not half so well pleased with it as I. They are always grumbling at it. 'What wretched weather!' they say. 'What a cursed misfortune!' they cry. 'What abominable luck!' they protest. Health is the first thing, they say, and cannot find it. They complain that their plans are thwarted, and when they succeed, that they do not yield the satisfaction they expected. Yet they mock at him who says he seeks a better country! --But I am keeping you awake, Alister! I will talk no more. You must go to sleep!" "It is better than any sleep to hear you talk, Ian," returned Alister. "What a way you are ahead of me! I do love this world! When I come to die, it will tear my heart to think that this cave which you and I have dug out together, must pass into other hands! I love every foot of the earth that remains to us--every foot that has been taken from us. When I stand on the top of this rock, and breathe the air of this mountain, I bless God we have still a spot to call our own. It is quite a different thing from the love of mere land; I could not feel the same toward any, however beautiful, that I had but bought. This, our own old land, I feel as if I loved in something the same way as I love my mother. Often in the hot summer-days, lying on my face in the grass, I have kissed the earth as if it were a live creature that could return my caresses! The long grass is a passion to me, and next to the grass I love the heather, not the growing corn. I am a fair farmer, I think, but I would rather see the land grow what it pleased, than pass into the hands of another. Place is to me sacred almost as body. There is at least something akin between the love we bear to the bodies of our friends, and that we bear to the place in which we were born and brought up." "That is all very true, Alister. I understand your feeling perfectly; I have it myself. But we must be weaned, I say only weaned, from that kind of thing; we must not love the outside as if it were the inside! Everything comes that' we may know the sender-of whom it is a symbol, that is, a far-off likeness of something in him; and to him it must lead us-the self-existent, true, original love, the making love. But I have felt all you say. I used to lie in bed and imagine the earth alive and carrying me on her back, till I fell asleep longing to see the face of my nurse. Once, the fancy turned into a dream. I will try to recall a sonnet I made the same night, before the dream came: it will help you to understand it. I was then about nineteen, I believe. I did not care for it enough to repeat it to you, and I fear we shall find it very bad." Stopping often to recall and rearrange words and lines, Ian completed at last the following sonnet:-- "She set me on my feet with steady hand, Among the crowding marvels on her face, Bidding me rise, and run a strong man's race; Swathed mo in circumstance's swaddling band; Fed me with her own self; then bade me stand MYself entire,--while she was but a place Hewn for my dwelling from the midst of space, A something better than HER sea or land. Nay, Earth! thou bearest me upon thy back, Like a rough nurse, and I can almost feel A touch of kindness in thy bands of steel, Although I cannot see thy face, and track An onward purpose shining through its black, Instinct with prophecy of future weal. "There! It is not much, is it?" "It is beautiful!" protested Alister. "It is worth nothing," said Ian, "except between you and me-and that it will make you understand my dream. That I shall never forget. When a dream does us good we don't forget it. "I thought I was home on the back of something great and strong-I could not tell what; it might be an elephant or a great eagle or a lion. It went sweeping swiftly along, the wind of its flight roaring past me in a tempest. I began to grow frightened. Where could this creature of such awful speed be carrying me? I prayed to God to take care of me. The head of the creature turned to me, and I saw the face of a woman, grand and beautiful. Never with my open eyes have I seen such a face! And I knew it was the face of this earth, and that I had never seen it before because she carries us upon her back. When I woke, I knew that all the strangest things in life and history must one day come together in a beautiful face of loving purpose, one of the faces of the living God. The very mother of the Lord did not for a long time understand him, and only through sorrow came to see true glory. Alister, if we were right with God, we could see the earth vanish and never heave a sigh; God, of whom it was but a shimmering revelation, would still be ours!" In the morning they fell asleep, and it was daylight, late in the winter, when Alister rose. He roused the fire, asleep all through the night, and prepared their breakfast of porridge and butter, tea, oat-cake, and mutton-ham. When it was nearly ready, he woke Ian, and when they had eaten, they read together a portion of the Bible, that they might not forget, and start the life of the day without trust in the life-causing God. "All that is not rooted in him," Ian would say, "all hope or joy that does not turn its face upward, is an idolatry. Our prayers must rise that our thoughts may follow them." The portion they read contained the saying of the Lord that we must forsake all and follow him if we would be his disciples. "I am sometimes almost terrified," said Ian, "at the scope of the demands made upon me, at the perfection of the self-abandonment required of me; yet outside of such absoluteness can be no salvation. In God we live every commonplace as well as most exalted moment of our being. To trust in him when no need is pressing, when things seem going right of themselves, may be harder than when things seem going wrong. At no time is there any danger except in ourselves, and the only danger is of trusting in something else than the living God, and so getting, as it were, outside of God. Oh Alister, take care you do not love the land more than the will of God! Take care you do not love even your people more than the will of God." They spent the day on the hill-top, and as there was no sign of storm, remained till the dark night, when the moon came to light them home. "Perhaps when we are dead," said Alister as they went, "we may be allowed to come here again sometimes! Only we shall not be able to quarry any further, and there is pain in looking on what cannot go on." "It may be a special pleasure," returned Ian, "in those new conditions, to look into such a changeless cabinet of the past. When we are one with our life, so that no prayer can be denied, there will be no end to the lovely possibilities." "So I have the people I love, I think I could part with all things else, even the land!" said Alister. "Be sure we shall not have to part with THEM. We shall yet walk, I think, with our father as of old, where the setting sun sent the shadows of the big horse-gowans that glowed in his red level rays, trooping eastward, as if they would go round the world to meet the sun that had banished them, and die in his glory; the wind of the twilight will again breathe about us like a thought of the living God haunting our goings, and watching to help us; the stars will yet call to us out of the great night, 'Love and be fearless.' 'Be independent!' cries the world from its' great Bible of the Belly;-says the Lord of men, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Our dependence is our eternity. We cannot live on bread alone; we need every word of God. We cannot live on air alone; we need an atmosphere of living souls. Should we be freer, Alister, if we were independent of each other? When I am out in the world, my heart is always with mother and you. We must be constantly giving ourselves away, we must dwell in houses of infinite dependence, or sit alone in the waste of a godless universe." It was a rough walk in the moonlight over the hills, but full of a rare delight. And while they walked the mother was waiting them, with the joy of St. John, of the Saviour, of God himself in her heart, the joy of beholding how the men she loved loved each other.	{ "id": "5967" }
6	THE TWO PAIRS.	The next morning, on the way to the village, the brothers overtook Christina and Mercy, and they walked along together. The young men felt inclined to be the more friendly with the girls, that the men of their own family were so unworthy of them. A man who does not respect a woman because she is a woman, cannot have thorough respect for his own mother, protest as he pleases: he is incapable of it, and cannot know his own incapacity. Alas for girls in a family where the atmosphere of vile thinking, winnowed by the carrion wings of degraded and degrading judgments, infolds them! One of the marvels of the world is, that, with such fathers and brothers, there are so few wicked women. Type of the greater number stands Ophelia, poor, weak, and not very refined, yet honest, and, in all her poverty, immeasurably superior to father and brother. Christina's condescension had by this time dwindled almost to the vanishing-point, and her talk was in consequence more natural: the company, conversation, and whole atmosphere of the young men, tended to wake in the girls what was best and sweetest. Reality appeals at once to the real, opens the way for a soul to emerge from the fog of the commonplace, the marsh of platitude, the Sahara of lies, into the colour and air of life. The better things of humanity often need the sun of friendship to wile them out. A girl, well-bred, tolerably clever, and with some genius of accommodation, will appear to a man possessed of a hundred faculties of which she knows nothing; but his belief will help to rouse them in her. A young man will see an angel where those who love her best see only a nice girl; but he sees not merely what she might be, but what one day she must be. Christina had been at first rather taken with the ploughman, but she turned her masked batteries now mainly on the soldier. During the dinner she had noted how entirely Ian was what she chose to call a man of the world; and it rendered him in her eyes more worthy of conquest. Besides, as elder sister, must she not protect the inexperienced Mercy? What is this passion for subjugation? this hunger for homage? Is it of hell direct, or what is there in it of good to begin with? Apparently it takes possession of such women as have set up each herself for the object of her worship: she cannot then rest from the effort to bring as many as possible to worship at the same shrine; and to this end will use means as deserving of the fire as any witchcraft. Christina stopped short with a little cry, and caught Ian's arm. "I beg your pardon," she said, "but I cannot bear it a moment longer! Something in my boot hurts me so!" She limped to the road-side, sat down, accepted the service of Ian to unlace her boot, and gave a sigh of relief when he pulled it off. He inverted and shook it, then searched and found a nail which must have hurt her severely. But how to get rid of the cruel projection! Ian's slender hand could but just reach with its finger-tips the haunted spot. In vain he tried to knock it down against a stone put inside. Alister could suggest nothing. But Mistress Conal's cottage was near: they might there find something to help! Only Christina could not be left behind, and how was she to walk in a silk stocking over a road frozen hard as glass? The chief would have carried her, but she would not let him. Ian therefore shod her with his Glengarry bonnet, tying it on with his handkerchief. There was much merriment over the extemporized shoe, mingled with apologetic gratitude from Christina, who, laughing at her poulticed foot, was yet not displeased at its contrast with the other. When the chief opened the door of the cottage, there was no one to be seen within. The fire was burning hot and flameless; a three-footed pot stood half in it; other sign of presence they saw none. As Alister stooped searching for some implement to serve their need, in shot a black cat, jumped over his back, and disappeared. The same instant they heard a groan, and then first discovered the old woman in bed, seemingly very ill. Ian went up to her. "What is the matter with you, Mistress Conal?" he asked, addressing her in English because of the ladies. But in reply she poured out a torrent of Gaelic, which seemed to the girls only grumbling, but was something stronger. Thereupon the chief went and spoke to her, but she was short and sullen with him. He left her to resume his search. "Let alone," she cried. "When that nail leaves her brog, it will be for your heart." Ian sought to soothe her. "She will bring misery on you all!" she insisted. "You have a hammer somewhere, I know!" said Alister, as if he had not heard her. "She shall be finding no help in MY house!" answered the old woman in English. "Very well, Mistress Conal!" returned the chief; "the lady cannot walk home; I shall have to carry her!" "God forbid!" she cried. "Go and fetch a wheelbarrow." "Mistress Conal, there is nothing for it but carry her home in my arms!" "Give me the cursed brog then. I will draw the nail." But the chief would not yield the boot; he went out and searched the hill-side until he found a smooth stone of suitable size, with which and a pair of tongs, he beat down the nail. Christina put on the boot, and they left the place. The chief stayed behind the rest for a moment, but the old woman would not even acknowledge his presence. "What a rude old thing she is! This is how she always treats us!" said Christina. "Have you done anything to offend her?" asked Alister. "Not that we know of. We can't help being lowlanders!" "She no doubt bears you a grudge," said Ian, "for having what once belonged to us. I am sorry she is so unfriendly. It is not a common fault with our people." "Poor old thing! what does it matter!" said Christina. A woman's hate was to her no more than the barking of a dog. They had not gone far, before the nail again asserted itself; it had been but partially subjugated. A consultation was held. It resulted in this, that Mercy and the chief went to fetch another pair of boots, while Ian remained with Christina. They seated themselves on a stone by the roadside. The sun clouded over, a keen wind blew, and Christina shivered. There was nothing for it but go back to the cottage. The key was in the door, Ian turned it, and they went in. Certainly this time no one was there. The old woman so lately groaning on her bed had vanished. Ian made up the fire, and did what he could for his companion's comfort. She was not pleased with the tone of his attentions, but the way she accepted them made her appear more pleased than Ian cared for, and he became colder and more polite. Piqued by his indifference, she took it nevertheless with a sweetness which belonged to her nature as God made it, not as she had spoiled it; and even such a butterfly as she, felt the influence of a man like Ian, and could not help being more natural in his presence. His truth elicited what there was of hers; the true being drew to the surface what there was of true in the being that was not true. The longer she was in his company, the more she was pleased with him, and the more annoyed with her failure in pleasing him. It is generally more or less awkward when a young man and maiden between whom is no convergent rush of spiritual currents, find themselves alone together. Ian was one of the last to feel such awkwardness, but he thought his companion felt it; he did his best, therefore, to make her forget herself and him, telling her story after story which she could not but find the more interesting that for the time she was quieted from self, and placed in the humbler and healthier position of receiving the influence of another. For one moment, as he was narrating a hair's-breadth escape he had had from a company of Tartar soldiers by the friendliness of a young girl, the daughter of a Siberian convict, she found herself under the charm of a certain potency of which he was himself altogether unconscious, but which had carried away hearts more indifferent than hers. In the meantime, Alister and Mercy were walking toward the New House, and, walking, were more comfortable than those that sat waiting. Mercy indeed had not much to say, but she was capable of asking a question worth answering, and of understanding not a little. Thinking of her walk with Ian on Christmas day,-- "Would you mind telling me something about your brother?" she said. "What would you like to know about him?" asked Alister. "Anything you care to tell me," she answered. Now there was nothing pleased Alister better than talking about Ian; and he talked so that Mercy could not help feeling what a brother he must be himself; while on his part Alister was delighted with the girl who took such an interest in Ian: for Ian's sake he began to love Mercy. He had never yet been what is called in love--had little opportunity indeed of falling in love. His breeding had been that of a gentleman, and notwithstanding the sweetness and gentleness of the maidens of his clan, there were differences which had as yet proved sufficient to prevent the first approaches of love, though, once entertained, they might have added to the depth of it. At the same time it was by no means impossible for Alister to fall in love with even an uneducated girl--so-called; neither would he, in that case, have felt any difficulty about marrying her; but the fatherly relation in which he stood toward his clan, had tended rather to prevent the thing. Many a youth falls to premature love-making, from the lack in his daily history of the womanly element. Matrons in towns should be exhorted to make of their houses a refuge. Too many mothers are anxious for what they count the welfare of their own children, and care nothing for the children of other women! But can we wonder, when they will wallow in meannesses to save their own from poverty and health, and damn them into comfort and decay. Alister told Mercy how Ian and he used to spend their boyhood. He recounted some of their adventures in hunting and herding and fishing, and even in going to and from school, a distance of five miles, in all weathers. Then he got upon the poetry of the people, their legends, their ballads and their songs; and at last came to the poetry of the country itself--the delights of following the plough, the whispers and gleams of nature, her endless appeal through every sense. The mere smell of the earth in a spring morning, he said, always made him praise God. "Everything we have," he went on, "must be shared with God. That is the notion of the Jewish thank-offering. Ian says the greatest word in the universe is ONE; the next greatest, ALL. They are but the two ends of a word to us unknowable--God's name for himself." Mercy had read Mrs. Barbauld's Hymns, and they had been something to her; but most of the little poetry she had read was only platitude sweetened with sound; she had never read, certainly never understood a real poem. Who can tell what a nature may prove, after feeding on good food for a while? The queen bee is only a better fed working bee. Who can tell what it may prove when it has been ploughed with the plough of suffering, when the rains of sorrow, the frosts of pain, and the winds of poverty have moistened and swelled and dried its fallow clods? Mercy had not such a sweet temper as her sister, but she was not so selfish. She was readier to take offence, perhaps just because she was less self-satisfied. Before long they might change places. A little dew from the eternal fountain was falling upon them. Christina was beginning to be aware that a certain man, neither rich nor distinguished nor ambitious, had yet a real charm for her. Not that for a moment she would think seriously of such a man! That would be simply idiotic! But it would be very nice to have a little innocent flirtation with him, or perhaps a "Platonic friendship! " --her phrase, not mine. What could she have to do with Plato, who, when she said I, was aware only of a neat bundle of foolish desires, not the God at her heart! Mercy, on the other hand, was being drawn to the big, strong, childlike heart of the chief. There is always, notwithstanding the gulf of unlikeness between them, an appeal from the childish to the childlike. The childish is but the shadow of the childlike, and shadows are little like the things from which they fall. But to what save the heavenly shall the earthly appeal in its sore need, its widowhood, its orphanage? with what shall the childish take refuge but the childlike? to what shall ignorance cry but wisdom? Mercy felt no restraint with the chief as with Ian. His great, deep, yet refined and musical laugh, set her at ease. Ian's smile, with its shimmering eternity, was no more than the moon on a rain-pool to Mercy. The moral health of the chief made an atmosphere of conscious safety around her. By the side of no other man had she ever felt so. With him she was at home, therefore happy. She was already growing under his genial influence. Every being has such influence who is not selfish. When Christina was re-shod, and they were leaving the cottage, Ian, happening to look behind him, spied the black cat perched on the edge of the chimney in the smoke. "Look at her," he said, "pretending innocence, when she has been watching you all the time!" Alister took up a stone. "Don't hurt her," said Ian, and he dropped it.	{ "id": "5967" }
7	AN CABRACH MOR.	I have already said that the young men had not done well as hunters. They had neither experience nor trustworthy attendance: none of the chief's men would hunt with them. They looked on them as intruders, and those who did not share in their chiefs dislike to useless killing, yet respected it. Neither Christian nor Sercombe had yet shot a single stag, and the time was drawing nigh when they must return, the one to Glasgow, the other to London. To have no proof of prowess to display was humbling to Sercombe; he must show a stag's head, or hide his own! He resolved, therefore, one of the next moonlit nights, to stalk by himself a certain great, wide-horned stag, of whose habits he had received information. At Oxford, where Valentine made his acquaintance, Sercombe belonged to a fast set, but had distinguished himself notwithstanding as an athlete. He was a great favourite with a few, not the best of the set, and admired by many for his confidence, his stature, and his regular features. These latter wore, however, a self-assertion which of others made him much disliked: a mean thing in itself, it had the meanest origin--the ability, namely, to spend money, for he was the favourite son of a rich banker in London. He knew nothing of the first business of life--self-restraint, had never denied himself anything, and but for social influences would, in manhood as infancy, have obeyed every impulse. He was one of the merest slaves in the universe, a slave in his very essence, for he counted wrong to others freedom for himself, and the rejection of the laws of his own being, liberty. The most righteous interference was insolence; his likings were his rights, and any devil that could whisper him a desire, might do with him as he pleased. From such a man every true nature shrinks with involuntary recoil, and a sick sense of the inhuman. But I have said more of him already than my history requires, and more than many a reader, partaking himself of his character to an unsuspected degree, will believe; for such men cannot know themselves. He had not yet in the eyes of the world disgraced himself: it takes a good many disgraceful things to bring a rich man to outward disgrace. His sole attendant when shooting was a clever vagabond lad belonging to nowhere in particular, and living by any crook except the shepherd's. From him he heard of the great stag, and the spots which in the valleys he frequented, often scraping away the snow with his feet to get at the grass. He did not inform him that the animal was a special favourite with the chief of Clanruadh, or that the clan looked upon him as their live symbol, the very stag represented as crest to the chief's coat of arms. It was the same Nancy had reported to her master as eating grass on the burn-side in the moonlight. Christian and Sercombe had stalked him day after day, but without success. And now, with one poor remaining hope, the latter had determined to stalk him at night. To despoil him of his life, his glorious rush over the mountain side, his plunge into the valley, and fierce strain up the opposing hill; to see that ideal of strength, suppleness, and joyous flight, lie nerveless and flaccid at his feet; to be able to call the thicket-like antlers of the splendid animal his own, was for the time the one ambition of Hilary Sercombe; for he was of the brood of Mephistopheles, the child of darkness, whose delight lies in undoing what God has done--the nearest that any evil power can come to creating. There was, however, a reason for the failure of the young hunters beyond lack of skill and what they called their ill-luck. Hector of the Stags was awake; his keen, everywhere-roving eyes were upon them, seconded by the keen, all-hearkening ears of Bob of the Angels. They had discovered that the two men had set their hearts on the big stag, an cabrach mor by right of excellence, and every time they were out after him, Hector too was out with his spy-glass, the gift of an old sea-faring friend, searching the billowy hills. While, the southrons would be toiling along to get the wind of him unseen, for the old stag's eyes were as keen as his velvety nose, the father and son would be lying, perhaps close at hand, perhaps far away on some hill-side of another valley, watching now the hunters, now the stag. For love of the Macruadh, and for love of the stag, they had constituted themselves his guardians. Again and again when one of them thought he was going to have a splendid chance--perhaps just as, having reached a rock to which he had been making his weary way over stones and bogs like Satan through chaos, and raised himself with weary slowness, he peeped at last over the top, and lo, there he was, well within range, quietly feeding, nought between the great pumping of his big joyous heart and the hot bullet but the brown skin behind his left shoulder! --a distant shot would forestall the nigh one, a shot for life, not death, and the stag, knowing instantly by wondrous combination of sense and judgment in what quarter lay the danger, would, without once looking round, measure straight a hundred yards of hillocks and rocks between the sight-taking and the pulling of the trigger. Another time it would be no shot, but the bark of a dog, the cry of a moorfowl, or a signal from watching hind that started him; for the creatures understand each the other's cries, and when an animal sees one of any sort on the watch to warn covey or herd or flock of its own kind, it will itself keep no watch, but feed in security. To Christian and Sercombe it seemed as if all the life in the glen were in conspiracy to frustrate their hearts' desire; and the latter at least grew ever the more determined to kill the great stag: he had begun to hate him. The sounds that warned the stag were by no means always what they seemed, those of other wild animals; they were often hut imitations by Bob of the Angels. I fear the animal grew somewhat bolder and less careful from the assurance thus given him that he was watched over, and cultivated a little nonchalance. Not a moment, however, did he neglect any warning from quarter soever, but from peaceful feeder was instantaneously wind-like fleer, his great horns thrown back over his shoulders, and his four legs just touching the ground with elastic hoof, or tucking themselves almost out of sight as he skipped rather than leaped over rock and gully, stone and bush--whatever lay betwixt him and larger room. Great joy it was to his two guardians to see him, and great game to watch the motions of his discomfited enemies. For the sake of an cabrach Hector and Bob would go hungry for hours. But they never imagined the luxurious Sasunnach, incapable, as they thought, of hardship or sustained fatigue, would turn from his warm bed to stalk the lordly animal betwixt snow and moon. One night, Hector of the Stags found he could not sleep. It was not for cold, for the night was for the season a mild one. The snow indeed lay deep around their dwelling, but they owed not a little of its warmth to the snow. It drifted up all about it, and kept off the terrible winds that swept along the side of the hill, like sharp swift scythes of death. They were in the largest and most comfortable of their huts--a deepish hollow in the limestone rock, lined with turf, and with wattles filled in with heather, the tops outward; its front a thick wall of turf, with a tolerable door of deal. It was indeed so snug as to be far from airy. Here they kept what little store of anything they had--some dried fish and venison; a barrel of oat-meal, seldom filled full; a few skins of wild creatures, and powder, ball, and shot. After many fruitless attempts to catch the still fleeting vapour sleep, raising himself at last on his elbow, Hector found that Rob was not by his side. He too had been unable to sleep, and at last discovered that he was uneasy about something-what, he could not tell. He rose and went out. The moon was shining very clear, and as there was much snow, the night, if not so bright as day, was yet brighter than many a day. The moon, the snow, the mountains, all dreaming awake, seemed to Rob the same as usual; but presently he fancied the hillside opposite had come nearer than usual: there must be a reason for that! He searched every yard of it with keenest gaze, but saw nothing. They were high above Glenruadh, and commanded parts of it: late though it was, Rob thought he saw some light from the New House, which itself he could not see, reflected from some shadowed evergreen in the shrubbery. He was thinking some one might be ill, and he ought to run down and See whether a messenger was wanted, when his father joined him. He had brought his telescope, and immediately began to sweep the moonlight on the opposite hill. In a moment he touched Rob on the shoulder, and handed him the telescope, pointing with it. Rob looked and saw a dark speck on the snow, moving along the hill-side. It was the big stag. Now and then he would stop to snuff and search for a mouthful, but was evidently making for one of his feeding-places--most likely that by the burn on the chief's land. The light! could it imply danger? He had heard the young men were going to leave: were they about to attempt a last assault on the glory of the glen? He pointed out to his father the dim light in the shadow of the house. Hector turned his telescope thitherward, immediately gave the glass to Bob, went into the hut, and came out again with his gun. They had not gone far when they lost sight of the stag, but they held on towards the castle. At every point whence a peep could be had in the direction of the house, they halted to reconnoitre: if enemies were abroad, they must, if possible, get and keep sight of them. They did not stop for more than a glance, however, but made for the valley as fast as they could walk: the noise of running feet would, on such a still night, be heard too far. The whole way, without sound uttered, father and son kept interchanging ideas on the matter. From thorough acquaintance with the habits of the animal, they were pretty certain he was on his way to the haunt aforementioned: if he got there, he would be safe; it was the chiefs ground, and no one would dare touch him. But he was not yet upon it, and was in danger; while, if he should leave the spot in any westward direction, he would almost at once be out of sanctuary! If they found him therefore at his usual feed, and danger threatening, they must scare him eastward; if no peril seemed at hand, they would watch him a while, that he might feed in safety. Swift and all but soundless on their quiet brogs they paced along: to startle the deer while the hunter was far off, might be to drive him within range of his shot. They reached the root of the spur, and approached the castle; immediately beyond that, they would be in sight of the feeding ground. But they were yet behind it when Rob of the Angels bounded forward in terror at the sound of a gun. His father, however, who was in front, was off before him. Neither hearing anything, nor seeing Rob, he knew that a shot had been fired, and, caution being now useless, was in a moment at full speed. The smoke of the shot hung white in the moonlight over the end of the ridge. No red bulk shadowed the green pasture, no thicket of horns went shaking about over the sod. No lord of creation, but an enemy of life, stood regarding his work, a tumbled heap of death, yet saying to himself, like God when he made the world, "It is good." The noble creature lay disformed on the grass; shot through the heart he had leaped high in the air, fallen with his head under him, and broken his neck. Rage filled the heart of Hector of the Stags. He could not curse, but he gave a roar like a wild beast, and raised his gun. But Rob of the Angels caught it ere it reached his shoulder. He yielded it, and, with another roar like a lion, bounded bare-handed upon the enemy. He took the descent in three leaps, and the burn in one. It was not merely that the enemy had killed an cabrach mor, the great stag of their love; he had killed him on the chief's own land! under the very eyes of the man whose business it was to watch over him! It was an offence unpardonable! an insult as well as a wrong to his chief! In the fierce majesty of righteous wrath he threw himself on the poacher. Sercombe met him with a blow straight from the shoulder, and he dropped. Rob of the Angels, close behind him, threw down the gun. The devil all but got into Rob of the Angels. His knife flashed pale in the moonlight, and he darted on the Sasunnach. It would then have gone ill with the bigger man, for Bob was lithe as a snake, swift not only to parry and dodge but to strike; he could not have reached the body of his antagonist, but Sercombe's arm would have had at least one terrible gash from his skean-dhu, sharp as a razor, had not, at the moment, from the top of the ridge come the stern voice of the chief. Rob's knife, like Excalibur from the hand of Sir Bedivere, "made lightnings in the splendour of the moon," as he threw it from him, and himself down by his father. Then Hector came to himself and rose. Rob rose also; and his father, trembling with excitement, stood grasping his arm, for he saw the stalwart form of his chief on the ridge above them. Alister had been waked by the gun, and at the roar of his friend Hector, sprang from his bed. When he saw his beloved stag dead on his pasture, he came down the ridge like an avalanche. Sercombe stood on his defence, wondering what devil was to pay, but beginning to think he might be in some wrong box. He had taken no trouble to understand the boundaries between Mr. Peregrine Palmer's land and that of the chief, and had imagined himself safe on the south side of the big burn. Alister gazed speechless for a moment on the slaughtered stag, and heaved a great sigh. "Mr. Sercombe," he said, "I would rather you had shot my best horse! Are you aware, sir, that you are a poacher?" "I had supposed the appellation inapplicable to a gentleman!" answered Sercombe, with entire coolness. "But by all means take me before a magistrate." "You are before a magistrate." "All I have to answer then is, that I should not have shot the animal had I not believed myself within my rights." "On that point, and on this very ground, I instructed you myself!" said the chief. "I misunderstood you." "Say rather you had not the courtesy to heed what I told you-had not faith enough to take the word of a gentleman! And for this my poor stag has suffered!" He stood for some moments in conflict with himself, then quietly resumed. "Of course, Mr. Sercombe, I have no intention of pushing the matter!" he said. "I should hope not!" returned Sercombe scornfully. "I will pay whatever you choose to set on the brute." It would be hard to say which was less agreeable to the chief-to have his stag called a brute, or be offered blood-money for him. "Stag Ruadh priced like a bullock!" he said, with a slow smile, full of sadness; "--the pride of every child in the strath! Not a gentleman in the county would have shot Clanruadh's deer!" Sercombe was by this time feeling uncomfortable, and it made him angry. He muttered something about superstition. "He was taken when a calf," the chief went on, "and given to a great-aunt of mine. But when he grew up, he took to the hills again, and was known by his silver collar till he managed to rid himself of it. He shall be buried where he lies, and his monument shall tell how the stranger Sasunnach served the stag of Clanruadh!" "Why the deuce didn't you keep the precious monster in a paddock, and let people know him for a tame animal?" sneered Sercombe. "My poor Euadh!" said the chief; "he was no tame animal! He as well as I would have preferred the death you have given him to such a fate. He lived while he lived! I thank you for his immediate transit. Shot right through the heart! Had you maimed him I should have been angrier." Sercombe felt flattered, and, attributing the chief's gentleness to a desire to please him, began to condescend. "Well, come now, Macruadh!" he began; but the chief turned from him. Hector stood with his arm on Rob's shoulder, and the tears rolling down his cheeks. He would not have wept but that the sobs of his son shook him. "Rob of the Angels," Alister said in their mother-tongue, "you must make an apology to the Sasunnach gentleman for drawing the knife on him. That was wrong, if he had killed all the deer in Benruadh." "It was not for that, Macruadh," answered Rob of the Angels. "It was because he struck my father, and laid a better man than himself on the grass." The chief turned to the Englishman. "Did the old man strike you, Mr. Sercombe?" "No, by Jove! I took a little care of that! If he had, I would have broke every bone in his body!" "Why did you strike him then?" "Because he rushed at me." "It was his duty to capture a poacher! --But you did not know he was deaf and dumb!" Alister added, as some excuse. "The deaf makes no difference!" protested Bob. "Hector of the Stags does not fight with his hands like a woman!" "Well, what's done is done!" laughed Sercombe. "It wasn't a bad shot anyhow!" "You have little to plume yourself upon, Mr. Sercombe!" said the chief. "You are a good shot, but you need not have been so frightened at an old man as to knock him down!" "Come, come, Macruadh! enough's enough! It's time to drop this!" returned Sercombe. "I can't stand much more of it! --Take ten pounds for the head! --Come!" The chief made one great stride towards him, but turned away, and said, "Come along, Rob! Tell your father you must not go up the hill again to-night." "No, sir," answered Bob; "there's nothing now to go up the hill for! Poor old Buadh! God rest his soul!" "Amen!" responded the chief; "but say rather, 'God give him room to run!'" "Amen! It is better. --But," added Kob, "we must watch by the body. The foxes and hooded crows are gathering already--I hear them on the hills; and I saw a sea-eagle as white as silver yesterday! We cannot leave Ruadh till he is under God's plaid!" "Then one of you come and fetch food and fire," said the chief. "I will be with you early." Father and son communicated in silence, and Rob went with the chief. "They worship the stag, these peasants, as the old Egyptians the bull!" said Sercombe to himself, walking home full of contempt.	{ "id": "5967" }
8	THE STAG'S HEAD.	Alister went straight to his brother's room, his heart bursting with indignation. It was some time before Ian could get the story from him in plain consecution; every other moment he would diverge into fierce denunciations. "Hadn't you better tell your master what has happened?" at length said Ian. "He ought to know why you curse one of your fellows so bitterly." Alister was dumb. For a moment he looked aghast. "Ian!" he said: "You think he wants to be told anything? I always thought you believed in his divinity!" "Ah!" returned Ian, "but do you? How am I to imagine it, when you go on like that in his hearing? Is it so you acknowledge his presence?" "Oh, Ian! you don't know how it tortures me to think of that interloper, the low brute, killing the big stag, the Macruadh stag-and on my land too! I feel as if I could tear him in pieces. But for him I would have killed him on the spot! It is hard if I may not let off my rage even to you!" "Let it off to him, Alister; he will give you fairer play than your small brother; he understands you better than I." "But I could not let it off to him that way!" "Then that is not a good way. The justice that, even in imagination, would tear and destroy and avenge, may be justice, but it is devil's justice. Come, begin now, and tell me all quietly-as if you had read it in a book." "Word for word, then, with all the imprecations!" returned Alister, a little cooler; and Ian was soon in possession of the story. "Now what do you think, Ian?" said the chief, ending a recital true to the very letter, and in a measure calm, but at various points revealing, by the merest dip of the surface, the boiling of the floods beneath. "You must send him the head, Alister," answered Ian. "Send-what-who-I don't understand you, Ian!" returned the chief, bewildered. "Oh, well, never mind!" said Ian. "You will think of it presently!" And therewith he turned his face to the wall, as if he would go to sleep. It had been a thing understood betwixt the brothers, and that from so far back in the golden haze of childhood that the beginning of it was out of sight, that, the moment one of them turned his back, not a word more was to be said, until he who thus dropped the subject, chose to resume it: to break this unspoken compact would have been to break one of the strands in the ancient bond of their most fast brotherhood. Alister therefore went at once to his room, leaving Ian loving him hard, and praying for him with his face to the wall. He went as one knowing well the storm he was about to encounter, but never before had he had such a storm to meet. He closed the door, and sat down on the side of his bed like one stunned. He did not doubt, yet could hardly allow he believed, that Ian, his oracle, had in verity told him to send the antlers of his cabrach mor, the late live type of his ancient crest, the pride of Clanruadh, to the vile fellow of a Sasunnach who had sent out into the deep the joyous soul of the fierce, bare mountains. There were rushings to and fro in the spirit of Alister, wild and terrible, even as those in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He never closed his eyes, but fought with himself all the night, until the morning broke. Could this thing be indeed his duty? And if not his duty, was he called to do it from mere bravado of goodness? How frightfully would not such an action be misunderstood by such a man! What could he take it for but a mean currying of favour with him! Why should he move to please such a fellow! Ian was too hard upon him! The more he yielded, the more Ian demanded! Every time it was something harder than the last! And why did he turn his face to the wall? Was he not fit to be argued with! Was he one that would not listen to reason! He had never known Ian ungenerous till now! But all the time there lay at his door a thing calling out to be done! The thing he did not like was always the thing he had to do! he grumbled; but this thing he hated doing! It was abominable! What! send the grand head, with its horns spread wide like a half-moon, and leaning--like oaks from a precipice--send it to the man that made it a dead thing! Never! It must not be left behind! It must go to the grave with the fleet limbs! and over it should rise a monument, at sight of which every friendly highlandman would say, Feiich an cabracli mor de Clanruadli! What a mockery of fate to be exposed for ever to the vulgar Cockney gaze, the trophy of a fool, whose boast was to kill! Such a noble beast! Such a mean man! To mutilate his remains for the pride of the wretch who killed him! It was too horrible! He thought and thought--until at last he lay powerless to think any more. But it is not always the devil that enters in when a man ceases to think. God forbid! The cessation of thought gives opportunity for setting the true soul thinking from another quarter. Suddenly Alister remembered a conversation he had had with Ian a day or two before. He had been saying to Ian that he could not understand what Jesus meant when he said, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also;" and was dissatisfied with the way Ian had answered him. "You must explain it to yourself," Ian said. He replied, "If I could do that, I should not have to ask you." "There are many things," Ian rejoined, "--arithmetic is one--that can be understood only in the doing of them." "But how can I do a thing without understanding it?" objected Alister. "When you have an opportunity of doing this very thing," said Ian, "do it, and see what will follow!" At the time he thought Ian was refusing to come to the point, and was annoyingly indefinite and illogical; but now it struck him that here was the opportunity of which he had spoken. "I see!" he said to himself. "It is not want of understanding that is in the way now! A thing cannot look hateful and reasonable at the same moment! This may be just the sort of thing Jesus meant! Even if I be in the right, I have a right to yield my right--and to HIM I will yield it. That was why Ian turned his face to the wall: he wanted me to discover that here was my opportunity! How but in the name of Jesus Christ could he have dared tell me to forgive Ruadh's death by sending his head to his murderer! It has to be done! I've got to do it! Here is my chance of turning the other cheek and being hurt again! What can come of it is no business of mine! To return evil is just to do a fresh evil! It MAY make the man ashamed of himself! It cannot hurt the stag; it only hurts my pride, and I owe my pride nothing! Why should not the fellow have what satisfaction he may--something to show for his shot! He shall have the head." Thereupon rushed into his heart the joy of giving up, of deliverance from self; and pity, to leaven his contempt, awoke for Sercombe. No sooner had he yielded his pride, than he felt it possible to love the man--not for anything he was, but for what he might and must be. "God let the man kill the stag," he said; "I will let him have the head." Again and yet again swelled afresh the tide of wrath and unwillingness, making him feel as if he could not carry out his resolve; but all the time he knew the thing was as good as done--absolutely determined, so that nothing could turn it aside. "To yield where one may, is the prerogative of liberty!" he said to himself. "God only can give; who would be his child must yield! Abroad in the fields of air, as Paul and the love of God make me hope, what will the wind-battling Ruadh care for his old head! Would he not say, 'Let the man have it; my hour was come, or the Some One would not have let him kill me!' ?" Thus argued the chief while the darkness endured--and as soon as the morning began to break, rose, took spade and pick and great knife, and went where Hector and Rob were watching the slain. It was bitterly cold. The burn crept silent under a continuous bridge of ice. The grass-blades were crisp with frost. The ground was so hard it met iron like iron. He sent the men to get their breakfast from Nancy: none but himself should do the last offices for Ruadh! With skilful hand he separated and laid aside the head--in sacrifice to the living God. Then the hard earth rang with mighty blows of the pickaxe. The labour was severe, and long ere the grave was deep enough, Hector and Rob had returned; but the chief would not get out of it to give them any share in the work. When he laid hold of the body, they did not offer to help him; they understood the heart of their chief. Not without a last pang that he could not lay the head beside it, he began to shovel in the frozen clods, and then at length allowed them to take a part. When the grave was full, they rolled great stones upon it, that it might not be desecrated. Then the chief went back to his room, and proceeded to prepare the head, that, as the sacrifice, so should be the gift. "I suppose he would like glass eyes, the ruffian!" he muttered to himself, "but I will not have the mockery. I will fill the sockets and sew up the eyelids, and the face shall be as of one that sleeps." Haying done all, and written certain directions for temporary treatment, which he tied to an ear, he laid the head aside till the evening. All the day long, not a word concerning it passed between the brothers; but when evening came, Alister, with a blue cotton handkerchief in his hand, hiding the head as far as the roots of the huge horns, asked Ian to go for a walk. They went straight to the New House. Alister left the head at the door, with his compliments to Mr. Sercombe. As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Ian put his arm through his brother's, but did not speak. "I know now about turning the other cheek!" said Alister. " --Poor Euadh!" "Leave him to the God that made the great head and nimble feet of him," said Ian. "A God that did not care for what he had made, how should we believe in! but he who cares for the dying sparrow, may be trusted with the dead stag." "Truly, yes," returned Alister. "Let us sit down," said Ian, "and I will sing you a song I made last night; I could not sleep after you left me." Without reply, Alister took a stone by the wayside, and Ian one a couple of yards from him. This was his song. LOVE'S HISTORY. Love, the baby, Toddled out to pluck a flower; One said, "No, sir;" one said, "Maybe, At the evening hour!" Love, the boy, Joined the boys and girls at play; But he left them half his joy Ere the close of day. Love, the youth, Roamed the country, lightning-laden; But he hurt himself, and, sooth, Many a man and maiden! Love, the man, Sought a service all about; But he would not take their plan, So they cast him out. Love, the aged, Walking, bowed, the shadeless miles, Bead a volume many-paged, Full of tears and smiles. Love, the weary, Tottered down the shelving road: At its foot, lo, night the starry Meeting him from God! "Love, the holy!" Sang a music in her dome, Sang it softly, sang it slowly, "--Love is coming home!" Ere the week was out, there stood above the dead stag a growing cairn, to this day called Carn a' cabrach mor. It took ten men with levers to roll one of the boulders at its base. Men still cast stones upon it as they pass. The next morning came a note to the cottage, in which Sercombe thanked the Macruadh for changing his mind, and said that, although he was indeed glad to have secured such a splendid head, he would certainly have stalked another deer, had he known the chief set such store by the one in question. It was handed to Alister as he sat at his second breakfast with his mother and Ian: even in winter he was out of the house by six o'clock, to set his men to work, and take his own share. He read to the end of the first page with curling lip; the moment he turned the leaf, he sprang from his seat with an exclamation that startled his mother. "The hound! --I beg my good dogs' pardon, one and all!" he cried. " --Look at this, Ian! See what comes of taking your advice!" "My dear fellow, I gave you no advice that had the least regard to the consequence of following it! That was the one thing you had nothing to do with." "READA," insisted Alister, as he pranced about the room. "No, don't read the letter; it's not worth, reading. Look at the paper in it." Ian looked, and saw a cheque for ten pounds. He burst into loud laughter. "Poor Ruadh's horns! they're hardly so long as their owner's ears!" he said. "I told you so!" cried the chief. "No, Alister! You never suspected such a donkey!" "What is it all about?" asked the mother. "The wretch who shot Ruadh," replied Alister, "--to whom I gave his head, all to please Ian,--" "Alister!" said Ian. The chief understood, and retracted. " --no, not to please Ian, but to do what Ian showed me was right:--I believe it was my duty! --I hope it was! --here's the murdering fellow sends me a cheque for ten pounds! --I told you, Ian, he offered me ten pounds over the dead body!" "I daresay the poor fellow was sorely puzzled what to do, and appealed to everybody in the house for advice!" "You take the cheque to represent the combined wisdom of the New House?" "You must have puzzled them all!" persisted Ian. "How could people with no principle beyond that of keeping to a bargain, understand you otherwise! First, you perform an action such persons think degrading: you carry a fellow's bag for a shilling, and then himself for nothing! Next, in the very fury of indignation with a man for killing the finest stag in the country on your meadow, you carry him home the head with your own hands! It all comes of that unlucky divine motion of yours to do good that good may come! That shilling of Mistress Conal's is at the root of it all!" Ian laughed again, and right heartily. The chief was too angry to enter into the humour of the thing. "Upon my word, Ian, it is too bad of you! What ARE you laughing at? It would become you better to tell me what I am to do! Am I free to break the rascal's bones?" "Assuredly not, after that affair with the bag!" "Oh, damn the bag! --I beg your pardon, mother." "Am I to believe my ears, Alister?" "What does it matter, mother? What harm can it do the bag? I wished no evil to any creature!" "It was the more foolish." "I grant it, mother. But you don't know what a relief it is sometimes to swear a little! --You are quite wrong, Ian; it all comes of giving him the head!" "You wish you had not given it him?" "No!" growled Alister, as from a pent volcano. "You will break my ears, Alister!" cried the mother, unable to keep from laughing at the wrath in which he went straining through the room. "Think of it," insisted Ian: "a man like could not think otherwise without a revolution of his whole being to which the change of the leopard's spots would be nothing. --What you meant, after all, was not cordiality; it was only generosity; to which his response, his countercheck friendly, was an order for ten pounds! --All is right between you!" "Now, really, Ian, you must not go on teasing your elder brother so!" said the mother. Alister laughed, and ceased fuming. "But I must answer the brute!" he said. "What am I to say to him?" "That you are much obliged," replied Ian, "and will have the cheque framed and hung in the hall." "Come, come! no more of that!" "Well, then, let me answer the letter." "That is just what I wanted!" Ian sat down at his mother's table, and this is what he wrote. "Dear sir,--My brother desires me to return the cheque which you unhappily thought it right to send him. Humanity is subject to mistake, but I am sorry for the individual who could so misunderstand his courtesy. I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant, Ian Macruadh." As Ian guessed, the matter had been openly discussed at the New House; and the money was sent with the approval of all except the two young ladies. They had seen the young men in circumstances more favourable to the understanding of them by ordinary people. "Why didn't the chief write himself?" said Christian. "Oh," replied Sercombe, "his little brother had been to school, and could write better!" Christina and Mercy exchanged glances. "I will tell you," Mercy said, "why Mr. lau answered the note: the chief had done with you!" "Or," suggested Christina, "the chief was in such a rage that he would write nothing but a challenge." "I wish to goodness he had! It would have given me the chance of giving the clodhopper a lesson." "For sending you the finest stag's head and horns in the country!" remarked Mercy. "I shot the stag! Perhaps you don't believe I shot him!" "Indeed I do! No one else would have done it. The chief would have died sooner!" "I'm sick of your chief!" said Christian. "A pretty chief without a penny to bless himself! A chief, and glad of the job of carrying a carpet-bag! You'll be calling him MY LORD, next!" "He may at least write BARONET after his name when he pleases," returned Mercy. "Why don't he then? A likely story!" "Because," answered Christina, "both his father and himself were ashamed of how the first baronet got his title. It had to do with the sale of a part of the property, and they counted the land the clan's as well as the chief's. They regarded it as an act of treachery to put the clan in the power of a stranger, and the chief looks on the title as a brand of shame." "I don't question the treachery," said Christian. "A highlander is treacherous." Christina had asked a friend in Glasgow to find out for her anything known among the lawyers concerning the Macruadhs, and what she had just recounted was a part of the information she had thereby received. Thenceforward silence covered the whole transaction. Sercombe neither returned the head, sent an apology, nor recognized the gift. That he had shot the stag was enough! But these things wrought shaping the idea of the brothers in the minds of the sisters, and they were beginning to feel a strange confidence in them, such as they had never had in men before. A curious little halo began to shimmer about the heads of the young men in the picture-gallery of the girls' fancy. Not the less, however, did they regard them as enthusiasts, unfitted to this world, incapable of self-protection, too good to live--in a word, unpractical! Because a man would live according to the laws of his being as well as of his body, obeying simple, imperative, essential human necessity, his fellows forsooth call him UNPRACTICAL! Of the idiotic delusions of the children of this world, that of being practical is one of the most ludicrous. Here is a translation, made by Ian, of one of Alister's Gaelic songs. THE SUN'S DAUGHTER. A bright drop of water In the gold tire Of a sun's daughter Was laughing to her sire; And from all the flowers about, That never toiled or spun, The soul of each looked out, Clear laughing to the sun. I saw them unfolding Their hearts every one! Every soul holding Within it the sun! But all the sun-mirrors Vanished anon; And their flowers, mere starers, Grew dry in the sun. "My soul is but water, Shining and gone! She is but the daughter," I said, "of the sun!" My soul sat her down In a deep-shaded gloom; Her glory was flown, Her earth was a tomb, Till night came and caught her, And then out she shone; And I knew her no daughter Of that shining sun-- Till night came down and taught her Of a glory yet unknown; And I knew my soul the daughter Of a sun behind the sun. Back, back to him that wrought her My soul shall haste and run; Straight back to him, his daughter, To the sun behind the sun.	{ "id": "5967" }
9	ANNIE OF THE SHOP.	At the dance in the chief's barn, Sercombe had paired with Annie of the shop oftener than with any other of the girls. That she should please him at all, was something in his favour, for she was a simple, modest girl, with the nicest feeling of the laws of intercourse, the keenest perception both of what is in itself right, and what is becoming in the commonest relation. She understood by a fine moral instinct what respect was due to her, and what respect she ought to show, and was therefore in the truest sense well-bred. There are women whom no change of circumstances would cause to alter even their manners a hair's-breadth: such are God's ladies; there are others in whom any outward change will reveal the vulgarity of a nature more conscious of claim than of obligation. I need not say that Sercomhe, though a man of what is called education, was but conventionally a gentleman. If in doubt whether a man be a gentleman or not, hear him speak to a woman he regards as his inferior: his very tone will probably betray him. A true gentleman, that is a true man, will be the more carefully respectful. Sercombe was one of those who regard themselves as respectable because they are prudent; whether they are human, and their brother and sister's keeper, they have never asked themselves. To some minds neither innocent nor simple, there is yet something attractive in innocence and simplicity. Perhaps it gives them a pleasing sense of their superiority--a background against which to rejoice in their liberty, while their pleasure in it helps to obscure the gulf between what the man would fain hold himself to be, and what in reality he is. There is no spectre so terrible as the unsuspected spectre of a man's own self; it is noisome enough to the man who is ever trying to better it: what must it appear to the man who sees it for the first time! Sercombe's self was ugly, and he did not know it; he thought himself an exceptionally fine fellow. No one knows what a poor creature he is but the man who makes it his business to be true. The only mistake worse than thinking well of himself, is for a man to think God takes no interest in him. One evening, sorely in lack of amusement, Sercombe wandered out into a star-lit night, and along the road to the village. There he went into the general shop, where sat Annie behind the counter. Now the first attention he almost always paid a woman, that is when he cared and dared, was a compliment--the fungus of an empty head or a false heart; but with Annie he took no such initiative liberty, and she, accustomed to respectful familiarity from the chief and his brother, showed no repugnance to his friendly approach. "Upon my word, Miss Annie," said Sercombe, venturing at length a little, "you were the best dancer on the floor that night!" "Oh, Mr. Sercombe! how can you say so--with such dancers as the young ladies of your party!" returned Annie. "They dance well," he returned, "but not so well as you." "It all depends on the dance--whether you are used to it or not." "No, by Jove! If you had a lesson or two such as they have been having all their lives, you would dance out of their sight in the twinkling of an eye. If I had you for a partner every night for a month, you would dance better than any woman I have ever seen--off the stage--any lady, that is." The grosser the flattery, the surer with a country girl, he thought. But there was that in his tone, besides the freedom of sounding her praises in her own ears, which was unpleasing to Annie's ladyhood, and she held her peace. "Come out and have a turn," he said thereupon. "It is lovely star-light. Have you had a walk to-day?" "No, I have not," answered Annie, casting how to get rid of him. "You wrong your beauty by keeping to the house." "My beauty," said Annie, flushing, "may look after itself; I have nothing to do with it--neither, excuse me, sir, have you." "Why, who has a right to be offended with the truth! A man can't help seeing your face is as sweet as your voice, and your figure, as revealed by your dancing, a match for the two!" "I will call my mother," said Annie, and left the shop. Sercombe did not believe she would, and waited. He took her departure for a mere coquetry. But when a rather grim, handsome old woman appeared, asking him--it took the most of her English--"What would you be wanting, sir?" as if he had just come into the shop, he found himself awkwardly situated. He answered, with more than his usual politeness, that, having had the pleasure of dancing with her daughter at the chief's hall, he had taken the liberty of looking in to inquire after her health; whereupon, perplexed, the old woman in her turn called Annie, who came at once, but kept close to her mother. Sercombe began to tell them about a tour he had made in Canada, for he had heard they had friends there; but the mother did not understand him, and Annie more and more disliked him. He soon saw that at least he had better say nothing more about a walk, and took himself off, not a little piqued at repulse from a peasant-girl in the most miserable shop he had ever entered. Two days after, he went again--this time to buy tobacco. Annie was short with him, but he went yet again and yet sooner: these primitive people objected to strangers, he said; accustomed to him she would be friendly! he would not rest until he had gained some footing of favour with her! Annie grew heartily offended with the man. She also feared what might be said if he kept coming to the shop--where Mistress Conal had seen him more than once, and looked poison at him. For her own sake, for the sake of Lachlan, and for the sake of the chief, she resolved to make the young father of the ancient clan acquainted with her trouble. It was on the day after his rejection of the ten-pound note that she found her opportunity, for the chief came to see her. "Was he rude to you, Annie?" he asked. "No, sir--too polite, I think: he must have seen I did not want his company. --I shall feel happier now you know." "I will see to it," said the chief. "I hope it will not put you to any trouble, sir!" "What am I here for, Annie! Are you not my clanswoman! Is not Lachlan my foster-brother! --He will trouble you no more, I think." As Alister walked home, he met Sercombe, and after a greeting not very cordial on either side, said thus: "I should be obliged to you, Mr. Sercombe, if you would send for anything you want, instead of going to the shop yourself. Annie Macruadh is not the sort of girl you may have found in such a position, and you would not wish to make her uncomfortable!" Sercombe was, ashamed, I think; for the refuge of the fool when dissatisfied with himself, is offence with his neighbour, and Sercombe was angry. "Are you her father--or her lover?" he said. "She has a right to my protection--and claims it," rejoined Alister quietly. "Protection! Oh! --What the devil would you protect her from?" "From you, Mr. Sercombe." "Protect her, then." "I will. Force yourself on that young woman's notice again, and you will have to do with me." They parted. Alister went home. Sercombe went straight to the shop. He was doing what he could to recommend himself to Christina; but whether from something antagonistic between them, or from unwillingness on her part to yield her position of advantage and so her liberty, she had not given him the encouragement he thought he deserved. He believed himself in love with her, and had told her so; but the truest love such a man can feel, is a poor thing. He admired, and desired, and thought he loved her beauty, and that he called being in love with HER! He did not think much about her money, but had she then been brought to poverty, he would at least have hesitated about marrying her. In the family he was regarded as her affianced, although she did not treat him as such, but merely went on bewitching him, pleased that at least he was a man of the world. While one is yet only IN LOVE, the real person, the love-capable, lies covered with the rose-leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person of whom is the dream. A thousand fancies fly out, approach, and cross, but never meet; the man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity--of essential capacity, therefore, of loving and being loved; at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, but their contacts are the merest brushings as of insect-antennae; the real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose-leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true--to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being. They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other--a love as essential to reality, to truth, to religion, as the love of the very God. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitnesses of temperament be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one. Sercombe saw no reason why a gentleman should not amuse himself with any young woman he pleased. What was the chief to him! He was not his chief! If he was a big man in the eyes of his little clan, he was nothing much in the eyes of Hilary Sercombe.	{ "id": "5967" }
10	THE ENCOUNTER.	Annie came again to her chief, with the complaint that Mr. Sercombe persisted in his attentions. Alister went to see her home. They had not gone far when Sercombe overtook them, and passed. The chief told Annie to go on, and called after him, "I must have a word or two with you, Mr. Sercombe!" He turned and came up with long steps, his hands in his coat-pockets. "I warned you to leave that girl alone!" said the chief. "And I warn you now," rejoined Sercombe, "to leave me alone!" "I am bound to take care of her." "And I of myself." "Not at her expense!" "At yours then!" answered Sercombe, provoking an encounter, to which he was the more inclined that he saw Ian coming slowly up the ridge. "It was your deliberate intention then to forget the caution I gave you?" said the chief, restraining his anger. "I make a point of forgetting what I do not think worth remembering." "I forget nothing!" "I congratulate you." "And I mean to assist your memory, Mr. Sercombe." "Mr. Macruadh!" returned Sercombe, "if you expect me not to open my lips to any hussy in the glen without your leave,--" His speech was cut short by a box on the ear from the open hand of the chief. He would not use his fist without warning, but such a word applied to any honest woman of his clan demanded instant recognition. Sercomhe fell back a step, white with rage, then darting forward, struck straight at the front of his adversary. Alister avoided the blow, but soon found himself a mere child at such play with the Englishman. He had not again touched Sercombe, and was himself bleeding fast, when Ian came up running. "Damn you! come on!" cried Sercombe when he saw him; "I can do the precious pair of you!" "Stop!" cried Ian, laying hold of his brother from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, wheeling him round, and taking his place. "Give over, Alister," he went on. "You can't do it, and I won't see you punished when it is he that deserves it. Go and sit there, and look on." "YOU can't do it, Ian!" returned Alister. "It is my business. One blow in will serve. He jumps about like a goat that I can't hit him!" "You are blind with blood!" said Ian, in a tone that gave Sercombe expectation of too easy a victory. "Sit down there, I tell you!" "Mind, I don't give in!" said Alister, but turning went to the bank at the roadside. "If he speak once again to Annie, I swear I will make him repent it!" Sercombe laughed insultingly. "Mr. Sercombe," said Ian, "had we not better put off our bout till to-morrow? You have fought already!" "Damn you for a coward, come on!" "Would you not like to take your breath for a moment?" "I have all I am likely to need." "It is only fair," persisted Ian, "to warn you that you will not find my knowledge on the level of my brother's!" "Shut up," said Sercombe savagely, "and come on." For a few rounds Ian seemed to Alister to be giving Sercombe time to recover his wind; to Sercombe he seemed to be saving his own. He stood to defend, and did not attempt to put in a blow. "Mr. Sercombe," he said at length, "you cannot serve me as you did my brother." "I see that well enough. Come on!" "Will you give your word to leave Annie of the shop alone?" Sercombe answered with a scornful imprecation. "I warn you again, I am no novice in this business!" said Ian. Sercombe struck out, but did not reach his antagonist. The fight lasted but a moment longer. As his adversary drew back from a failed blow, Alister saw Ian's eyes flash, and his left arm shoot out, as it seemed, to twice its length. Sercombe neither reeled nor staggered but fell supine, and lay motionless. The brothers were by his side in a moment. "I struck too hard!" said Ian. "Who can think about that in a fight!" returned Alister. "I could have helped it well enough, and a better man would. Something shot through me--I hope it wasn't hatred; I am sure it was anger--and the man went down! What if the devil struck the blow!" "Nonsense, Ian!" said Alister, as they raised Sercombe to carry him to the cottage. "It was pure indignation, and nothing to blame in it!" "I wish I could be sure of that!" They had not gone far before he began to come to himself. "What are you about?" he said feebly but angrily. "Set me down." They did so. He staggered to the road-side, and leaned against the bank. "What's been the row?" he asked. "Oh, I remember! --Well, you've had the best of it!" He held out his hand in a vague sort of way, and the gesture invaded their soft hearts. Each took the hand. "I was all right about the girl though," said Sercombe. "I didn't mean her any harm." "I don't think you did," answered Alister; "and I am sure you could have done her none; but the girl did not like it." "There is not a girl of the clan, or in the neighbourhood, for whom my brother would not have done the same." said Ian. "You're a brace of woodcocks!" cried Sercombe. "It's well you're not out in the world. You would be in hot water from morning to night! I can't think how the devil you get on at all!" "Get on! Where?" asked Ian with a smile. "Come now! You ain't such fools as you want to look! A man must make a place for himself somehow in the world!" He rose, and they walked in the direction of the cottage. "There is a better thing than that," said Ian! "What?" "To get clean out of it." "What! cut your throats?" "I meant that to get out of the world clean was better than to get on in it." "I don't understand you. I don't choose to think the man that thrashed me a downright idiot!" growled Sercombe. "What you call getting on," rejoined Ian, "we count not worth a thought. Look at our clan! it is a type of the world itself. Everything is passing away. We believe in the kingdom of heaven." "Come, come! fellows like you must know well enough that's all bosh! Nobody nowadays--nobody with any brains--believes such rot!" "We believe in Jesus Christ," said Ian, "and are determined to do what he will have us do, and take our orders from nobody else." "I don't understand you!" "I know you don't. You cannot until you set about changing your whole way of life." "Oh, be damned! what an idea! a sneaking, impossible idea!" "As to its being an impossible idea, we hold it, and live by it. How absurd it must seem to you, I know perfectly. But we don't live in your world, and you do not even see the lights of ours." " 'There is a world beyond the stars'! --Well, there may be; I know nothing about it; I only know there is one on this side of them,--a very decent sort of world too! I mean to make the best of it." "And have not begun yet!" "Indeed I have! I deny myself nothing. I live as I was made to live." "If you were not made to obey your conscience or despise yourself, you are differently made from us, and no communication is possible between us. We must wait until what differences a man from a beast make its appearance in you." "You are polite!" "You have spoken of us as you think; now we speak of you as we think. Taking your representation of yourself, you are in the condition of the lower animals, for you claim inclination as the law of your life." "My beast is better than your man!" "You mean you get more of the good of life!" "Right! I do." The brothers exchanged a look and smile. "But suppose," resumed Ian, "the man we have found in us should one day wake up in you! Suppose he should say, 'Why did you make a beast of me?' ! It will not be easy for you to answer him!" "That's all moonshine! Things are as you take them." "So said Lady Macbeth till she took to walking in her sleep, and couldn't get rid of the smell of the blood!" Sercombe said no more. He was silent with disgust at the nonsense of it all. They reached the door of the cottage. Alister invited him to walk in. He drew back, and would have excused himself. "You had better lie down a while," said Alister. "You shall come to my room," said Ian. "We shall meet nobody." Sercombe yielded, for he felt queer. He threw himself on Ian's bed, and in a few minutes was fast asleep. When he woke, he had a cup of tea, and went away little the worse. The laird could not show himself for several days. After this Annie had no further molestation. But indeed the young men's time was almost up--which was quite as well, for Annie of the shop, after turning a corner of the road, had climbed the hill-side, and seen all that passed. The young ladies, hearing contradictory statements, called upon Annie to learn the truth, and the intercourse with her that followed was not without influence on them. Through Annie they saw further into the character of the brothers, who, if they advocated things too fine for the world the girls had hitherto known, DID things also of which it would by no means have approved. They valued that world and its judgment not a straw!	{ "id": "5967" }
11	A LESSON.	All the gentlemen at the New House left it together, and its ladies were once more abandoned to the society of Nature, who said little to any of them. For, though she recognized her grandchildren, and did what she could for them, it was now time they should make some move towards acquaintance with her. A point comes when she must stand upon her dignity, for it is great. If you would hear her wonderful tales, or see her marvellous treasures, you must not trifle with her; you must not talk as if you could rummage her drawers and cabinets as you pleased. You must believe in her; you must reverence her; else, although she is everywhere about the house, you may not meet her from the beginning of one year to the end of another. To allude to any aspect of nature in the presence of the girls was to threaten to bore them; and I heartily confess to being bored myself with common talk about scenery; but these ladies appeared unaware of the least expression on the face of their grand-mother. Doubtless they received some good from the aspect of things--that they could not help; there Grannie's hidden, and therefore irresistible power was in operation; but the moment they had their thoughts directed to the world around them, they began to gape inwardly. Even the trumpet and shawm of her winds, the stately march of her clouds, and the torrent-rush of her waters, were to them poor facts, no vaguest embodiment of truths eternal. It was small wonder then that verse of any worth should be to them but sounding brass and clanging cymbals. What they called society, its ways and judgments, its decrees and condemnations, its fashions and pomps and shows, false, unjust, ugly, was nearly all they cared for. The truth of things, without care for which man or woman is the merest puppet, had hitherto been nothing to them. To talk of Nature was sentimental. To talk of God was both irreverent and ill-bred. Wordsworth was an old woman; St. Paul an evangelical churchman. They saw no feature of any truth, but, like all unthinkers, wrapped the words of it in their own foolishness, and then sneered at them. They were too much of ladies, however, to do it disagreeably; they only smiled at the foolish neighbour who believed things they were too sensible to believe. It must, however, be said for them, that they had not yet refused anything worth believing--as presented to them. They had not yet actually looked upon any truth and refused it. They were indeed not yet true enough in themselves to suspect the presence of either a truth or a falsehood. A thaw came, and the ways were bad, and they found the time hang yet heavier on their unaided hands. An intercourse by degrees established itself between Mrs. Macruadh and the well-meaning, handsome, smiling Mrs. Palmer, and rendered it natural for the girls to go rather frequently to the cottage. They made themselves agreeable to the mother, and subject to the law of her presence showed to better advantage. With their love of literature, it was natural also that the young men should at such times not only talk about books, but occasionally read for their entertainment from some favourite one; so that now, for the first time in their lives, the young ladies were brought under direct teaching of a worthy sort--they had had but a mockery of it at school and church--and a little light began to soak through their unseeking eyes. Among many others, however, less manifest, one obstruction to their progress lay in the fact that Christina, whose perceptions in some directions was quick enough, would always make a dart at the comical side of anything that could be comically turned, so disturbing upon occasion the whole spiritual atmosphere about some delicate epiphany: this to both Alister and Ian was unbearable. She offended chiefly in respect of Wordsworth--who had not humour enough always to perceive what seriously meant expression might suggest a ludicrous idea. One time, reading from the Excursion, Ian came to the verse--not to be found, I think, in later editions-- "Perhaps it is not he but some one else":-- "Awful idea!" exclaimed Christina, with sepulchral tone; "--'some one else!' Think of it! It makes me shudder! Who might it not have been!" Ian closed the book, and persistently refused to read more that day. Another time he was reading, in illustration of something, Wordsworth's poem, "To a Skylark," the earlier of the two with that title: when he came to the unfortunate line,-- "Happy, happy liver!" -- "Oh, I am glad to know that!" cried Christina. "I always thought the poor lark must have a bad digestion--he was up so early!" Ian refused to finish the poem, although Mercy begged hard. The next time they came, he proposed to "read something in Miss Palmer's style," and taking up a volume of Hood, and avoiding both his serious and the best of his comic poems, turned to two or three of the worst he could find. After these he read a vulgar rime about an execution, pretending to be largely amused, making flat jokes of his own, and sometimes explaining elaborately where was no occasion. "Ian!" said his mother at length; "have you bid farewell to your senses?" "No, mother," he answered; "what I am doing is the merest consequence of the way you brought us up." "I don't understand that!" she returned. "You always taught us to do the best we could for our visitors. So when I fail to interest them, I try to amuse them." "But you need not make a fool of yourself!" "It is better to make a fool of myself, than let Miss Palmer make a fool of--a great man!" "Mr. Ian," said Christina, "it is not of yourself but of me you have been making a fool. --I deserved it!" she added, and burst into tears. "Miss Palmer," said Ian, "I will drop my foolishness, if you will drop your fun." "I will," answered Christina. And Ian read them the poem beginning-- "Three years she grew in sun and shower." Scoffing at what is beautiful, is not necessarily a sign of evil; it may only indicate stupidity or undevelopment: the beauty is not perceived. But blame is often present in prolonged undevelopment. Surely no one habitually obeying his conscience would long be left without a visit from some shape of the beautiful!	{ "id": "5967" }
12	NATURE.	The girls had every liberty; their mother seldom interfered. Herself true to her own dim horn-lantern, she had confidence in the discretion of her daughters, and looked for no more than discretion. Hence an amount of intercourse was possible between them and the young men, which must have speedily grown to a genuine intimacy had they inhabited even a neighbouring sphere of conscious life. Almost unknown to herself, however, a change for the better had begun in Mercy. She had not yet laid hold of, had not yet perceived any truth; but she had some sense of the blank where truth ought to be. It was not a sense that truth was lacking; it was only a sense that something was not in her which was in those men. A nature such as hers, one that had not yet sinned against the truth, was not one long to frequent such a warm atmosphere of live truth, without approach to the hour when it must chip its shell, open its eyes, and acknowledge a world of duty around it. One lovely star-lit night of keen frost, the two mothers were sitting by a red peat-fire in the little drawing-room of the cottage, and Ian was talking to the girls over some sketches he had made in the north, when the chief came in, bringing with him an air of sharp exhilaration, and proposed a walk. "Come and have a taste of star-light!" he said. The girls rose at once, and were ready in a minute. The chief was walking between the two ladies, and Ian was a few steps in front, his head bent as in thought. Suddenly, Mercy saw him spread out his arms toward the starry vault, with his face to its serrated edge of mountain-tops. The feeling, almost the sense of another presence awoke in her, and as quickly vanished. The thought, IS HE A PANTHEIST? took its place. Had she not surprised him in an act of worship? In that wide outspreading of the lifted arms, was he not worshipping the whole, the Pan? Sky and stars and mountains and sea were his God! She walked aghast, forgetful of a hundred things she had heard him say that might have settled the point. She had, during the last day or two, been reading an article in which PANTHEISM was once and again referred to with more horror than definiteness. Recovering herself a little, she ventured approach to the subject. "Macruadh," she said, "Mr. Ian and you often say things about NATURE that I cannot understand: I wish you would tell me what you mean by it." "By what?" asked Alister. "By NATURE" answered Mercy. "I heard Mr. Ian say, for instance, the other night, that he did not like Nature to take liberties with him; you said she might take what liberties with you she pleased; and then you went on talking so that I could not understand a word either of you said!" While she spoke, Ian had turned and rejoined them, and they were now walking in a line, Mercy between the two men, and Christina on Ian's right. The brothers looked at each other: it would be hard to make her understand just that example! Something more rudimentary must prepare the way! Silence fell for a moment, and then Ian said-- "We mean by nature every visitation of the outside world through our senses." "More plainly, please Mr. Ian! You cannot imagine how stupid I feel when you are talking your thinks, as once I heard a child call them." "I mean by nature, then, all that you see and hear and smell and taste and feel of the things round about you." "If that be all you mean, why should you make it seem so difficult?" "But that is not all. We mean the things themselves only for the sake of what they say to us. As our sense of smell brings us news of fields far off, so those fields, or even the smell only that comes from them, tell us of things, meanings, thoughts, intentions beyond them, and embodied in them." "And that is why you speak of Nature as a person?" asked Mercy. "Whatever influences us must be a person. But God is the only real person, being in himself, and without help from anybody; and so we talk even of the world which is but his living garment, as if that were a person; and we call it SHE as if it were a woman, because so many of God's loveliest influences come to us through her. She always seems to me a beautiful old grandmother." "But there now! when you talk of her influences, and the liberties she takes, I do not know what you mean. She seems to do and be something to you which certainly she does not and is not to me. I cannot tell what to make of it. I feel just as when our music-master was talking away about thorough bass: I could not get hold, head or tail, of what the man was after, and we all agreed there was no sense in it. Now I begin to suspect there must have been too much!" "There is no fear of her!" said Ian to himself. "My heart told me the truth about her!" thought Alister jubilant. "Now we shall have talk!" "I think I can let you see into it, Miss Mercy," said Ian. "Imagine for a moment how it would be if, instead of having a roof like 'this most excellent canopy the air, this brave o'erhanging, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire,'--" "Are you making the words, or saying them out of a book?" interrupted Mercy. "Ah! you don't know Hamlet? How rich I should feel myself if I had the first reading of it before me like you! --But imagine how different it would have been if, instead of such a roof, we had only clouds, hanging always down, like the flies in a theatre, within a yard or two of our heads!" Mercy was silent for a moment, then said, "It would be horribly wearisome." "It would indeed be wearisome! But how do you think it would affect your nature, your being?" Mercy held the peace which is the ignorant man's wisdom. "We should have known nothing of astronomy," said Christina. "True; and the worst would have been, that the soul would have had no astronomy--no notion of heavenly things." "There you leave me out again!" said Mercy. "I mean," said Ian, "that it would have had no sense of outstretching, endless space, no feeling of heights above, and depths beneath. The idea of space would not have come awake in it." "I understand!" said Christina. "But I do not see that we should have been much the worse off. Why should we have the idea of more than we want? So long as we have room, I do not see what space matters to us!" "Ah, but when the soul wakes up, it needs all space for room! A limit of thousands of worlds will not content it. Mere elbow-room will not do when the soul wakes up!" "Then my soul is not waked up yet!" rejoined Christina with a laugh. Ian did not reply, and Christina felt that he accepted the proposition, absurd as it seemed to herself. "But there is far more than that," he resumed. "What notion could you have had of majesty, if the heavens seemed scarce higher than the earth? what feeling of the grandeur of him we call God, of his illimitation in goodness? For space is the body to the idea of liberty. Liberty is--God and the souls that love; these are the limitless room, the space, in which thoughts, the souls of things, have their being. If there were no holy mind, then no freedom, no spiritual space, therefore no thoughts; just as, if there were no space, there could be no things." Ian saw that not even Alister was following him, and changed his key. "Look up," he said, "and tell me what you see. --What is the shape over us?" "It is a vault," replied Christina. "A dome--is it not?" said Mercy. "Yes; a vault or a dome, recognizable at the moment mainly by its shining points. This dome we understand to be the complement or completing part of a correspondent dome on the other side of the world. It follows that we are in the heart of a hollow sphere of loveliest blue, spangled with light. Now the sphere is the one perfect geometrical form. Over and round us then we have the one perfect shape. I do not say it is put there for the purpose of representing God; I say it is there of necessity, because of its nature, and its nature is its relation to God. It is of God's thinking; and that half-sphere above men's heads, with influence endlessly beyond the reach of their consciousness, is the beginning of all revelation of him to men. They must begin with that. It is the simplest as well as most external likeness of him, while its relation to him goes so deep that it represents things in his very nature that nothing else could." "You bewilder me," said Mercy. "I cannot follow you. I am not fit for such high things!" "I will go on; you will soon begin to see what I mean: I know what you are fit for better than you do yourself, Miss Mercy. --Think then how it would be if this blue sky were plainly a solid. Men of old believed it a succession of hollow spheres, one outside the other; it is hardly a wonder they should have had little gods. No matter how high the vault of the inclosing sphere; limited at all it could not declare the glory of God, it could only show his handiwork. In our day it is a sphere only to the eyes; it is a foreshortening of infinitude that it may enter our sight; there is no imagining of a limit to it; it is a sphere only in this, that in no one direction can we come nearer to its circumference than in another. This infinitive sphere, I say then, or, if you like it better, this spheric infinitude, is the only figure, image, emblem, symbol, fit to begin us to know God; it is an idea incomprehensible; we can only believe in it. In like manner God cannot by searching be found out, cannot be grasped by any mind, yet is ever before us, the one we can best know, the one we must know, the one we cannot help knowing; for his end in giving us being is that his humblest creature should at length possess himself, and be possessed by him." "I think I begin," said Mercy--and said no more. "If it were not for the outside world," resumed Ian, "we should have no inside world to understand things by. Least of all could we understand God without these millions of sights and sounds and scents and motions, weaving their endless harmonies. They come out from his heart to let us know a little of what is in it!" Alister had been listening hard. He could not originate such things, but he could understand them; and his delight in them proved them his own, although his brother had sunk the shaft that laid open their lode. "I never heard you put a thing better, Ian!" he said. "You gentlemen," said Mercy, "seem to have a place to think in that I don't know how to get into! Could you not open your church-door a little wider to let me in? There must be room for more than two!" She was looking up at Alister, not so much afraid of him; Ian was to her hardly of this world. In her eyes Alister saw something that seemed to reflect the starlight; but it might have been a luminous haze about the waking stars of her soul! "My brother has always been janitor to me," replied Alister; "I do not know how to open any door. But here no door needs to be opened; you have just to step straight into the temple of nature, among all the good people worshipping." "There! that is what I was afraid of!" cried Mercy: "you are pantheists!" "Bless my soul, Mercy!" exclaimed Christina; "what do you mean?" "Yes," answered Ian. "If to believe that not a lily can grow, not a sparrow fall to the ground without our Father, be pantheism, Alister and I are pantheists. If by pantheism you mean anything that would not fit with that, we are not pantheists." "Why should we trouble about religion more than is required of us!" interposed Christina. "Why indeed?" returned Ian. "But then how much is required?" "You require far more than my father, and he is good enough for me!" "The Master says we are to love God with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind." "That was in the old law, Ian," said Alister. "You are right. Jesus only justified it--and did it." "How then can you worship in the temple of Nature?" said Mercy. "Just as he did. It is Nature's temple, mind, for the worship of God, not of herself!" "But how am I to get into it? That is what I want to know." "The innermost places of the temple are open only to such as already worship in a greater temple; but it has courts into which any honest soul may enter." "You wouldn't set me to study Wordsworth?" "By no means." "I am glad of that--though there must be more in him than I see, or you couldn't care for him so much!" "Some of Nature's lessons you must learn before you can understand them." "Can you call it learning a lesson if you do not understand it?" "Yes--to a certain extent. Did you learn at school to work the rule of three?" "Yes; and I was rather fond of it." "Did you understand it?" "I could work sums in it." "Did you see how it was that setting the terms down so, and working out the rule, must give you a true answer. Did you perceive that it was safe to buy or sell, to build a house, or lay out a garden, by the rule of three?" "I did not. I do not yet." "Then one may so far learn a lesson without understanding it! All do, more or less, in Dame Nature's school. Not a few lessons must be so learned in order to be better learned. Without being so learned first, it is not possible to understand them; the scholar has not facts enough about the things to understand them. Keats's youthful delight in Nature was more intense even than Wordsworth's, but he was only beginning to understand her when he died. Shelley was much nearer understanding her than Keats, but he was drowned before he did understand her. Wordsworth was far before either of them. At the same time, presumptuous as it may appear, I believe there are regions to be traversed, beyond any point to which Wordsworth leads us." "But how am I to begin? Do tell me. Nothing you say helps me in the least." "I have all the time been leading you toward the door at which you want to go in. It is not likely, however, that it will open to you at once. I doubt if it will open to you at all except through sorrow." "You are a most encouraging master!" said Christina, with a light laugh. "It was Wordsworth's bitter disappointment in the outcome of the French revolution," continued Ian, "that opened the door to him. Yet he had gone through the outer courts of the temple with more understanding than any who immediately preceded him. --Will you let me ask you a question?" "You frighten me!" said Mercy. "I am sorry for that. We will talk of something else." "I am not afraid of what you may ask me; I am frightened at what you tell me. I fear to go on if I must meet Sorrow on the way!" "You make one think of some terrible secret society!" said Christina. "Tell me then, Miss Mercy, is there anything you love very much? I don't say any PERSON, but any THING." "I love some animals." "An animal is not a thing. It is possible to love animals and not the nature of which we are speaking. You might love a dog dearly, and never care to see the sun rise! --Tell me, did any flower ever make you cry? "No," answered Mercy, with a puzzled laugh; "how could it?" "Did any flower ever make you a moment later in going to bed, or a moment earlier in getting out of it?" "No, certainly!" "In that direction, then, I am foiled!" "You would not really have me cry over a flower, Mr. Ian? Did ever a flower make you cry yourself? Of course not! it is only silly women that cry for nothing!" "I would rather not bring myself in at present," answered Ian smiling. "Do you know how Chaucer felt about flowers?" "I never read a word of Chaucer." "Shall I give you an instance?" "Please." "Chaucer was a man of the world, a courtier, more or less a man of affairs, employed by Edward III. in foreign business of state: you cannot mistake him for an effeminate or sentimental man! He does not anywhere, so far as I remember, say that ever he cried over a flower, but he shows a delight in some flowers so delicate and deep that it must have a source profounder than that of most people's tears. When we go back I will read you what he says about the daisy; but one more general passage I think I could repeat. There are animals in it too!" "Pray let us hear it," said Christina. He spoke the following stanzas--not quite correctly, but supplying for the moment's need where he could not recall:-- A gardein saw I, full of blosomed bowis, Upon a river, in a grene mede, There as sweetnesse evermore inough is, With floures white, blewe, yelowe, and rede, And cold welle streames, nothing dede, That swommen full of smale fishes light, With finnes rede, and scales silver bright. On every bough the birdes heard I sing, With voice of angell, in hir armonie, That busied hem, hir birdes forth to bring, The little pretty conies to hir play gan hie, And further all about I gan espie, The dredeful roe, the buck, the hart, and hind, Squirrels, and beastes small, of gentle kind. Of instruments of stringes in accorde, Heard I so play, a ravishing swetnesse, That God, that maker is of all and Lorde, Ne heard never better, as I gesse, Therewith a wind, unneth it might be lesse, Made in the leaves grene a noise soft, Accordant to the foules song on loft. The aire of the place so attempre was, That never was ther grevance of hot ne cold, There was eke every noisome spice and gras, Ne no man may there waxe sicke ne old, Yet was there more joy o thousand fold, Than I can tell or ever could or might, There is ever clere day, and never night. He modernized them also a little in repeating them, so that his hearers missed nothing through failing to understand the words: how much they gained, it were hard to say. "It reminds one," commented Ian, "of Dante's paradise on the top of the hill of purgatory." "I don't know anything about Dante either," said Mercy regretfully. "There is plenty of time!" said Ian. "But there is so much to learn!" returned Mercy in a hopeless tone. "That is the joy of existence!" Ian replied. "We are not bound to know; we are only bound to learn. --But to return to my task: a man may really love a flower. In another poem Chaucer tells us that such is his delight in his books that no other pleasure can take him from them-- Save certainly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I heare the foules sing, And that the floures ginnen for to spring, Farwell my booke, and my devotion! Poor people love flowers; rich people admire them." "But," said Mercy, "how can one love a thing that has no life?" Ian could have told her that whatever grows must live; he could further have told her his belief that life cannot be without its measure of consciousness; but it would have led to more difficulty, and away from the end he had in view. He felt also that no imaginable degree of consciousness in it was commensurate with the love he had himself for almost any flower. His answer to Mercy's question was this:-- "The flowers come from the same heart as man himself, and are sent to be his companions and ministers. There is something divinely magical, because profoundly human in them. In some at least the human is plain; we see a face of childlike peace and confidence that appeals to our best. Our feeling for many of them doubtless owes something to childish associations; but how did they get their hold of our childhood? Why did they enter our souls at all? They are joyous, inarticulate children, come with vague messages from the father of all. If I confess that what they say to me sometimes makes me weep, how can I call my feeling for them anything but love? The eternal thing may have a thousand forms of which we know nothing yet!" Mercy felt Ian must mean something she ought to like, if only she knew what it was; but he had not yet told her anything to help her! He had, however, neither reached his end nor lost his way; he was leading her on--gently and naturally. "I did not mean," he resumed, "that you must of necessity begin with the flowers. I was only inquiring whether at that point you were nearer to Nature. --Tell me--were you ever alone?" "Alone!" repeated Mercy, thinking. " --Surely everybody has been many times alone!" "Could you tell when last you were alone?" She thought, but could not tell. "What I want to ask you," said Ian, "is--did you ever feel alone? Did you ever for a moment inhabit loneliness? Did it ever press itself upon you that there was nobody near--that if you called nobody would hear? You are not alone while you know that you can have a fellow creature with you the instant you choose." "I hardly think I was ever alone in that way." "Then what I would have you do," continued Ian, "is--to make yourself alone in one of Nature's withdrawing-rooms, and seat yourself in one of Grannie's own chairs. --I am coming to the point at last! --Upon a day when the weather is fine, go out by yourself. Tell no one where you are going, or that you are going anywhere. Climb a hill. If you cannot get to the top of it, go high on the side of it. No book, mind! nothing to fill your thinking-place from another's! People are always saying 'I think,' when they are not thinking at all, when they are at best only passing the thoughts of others whom they do not even know. "When you have got quite alone, when you do not even know the nearest point to anybody, sit down and be lonely. Look out on the loneliness, the wide world round you, and the great vault over you, with the lonely sun in the middle of it; fold your hands in your lap, and be still. Do not try to think anything. Do not try to call up any feeling or sentiment or sensation; just be still. By and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of Nature. I do not know you well enough to be sure about it; but if you tell me afterwards how you fared, I shall then know you a little better, and perhaps be able to tell you whether Nature will soon speak to you, or not until, as Henry Vaughan says, some veil be broken in you." They were approaching the cottage, and little more was said. They found Mrs. Palmer prepared to go, and Mercy was not sorry: she had had enough for a while. She was troubled at the thought that perhaps she was helplessly shut out from the life inhabited by the brothers. When she lay down, her own life seemed dull and poor. These men, with all their kindness, respect, attention, and even attendance upon them, did not show them the homage which the men of their own circle paid them! "They will never miss us!" she said to herself. "They will go on with their pantheism, or whatever it is, all the same!" But they should not say she was one of those who talk but will not do! That scorn she could not bear! All the time, however, the thing seemed to savour more of spell or cast of magic than philosophy: the means enjoined were suggestive of a silent incantation!	{ "id": "5967" }
13	GRANNY ANGRY.	It must not be supposed that all the visiting was on the part of those of the New House. The visits thence were returned by both matron and men. But somehow there was never the same freedom in the house as in the cottage. The difference did not lie in the presence of the younger girls: they were well behaved, friendly, and nowise disagreeable children. Doubtless there was something in the absence of books: it was of no use to jump up when a passage occurred; help was not at hand. But it was more the air of the place, the presence of so many common-place things, that clogged the wheels of thought. Neither, with all her knowledge of the world and all her sweetness, did Mrs. Palmer understand the essentials of hospitality half so well as the widow of the late minister-chief. All of them liked, and confessed that they liked the cottage best. Even Christina felt something lacking in their reception. She regretted that the house was not grand enough to show what they were accustomed to. Mrs. Palmer seldom understood the talk, and although she sat looking persistently content, was always haunted with a dim feeling that her husband would not be hest pleased at so much intercourse between his rich daughters and those penniless country-fellows. But what could she do! the place where he had abandoned them was so dull, so solitary! the girls must not mope! Christina would wither up without amusement, and then good-bye to her beauty and all that depended upon it! In the purity of her motherhood, she more than liked the young men: happy mother she would think herself, were her daughters to marry such men as these! The relations between them and their mother delighted her: they were one! their hearts were together! they understood each other! She could never have such bliss with her sons! Never since she gave them birth had she had one such look from either of hers as she saw pass every now and then from these to their mother! It would be like being born again to feel herself loved in that way! For any danger to the girls, she thought with a sigh how soon in London they would forget the young highlanders. Was there no possibility of securing one of them? What chance was there of Mercy's marrying well! she was so decidedly plain! Was the idea of marrying her into an old and once powerful family like that of the Macruadh, to her husband inconceivable? Could he not restore its property as the dowry of his unprized daughter! it would be to him but a trifle! --and he could stipulate that the chief should acknowledge the baronetcy and use his title! Mercy would then be a woman of consequence, and Peregrine would have the Bible-honour of being the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in! --Such were some of the thoughts that would come and go in the brain of the mother as she sat; nor were they without a share in her readiness to allow her daughters to go out with the young men: she had an unquestioning conviction of their safety with them. The days went by, and what to Christina had seemed imprisonment, began to look like some sort of liberty. She had scarce come nearer to sympathy with those whose society consoled her, but their talk had ceased to sound repulsive. She was infinitely more than a well-modelled waxflower, and yet hardly a growing plant. More was needed to wake her than friends awake. It is wonderful how long the sleeping may go with the waking, and not discover any difference between them. But Grannie Nature was about to interfere. The spring drew gently on. It would be long ere summer was summer enough to show. There seemed more of the destructive in the spring itself than of the genial--cold winds, great showers, days of steady rain, sudden assaults of hail and sleet. Still it was spring, and at length, one fine day with a bright sun, snow on the hills, and clouds in the east, but no sign of any sudden change, the girls went out for a walk, and took the younger girls with them. A little way up the valley, out of sight of the cottage, a small burn came down its own dell to join that which flowed through the chiefs farm. Its channel was wide, but except in time of rain had little water in it. About half a mile up its course it divided, or rather the channel did, for in one of its branches there was seldom any water. At the fork was a low rocky mound, with an ancient ruin of no great size-three or four fragments of thick walls, within whose plan grew a slender birch-tree. Thither went the little party, wandering up the stream: the valley was sheltered; no wind but the south could reach it; and the sun, though it could not make it very warm, as it looked only aslant on its slopes, yet lighted both sides of it. Great white clouds passed slowly across the sky, with now and then a nearer black one threatening rain, but a wind overhead was carrying them quickly athwart. Ian had seen the ladies pass, but made no effort to overtake them, although he was bound in the same direction: he preferred sauntering along with a book of ballads. Suddenly his attention was roused by a peculiar whistle, which he knew for that of Hector of the Stags: it was one of the few sounds he could make. Three times it was hurriedly repeated, and ere the third was over, Ian had discovered Hector high on a hill on the opposite side of the burn, waving his arms, and making eager signs to him. He stopped and set himself to understand. Hector was pointing with energy, but it was impossible to determine the exact direction: all that Ian could gather was, that his presence was wanted somewhere farther on. He resumed his walk therefore at a rapid pace, whereupon Hector pointed higher. There on the eastern horizon, towards the north, almost down upon the hills, Ian saw a congeries of clouds in strangest commotion, such as he had never before seen in any home latitude--a mass of darkly variegated vapours manifesting a peculiar and appalling unrest. It seemed tormented by a gyrating storm, twisting and contorting it with unceasing change. Now the gray came writhing out, now the black came bulging through, now a dirty brown smeared the ashy white, and now the blue shone calmly out from eternal distances. At the season he could hardly think it a thunderstorm, and stood absorbed in the unusual phenomenon. But again, louder and more hurried, came the whistling, and again he saw Hector gesticulating, more wildly than before. Then he knew that someone must be in want of help or succour, and set off running as hard as he could: he saw Hector keeping him in sight, and watching to give him further direction: perhaps the ladies had got into some difficulty! When he arrived at the opening of the valley just mentioned, Hector's gesticulations made it quite plain it was up there he must go; and as soon as he entered it, he saw that the cloudy turmoil was among the hills at its head. With that he began to suspect the danger the hunter feared, and almost the same instant heard the merry voices of the children. Running yet faster, he came in sight of them on the other side of the stream,--not a moment too soon. The valley was full of a dull roaring sound. He called to them as he ran, and the children saw and came running down toward him, followed by Mercy. She was not looking much concerned, for she thought it only the grumbling of distant thunder. But Ian saw, far up the valley, what looked like a low brown wall across it, and knew what it was. "Mercy!" he cried, "run up the side of the hill directly; you will be drowned--swept away if you do not." She looked incredulous, and glanced up the hill-side, but carne on as if to cross the burn and join him. "Do as I tell you," he cried, in a tone which few would have ventured to disregard, and turning darted across the channel toward her. Mercy did not wait his coming, but took the children, each by a hand, and went a little way up the hill that immediately bordered the stream. "Farther! farther!" cried Ian as he ran. "Where is Christina?" "At the ruin," she answered. "Good heavens!" exclaimed Ian, and darted off, crying, "Up the hill with you! up the hill!" Christina was standing by the birch-tree in the ruin, looking down the burn. She had heard Ian calling, and saw him running, but suspected no danger. "Come; come directly; for God's sake, come!" he cried. "Look up the burn!" he added, seeing her hesitate bewildered. She turned, looked, and came running to him, down the channel, white with terror. It was too late. The charging water, whose front rank was turf, and hushes, and stones, was almost upon her. The solid matter had retarded its rush, but it was now on the point of dividing against the rocky mound, to sweep along both sides, and turn it into an island. Ian bounded to her in the middle of the channel, caught her by the arm, and hurried her back to the mound as fast as they could run: it was the highest ground immediately accessible. As they reached it, the water broke with a roar against its rocky base, rose, swelled--and in a moment the island was covered with a brown, seething, swirling flood. "Where's Mercy and the children?" gasped Christina, as the water rose upon her. "Safe, safe!" answered Ian. "We must get to the ruin!" The water was halfway up his leg, and rising fast. Their danger was but beginning. Would the old walls, in greater part built without mortar, stand the rush? If a tree should strike them, they hardly would! If the flood came from a waterspout, it would soon be over--only how high it might first rise, who could tell! Such were his thoughts as they struggled to the ruin, and stood up at the end of a wall parallel with the current. The water was up to Christina's waist, and very cold. Here out of the rush, however, she recovered her breath in a measure, and showed not a little courage. Ian stood between her and the wall, and held her fast. The torrent came round the end of the wall from both sides, but the encounter and eddy of the two currents rather pushed them up against it. Without it they could not have stood. The chief danger to Christina, however, was from the cold. With the water so high on her body, and flowing so fast, she could not long resist it! Ian, therefore, took her round the knees, and lifted her almost out of the water. "Put your arms up," he said, "and lay hold of the wall. Don't mind blinding me; my eyes are of little use at present. There--put your feet in my hands. Don't be frightened; I can hold you." "I can't help being frightened!" she panted. "We are in God's arms," returned Ian. "He is holding us." "Are you sure we shall not be drowned?" she asked. "No; but I am sure the water cannot take us out of God's arms." This was not much comfort to Christina. She did not know anything about God--did not believe in him any more than most people. She knew God's arms only as the arms of Ian--and THEY comforted her, for she FELT them! How many of us actually believe in any support we do not immediately feel? in any arms we do not see? But every help I from God; Ian's help was God's help; and though to believe in Ian was not to believe in God, it was a step on the road toward believing in God. He that believeth not in the good man whom he hath seen, how shall he believe in the God whom he hath not seen? She began to feel a little better; the ghastly choking at her heart was almost gone. "I shall break your arms!" she said. "You are not very heavy," he answered; "and though I am not so strong as Alister, I am stronger than most men. With the help of the wall I can hold you a long time." How was it that, now first in danger, self came less to the front with her than usual? It was that now first she was face to face with reality. Until this moment her life had been an affair of unrealities. Her selfishness had thinned, as it were vaporized, every reality that approached her. Solidity is not enough to teach some natures reality; they must hurt themselves against the solid ere they realize its solidity. Small reality, small positivity of existence has water to a dreaming soul, half consciously gazing through half shut eyes at the soft river floating away in the moonlight: Christina was shivering in its grasp on her person, its omnipresence to her skin; its cold made her gasp and choke; the push and tug of it threatened to sweep her away like a whelmed log! It is when we are most aware of the FACTITUDE of things, that we are most aware of our need of God, and most able to trust in him; when most aware of their presence, the soul finds it easiest to withdraw from them, and seek its safety with the maker of it and them. The recognition of inexorable reality in any shape, or kind, or way, tends to rouse the soul to the yet more real, to its relations with higher and deeper existence. It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold water is good. All who dream life instead of living it, require some similar shock. Of the kind is every disappointment, every reverse, every tragedy of life. The true in even the lowest kind, is of the truth, and to be compelled to feel even that, is to be driven a trifle nearer to the truth of being, of creation, of God. Hence this sharp contact with Nature tended to make Christina less selfish: it made her forget herself so far as to care for her helper as well as herself. It must be remembered, however, that her selfishness was not the cultivated and ingrained selfishness of a long life, but that of an uneducated, that is undeveloped nature. Her being had not degenerated by sinning against light known as light; it had not been consciously enlightened at all; it had scarcely as yet begun to grow. It was not lying dead, only unawaked. I would not be understood to imply that she was nowise to blame--but that she was by no means so much to blame as one who has but suspected the presence of a truth, and from selfishness or self-admiration has turned from it. She was to blame wherever she had not done as her conscience had feebly told her; and she had not made progress just because she had neglected the little things concerning which she had promptings. There are many who do not enter the kingdom of heaven just because they will not believe the tiny key that is handed them, fit to open its hospitable gate. "Oh, Mr. Ian, if you should be drowned for my sake!" she faltered with white lips. "You should not have come to me!" "I would not wish a better death," said Ian. "How can you talk so coolly about it!" she cried. "Well," he returned, "what better way of going out of the world is there than by the door of help? No man cares much about what the idiots of the world call life! What is it whether we live in this room or another? The same who sent us here, sends for us out of here!" "Most men care very much! You are wrong there!" "I don't call those who do, men! They are only children! I know many men who would no more cleave to this life than a butterfly would fold his wings and creep into his deserted chrysalis-case. I do care to live--tremendously, but I don't mind where. He who made this room so well worth living in, may surely be trusted with the next!" "I can't quite follow you," stammered Christina. "I am sorry. Perhaps it is the cold. I can't feel my hands, I am so cold." "Leave the wall, and put your arms round my neck. The change will rest me, and the water is already falling! It will go as rapidly as it came!" "How do you know that?" "It has sunk nearly a foot in the last fifteen minutes: I have been carefully watching it, you may be sure! It must have been a waterspout, and however much that may bring, it pours it out all at once." "Oh!" said Christina, with a tremulous joyfulness; "I thought it would go on ever so long!" "We shall get out of it alive! --God's will be done!" "Why do you say that? Don't you really mean we are going to be saved?" "Would you want to live, if he wanted you to die?" "Oh, but you forget, Mr. Ian, I am not ready to die, like you!" sobbed Christina. "Do you think anything could make it better for you to stop here, after God thought it better for you to go?" "I dare not think about it." "Be sure God will not take you away, if it be better for you to live here a little longer. But you will have to go sometime; and if you contrived to live after God wanted you to go, you would find yourself much less ready when the time came that you must. But, my dear Miss Palmer, no one can be living a true life, to whom dying is a terror." Christina was silent. He spoke the truth! She was not worth anything! How grand it was to look death in the face with a smile! If she had been no more than the creature she had hitherto shown herself, not all the floods of the deluge could have made her think or feel thus: her real self, her divine nature had begun to wake. True, that nature was as yet no more like the divine, than the drowsy, arm-stretching, yawning child is like the merry elf about to spring from his couch, full of life, of play, of love. She had no faith in God yet, but it was much that she felt she was not worth anything. You are right: it was odd to hold such a conversation at such a time! But Ian was an odd man. He actually believed that God was nearer to him than his own consciousness, yet desired communion with him! and that Jesus Christ knew what he said when he told his disciples that the Father cared for his sparrows. Only one human being witnessed their danger, and he could give no help. Hector of the Stags had crossed the main valley above where the torrent entered it, and coming over the hill, saw with consternation the flood-encompassed pair. If there had been help in man, he could have brought none; the raging torrent blocked the way both to the village and to the chief's house. He could only stand and gaze with his heart in his eyes. Beyond the stream lay Mercy on the hillside, with her face in the heather. Frozen with dread, she dared not look up. Had she moved but ten yards, she would have seen her sister in Ian's arms. The children sat by her, white as death, with great lumps in their throats, and the silent tears rolling down their cheeks. It was the first time death had come near them. A sound of sweeping steps came through the heather. They looked up: there was the chief striding toward them. The flood had come upon him at work in his fields, whelming his growing crops. He had but time to unyoke his bulls, and run for his life. The bulls, not quite equal to the occasion, were caught and swept away. They were found a week after on the hills, nothing the worse, and nearly as wild as when first the chief took them in hand. The cottage was in no danger; and Nancy got a horse and the last of the cows from the farm-yard on to the crest of the ridge, against which the burn rushed roaring, just as the water began to invade the cowhouse and stable. The moment he reached the ridge, the chief set out to look for his brother, whom he knew to be somewhere up the valley; and having climbed to get an outlook, saw Mercy and the girls, from whose postures he dreaded that something had befallen them. The girls uttered a cry of welcome, and the chief answered, but Mercy did not lift her head. "Mercy," said Alister softly, and kneeling laid his hand on her. She turned to him such a face of blank misery as filled him with consternation. "What has happened?" he asked. She tried to speak, but could not. "Where is Christina?" he went on. She succeeded in bringing out the one word "ruin." "Is anybody with her?" "Ian." "Oh!" he returned cheerily, as if then all would be right. But a pang shot through his heart, and it was as much for himself as for Mercy that he went on: "But God is with them, Mercy. If he were not, it would be bad indeed! Where he is, all is well!" She sat up, and putting out her hand, laid it in his great palm. "I wish I could believe that!" she said; "but you know people ARE drowned sometimes!" "Yes, surely! but if God be with them what does it matter! It is no worse than when a mother puts her baby into a big bath." "It is cruel to talk like that to me when my sister is drowning!" She gave a stifled shriek, and threw herself again on her face. "Mercy," said the chief--and his voice trembled a little, "you do not love your sister more than I love my brother, and if he be drowned I shall weep; but I shall not be miserable as if a mocking devil were at the root of it, and not one who loves them better than we ever shall. But come; I think we shall find them somehow alive yet! Ian knows what to do in an emergency; and though you might not think it, he is a very strong man." She rose immediately, and taking like a child the hand he offered her, went up the hill with him. The girls ran before them, and presently gave a scream of joy. "I see Chrissy! I see Chrissy!" cried one. "Yes! there she is! I see her too!" cried the other. Alister hurried up with Mercy. There was Christina! She seemed standing on the water! Mercy burst into tears. "But where's Ian?" she said, when she had recovered herself a little; "I don't see him!" "He is there though, all right!" answered Alister. "Don't you see his hands holding her out of the water?" And with that he gave a great shout:-- "Ian! Ian! hold on, old boy! I'm coming!" Ian heard him, and was filled with terror, but had neither breath nor strength to answer. Along the hillside went Alister bounding like a deer, then turning sharp, shot headlong down, dashed into the torrent--and was swept away like a cork. Mercy gave a scream, and ran down the hill. He was not carried very far, however. In a moment or two he had recovered himself, and crept out gasping and laughing, just below Mercy. Ian did not move. He was so benumbed that to change his position an inch would, he well knew, be to fall. And now Hector began to behave oddly. He threw a stone, which went in front of Ian and Christina. Then he threw another, which went behind them. Then he threw a third, and Christina felt her hat caught by a bit of string. She drew it toward her as fast as numbness would permit, and found at the end a small bottle. She managed to get it uncorked, and put it to Ian's lips. He swallowed a mouthful, and made her take some. Hector stood on one side, the chief on the other, and watched the proceeding. "What would mother say, Alister!" cried Ian across the narrowing water. In the joy of hearing his voice, Alister rushed again into the torrent; and, after a fierce struggle, reached the mound, where he scrambled up, and putting his arms round Ian's legs with a shout, lifted the two at once like a couple of babies. "Come! come, Alister! don't be silly!" said Ian. "Set me down!" "Give me the girl then." "Take her!" Christina turned on him a sorrowful gaze as Alister took her. "I have killed you!" she said. "You have done me the greatest favour," he replied. "What?" she asked. "Accepted help." She burst out crying. She had not shed a tear before. "Get on the top of the wall, Ian, out of the wet," said Alister. "You can't tell what the water may have done to the foundations, Alister! I would rather not break my leg! It is so frozen it would never mend again!" As they talked, the torrent had fallen so much, that Hector of the Stags came wading from the other side. A few minutes more, and Alister carried Christina to Mercy. "Now," he said, setting her down, "you must walk." Ian could not cross without Hector's help; he seemed to have no legs. They set out at once for the cottage. "How will your crops fare, Alister?" asked Ian. "Part will be spoiled," replied the chief; "part not much the worse." The torrent had rushed half-way up the ridge, then swept along the flank of it, and round the end in huge bulk, to the level on the other side. The water lay soaking into the fields. The valley was desolated. What green things had not been uprooted or carried away with the soil, were laid flat. Everywhere was mud, and scattered all over were lumps of turf, with heather, brushwood, and small trees. But it was early in the year, and there was hope! I will spare the description of the haste and hurrying to and fro in the little house--the blowing of fires, the steaming pails and blankets, the hot milk and tea! Mrs. Macruadh rolled up her sleeves, and worked like a good housemaid. Nancy shot hither and thither on her bare feet like a fawn--you could not say she ran, and certainly she did not walk. Alister got Ian to bed, and rubbed him with rough towels--himself more wet than he, for he had been rolled over and over in the torrent. Christina fell asleep, and slept many hours. When she woke, she said she was quite well; but it was weeks before she was like herself. I doubt if ever she was quite as strong again. For some days Ian confessed to an aching in his legs and arms. It was the cold of the water, he said; but Alister insisted it was from holding Christina so long. "Water could not hurt a highlander!" said Alister.	{ "id": "5967" }
14	CHANGE.	Christina walked home without difficulty, but the next day did not leave her bed, and it was a fortnight before she was able to be out of doors. When Ian and she met, her manner was not quite the same as before. She seemed a little timid. As she shook hands with him her eyes fell; and when they looked up again, as if ashamed of their involuntary retreat, her face was rosy; but the slight embarrassment disappeared as soon as they began to talk. No affectation or formality, however, took its place: in respect of Ian her falseness was gone. The danger she had been in, and her deliverance through the voluntary sharing of it by Ian, had awaked the simpler, the real nature of the girl, hitherto buried in impressions and their responses. She had lived but as a mirror meant only to reflect the outer world: something of an operative existence was at length beginning to appear in her. She was growing a woman. And the first stage in that growth is to become as a little child. The child, however, did not for some time show her face to any but Ian. In his presence Christina had no longer self-assertion or wile. Without seeking his notice she would yet manifest an almost childish willingness to please him. It was no sudden change. She had, ever since their adventure, been haunted, both awake and asleep, by his presence, and it had helped her to some discoveries regarding herself. And the more she grew real, the nearer, that is, that she came to being a PERSON, the more she came under the influence of his truth, his reality. It is only through live relation to others that any individuality crystallizes. "You saved my life, Ian!" she said one evening for the tenth time. "It pleased God you should live," answered Ian. "Then you really think," she returned, "that God interfered to save us?" "No, I do not; I don't think he ever interferes." "Mr. Sercombe says everything goes by law, and God never interferes; my father says he does interfere sometimes." "Would you say a woman interfered in the management of her own house? Can one be said to interfere where he is always at work? He is the necessity of the universe, ever and always doing the best that can be done, and especially for the individual, for whose sake alone the cosmos exists. If we had been drowned, we should have given God thanks for saving us." "I do not understand you!" "Should we not have given thanks to find ourselves lifted out of the cold rushing waters, in which we felt our strength slowly sinking?" "But you said DROWNED! How could we have thanked God for deliverance if we were drowned?" "What! --not when we found ourselves above the water, safe and well, and more alive than ever? Would it not be a dreadful thing to lie tossed for centuries under the sea-waves to which the torrent had borne us? Ah, how few believe in a life beyond, a larger life, more awake, more earnest, more joyous than this!" "Oh, _I_ do! but that is not what one means by LIFE; that is quite a different kind of thing!" "How do you make out that it is so different? If I am I, and you are you, how can it be very different? The root of things is individuality, unity of idea, and persistence depends on it. God is the one perfect individual; and while this world is his and that world is his, there can be no inconsistency, no violent difference, between there and here." "Then you must thank God for everything--thank him if you are drowned, or burnt, or anything!" "Now you understand me! That is precisely what I mean." "Then I can never be good, for I could never bring myself to that!" "You cannot bring yourself to it; no one could. But we must come to it. I believe we shall all be brought to it." "Never me! I should not wish it!" "You do not wish it; but you may be brought to wish it; and without it the end of your being cannot be reached. No one, of course, could ever give thanks for what he did not know or feel as good. But what IS good must come to be felt good. Can you suppose that Jesus at any time could not thank his Father for sending him into the world?" "You speak as if we and he were of the same kind!" "He and we are so entirely of the same kind, that there is no bliss for him or for you or for me but in being the loving obedient child of the one Father." "You frighten me! If I cannot get to heaven any other way than that, I shall never get there." "You will get there, and you will get there that way and no other. If you could get there any other way, it would be to be miserable." "Something tells me you speak the truth; but it is terrible! I do not like it." "Naturally." She was on the point of crying. They were alone in the drawing-room of the cottage, but his mother might enter any moment, and Ian said no more. It was not a drawing toward the things of peace that was at work in Christina: it was an urging painful sense of separation from Ian. She had been conscious of some antipathy even toward him, so unlike were her feelings, thoughts, judgments, to his: this feeling had changed to its opposite. A meeting with Ian was now to Christina the great event of day or week; but Ian, in love with the dead, never thought of danger to either. One morning she woke from a sound and dreamless sleep, and getting out of bed, drew aside the curtains, looked out, and then opened her window. It was a lovely spring-morning. The birds were singing loud in the fast greening shrubbery. A soft wind was blowing. It came to her, and whispered something of which she understood only that it was both lovely and sad. The sun, but a little way up, was shining over hills and cone-shaped peaks, whose shadows, stretching eagerly westward, were yet ever shortening eastward. His light was gentle, warm, and humid, as if a little sorrowful, she thought, over his many dead children, that he must call forth so many more to the new life of the reviving year. Suddenly as she gazed, the little clump of trees against the hillside stood as she had never seen it stand before--as if the sap in them were no longer colourless, but red with human life; nature was alive with a presence she had never seen before; it was instinct with a meaning, an intent, a soul; the mountains stood against the sky as if reaching upward, knowing something, waiting for something; over all was a glory. The change was far more wondrous than from winter to summer; it was not as if a dead body, but a dead soul had come alive. What could it mean? Had the new aspect come forth to answer this glow in her heart, or was the glow in her heart the reflection of this new aspect of the world? She was ready to cry aloud, not with joy, not from her feeling of the beauty, but with a SENSATION almost, hitherto unknown, therefore nameless. It was a new and marvellous interest in the world, a new sense of life in herself, of life in everything, a recognition of brother-existence, a life-contact with the universe, a conscious flash of the divine in her soul, a throb of the pure joy of being. She was nearer God than she had ever been before. But she did not know this--might never in this world know it; she understood nothing of what was going on in her, only felt it go on; it was not love of God that was moving in her. Yet she stood in her white dress like one risen from the grave, looking in sweet bliss on a new heaven and a new earth, made new by the new opening of her eyes. To save man or woman, the next thing to the love of God is the love of man or woman; only let no man or woman mistake the love of love for love! She started, grew white, stood straight up, grew red as a sunset:--was it--could it be? --"Is this love?" she said to herself, and for minutes she hardly moved. It was love. Whether love was in her or not, she was in love--and it might get inside her. She hid her face in her hands, and wept. With what opportunities I have had of studying, I do not say UNDERSTANDING, the human heart, I should not have expected such feeling from Christina--and she wondered at it herself. Till a child is awake, how tell his mood? --until a woman is awaked, how tell her nature? Who knows himself? --and how then shall he know his neighbour? For who can know anything except on the supposition of its remaining the same? and the greatest change of all, next to being born again, is beginning to love. The very faculty of loving had been hitherto repressed in the soul of Christina--by poor education, by low family and social influences, by familiarity with the worship of riches, by vanity, and consequent hunger after the attentions of men; but now at length she was in love. At breakfast, though she was silent, she looked so well that her mother complimented her on her loveliness. Had she been more of a mother, she might have seen cause for anxiety in this fresh bourgeoning of her beauty.	{ "id": "5967" }
15	LOVE ALLODIAL.	While the chief went on in his humble way, enjoying life and his lowly position; seeming, in the society of his brother, to walk the outer courts of heaven; and, unsuspicious of the fact, growing more and more in love with the ill educated, but simple, open, and wise Mercy, a trouble was gathering for him of which he had no presentiment. We have to be delivered from the evils of which we are unaware as well as from those we hate; and the chief had to be set free from his unconscious worship of Mammon. He did not worship Mammon by yielding homage to riches; he did not make a man's money his pedestal; had he been himself a millionaire, he would not have connived at being therefore held in honour; but, ever consciously aware of the deteriorating condition of the country, and pitifully regarding the hundred and fifty souls who yet looked to him as their head, often turning it over in his mind how to shepherd them should things come to a crisis, his abiding, ever-recurring comfort was the money from the last sale of the property, accumulating ever since, and now to be his in a very few years: he always thought, I say, first of this money and not first of God. He imagined it an inexhaustible force, a power with which for his clan he could work wonders. It is the common human mistake to think of money as a force and not as a mere tool. But he never thought of it otherwise than as belonging to the clan; never imagined the least liberty to use it save in the direct service of his people. And all the time, the very shadow of this money was disappearing from the face of the earth! It had scarcely been deposited where the old laird judged it as safe as in the Bank of England, when schemes and speculations were initiated by the intrusted company which brought into jeopardy everything it held, and things had been going from bad to worse ever since. Nothing of this was yet known, for the directors had from the first carefully muffled up the truth, avoiding the least economy lest it should be interpreted as hinting at any need of prudence; living in false show with the very money they were thus lying away, warming and banqueting their innocent neighbours with fuel and wine stolen from their own cellars; and working worse wrong and more misery under the robe of imputed righteousness, that is, respectability, than could a little army of burglars. Unawares to a trusting multitude, the vacant eyes of loss were drawing near to stare them out of hope and comfort; and annihilation had long closed in upon the fund which the chief regarded as the sheet-anchor of his clan: he trusted in Mammon, and Mammon had played him one of his rogue's-tricks. The most degrading wrong to ourselves, and the worst eventual wrong to others, is to trust in any thing or person but the living God: it was an evil thing from which the chief had sore need to be delivered. Even those who help us we must regard as the loving hands of the great heart of the universe, else we do God wrong, and will come to do them wrong also. And there was more yet of what we call mischief brewing in another quarter to like hurt. Mr. Peregrine Palmer was not now so rich a man as when he bought his highland property; also he was involved in affairs of doubtful result. It was natural, therefore, that he should begin to think of the said property not merely as an ornament of life, but as something to fall back upon. He feared nothing, however, more unpleasant than a temporary embarrassment. Had not his family been in the front for three generations! Had he not a vested right in success! Had he not a claim for the desire of his heart on whatever power it was that he pictured to himself as throned in the heavens! It never came into his head that, seeing there were now daughters in the family, it might be worth the while of that Power to make a poor man of him for their sakes; or that neither he, his predecessors, nor his sons, had ever come near enough to anything human to be fit for having their pleasures taken from them. But what I have to do with is the new aspect his Scotch acres now put on: he must see to making the best of them! and that best would be a deer-forest! He and his next neighbour might together effect something worth doing! Therefore all crofters or villagers likely to trespass must be got rid of--and first and foremost the shepherds, for they had endless opportunities of helping themselves to a deer. Where there were sheep there must be shepherds: they would make a clearance of both! The neighbour referred to, a certain Mr. Brander, who had made his money by sharp dealing in connection with a great Russian railway, and whom Mr. Peregrine Palmer knew before in London, had enlightened him on many things, and amongst others on the shepherds' passion for deer-stalking. Being in the company of the deer, he said, the whole day, and the whole year through, they were thoroughly acquainted with their habits, and were altogether too much both for the deer and for their owners. A shepherd would take the barrel of his gun from the stock, and thrust it down his back, or put it in a hollow crook, and so convey it to the vicinity of some spot frequented by a particular animal, to lie hidden there for his opportunity. In the hills it was impossible to tell with certainty whence came the sound of a shot; and no rascal of them would give information concerning another! In short, there was no protecting the deer without uprooting and expelling the peasantry! The village of the Clanruadh was on Mr. Brander's land, and was dependent in part on the produce of small pieces of ground, the cultivators of which were mostly men with other employment as well. Some made shoes of the hides, others cloth and clothes of the wool of the country. Some were hinds on neighbouring farms, but most were shepherds, for there was now very little tillage. Almost all the land formerly cultivated had been given up to grass and sheep, and not a little of it was steadily returning to that state of nature from which it had been reclaimed, producing heather, ling, blueberries, cnowperts, and cranberries. The hamlet was too far from the sea for much fishing, but some of its inhabitants would join relatives on the coast and go fishing with them, when there was nothing else to be done. But many of those who looked to the sea for help had lately come through a hard time, in which they would have died but for the sea-weed and shellfish the shore afforded them; yet such was their spirit of independence that a commission appointed to inquire into their necessity, found scarcely one willing to acknowledge any want: such was the class of men and women now doomed, at the will of two common-minded, greedy men, to expulsion from the houses and land they had held for generations, and loved with a love unintelligible to their mean-souled oppressors. Ian, having himself learned the lesson that, so long as a man is dependent on anything earthly, he is not a free man, was very desirous to have his brother free also. He could not be satisfied to leave the matter where, on their way home that night from THE TOMB, as they called their cave-house, their talk had left it. Alister's love of the material world, of the soil of his ancestral acres, was, Ian plainly saw, not yet one with the meaning and will of God: he was not yet content that the home of his fathers should fare as the father of fathers pleased. He was therefore on the outlook for the right opportunity of having another talk with him on the subject. That those who are trying to be good are more continuously troubled than the indifferent, has for ages been a puzzle. "I saw the wicked spreading like a green bay tree," says king David; and he was far from having fathomed the mystery when he got his mind at rest about it. Is it not simply that the righteous are worth troubling? that they are capable of receiving good from being troubled? As a man advances, more and more is required of him. A wrong thing in the good man becomes more and more wrong as he draws nearer to freedom from it. His friends may say how seldom he offends; but every time he offends, he is the more to blame. Some are allowed to go on because it would be of no use to stop them yet; nothing would yet make them listen to wisdom. There must be many who, like Dives, need the bitter contrast between the good things of this life and the evil things of the next, to wake them up. In this life they are not only fools, and insist on being treated as fools, but would have God consent to treat them as if he too had no wisdom! The laird was one in whom was no guile, but he was far from perfect: any man is far from perfect whose sense of well-being could be altered by any change of circumstance. A man unable to do without this thing or that, is not yet in sight of his perfection, therefore not out of sight of suffering. They who do not know suffering, may well doubt if they have yet started on the way TO BE. If clouds were gathering to burst in fierce hail on the head of the chief, it was that he might be set free from yet another of the cords that bound him. He was like a soaring eagle from whose foot hung, trailing on the earth, the line by which his tyrant could at his will pull him back to his inglorious perch. To worship truly is to treat according to indwelling worth. The highest worship of Nature is to worship toward it, as David and Daniel worshipped toward the holy place. But even the worship of Nature herself might be an ennobling idolatry, so much is the divine present in her. There is an intense, almost sensuous love of Nature, such as the chief confessed to his brother, which is not only one with love to the soul of Nature, but tends to lift the soul of man up to the lord of Nature. To love the soul of Nature, however, does not secure a man from loving the body of Nature in the low Mammon-way of possession. A man who loves the earth even as the meek love it, may also love it in a way hostile to such possession of it as is theirs. The love of possessing as property, must, unchecked, come in time to annihilate in a man the inheritance of the meek. A few acres of good valley-land, with a small upland pasturage, and a space of barren hill-country, had developed in the chief a greater love of the land as a possession than would have come of entrance upon an undiminished inheritance. He clave to the ground remaining to him, as to the last remnant of a vanishing good. One day the brothers were lying on the westward slope of the ridge, in front of the cottage. A few sheep, small, active, black-faced, were feeding around them: it was no use running away, for the chief's colley was lying beside him! The laird every now and then buried his face in the short sweet mountain-grass-like that of the clowns in England, not like the rich sown grass on the cultivated bank of the burn. "I believe I love the grass," he said, "as much, Ian, as your Chaucer loved the daisy!" "Hardly so much, I should think!" returned Ian. "Why do you think so?" "I doubt if grass can be loved so much as a flower." "Why not?" "Because the one is a mass, the other an individual." "I understand." "I have a fear, Alister, that you are in danger of avarice," said Ian, after a pause. "Avarice, Ian! What can you mean?" "You are as free, Alister, from the love of money, as any man I ever knew, but that is not enough. Did you ever think of the origin of the word AVARICE?" "No." "It comes--at least it seems to me to come--from the same root as the verb HAVE. It is the desire to call THINGS ours--the desire of company which is not of our kind--company such as, if small enough, you would put in your pocket and carry about with you. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the pocket, or the power, HAVING; but things so held cannot really be HAD; HAVING is but an illusion in regard to THINGS. It is only what we can be WITH that we can really possess--that is, what is of our kind, from God to the lowest animal partaking of humanity. A love can never be lost; it is a possession; but who can take his diamond ring into the somewhere beyond? --it is not a possession. God only can be ours perfectly; nothing called property can be ours at all." "I know it--with my head at least," said Alister; "but I am not sure how you apply it to me." "You love your country--don't you, Alister?" "I do." "What do you mean by LOVING YOUR COUNTRY?" "It is hard to say all at once. The first thing that comes to me is, that I would rather live in it than in any other." "Would you care to vaunt your country at the expense of any other?" "Not if it did not plainly excel--and even then it might be neither modest nor polite!" "Would you feel bound to love a man more because he was a fellow-countryman?" "Other things being equal, I could not help it." "Other things not being equal,--?" "I should love the best man best--Scotsman or negro." "That is as I thought of you. For my part, my love for my own people has taught me to love every man, be his colour or country what it may. The man whose patriotism is not leading him in that direction has not yet begun to be a true patriot. Let him go to St. Paul and learn, or stay in his own cellar and be an idiot. --But now, from loving our country, let us go down the other way:--Do you love the highlands or the lowlands best? You love the highlands, of course, you say. And what district do you like best? Our own. What parish? Your father's. What part of the parish? Why this, where at this moment we are lying. Now let me ask, have you, by your love for this piece of the world, which you will allow me to call ours, learned to love the whole world in like fashion?" "I cannot say so. I do not think we can love the whole world in the same way as our own part of it--the part where we were born and bred! It is a portion of our very being." "If your love to what we call our own land is a love that cannot spread, it seems to me of a questionable kind--of a kind involving the false notion of HAVING? The love that is eternal is alone true, and that is the love of the essential, which is the universal. We love indeed individuals, even to their peculiarities, but only BECAUSE of what lies under and is the life of them--what they share with every other, the eternal God-born humanity WHICH IS THE PERSON. Without this humanity where were your friend? Mind, I mean no abstraction, but the live individual humanity. Do you see what I am driving at? I would extend my love of the world to all the worlds; my love of humanity to all that inhabit them. I want, from being a Scotsman, to be a Briton, then a European, then a cosmopolitan, then a dweller of the universe, a lover of all the worlds I see, and shall one day know. In the face of such a hope, I find my love for this ground of my father's--not indeed less than before, but very small. It has served its purpose in having begun in me love of the revelation of God. Wherever I see the beauty of the Lord, that shall be to me his holy temple. Our Lord was sent first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel:-how would you bear to be told that he loved them more than Africans or Scotsmen?" "I could not bear it." "Then, Alister, do you not see that the love of our mother earth is meant to be but a beginning; and that such love as yours for the land belongs to that love of things which must perish? You seem to me not to allow it to blossom, but to keep it a hard bud; and a bud that will not blossom is a coffin. A flower is a completed idea, a thought of God, a creature whose body is most perishable, bat whose soul, its idea, cannot die. With the idea of it in you, the withering of the flower you can bear. The God in it is yours always. Every spring you welcome the daisy anew; every time the primrose departs, it grows more dear by its death. I say there must be a better way of loving the ground on which we were born, than that whence the loss of it would cause us torture." Alister listened as to a prophecy of evil. "Rather than that cottage and those fields should pass into the hands of others," he said, almost fiercely, "I would see them sunk in a roaring tide!" Ian rose, and walked slowly away. Alister lay clutching the ground with his hands. For a passing moment Ian felt as if he had lost him. "Lord, save him from this demon-love," he said, and sat down among the pines. In a few minutes, Alister came to him. "You cannot mean, Ian," he said-and his face was white through all its brown, "that I am to think no more of the fields of my fathers than of any other ground on the face of the earth!" "Think of them as the ground God gave to our fathers, which God may see fit to take from us again, and I shall be content--for the present," answered Ian. "Do not be vexed with me," cried Alister. "I want to think as well as do what is right; but you cannot know how I feel or you would spare me. I love the very stones and clods of the land! The place is to me as Jerusalem to the Jews:--you know what the psalm says:-- Thy saints take pleasure in her stones, Her very dust to them is dear!" "They loved their land as theirs," said Ian, "and have lost it!" "I know I must be cast out of it! I know I must die and go from it; but I shall come back and wander about the fields and the hills with you and our father and mother!" "And how about horse and dog?" asked Ian, willing to divert his thoughts for a moment. "Well! Daoimean and Luath are so good that I don't see why I should not have them!" "No more do I!" responded Ian. "We may be sure God will either let you have them, or show you reason to content you for not having them. No love of any thing is to be put in the same thought-pocket with love for the poorest creature that has life. But I am sometimes not a little afraid lest your love for the soil get right in to your soul. We are here but pilgrims and strangers. God did not make the world to be dwelt in, but to be journeyed through. We must not love it as he did not mean we should. If we do, he may have great trouble and we much hurt ere we are set free from that love. Alister, would you willingly walk out of the house to follow him up and down for ever?" "I don't know about willingly," replied Alister, "but if I were sure it was he calling me, I am sure I would walk out and follow him." "What if your love of house and lands prevented you from being sure, when he called you, that it was he?" "That would be terrible! But he would not leave me so. He would not forsake me in my ignorance!" "No. Having to take you from everything, he would take everything from you!" Alister went into the house. He did not know how much of the worldly mingled with the true in him. He loved his people, and was unselfishly intent on helping them to the utmost; but the thought that he was their chief was no small satisfaction to him; and if the relation between them was a grand one, self had there the more soil wherein to spread its creeping choke-grass roots. In like manner, his love of nature nourished the parasite possession. He had but those bare hill-sides, and those few rich acres, yet when, from his eyry on the hill-top, he looked down among the valleys, his heart would murmur within him, "From my feet the brook flows gurgling to water my fields! The wild moors around me feed my sheep! Yon glen is full of my people!" Even with the pure smell of the earth, mingled the sense of its possession. When, stepping from his cave-house, he saw the sun rise on the outstretched grandeur of the mountain-world, and felt the earth a new creation as truly as when Adam first opened his eyes on its glory, his heart would give one little heave more at the thought that a portion of it was his own. But all is man's only because it is God's. The true possession of anything is to see and feel in it what God made it for; and the uplifting of the soul by that knowledge, is the joy of true having. The Lord had no land of his own. He did not care to have it, any more than the twelve legions of angels he would not pray for: his pupils must not care for things he did not care for. He had no place to lay his head in-had not even a grave of his own. For want of a boat he had once to walk the rough Galilean sea. True, he might have gone with the rest, but he had to stop behind to pray: he could not do without that. Once he sent a fish to fetch him money, but only to pay a tax. He had even to borrow the few loaves and little fishes from a boy, to feed his five thousand with. The half-hour which Alister spent in the silence of his chamber, served him well: a ray as of light polarized entered his soul in its gloom. He returned to Ian, who had been all the time walking up and down the ridge. "You are right, Ian!" he said. "I do love the world! If I were deprived of what I hold, I should doubt God! I fear, oh, I fear, Ian, he is going to take the land from me!" "We must never fear the will of God, Alister! We are not right until we can pray heartily, not say submissively, 'Thy will be done!' We have not one interest, and God another. When we wish what he does not wish, we are not more against him than against our real selves. We are traitors to the human when we think anything but the will of God desirable, when we fear our very life." It was getting toward summer, and the days were growing longer. "Let us spend a night in the tomb!" said Ian; and they fixed a day in the following week.	{ "id": "5967" }
16	MERCY CALLS ON GRANNIE.	Although the subject did not again come up, Mercy had not forgotten what Ian had said about listening for the word of Nature, and had resolved to get away the first time she could, and see whether Grannie, as Ian had called her, would have anything to do with her. It were hard to say what she expected--something half magical rather than anything quite natural. The notions people have of spiritual influence are so unlike the facts, that, when it begins they never recognize it, but imagine something common at work. When the Lord came, those who were looking for him did not know him:--was he not a man like themselves! did they not know his father and mother! It was a fine spring morning when Mercy left the house to seek an interview with Nature somewhere among the hills. She took a path she knew well, and then struck into a sheep-track she had never tried. Up and up she climbed, nor spent a thought on the sudden changes to which at that season, and amongst those hills, the weather is subject. With no anxiety as to how she might fare, she was yet already not without some awe: she was at length on her pilgrimage to the temple of Isis! Not until she was beyond sight of any house, did she begin to feel alone. It was a new sensation, and of a mingled sort. But the slight sense of anxiety and fear that made part of it, was soon overpowered by something not unlike the exhilaration of a child escaped from school. This grew and grew until she felt like a wild thing that had been caught, and had broken loose. Now first, almost, she seemed to have begun to live, for now first was she free! She might lie in the heather, walk in the stream, do as she pleased! No one would interfere with her, no one say Don't! She felt stronger and fresher than ever in her life; and the farther she went, the greater grew the pleasure. The little burn up whose banks, now the one and now the other, she was walking, kept on welcoming her unaccustomed feet to the realms of solitude and liberty. For ever it seemed coming to meet her, hasting, running steep, as if straight out of the heaven to which she was drawing nearer and nearer. The wind woke now and then, and blew on her for a moment, as if tasting her, to see what this young Psyche was that had floated up into the wild thin air of the hills. The incessant meeting of the brook made it a companion to her although it could not go her way, and was always leaving her. But it kept her from the utter loneliness she sought; for loneliness is imperfect while sound is by, especially a sing-sound, and the brook was one of Nature's self--playing song--instruments. But she came at length to a point where the ground was too rough to let her follow its path any more, and turning from it, she began to climb a steep ridge. The growing and deepening silence as she went farther and farther from the brook, promised the very place for her purpose on the top of the heathery ridge. But when she reached it and looked behind her, lo, the valley she had left lay at her very feet! The world had rushed after and caught her! She had not got away from it! It was like being enchanted! She thought she was leaving it far behind, but the nature she sought to escape that she might find Nature, would not let her go! It kept following her as if to see that she fell into no snare, neither was too sternly received by the loftier spaces. She could distinguish one of the laird's men, ploughing in the valley below: she knew him by his red waistcoat! Almost fiercely she turned and made for the next ridge: it would screen her from the world she had left; it should not spy upon her! The danger of losing her way back never suggested itself. She had not learned that the look of things as you go, is not their look when you turn to go back; that with your attitude their mood will have altered. Nature is like a lobster-pot: she lets you easily go on, but not easily return. When she gained the summit of the second ridge, she looked abroad on a country of which she knew nothing. It was like the face of an utter stranger. Not far beyond rose yet another ridge: she must see how the world looked from that! On and on she went, crossing ridge after ridge, but no place invited her to stay and be still. She found she was weary, and spying in the midst of some short heather a great stone, sat down, and gave herself up to the rest that stole upon her. Though the sun was warm, the air was keen, and, hot with climbing, she turned her face to it, and drank in its refreshing with delight. She looked around; not a trace of humanity was visible-nothing but brown and gray and green hills, with the clear sky over her head, and in the north a black cloud creeping up from the horizon. Another sense than that of rest awoke in her; now first in her life the sense of loneliness absolute began to possess her. And therewith suddenly descended upon her a farther something she had never known; it was as if the loneliness, or what is the same thing, the presence of her own being without another to qualify and make it reasonable and endurable, seized and held her. The silence gathered substance, grew as it were solid, and closing upon her, imprisoned her. Was it not rather that the Soul of Nature, unprevented, unthwarted by distracting influences, found a freer entrance to hers, but she, not yet in harmony with it, felt its contact as alien-as bondage therefore and not liberty? She was nearer than ever she had been to knowing the presence of the God who is always nearer to us than aught else. Yea, something seemed, through the very persistence of its silence, to say to her at last, and keep saying, "Here I am!" She looked behind her in sudden terror: 110 form was there. She sent out her gaze to the horizon: the huge waves of the solid earth stood up against the sky, sinking so slowly she could not see them sink: they stood mouldering away, biding their time. They were of those "who only stand and wait," fulfilling the will of him who set them to crumble till the hour of the new heavens and the new earth arrive. There was no visible life between her and the great silent mouldering hills. On her right hand lay a blue segment of the ever restless sea, but so far that its commotion seemed a yet deeper rest than that of the immovable hills. She sat and sat, but nothing came, nothing seemed coming to her. The hope Ian had given her was not to be fulfilled! For here there was no revelation! She was not of the kind Nature could speak to! She began to grow uncomfortable--to feel as if she had done something wrong--as if she was a child put into the corner--a corner of the great universe, to learn to be sorry for something. Certainly something was wrong with her-but what? Why did she feel so uncomfortable? Was she so silly as mind being alone? There was nothing in these mountains that would hurt her! The red deer were sometimes dangerous, but none were even within sight! Yet something like fear was growing in her! Why should she be afraid? Everything about her certainly did look strange, as if she had nothing to do with it, and it had nothing to do with her; but that was all! Ian Macruadh must be wrong! How could there be any such bond as he said between Nature and the human heart, when the first thing she felt when alone with her, was fear! The world was staring at her! She was the centre of a fixed, stony regard from all sides! The earth, and the sea, and the sky, were watching her! She did not like it! She would rise and shake off the fancy! But she did not rise; something held her to her thinking. Just so she would, when a child in the dark, stand afraid to move lest the fear itself, lying in wait like a tigress, should at her first motion pounce upon her. The terrible, persistent silence! --would nothing break it! And there was in herself a response to it--something that was in league with it, and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, went to church twice every Sunday, and read her bible every morning, she would come not to be afraid of-she did not know what. It would be grand to have no fear of person or thing! She was sometimes afraid of her own father, even when she knew no reason! How that mountain with the horn kept staring at her! It was all nonsense! She was silly! She would get up and go home: it must be time! But things were not as they should be! Something was required of her! Was it God wanting her to do something? She had never thought whether he required anything of her! She must be a better girl! Then she would have God with her, and not be afraid! And all the time it was God near her that was making her unhappy. For, as the Son of Man came not to send peace on the earth but a sword, so the first visit of God to the human soul is generally in a cloud of fear and doubt, rising from the soul itself at his approach. The sun is the cloud-dispeller, yet often he must look through a fog if he would visit the earth at all. The child, not being a son, does not know his father. He may know he is what is called a father; what the word means he does not know. How then should he understand when the father comes to deliver him from his paltry self, and give him life indeed! She tried to pray. She said, "Oh G--od! forgive me, and make me good. I want to be good!" Then she rose. She went some little way without thinking where she was going, and then found she did not even know from what direction she had come. A sharp new fear, quite different from the former, now shot through her heart: she was lost! She had told no one she was going anywhere! No one would have a notion where to look for her! She had been beginning to feel hungry, but fear drove hunger away. All she knew was that she must not stay there. Here was nowhere; walking on she might come somewhere--that is, among human beings! So out she set on her weary travel from no-where to somewhere, giving Nature little thanks. She did not suspect that her grandmother had been doing anything for her by the space around her, or that now, by the tracklessness, the lostness, she was doing yet more. On and on she walked, climbing the one hillside and descending the other, going she knew not whither, hardly hoping she drew one step nearer home. All at once her strength went from her. She sat down and cried. But with her tears came the thought how the chief and his brother talked of God. She remembered she had heard in church that men ought to cry to God in their troubles. Broken verses of a certain psalm came to her, saying God delivered those who cried to him even from things they had brought on themselves, and she had been doing nothing wrong! She tried to trust in him, but could not: he was as far from her as the blue heavens! True, it bent over all, but its one great eye was much too large to see the trouble she was in! What did it matter to the blue sky if she fell down and withered up to bones and dust! She well might-for here no foot of man might pass till she was a thing terrible to look at! If there was nobody where seemed to be nothing, how fearfully empty was the universe! Ah, if she had God for her friend! What if he was her friend, and she had not known it because she never spoke to him, never asked him to do anything for her? It was horrible to think it could be a mere chance whether she got home, or died there! She would pray to God! She would ask him to take her home! A wintery blast came from the north. The black cloud had risen, and was now spreading over the zenith. Again the wind came with an angry burst and snarl. Snow carne swept upon it in hard sharp little pellets. She started up, and forgot to pray. Some sound in the wind or some hidden motion of memory all at once let loose upon her another fear, which straight was agony. A rumour had reached the New House the night before, that a leopard had broken from a caravan, and got away to the hills. It was but a rumour; some did not believe it, and the owners contradicted it, but a party had set out with guns and dogs. It was true! it was true! There was the terrible creature crouching behind that stone! He was in every clump of heather she passed, swinging his tail, and ready to spring upon her! He must be hungry by this time, and there was nothing there for him to eat but her! By and by, however, she was too cold to be afraid, too cold to think, and presently, half-frozen and faint for lack of food, was scarce able to go a step farther. She saw a great rock, sank down in the shelter of it, and in a minute was asleep. She slept for some time, and woke a little refreshed. The wonder is that she woke at all. It was dark, and her first consciousness was ghastly fear. The wind had ceased, and the storm was over. Little snow had fallen. The stars were all out overhead, and the great night was round her, enclosing, watching her. She tried to rise, and could just move her limbs. Had she fallen asleep again, she would not have lived through the night. But it is idle to talk of what would have been; nothing could have been but what was. Mercy wondered afterwards that she did not lose her reason. She must, she thought, have been trusting somehow in God. It was terribly dreary. Sure never one sorer needed God's help! And what better reason could there be for helping her than that she so sorely needed it! Perhaps God had let her walk into this trouble that she might learn she could not do without him! She--would try to be good! How terrible was the world, with such wide spaces and nobody in them! And all the time, though she did not know it, she was sobbing and weeping. The black silence was torn asunder by the report of a gun. She started up with a strange mingling of hope and terror, gave a loud cry, and sank senseless. The leopard would be upon her! Her cry was her deliverance.	{ "id": "5967" }
17	IN THE TOMB.	The brothers had that same morning paid their visit to the tomb, and there spent the day after their usual fashion, intending to go home the same night, and as the old moon was very late in rising, to take the earlier and rougher part of the way in the twilight. Just as they were setting out, however, what they rightly judged a passing storm came on, and they delayed their departure. By the time the storm was over, it was dark, and there was no use in hurrying; they might as well stop a while, and have the moon the latter part of the way. When at length they were again on the point of starting, they thought they heard something like sounds of distress, but the darkness making search difficult and unsatisfactory, the chief thought of firing his gun, when Mercy's cry guided them to where she lay. Alister's heart, at sight of her, and at the thought of what she must have gone through, nearly stood still. They carried her in, laid her on the bed, and did what they could to restore her, till she began to come to herself. Then they left her, that she might not see them without preparation, and sat down by the fire in the outer room, leaving the door open between the two. "I see how it is!" said Alister. "You remember, Ian, what you said to her about giving Nature an opportunity of exerting her influence? Mercy has been following your advice, and has lost her way among the hills!" "That was so long ago!" returned Ian thoughtfully. "Yes-when the weather was not fit for it. It is not fit now, but she has ventured!" "I believe you are right! I thought there was some reality in her! -But she must not hear us talking about her!" When Mercy came to herself, she thought at first that she lay where she had fallen, but presently perceived that she was covered, and had something hot at her feet: was she in her own bed? was it all a terrible dream, that she might know what it was to be lost, and think of God? . She put out her arm: her hand went against cold stone. The dread thought rushed in-that she was buried-was lying in her grave-to lie there till the trumpet should sound, and the dead be raised. She was not horrified; her first feeling was gladness that she had prayed before she died. She had been taught at church that an hour might come when it would be of no use to pray-the hour of an unbelieving death: it was of no use to pray now, but her prayer before she died might be of some avail! She wondered that she was not more frightened, for in sooth it was a dreary prospect before her: long and countless years must pass ere again she heard the sound of voices, again saw the light of the sun! She was half awake and half dreaming; the faintness of her swoon yet upon her, the repose following her great weariness, and the lightness of her brain from want of food, made her indifferent-almost happy. She could lie so a long time, she thought. At length she began to hear sounds, and they were of human voices. She had companions then in the grave! she was not doomed to a solitary waiting for judgment! She must be in some family-vault, among strangers. She hoped they were nice people: it was very desirable to be buried with nice people! Then she saw a reddish light. It was a fire--far off! Was she in the bad place? Were those shapes two demons, waiting till she had got over her dying? She listened:--"That will divide her between us," said one. "Yes," answered the other; "there will be no occasion to cut it!" What dreadful thing could they mean? But surely she had heard their voices before! She tried to speak, but could not. "We must come again soon!" said one. "At this rate it will take a life-time to carve the tomb." "If we were but at the roof of it!" said the other. "I long to tackle the great serpent of eternity, and lay him twining and coiling and undulating all over it! I dream about those tombs before ever they were broken into-royally furnished in the dark, waiting for the souls to come back to their old, brown, dried up bodies!" Here one of them rose and came toward her, growing bigger and blacker as he came, until he stood by the bedside. He laid his hand on her wrist, and felt her pulse. It was Ian! She could not see his face for there was no light on it, but she knew his shape, his movements! She was saved! He saw her wide eyes, two great spiritual nights, gazing up at him. "All, you are better, Miss Mercy!" lie said cheerily. "Now you shall have some tea!" Something inside her was weeping for joy, but her outer self was quite still. She tried again to speak, and uttered a few inarticulate sounds. Then came Alister on tip-toe, and they stood both by the bedside, looking down on her. "I shall be all right presently!"' she managed at length to say. "I am so glad I'm not dead! I thought I was dead!" "You would soon have been if we had not found you!" replied Alister. "Was it you that fired the gun?" "Yes." "I was so frightened!" "It saved your life, thank God! for then you cried out." "Fright was your door out of fear!" said Ian. "I thought it was the leopard!" "I did bring my gun because of the leopard," said Alister. "It was true about him then?" "He is out." "And now it is quite dark!" "It doesn't signify; we'll take a lantern; I've got my gun, and Ian has his dirk!" "Where are you going then?" asked Mercy, still confused. "Home, of course." "Oh, yes, of course! I will get up in a minute." "There is plenty of time," said Ian. "You must eat something before you get up. We, have nothing but oat-cakes, I am sorry to say!" "I think you promised me some tea!" said Mercy. "I don't feel hungry." "You shall have the tea. When did you eat last?" "Not since breakfast." "It is a marvel you are able to speak! You must try to eat some oat-cake." "I wish I hadn't taken that last slice of deer-ham!" said Alister, ruefully. "I will eat if I can," said Mercy. They brought her a cup of tea and some pieces of oat-cake; then, having lighted her a candle, they left her, and closed the door. She sipped her tea, managed to eat a little of the dry but wholesome food, and found herself capable of getting up. It was the strangest bedroom! she thought. Everything was cut out of the live rock. The dressing-table might have been a sarcophagus! She kneeled by the bedside, and tried to thank God. Then she opened the door. The chief rose at the sound of it. "I'm sorry," he said, "that we have no woman to wait on you." "I want nothing, thank you!" answered Mercy, feeling very weak and ready to cry, but restraining her tears. "What a curious house this is!" "It is a sort of doll's house my brother and I have been at work upon for nearly fifteen years. We meant, when summer was come, to ask you all to spend a day with us up here." "When first we went to work on it," said Ian, "we used to tell each other tales in which it bore a large share, and Alister's were generally about a lost princess taking refuge in it!" "And now it is come true!" said Alister. "What an escape I have had!" "I do not like to hear you say that!" returned Ian. "You have been taken care of all the time. If you had died in the cold, it would not have been because God had forgotten you; you would not have been lost." "I wanted to know," said Mercy, "whether Nature would speak to me. It was of no use! She never came near me!" "I think she must have come without your knowing her," answered Ian. "But we shall have a talk about that afterwards, when you are quite rested; we must prepare for home now." Mercy's heart sank within her--she felt so weak and sleepy! How was she to go back over all that rough mountain-way! But she dared not ask to be left-with the leopard about! He might come down the wide chimney! She soon found that the brothers had never thought of her walking. They wrapt her in Ian's plaid. Then they took the chiefs, which was very strong, and having folded it twice lengthwise, drew each an end of it over his shoulders, letting it hang in a loop between them: in this loop they made her seat herself, and putting each as arm behind her, tried how they could all get on. After a few shiftings and accommodations, they found the plan likely to answer. So they locked the door, and left the fire glowing on the solitary hearth. To Mercy it was the strangest journey--an experience never to be forgotten. The tea had warmed her, and the air revived her. It was not very cold, for only now and then blew a little puff of wind. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the wide void of the air between her and the earth below seemed full of wonder and mystery. Now and then she fancied some distant sound the cry of the leopard: he might be coming nearer and nearer as they went! but it rather added to the eerie witchery of the night, making it like a terrible story read in the deserted nursery, with the distant noise outside of her brothers and sisters at play. The motion of her progress by and by became pleasant to her. Sometimes her feet would brush the tops of the heather; but when they came to rocky ground, they always shortened the loop of the plaid. To Mercy's inner ear came the sound of words she had heard at church: "He shall give his angels charge over thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." Were not these two men God's own angels! They scarcely spoke, except when they stopped to take breath, but went on and on with a steady, rhythmic, silent trudge. Up and down the rough hill, and upon the hardly less rough hill-road, they had enough ado to heed their steps. Now and then they would let her walk a little way, but not far. She was neither so strong nor so heavy as a fat deer, they said. They were yet high among the hills, when the pale, withered, waste shred of the old moon rose above the upheaved boat-like back of one of the battlements of the horizon-rampart. With disconsolate face, now lost, now found again, always reappearing where Mercy had not been looking for her, she accompanied them the rest of their journey, and the witch-like creature brought out the whole character of the night. Booked in her wonderful swing, Mercy was not always quite sure that she was not dreaming the strangest, pleasantest dream. Were they not fittest for a dream, this star and moon beset night-this wind that now and then blew so eerie and wild, yet did not wake her-this gulf around, above, and beneath her, through which she was borne as if she had indeed died, and angels were carrying her through wastes of air to some unknown region afar? Except when she brushed the heather, she forgot that the earth was near her. The arms around her were the arms of men and not angels, but how far above this lower world dwelt the souls that moved those strong limbs! What a small creature she was beside them! how unworthy of the labour of their deliverance! Her awe of the one kept growing; the other she could trust with heart as well as brain; she could never be afraid of him! To the chief she turned to shadow her from Ian. When they came to the foot of the path leading up to Mistress Conal's cottage, there, although it was dark night, sat the old woman on a stone. "It's a sorrow you are carrying home with you, chief!" she said in Gaelic. "As well have saved a drowning man!" She did not rise or move, but spoke like one talking by the fireside. "The drowning man has to be saved, mother!" answered the chief, also in Gaelic; "and the sorrow in your way has to be taken with you. It won't let you pass!" "True, my son!" said the woman; "but it makes the heart sore that sees it!" "Thank you for the warning then, but welcome the sorrow!" he returned. "Good night." "Good night, chiefs sons both!" she replied. "You're your father's anyway! Did he not one night bring home a frozen fox in his arms, to warm him by his fire! But when he had warmed him--he turned him out!" It was quite clear when last they looked at the sky, but the moment they left her, it began to rain heavily. So fast did it rain, that the men, fearing for Mercy, turned off the road, and went down a steep descent, to make straight across their own fields for the cottage; and just as they reached the bottom of the descent, although they had come all the rough way hitherto without slipping or stumbling--once, the chief fell. He rose in consternation; but finding that Mercy, upheld by Ian, had simply dropped on her feet, and taken no hurt, relieved himself by unsparing abuse of his clumsiness. Mercy laughed merrily, resumed her place in the plaid, and closed her eyes. She never saw where they were going, for she opened them again only when they stopped a little as they turned into the fir-clump before the door. "Where are we?" she asked; but for answer they carried her straight into the house. "We have brought you to our mother instead of yours," said Alister. "To get wet would have been the last straw on the back of such a day. We will let them know at once that you are safe." Lady Macruadh, as the highlanders generally called her, made haste to receive the poor girl with that sympathetic pity which, of all good plants, flourishes most in the Celtic heart. Mercy's mother had come to her in consternation at her absence, and the only comfort she could give her was the suggestion that she had fallen in with her sons. She gave her a warm bath,-put her to bed, and then made her eat, so preparing her for a healthful sleep. And she did sleep, but dreamed of darkness and snow and leopards. As men were out searching in all directions, Alister, while Ian went to the New House, lighted a beacon on the top of the old castle to bring them back. By the time Ian had persuaded Mrs. Palmer to leave Mercy in his mother's care for the night, it was blazing beautifully. In the morning it was found that Mercy had a bad cold, and could not be moved. But the cottage, small as it was, had more than one guest-chamber, and Mrs. Macruadh was delighted to have her to nurse. END OF VOL. II.	{ "id": "5967" }
1	AT A HIGH SCHOOL.	When Mercy was able to go down to the drawing-room, she found the evenings pass as never evenings passed before; and during the day, although her mother and Christina came often to see her, she had time and quiet for thinking. And think she must; for she found herself in a region of human life so different from any she had hitherto entered, that in no other circumstances would she have been able to recognize even its existence. Everything said or done in it seemed to acknowledge something understood. Life went on with a continuous lean toward something rarely mentioned, plainly uppermost; it embodied a tacit reference of everything to some code so thoroughly recognized that occasion for alluding to it was unfrequent. Its inhabitants appeared to know things which her people did not even suspect. The air of the brothers especially was that of men at their ease yet ready to rise--of men whose loins were girded, alert for an expected call. Under their influence a new idea of life, and the world, and the relations of men and things, began to grow in the mind of Mercy. There was a dignity, almost grandeur, about the simple life of the cottage, and the relation of its inmates to all they came near. No one of them seemed to live for self, but each to be thinking and caring for the others and for the clan. She awoke to see that manners are of the soul; that such as she had hitherto heard admired were not to be compared with the simple, almost peasant-like dignity and courtesy of the chief; that the natural grace, accustomed ease, and cultivated refinement of Ian's carriage, came out in attention and service to the lowly even more than in converse with his equals; while his words, his gestures, his looks, every expression born of contact, witnessed a directness and delicacy of recognition she could never have imagined. The moment he began to speak to another, he seemed to pass out of himself, and sit in the ears of the other to watch his own words, lest his thoughts should take such sound or shape as might render them unwelcome or weak. If they were not to be pleasant words, they should yet be no more unpleasant than was needful; they should not hurt save in the nature of that which they bore; the truth should receive no injury by admixture of his personality. He heard with his own soul, and was careful over the other soul as one of like kind. So delicately would he initiate what might be communion with another, that to a nature too dull or selfish to understand him, he gave offence by the very graciousness of his approach. It was through her growing love to Alister that Mercy became able to understand Ian, and perceived at length that her dread, almost dislike of him at first, was owing solely to her mingled incapacity and unworthiness. Before she left the cottage, it was spring time in her soul; it had begun to put forth the buds of eternal life. Such buds are not unfrequently nipped; but even if they are, if a dull, false, commonplace frost close in, and numb the half wakened spirit back into its wintry sleep, that sleep will ever after be haunted with some fainting airs of the paradise those buds prophesied. In Mercy's case they were to grow into spiritual eyes--to open and see, through all the fogs and tumults of this phantom world, the light and reality of the true, the spiritual world everywhere around her--as the opened eyes of the servant of the prophet saw the mountains of Samaria full of horses of fire and chariots of fire around him. Every throb of true love, however mingled with the foolish and the false, is a bourgeoning of the buds of the life eternal--ah, how far from leaves! how much farther from flowers. Ian was high above her, so high that she shrank from him; there seemed a whole heaven of height between them. It would fill her with a kind of despair to see him at times sit lost in thought: he was where she could never follow him! He was in a world which, to her childish thought, seemed not the world of humanity; and she would turn, with a sense of both seeking and finding, to the chief. She imagined he felt as she did, saw between his brother and him a gulf he could not cross. She did not perceive this difference, that Alister knew the gulf had to be crossed. At such a time, too, she had seen his mother regarding him with a similar expression of loss, but with a mingling of anxiety that was hers only. It was sweet to Mercy to see in the eyes of Alister, and in his whole bearing toward his younger brother, that he was a learner like herself, that they were scholars together in Ian's school. A hunger after something beyond her, a something she could not have described, awoke in her. She needed a salvation of some kind, toward which she must grow! She needed a change which she could not understand until it came--a change the greatest in the universe, but which, man being created with the absolute necessity for it, can be no violent transformation, can be only a grand process in the divine idea of development. She began to feel a mystery in the world, and in all the looks of it--a mystery because a meaning. She saw a jubilance in every sunrise, a sober sadness in every sunset; heard a whispering of strange secrets in the wind of the twilight; perceived a consciousness of unknown bliss in the song of the lark;--and was aware of a something beyond it all, now and then filling her with wonder, and compelling her to ask, "What does it, what can it mean?" Not once did she suspect that Nature had indeed begun to deal with her; not once suspect, although from childhood accustomed to hear the name of Love taken in vain, that love had anything to do with these inexplicable experiences. Let no one, however, imagine he explains such experiences by suggesting that she was in love! That were but to mention another mystery as having introduced the former. For who in heaven or on earth has fathomed the marvel betwixt the man and the woman? Least of all the man or the woman who has not learned to regard it with reverence. There is more in this love to uplift us, more to condemn the lie in us, than in any other inborn drift of our being, except the heavenly tide Godward. From it flow all the other redeeming relations of life. It is the hold God has of us with his right hand, while death is the hold he has of us with his left. Love and death are the two marvels, yea the two terrors--but the one goal of our history. It was love, in part, that now awoke in Mercy a hunger and thirst after heavenly things. This is a direction of its power little heeded by its historians; its earthly side occupies almost all their care. Because lovers are not worthy of even its earthly aspect, it palls upon them, and they grow weary, not of love, but of their lack of it. The want of the heavenly in it has caused it to perish: it had no salt. From those that have not is taken away that which they have. Love without religion is the plucked rose. Religion without love--there is no such thing. Religion is the bush that bears all the roses; for religion is the natural condition of man in relation to the eternal facts, that is the truths, of his own being. To live is to love; there is no life but love. What shape the love puts on, depends on the persons between whom is the relation. The poorest love with religion, is better, because truer, therefore more lasting, more genuine, more endowed with the possibility of persistence--that is, of infinite development, than the most passionate devotion between man and woman without it. Thus together in their relation to Ian, it was natural that Mercy and the chief should draw yet more to each other. Mercy regarded Alister as a big brother in the same class with herself, but able to help her. Quickly they grew intimate. In the simplicity of his large nature, the chief talked with Mercy as openly as a boy, laying a heart bare to her such that, if the world had many like it, the kingdom of heaven would be more than at hand. He talked as to an old friend in perfect understanding with him, from whom he had nothing to gain or to fear. There was never a compliment on the part of the man, and never a coquetry on the part of the girl--a dull idea to such as without compliment or coquetry could hold no intercourse, having no other available means. Mercy had never like her sister cultivated the woman's part in the low game; and her truth required but the slightest stimulus to make her incapable of it. With such a man as Alister she could use only a simplicity like his; not thus to meet him would have been to decline the honouring friendship. Dark and plain, though with an interesting face and fine eyes, she had received no such compliments as had been showered upon her sister; it was an unspoiled girl, with a heart alive though not yet quite awake, that was brought under such good influences. What better influences for her, for any woman, than those of unselfish men? what influences so good for any man as those of unselfish women? Every man that hears and learns of a worthy neighbour, comes to the Father; every man that hath heard and learned of the Father comes to the Lord; every man that comes to the Lord, he leads back to the Father. To hear Ian speak one word about Jesus Christ, was for a true man to be thenceforth truer. To him the Lord was not a theological personage, but a man present in the world, who had to be understood and obeyed by the will and heart and soul, by the imagination and conscience of every other man. If what Ian said was true, this life was a serious affair, and to be lived in downright earnest! If God would have his creatures mind him, she must look to it! She pondered what she heard. But she went always to Alister to have Ian explained; and to hear him talk of Ian, revealed Alister to her. When Mercy left the cottage, she felt as if she were leaving home to pay a visit. The rich house was dull and uninteresting. She found that she had immediately to put in practice one of the lessons she had learned--that the service of God is the service of those among whom he has sent us. She tried therefore to be cheerful, and even to forestall her mother's wishes. But life was harder than hitherto--so much more was required of her. The chief was falling thoroughly in love with Mercy, but it was some time before he knew it. With a heart full of tenderness toward everything human, he knew little of love special, and was gradually sliding into it without being aware of it. How little are we our own! Existence is decreed us; love and suffering are appointed us. We may resist, we may modify; but we cannot help loving, and we cannot help dying. We need God to keep us from hating. Great in goodness, yea absolutely good, God must be, to have a right to make us--to compel our existence, and decree its laws! Without his choice the chief was falling in love. The woman was sent him; his heart opened and took her in. Relation with her family was not desirable, but there she was! Ian saw, but said nothing. His mother saw it too. "Nothing good will come of it!" she said, with a strong feeling of unfitness in the thing. "Everything will come of it, mother, that God would have come of it," answered Ian. "She is an honest, good girl, and whatever comes of it must be good, whether pleasant or not." The mother was silent. She believed in God, but not so thoroughly as to abjure the exercise of a subsidiary providence of her own. The more people trust in God, the less will they trust their own judgments, or interfere with the ordering of events. The man or woman who opposes the heart's desire of another, except in aid of righteousness, is a servant of Satan. Nor will it avail anything to call that righteousness which is of Self or of Mammon. "There is no action in fretting," Ian would say, "and not much in the pondering of consequences. True action is the doing of duty, come of it heartache, defeat, or success." "You are a fatalist, Ian!" said his mother one day. "Mother, I am; the will of God is my fate!" answered Ian. "He shall do with me what he pleases; and I will help him!" She took him in her arms and kissed him. She hoped God would not be strict with him, for might not the very grandeur of his character be rooted in rebellion? Might not some figs grow on some thistles? At length came the paternal summons for the Palmers to go to London. For a month the families had been meeting all but every day. The chief had begun to look deep into the eyes of the girl, as if searching there for some secret joy; and the girl, though she drooped her long lashes, did not turn her head away. And now separation, like death, gave her courage, and when they parted, Mercy not only sustained Alister's look, but gave him such a look in return that he felt no need, no impulse to say anything. Their souls were satisfied, for they knew they belonged to each other.	{ "id": "5968" }
2	A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.	So entirely were the chief and his family out of the world, that they had not yet a notion of the worldly relations of Mr. Peregrine Palmer. But the mother thought it high time to make inquiry as to his position and connections. She had an old friend in London, the wife of a certain vice-chancellor, with whom she held an occasional correspondence, and to her she wrote, asking if she knew anything of the family. Mrs. Macruadh was nowise free from the worldliness that has regard to the world's regard. She would not have been satisfied that a daughter in law of hers should come of people distinguished for goodness and greatness of soul, if they were, for instance, tradespeople. She would doubtless have preferred the daughter of an honest man, whatever his position, to the daughter of a scoundrel, even if he chanced to be a duke; but she would not have been content with the most distinguished goodness by itself. Walking after Jesus, she would have drawn to the side of Joanna rather than Martha or Mary; and I fear she would have condescended--just a little--to Mary Magdalen: repentance, however perfect, is far from enough to satisfy the worldly squeamishness of not a few high-principled people who do not know what repentance means. Mrs. Macruadh was anxious to know that the girl was respectable, and so far worthy of her son. The idea of such an inquiry would have filled Mercy's parents with scornful merriment, as a thing ludicrous indeed. People in THEIR position, who could do this and that, whose name stood so high for this and that, who knew themselves well bred, who had one relation an admiral, another a general, and a marriage-connection with some of the oldest families in the country--that one little better than a yeoman, a man who held the plough with his own big hands, should enquire into THEIR social standing! Was not Mr. Peregrine Palmer prepared to buy him up the moment he required to sell! Was he not rich enough to purchase an earl's daughter for his son, and an earl himself for his beautiful Christina! The thing would have seemed too preposterous. The answer of the vice-chancellor's lady burst, nevertheless, like a bombshell in the cottage. It was to this effect:--The Palmers were known, if not just in the best, yet in very good society; the sons bore sign of a defective pedigree, but the one daughter out was, thanks to her mother, fit to go anywhere. For her own part, wrote the London correspondent, she could not help smelling the grains: in Scotland a distiller, Mr. Peregrine Palmer had taken to brewing in England--was one of the firm Pulp and Palmer, owning half the public-houses in London, therefore high in the regard of the English nobility, if not actually within their circle. --Thus far the satirical lady of the vice-chancellor. Horror fell upon the soul of the mother. The distiller was to her as the publican to the ancient Jew. No dealing in rags and marine stores, no scraping of a fortune by pettifogging, chicane, and cheating, was to her half so abominable as the trade of a brewer. Worse yet was a brewer owning public-houses, gathering riches in half-pence wet with beer and smelling of gin. The brewer was to her a moral pariah; only a distiller was worse. As she read, the letter dropped from her hands, and she threw them up in unconscious appeal to heaven. She saw a vision of bloated men and white-faced women, drawing with trembling hands from torn pockets the money that had bought the wide acres of the Clanruadh. To think of the Macruadh marrying the daughter of such a man! In society few questions indeed were asked; everywhere money was counted a blessed thing, almost however made; none the less the damnable fact remained, that certain moneys were made, not in furthering the well-being of men and women, but in furthering their sin and degradation. The mother of the chief saw that, let the world wink itself to blindness, let it hide the roots of the money-plant in layer upon layer of social ascent, the flower for which an earl will give his daughter, has for the soil it grows in, not the dead, but the diseased and dying, of loathsome bodies and souls of God's men and women and children, which the grower of it has helped to make such as they are. She was hot, she was cold; she started up and paced hurriedly about the room. Her son the son in law of a distiller! the husband of his daughter! The idea was itself abhorrence and contempt! Was he not one of the devil's fishers, fishing the sea of the world for the souls of men and women to fill his infernal ponds withal! His money was the fungous growth of the devil's cellars. How would the brewer or the distiller, she said, appear at the last judgment! How would her son hold up his head, if he cast in his lot with theirs! But that he would never do! Why should she be so perturbed! in this matter at least there could be no difference between them! Her noble Alister would be as much shocked as herself at the news! Could the woman be a lady, grown on such a hot-bed! Yet, alas! love could tempt far--could subdue the impossible! She could not rest; she must find one of them! Not a moment longer could she remain alone with the terrible disclosure. If Alister was in love with the girl, he must get out of it at once! Never again would she enter the Palmers' gate, never again set foot on their land! The thought of it was unthinkable! She would meet them as if she did not see them! But they should know her reason--and know her inexorable! She went to the edge of the ridge, and saw Ian sitting with his book on the other side of the burn. She called him to her, and handed him the letter. He took it, read it through, and gave it her back. "Ian!" she exclaimed, "have you nothing to say to that?" "I beg your pardon, mother," he answered: "I must think about it. Why should it trouble you so! It is painfully annoying, but we have come under no obligation to them!" "No; but Alister!" "You cannot doubt Alister will do what is right!" "He will do what he thinks right!" "Is not that enough, mother?" "No," she answered angrily; "he must do the thing that is right." "Whether he knows it or not? Could he do the thing he thought wrong?" She was silent. "Mother dear," resumed Ian, "the only Way to get at what IS right is to do what seems right. Even if we mistake there is no other way!" "You would do evil that good may come! Oh, Ian!" "No, mother; evil that is not seen to be evil by one willing and trying to do right, is not counted evil to him. It is evil only to the person who either knows it to be evil, or does not care whether it be or not." "That is dangerous doctrine!" "I will go farther, mother, and say, that for Alister to do what you thought right, if he did not think it right himself--even if you were right and he wrong--would be for him to do wrong, and blind himself to the truth." "A man may be to blame that he is not able to see the truth," said the mother. "That is very true, but hardly such a man as Alister, who would sooner die than do the thing he believed wrong. But why should you take it for granted that Alister will think differently from you?" "We don't always think alike." "In matters of right and wrong, I never knew him or me think differently from you, mother!" "He is very fond of the girl!" "And justly. I never saw one more in earnest, or more anxious to learn." "She might well be teachable to such teachers!" "I don't see that she has ever sought to commend herself to either of us, mother. I believe her heart just opened to the realities she had never had shown her before. Come what may, she will never forget the things we have talked about." "Nothing would make me trust her!" "Why?" "She comes of an' abominable breed." "Is it your part, mother, to make her suffer for the sins of her fathers?" "I make her suffer!" "Certainly, mother--by changing your mind toward her, and suspecting her, the moment you learn cause to condemn her father." "The sins of the fathers are visited on the children! --You will not dispute that?' "I will grant more--that the sins of the fathers are often reproduced in the children. But it is nowhere said, 'Thou shalt visit the sins of the fathers on the children.' God puts no vengeance into our hands. I fear you are in danger of being unjust to the girl, mother! --but then you do not know her so well as we do!" "Of course not! Every boy understands a woman better than his mother!" "The thing is exceedingly annoying, mother! Let us go and find Alister at once!" "He will take it like a man of sense, I trust!" "He will. It will trouble him terribly, but he will do as he ought. Give him time and I don't believe there is a man in the world to whom the right comes out clearer than to Alister." The mother answered only with a sigh. "Many a man," remarked Ian, "has been saved through what men call an unfortunate love affair!" "Many a man has been lost by having his own way in one!" rejoined the mother. "As to LOST, I would not make up my mind about that for a few centuries or so!" returned Ian. "A man may be allowed his own way for the discipline to result from it." "I trust, Ian, you will not encourage him in any folly!" "I shall have nothing to do but encourage him in his first resolve, mother!"	{ "id": "5968" }
3	HOW ALISTER TOOK IT.	They could not find Alister, who had gone to the smithy. It was tea-time before he came home. As soon as he entered, his mother handed him the letter. He read it without a word, laid it on the table beside his plate, and began to drink his tea, his eyes gleaming with a strange light, lan kept silence also. Mrs. Macruadh cast a quick glance, now at the one, now at the other. She was in great anxiety, and could scarce restrain herself. She knew her boys full of inbred dignity and strong conscience, but was nevertheless doubtful how they would act. They could not feel as she felt, else would the hot blood of their race have at once boiled over! Had she searched herself she might have discovered a latent dread that they might be nearer the right than she. Painfully she watched them, half conscious of a traitor in her bosom, judging the world's judgment and not God's. Her sons seemed on the point of concluding as she would not have them conclude: they would side with the young woman against their mother! The reward of parents who have tried to be good, may be to learn, with a joyous humility from their children. Mrs. Macruadh was capable of learning more, and was now going to have a lesson. When Alister pushed back his chair and rose, she could refrain no longer. She could not let him go in silence. She must understand something of what was passing in his mind! "What do you think of THAT, Alister?" she said. He turned to her with a faint smile, and answered, "I am glad to know it, mother." "That is good. I was afraid it would hurt you!" "Seeing the thing is so, I am glad to be made aware of it. The information itself you cannot expect me to be pleased with!" "No, indeed, my son! I am very sorry for you. After being so taken with the young woman,--" Alister looked straight in his mother's face. "You do not imagine, mother," he said, "it will make any difference as to Mercy?" "Not make any difference!" echoed Mrs. Macruadh. "What is it possible you can mean, Alister?" The anger that glowed in her dark eyes made her look yet handsomer, proving itself not a mean, though it might be a misplaced anger. "Is she different, mother, from what she was before you had the letter?" "You did not then know what she was!" "Just as well as I do now. I have no reason to think she is not what I thought her." "You thought her the daughter of a gentleman!" "Hardly. I thought her a lady, and such I think her still." "Then you mean to go on with it?" "Mother dear," said Alister, taking her by the hand, "give me a little time. Not that I am in any doubt--but the news has been such a blow to me that--" "It must have been!" said the mother. " --that I am afraid of answering you out of the soreness of my pride, and Ian says the Truth is never angry." "I am quite willing you should do nothing in a hurry," said the mother. She did not understand that he feared lest, in his indignation for Mercy, he should answer his mother as her son ought not. "I will take time," he replied. "And here is Ian to help me!" "Ah! if only your father were here!" "He may be, mother! Anyhow I trust I shall do nothing he would not like!" "He would sooner see son of his marry the daughter of a cobbler than of a brewer!" "So would I, mother!" said Alister. "I too," said Ian, "would much prefer that my sister-in-law's father were not a brewer." "I suppose you are splitting some hair, Ian, but I don't see it," remarked his mother, who had begun to gather a little hope. "You will be back by supper-time, Alister, I suppose?" "Certainly, mother. We are only going to the village." The brothers went. "I knew everything you were thinking," said Ian. "Of course you did!" answered Alister. "But I am very sorry!" "So am I! It is a terrible bore!" A pause followed. Alister burst into a laugh that was not merry. "It makes me think of the look on my father's face," he said, "once at the market, as he was putting in his pocket a bunch of more than usually dirty bank-notes. The look seemed almost to be making apology that he was my father--the notes were SO DIRTY! 'They're better than they look, lad!' he said." "What ARE you thinking of, Alister?" "Of nothing you are not thinking of, Ian, I hope in God! Mr. Palmer's money is worse than it looks." "You frightened me for a moment, Alister!" "How could I, Ian?" "It was but a nervo-mechanical fright. I knew well enough you could mean nothing I should not like. But I see trouble ahead, Alister!" "We shall be called a pack of fools, but what of that! We shall be told the money itself was clean, however dirty the hands that made it! The money-grubs!" "I would rather see you hanged, than pocketing a shilling of it!" "Of course you would! But the man who could pocket it, will be relieved to find it is only his daughter I care about." "There will be difficulty, Alister, I fear. How much have you said to Mercy?" "I have SAID nothing definite." "But she understands?" "I think--I hope so. --Don't you think Christina is much improved, lan?" "She is more pleasant." "She is quite attentive to you!" "She is pleased with me for saving her life. She does not like me--and I have just arrived at not disliking her." "There is a great change on her!" "I doubt if there is any IN her though!" "She may be only amusing herself with us in this outlandish place! Mercy, I am sure, is quite different!" "I would trust her with anything, Alister. That girl would die for the man she loved!" "I would rather have her love, though we should never meet in this world, than the lands of my fathers!" "What will you do then?" "I will go to Mr. Palmer, and say to him: 'Give me your daughter. I am a poor man, but we shall have enough to live upon. I believe she will be happy.'" "I will answer for him: 'I have the greatest regard for you, Macruadh. You are a gentleman, and that you are poor is not of the slightest consequence; Mercy's dowry shall be worthy the lady of a chief!' --What then, Alister?" "Fathers that love money must be glad to get rid of their daughters without a. dowry!" "Yes, perhaps, when they are misers, or money is scarce, or wanted for something else. But when a poor man of position wanted to marry his daughter, a parent like Mr. Palmer would doubtless regard her dowry as a good investment. You must not think to escape that way, Alister! What would you answer him?" "I would say, 'My dear sir,'--I may say 'My dear sir,' may I not? there is something about the man I like! --'I do not want your money. I will not have your money. Give me your daughter, and my soul will bless you.'" "Suppose he should reply,' Do you think I am going to send my daughter from my house like a beggar? No, no, my boy! she must carry something with her! If beggars married beggars, the world would be full of beggars!' --what would you say then?" "I would tell him I had conscientious scruples about taking his money." "He would tell you you were a fool, and not to be trusted with a wife. 'Who ever heard such rubbish!' he would say. 'Scruples, indeed! You must get over them! What are they?' --What would you say then?" "If it came to that, I should have no choice but tell him I had insuperable objections to the way his fortune was made, and could not consent to share it." "He would protest himself insulted, and swear, if his money was not good enough for you, neither was his daughter. What then?" "I would appeal to Mercy." "She is too young. It would be sad to set one of her years at variance with her family. I almost think I would rather you ran away with her. It is a terrible thing to go into a house and destroy the peace of those relations which are at the root of all that is good in the world." "I know it! I know it! That is my trouble! I am not afraid of Mercy's courage, and I am sure she would hold out. I am certain nothing would make her marry the man she did not love. But to turn the house into a hell about her--I shrink from that! --Do you count it necessary to provide against every contingency before taking the first step?" "Indeed I do not! The first step is enough. When that step has landed us, we start afresh. But of all things you must not lose your temper with the man. However despicable his money, you are his suitor for his daughter! And he may possibly not think you half good enough for her." "That would be a grand way out of the difficulty!" "How?" "It would leave me far freer to deal with her." "Perhaps. And in any case, the more we can honestly avoid reference to his money, the better. We are not called on to rebuke." "Small is my inclination to allude to it--so long as not a stiver of it seeks to cross to the Macruadh!" "That is fast as fate. But there is another thing, Alister: I fear lest you should ever forget that her birth and her connections are no more a part of the woman's self than her poverty or her wealth." "I know it, Ian. I will not forget it." "There must never be a word concerning them!" "Nor a thought, Ian! In God's name I will be true to her." They found Annie of the shop in a sad way. She had just had a letter from Lachlan, stating that he had not been well for some time, and that there was little prospect of his being able to fetch her. He prayed her therefore to go out to him; and had sent money to pay her passage and her mother's. "When do you go?" asked the chief. "My mother fears the voyage, and is very unwilling to turn her back on her own country. But oh, if Lachlan die, and me not with him!" She could say no more. "He shall not die for want of you!" said the laird. "I will talk to your mother." He went into the room behind. Ian remained in the shop. "Of course you must go, Annie!" he said. "Indeed, sir, I must! But how to persuade my mother I do not know! And I cannot leave her even for Lachlan. No one would nurse him more tenderly than she; but she has a horror of the salt water, and what she most dreads is being buried in it. She imagines herself drowning to all eternity!" "My brother will persuade her." "I hope so, sir. I was just coming to him! I should never hold up my head again--in this world or the next--either if I did not go, or if I went without my mother! Aunt Conal told me, about a month since, that I was going a long journey, and would never come back. I asked her if I was to die on the way, but she would not answer me. Anyhow I'm not fit to be his wife, if I'm not ready to die for him! Some people think it wrong to marry anybody going to die, but at the longest, you know, sir, you must part sooner than you would! Not many are allowed to die together! --You don't think, do you, sir, that marriages go for nothing in the other world?" She spoke with a white face and brave eyes, and Ian was glad at heart. "I do not, Annie," he answered. " 'The gifts of God are without repentance.' He did not give you and Lachlan to each other to part you again! Though you are not married yet, it is all the same so long as you are true to each other." "Thank you, sir; you always make me feel strong!" Alister came from the back room. "I think your mother sees it not quite so difficult now," he said. The next time they went, they found them preparing to go. Now Ian had nearly finished the book he was writing about Russia, and could not begin another all at once. He must not stay at home doing nothing, and he thought that, as things were going from bad to worse in the highlands, he might make a voyage to Canada, visit those of his clan, and see what ought to be done for such as must soon follow them. He would presently have a little money in his possession, and believed he could not spend it better. He made up his mind therefore to accompany Annie and her mother, which resolve overcame the last of the old woman's lingering reluctance. He did not like leaving Alister at such a critical point in his history; but he said to himself that a man might be helped too much; arid it might come that he and Mercy were in as much need of a refuge as the clan. I cannot say NO worldly pride mingled in the chief's contempt for the distiller's money; his righteous soul was not yet clear of its inherited judgments as to what is dignified and what is not. He had in him still the prejudice of the landholder, for ages instinctive, against both manufacture and trade. Various things had combined to foster in him also the belief that trade at least was never free from more or less of unfair dealing, and was therefore in itself a low pursuit. He had not argued that nothing the Father of men has decreed can in its nature be contemptible, but must be capable of being nobly done. In the things that some one must do, the doer ranks in God's sight, and ought to rank among his fellow-men, according to how he does it. The higher the calling the more contemptible the man who therein pursues his own ends. The humblest calling, followed on the principles of the divine caller, is a true and divine calling, be it scavenging, handicraft, shop-keeping, or book-making. Oh for the day when God and not the king shall be regarded as the fountain of honour. But the Macruadh looked upon the calling of the brewer or distiller as from the devil: he was not called of God to brew or distil! From childhood his mother had taught him a horror of gain by corruption. She had taught, and he had learned, that the poorest of all justifications, the least fit to serve the turn of gentleman, logician, or Christian, was--"If I do not touch this pitch, another will; there will be just as much harm done; AND ANOTHER INSTEAD OF ME WILL HAVE THE BENEFIT; therefore it cannot defile me. --Offences must come, therefore I will do them!" "Imagine our Lord in the brewing trade instead of the carpentering!" she would say. That better beer was provided by the good brewer would not go far for brewer or drinker, she said: it mattered little that, by drinking good beer, the drunkard lived to be drunk the oftener. A brewer might do much to reduce drinking; but that would be to reduce a princely income to a modest livelihood, and to content himself with the baker's daughter instead of the duke's! It followed that the Macruadh would rather have robbed a church than touched Mr. Peregrine Palmer's money. To rifle the tombs of the dead would have seemed to him pure righteousness beside sharing in that. He could give Mercy up; he could NOT take such money with her! Much as he loved her, separate as he saw her, clearly as she was to him a woman undefiled and straight from God, it was yet a trial to him that she should be the daughter of a person whose manufacture and trade were such. After much consideration, it was determined in the family conclave, that Ian should accompany the two women to Canada, note how things were going, and conclude what had best be done, should further exodus be found necessary. As, however, there had come better news of Lachlan, and it was plain he was in no immediate danger, they would not, for several reasons, start before the month of September. A few of the poorest of the clan resolved to go with them. Partly for their sakes, partly because his own provision would be small, Ian would take his passage also in the steerage.	{ "id": "5968" }
4	LOVE.	Christina went back to London considerably changed. Her beauty was greater far, for there was a new element in it--a certain atmosphere of distances and shadows gave mystery to her landscape. Her weather, that is her mood, was now subject to changes which to many made her more attractive. Fits of wild gaiety alternated with glooms, through which would break flashes of feline playfulness, where pat and scratch were a little mixed. She had more admirers than ever, for she had developed points capable of interesting men of somewhat higher development than those she had hitherto pleased. At the same time she was more wayward and imperious with her courtiers. Gladly would she have thrown all the flattery once so coveted into the rag-bag of creation, to have one approving smile from the grave-looking, gracious man, whom she knew happier, wandering alone over the hills, than if she were walking by his side. For an hour she would persuade herself that he cared for her a little; the next she would comfort herself with the small likelihood of his meeting another lady in Glenruadh. But then he had been such a traveller, had seen so much of the great world, that perhaps he was already lost to her! It seemed but too probable, when she recalled the sadness with which he seemed sometimes overshadowed: it could not be a religious gloom, for when he spoke of God his face shone, and his words were strong! I think she mistook a certain gravity, like that of the Merchant of Venice, for sorrowfulness; though doubtless the peculiarity of his loss, as well as the loss itself, did sometimes make him sad. She had tried on him her little arts of subjugation, but the moment she began to love him, she not only saw their uselessness, but hated them. Her repellent behaviour to her admirers, and her occasional excitement and oddity, caused her mother some anxiety, but as the season came to a close, she grew gayer, and was at times absolutely bewitching. The mother wished to go northward by degrees, paying visits on the way; but her plan met with no approbation from the girls. Christina longed for the presence and voice of Ian in the cottage-parlour, Mercy for a hill-side with the chief; both longed to hear them speak to each other in their own great way. And they talked so of the delights of their highland home, that the mother began to feel the mountains, the sea, and the islands, drawing her to a land of peace, where things went well, and the world knew how to live. But the stormiest months of her life were about to pass among those dumb mountains! After a long and eager journey, the girls were once more in their rooms at the New House. Mercy went to her window, and stood gazing from it upon the mountain-world, faint-lighted by the northern twilight. She might have said with Portia:-- "This night methinks is but the daylight sick; It looks a little paler: 'tis a day, Such as the day is when the sun is hid." She could see the dark bulk of the hills, sharpened to a clear edge against the pellucid horizon, but with no colour, and no visible featuring of their great fronts. When the sun rose, it would reveal innumerable varieties of surface, by the mottling of endless shadows; now all was smooth as an unawakened conscience. By the shape of a small top that rose against the greenish sky betwixt the parting lines of two higher hills, where it seemed to peep out over the marge into the infinite, as a little man through the gap between the heads of taller neighbours, she knew the roof of THE TOMB; and she thought how, just below there, away as it seemed in the high-lifted solitudes of heaven, she had lain in the clutches of death, all the time watched and defended by the angel of a higher life who had been with her ever since first she came to Glenruadh, waking her out of such a stupidity, such a non-existence, as now she could scarce see possible to human being. It was true her waking had been one with her love to that human East which first she saw as she opened her eyes, and whence first the light of her morning had flowed--the man who had been and was to her the window of God! But why should that make her doubt? God made man and woman to love each other: why should not the waking to love and the waking to truth come together, seeing both were of God? If the chief were never to speak to her again, she would never go back from what she had learned of him! If she ever became careless of truth and life and God, it would but show that she had never truly loved the chief! As she stood gazing on the hill-top, high landmark of her history, she felt as if the earth were holding her up toward heaven, an offering to the higher life. The hill grew an altar of prayer on which her soul was lying, dead until taken up into life by the arms of the Father. A deep content pervaded her heart. She turned with her weight of peace, lay down, and went to sleep in the presence of her Life. Christina looked also from her window, but her thoughts were not like Mercy's, for her heart was mainly filled, not with love of Ian, but with desire that Ian should love her. She longed to be his queen--the woman of all women he had seen. The sweet repose of the sleeping world wrought in her--not peace, but weakness. Her soul kept leaning towards Ian; she longed for his arms to start out the alien nature lying so self-satisfied all about her. To her the presence of God took shape as an emptiness--an absence. The resting world appeared to her cold, unsympathetic, heedless; its peace was but heartlessness. The soft pellucid chrysolite of passive heavenly thought, was a merest arrangement, a common fact, meaning nothing to her. She was hungry, not merely after bliss, but after distinction in bliss; not after growth, but after acknowledged superiority. She needed to learn that she was nobody--that if the world were peopled with creatures like her, it would be no more worth sustaining than were it a world of sand, of which no man could build even a hut. Still, by her need of another, God was laying hold of her. As by the law is the knowledge of sin, so by love is selfishness rampantly roused--to be at last, like death, swallowed up in victory--the victory of the ideal self that dwells in God. All night she dreamed sad dreams of Ian in the embrace of a lovely woman, without word or look for her. She woke weeping, and said to herself that it could not be. He COULD not be taken from her! it was against nature! Soul, brain, and heart, claimed him hers! How could another possess what, in the testimony of her whole consciousness, was hers and hers alone! Love asserts an innate and irreversible right of profoundest property in the person loved. It is an instinct--but how wrongly, undivinely, falsely interpreted! Hence so many tears! Hence a law of nature, deep written in the young heart, seems often set utterly at nought by circumstance! But the girl in her dejection and doubt, was worth far more than in her content and confidence. She was even now the richer by the knowledge of sorrow, and she was on the way to know that she needed help, on the way to hate herself, to become capable of loving. Life could never be the same to her, and the farther from the same the better! The beauty came down in the morning pale and dim and white-lipped, like a flower that had had no water. Mercy was fresh and rosy, with a luminous mist of loveliness over her plain unfinished features. Already had they begun to change in the direction of beauty. Christina's eyes burned; in Mercy's shone something of the light by which a soul may walk and not stumble. In the eyes of both was expectation, in the eyes of the one confident, in the eyes of the other anxious. As soon as they found themselves alone together, eyes sought eyes, and met in understanding. They had not made confidantes of each other, each guessed well, and was well guessed at. They did not speculate; they understood. In like manner, Mercy and Alister understood each other, but not Christina and Ian. Neither of these knew the feelings of the other. Without a word they rose, put on their hats, left the house, and took the road toward the valley. About half-way to the root of the ridge, they came in sight of the ruined castle; Mercy stopped with a little cry. "Look! Chrissy!" she said, pointing. On the corner next them, close by the pepper-pot turret, sat the two men, in what seemed to loving eyes a dangerous position, but to the mountaineers themselves a comfortable coin of vantage. The girls thought, "They are looking out for us!" but Ian was there only because Alister was there. The men waved their bonnets. Christina responded with her handkerchief. The men disappeared from their perch, and were with the ladies before they reached the ridge. There was no embarrassment on either side, though a few cheeks were rosier than usual. To the chief, Mercy was far beyond his memory of her. Not her face only, but her every movement bore witness to a deeper pleasure, a greater freedom in life than before. "Why were you in such a dangerous place?" asked Christina. "We were looking out for you," answered Alister. "From there we could see you the moment you came out." "Why didn't you come and meet us then?" "Because we wanted to watch you coming." "Spies! --I hope, Mercy, we were behaving ourselves properly! I had no idea we were watched!" "We thought you had quarrelled; neither said a word to the other." Mercy looked up; Christina looked down. "Could you hear us at that height?" asked Mercy. "How could we when there was not a word to hear!" "How did you know we were silent?" "We might have known by the way you walked," replied Alister. "But if you had spoken we should have heard, for sound travels far among the mountains!" "Then I think it was a shame!" said Christina. "How could you tell that we might not object to your hearing us?" "We never thought of that!" said Alister. "I am very sorry. We shall certainly not be guilty again!" "What men you are for taking everything in downright earnest!" cried Christina; "--as if we could have anything to say we should wish YOU not to hear?" She pat a little emphasis on the YOU, hut not much. Alister heard it as if Mercy had said it, and smiled a pleased smile. "It will be a glad day for the world," he said, "when secrecy is over, and every man may speak out the thing that is in him, without danger of offence!" In her turn, Christina heard the words as if spoken with reference to Ian though not by him, and took them to hint at the difficulty of saying what was in his heart. She had such an idea of her superiority because of her father's wealth and fancied position, that she at once concluded Ian dreaded rejection with scorn, for it was not even as if he were the chief. However poor, Alister was at least the head of a family, and might set SIR before, and BARONET after his name--not that her father would think that much of a dignity! --but no younger son of whatever rank, would be good enough for her in her father's eyes! At the same time she had a choice as well as her father, and he should find she too had a will of her own! "But was it not a dangerous place to be in?" she said. "It is a little crumbly!" confessed Ian. " --That reminds me, Alister, we must have a bout at the old walls before long! --Ever since Alister was ten years old," he went on in explanation to Christina, "he and I have been patching and pointing at the old hulk--the stranded ship of our poor fortunes. I showed you, did I not, the ship in our coat of arms--the galley at least, in which, they say, we arrived at the island?" "Yes, I remember. --But you don't mean you do mason's work as well as everything else?" exclaimed Christina. "Come; we will show you," said the chief. "What do you do it for?" The brothers exchanged glances. "Would you count it sufficient reason," returned Ian, "that we desired to preserve its testimony to the former status of our family?" A pang of pleasure shot through the heart of Christina. Passion is potent to twist in its favour whatever can possibly be so twisted. Here was an indubitable indication of his thoughts! He must make the most of himself, set what he could against the overwhelming advantages on her side! In the eyes of a man of the world like her father, an old name was nothing beside new money! still an old castle was always an old castle! and that he cared about it for her sake made it to her at least worth something! Ere she could give an answer, Ian went on. "But in truth," he said, "we have always had a vague hope of its resurrection. The dream of our boyhood was to rebuild the castle. Every year it has grown more hopeless, and keeps receding. But we have come to see how little it matters, and content ourselves with keeping up, for old love's sake, what is left of the ruin." "How do you get up on the walls?" asked Mercy. "Ah, that is a secret!" said Ian. "Do tell us," pleaded Christina. "If you want very much to know,--" answered Ian, a little doubtfully. "I do, I do!" "Then I suppose we must tell you!" Yet more confirmation to the passion-prejudiced ears of Christina! "There is a stair," Ian went on, "of which no one but our two selves knows anything. Such stairs are common in old houses--far commoner than people in towns have a notion of. But there would not have been much of it left by this time, if we hadn't taken care of it. We were little fellows when we began, and it needed much contrivance, for we were not able to unseat the remnants of the broken steps, and replace them with new ones." "Do show it us," begged Christina. "We will keep it," said Alister, "for some warm twilight. Morning is not for ruins. Yon mountain-side is calling to us. Will you come, Mercy?" "Oh yes!" cried Christina; "that will be much better! Come, Mercy! You are up to a climb, I am sure!" "I ought to be, after such a long rest." "You may have forgotten how to climb!" said Alister. "I dreamed too much of the hills for that! And always the noise of London was changed into the rush of waters." They had dropped a little behind the other pair. "Did you always climb your dream-hills alone?" asked Alister. She answered him with just a lift of her big dark eyes. They walked slowly down the road till they came to Mrs. Conal's path, passed her door unassailed, and went up the hill.	{ "id": "5968" }
5	PASSION AND PATIENCE.	It was a glorious morning, and as they climbed, the lightening air made their spirits rise with their steps. Great masses of cloud hung beyond the edge of the world, and here and there towered foundationless in the sky--huge tumulous heaps of white vapour with gray shadows. The sun was strong, and poured down floods of light, but his heat was deliciously tempered by the mountain atmosphere. There was no wind--only an occasional movement as if the air itself were breathing--just enough to let them feel they moved in no vacuum, but in the heart of a gentle ocean. They came to the hut I have already described as the one chiefly inhabited by Hector of the Stags and Bob of the Angels. It commanded a rare vision. In every direction rose some cone-shaped hill. The world lay in coloured waves before them, wild, rugged, and grand, with sheltering spots of beauty between, and the shine of lowly waters. They tapped at the door of the hut, but there was no response; they lifted the latch--it had no lock--and found neither within. Alister and Mercy wandered a little higher, to the shadow of a great stone; Christina went inside the hut and looked from its door upon the world; Ian leaned against the side of it, and looked up to the sky. Suddenly a few great drops fell--it was hard to say whence. The scattered clouds had been drawing a little nearer the sun, growing whiter as they approached him, and more had ascended from the horizon into the middle air, blue sky abounding between them. A swift rain, like a rain of the early summer, began to fall, and grew to a heavy shower. They were glorious drops that made that shower; for the sun shone, and every drop was a falling gem, shining, sparkling like a diamond, as it fell. It was a bounteous rain, coming from near the zenith, and falling in straight lines direct from heaven to earth. It wanted but sound to complete its charm, and that the bells of the heather gave, set ringing by the drops. The heaven was filled with blue windows, and the rain seemed to come from them rather than from the clouds. Into the rain rose the heads of the mountains, each clothed in its surplice of thin mist; they seemed rising on tiptoe heavenward, eager to drink of the high-born comfort; for the rain comes down, not upon the mown grass only, but upon the solitary and desert places also, where grass will never be--"the playgrounds of the young angels," Bob called them. "Do come in," said Christina; "you will get quite wet!" He turned towards her. She stepped back, and he entered. Like one a little weary, he sat down on Hector's old chair. "Is anything the matter?" asked Christina, with genuine concern. She saw that he was not quite like himself, that there was an unusual expression on his face. He gave a faint apologetic smile. "As I stood there," he answered, "a strange feeling came over me--a foreboding, I suppose you would call it!" He paused; Christina grew pale, and said, "Won't you tell me what it was?" "It was an odd kind of conviction that the next time I stood there, it would not be in the body. --I think I shall not come back." "Come back!" echoed Christina, fear beginning to sip at the cup of her heart. "Where are you going?" "I start for Canada next week." She turned deadly white, and put out her hands, feeling blindly after support. Ian started to his feet. "We have tired you out!" he said in alarm, and took her by both hands to place her in the chair. She did not hear him. The world had grown dark about her, a hissing noise was in her ears, and she would have fallen had he not put his arm round her. The moment she felt supported, she began to come to herself. There was no pretence, however, no coquetry in her faintness. Neither was it aught but misery and affection that made her lay her head on Ian's shoulder, and burst into a violent fit of weeping. Unused to real emotion, familiar only with the poverty-stricken, false emotion of conquest and gratified vanity, when the real emotion came she did not know how to deal with it, and it overpowered her. "Oh! oh!" she cried at length between her sobs, "I am ashamed of myself! I can't help it! I can't help it! What will you think of me! I have disgraced myself!" Ian had been far from any suspicion of the state of things, but he had had too much sorrowful experience to be able to keep his unwilling eyes closed to this new consternation. The cold shower seemed to flood his soul; the bright drops descending with such swiftness of beauty, instinct with sun-life, turned into points of icy steel that pierced his heart. But he must not heed himself! he must speak to her! He must say something through the terrible shroud that infolded them! "You are as safe with me," he faltered, "--as safe as with your mother!" "I believe it! I know it," she answered, still sobbing, but looking up with an expression of genuine integrity such as he had never seen on her face before. "But I AM sorry!" she went on. "It is very weak, and very, very un--un--womanly of me! But it came upon me all at once! If I had only had some warning! Oh, why did you not tell me before? Why did you not prepare me for it? You might have known what it would be to hear it so suddenly!" More and more aghast grew Ian! What was to be done? What was to be said? What was left for a man to do, when a woman laid her soul before him? Was there nothing but a lie to save her from bitterest humiliation? To refuse any woman was to Ian a hard task; once he had found it impossible to refuse even where he could not give, and had let a woman take his soul! Thank God, she took it indeed! he yielded himself perfectly, and God gave him her in return! But that was once, and for ever! It could not be done again! "I am very sorry!" he murmured; and the words and their tone sent a shiver through the heart of Christina. But now that she had betrayed her secret, the pent up tide of her phantasy rushed to the door. She was reckless. Used to everything her own way, knowing nothing of disappointment, a new and ill understood passion dominating her, she let everything go and the torrent sweep her with it. Passion, like a lovely wild beast, had mastered her, and she never thought of trying to tame it. It was herself! there was not enough of her outside the passion to stand up against it! She began to see the filmy eyed Despair, and had neither experience to deal with herself, nor reticence enough to keep silence. "If you speak to me like that," she cried, "my heart will break! --Must you go away?" "Dear Miss Palmer,--" faltered Ian. "Oh!" she ejaculated, with a world of bitterness in the protest. " --do let us be calm!" continued Ian. "We shall not come to anything if we lose ourselves this way!" The WE and the US gave her a little hope. "How can I be calm!" she cried. "I am not cold-hearted like you! --You are going away, and I shall never see you again to all eternity!" She burst out weeping afresh. "Do love me a little before you go," she sobbed. "You gave me my life once, but that does not make it right to take it from me again! It only gives you a right to its best!" "God knows," said Ian, "if my life could serve you, I should count it a small thing to yield! --But this is idle talk! A man must not pretend anything! We must not be untrue!" She fancied he did not believe in her. "I know! I know! you may well distrust me!" she returned. "I have often behaved abominably to you! But indeed I am true now! I dare not tell you a lie. To you I MUST speak the truth, for I love you with my whole soul." Ian stood dumb. His look of consternation and sadness brought her to herself a little. "What have I done!" she cried, and drawing back a pace, stood looking at him, and trembling. "I am disgraced for ever! I have told a man I love him, and he leaves me to the shame of it! He will not save me from it! he will not say one word to take it away! Where is your generosity, Ian?" "I must be true!" said Ian, speaking as if to himself, and in a voice altogether unlike his own. "You will not love me! You hate me! You despise me! But I will not live rejected! He brushes me like a feather from his coat!" "Hear me," said Ian, trying to recover himself. "Do not think me insensible--" "Oh, yes! I know!" cried Christina yet more bitterly; "--INSENSIBLE TO THE HONOUR _I_ DO YOU, and all that world of nothing! --Pray use your victory! Lord it over me! I am the weed under your foot! I beg you will not spare me! Speak out what you think of me!" Ian took her hand. It trembled as if she would pull it away, and her eyes flashed an angry fire. She looked more nearly beautiful than ever he had seen her! His heart was like to break. He drew her to the chair, and taking a stool, sat down beside her. Then, with a voice that gathered strength as he proceeded, he said:-- "Let me speak to you, Christina Palmer, as in the presence of him who made us! To pretend I loved you would be easier than to bear the pain of giving you such pain. Were I selfish enough, I could take much delight in your love; but I scorn the unmanliness of accepting gold and returning silver: my love is not mine to give." It was some relief to her proud heart to imagine he would have loved her had he been free. But she did not speak. "If I thought," pursued Ian, "that I had, by any behaviour of mine, been to blame for this,--" There he stopped, lest he should seem to lay blame on her. --"I think," he resumed, "I could help you if you would listen to me. Were I in like trouble with you, I would go into my room, and shut the door, and tell my Father in heaven everything about it. Ah, Christina! if you knew him, you would not break your heart that a man did not love you just as you loved him." Had not her misery been so great, had she not also done the thing that humbled her before herself, Christina would have been indignant with the man who refused her love and dared speak to her of religion; but she was now too broken for resentment. The diamond rain was falling, the sun was shining in his vaporous strength, and the great dome of heaven stood fathomless above the pair; but to Christina the world was black and blank as the gloomy hut in which they sat. When first her love blossomed, she saw the world open; she looked into its heart; she saw it alive--saw it burning with that which made the bush alive in the desert of Horeb--the presence of the living God; now, the vision was over, the desert was dull and dry, the bush burned no more, the glowing lava had cooled to unsightly stone! There was no God, nor any man more! Time had closed and swept the world into the limbo of vanity! For a time she sat without thought, as it were in a mental sleep. She opened her eyes, and the blank of creation stared into the very heart of her. The emptiness and loneliness overpowered her. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she slid to her knees at Ian's feet, crying, "Save me, save me, Ian! I shall go mad! Pardon me! Help me!" "All a man may be to his sister, I am ready to be to you. I will write to you from Canada; you can answer me or not as you please. My heart cries out to me to take you in my arms and comfort you, but I must not; it would not comfort you." "You do not despise me, then? --Oh, thank you!" "Despise you! --no more than my dead sister! I would cherish you as I would her were she in like sorrow. I would die to save you this grief--except indeed that I hope much from it." "Forget all about me," said Christina, summoning pride to her aid. "I will not forget you. It is impossible, nor would I if I could." "You forgive me then, and will not think ill of me?" "How forgive trust? Is that an offence?" "I have lost your good opinion! How could I degrade myself so!" "On the contrary, you are fast gaining my good opinion. You have begun to be a true woman!" "What if it should be only for--" "Whatever it may have been for, now you have tasted truth you will not turn back!" "Now I know you do not care for me, I fear I shall soon sink back into my old self!" "I do care for you, Christina, and you will not sink back into your old self. God means you to be a strong, good woman--able, with the help he will give you, to bear grief in a great-hearted fashion. Believe me, you and I may come nearer each other in the ages before us by being both true, than is possible in any other way whatever." "I am miserable at the thought of what you must think of me! Everybody would say I had done a shameless thing in confessing my love!" "I am not in the way of thinking as everybody thinks. There is little justice, and less sympathy, to be had from everybody. I would think and judge and feel as the one, my Master. Be sure you are safe with me." "You will not tell anybody?" "You must trust me." "I beg your pardon! I have offended you!" "Not in the least. But I will bind myself by no promises. I am bound already to be as careful over you as if you were the daughter of my father and mother. Your confession, instead of putting you in my power, makes me your servant." By this time Christina was calm. There was a great load on her heart, but somehow she was aware of the possibility of carrying it. She looked up gratefully in Ian's face, already beginning to feel for him a reverence which made it easier to forego the right to put her arms round him. And therewith awoke in her the first movement of divine relationship--rose the first heave of the child-heart toward the source of its being. It appeared in the form of resistance. Complaint against God is far nearer to God than indifference about him. "Ian Macruadh," said Christina solemnly, and she looked him in the eyes as she said it, "how can you believe there is a God? If there were, would he allow such a dreadful thing to befall one of his creatures? How am I to blame? I could not help it!" "I see in it his truth and goodness toward his child. And he will let you see it. The thing is between him and you." "It will be hard to convince me it is either good or loving to make anyone suffer like this!" protested Christina, her hand unconsciously pressed on her heart; "--and all the disgrace of it too!" she added bitterly. "I will not allow there is any disgrace," returned Ian. "But I will not try to con vince you of anything about God. I cannot. You must know him. I only say I believe in him with all my heart. You must ask him to explain himself to you, and not take it for granted, because he has done what you do not like, that he has done you a wrong. Whether you seek him or not, he will do you justice; but he cannot explain himself except you seek him." "I think I understand. Believe me, I am willing to understand." A few long seconds of silence followed. Christina came a little nearer. She was still on her knees. "Will you kiss me once," she said, "as you would a little child!" "In the name of God!" answered Ian, and stooping kissed her gently and tenderly. "Thank you!" she said; "--and now the rain is over, let us join Mercy and the chief. I hope they have not got very wet!" "Alister will have taken care of that. There is plenty of shelter about here." They left the cottage, drew the door close, and through the heather, sparkling with a thousand rain-drops, the sun shining hotter than ever through the rain-mist, went up the hill. They found the other pair sheltered by the great stone, which was not only a shadow from the heat, but sloped sufficiently to be a covert from the rain. They did not know it had ceased; perhaps they did not know it had rained. On a fine morning of the following week, the emigrants began the first stage of their long journey; the women in two carts, with their small impedimenta, the men walking--Ian with them, a stout stick in his hand. They were to sail from Greenock. Ian and Christina met several times before he left, but never alone. No conference of any kind, not even of eyes, had been sought by Christina, and Ian had resolved to say nothing more until he reached Canada. Thence he would write things which pen and ink would say better and carry nearer home than could speech; and by that time too the first keenness of her pain would have dulled, and left her mind more capable of receiving them. He was greatly pleased with the gentle calm of her behaviour. No one else could have seen any difference toward himself. He read in her carriage that of a child who had made a mistake, and was humbled, not vexed. Her mother noted that her cheek was pale, and that she seemed thoughtful; but farther she did not penetrate. To Ian it was plain that she had set herself to be reasonable.	{ "id": "5968" }
6	LOVE GLOOMING.	Ian, the light of his mother's eyes, was gone, and she felt forsaken. Alister was too much occupied with Mercy to feel his departure as on former occasions, yet he missed him every hour of the day. Mercy and he met, but not for some time in open company, as Christina refused to go near the cottage. Things were ripening to a change. Alister's occupation with Mercy, however, was far from absorption; the moment Ian was gone, he increased his attention to his mother, feeling she had but him. But his mother was not quite the same to him now. At times she was even more tender; at other times she seemed to hold him away from her, as one with whom she was not in sympathy. The fear awoke in him that she might so speak to some one of the Palmers as to raise an insuperable barrier between the families; and this fear made him resolve to come at once to an understanding with Mercy. The resulting difficulties might be great; he felt keenly the possible alternative of his loss of Mercy, or Mercy's loss of her family; but the fact that he loved her gave him a right to tell her so, and made it his duty to lay before her the probability of an obstacle. That his mother did not like the alliance had to be braved, for a man must leave father and mother and cleave to his wife--a saying commonly by male presumption inverted. Mercy's love he believed such that she would, without a thought, leave the luxury of her father's house for the mere plenty of his. That it would not be to descend but to rise in the true social scale he would leave her to discover. Had he known what Mr. Palmer was, and how his money had been made, he would neither have sought nor accepted his acquaintance, and it would no more have been possible to fall in love with one of his family than to covet one of his fine horses. But that which might, could, would, or should have been, affected in no way that which was. He had entered in ignorance, by the will of God, into certain relations with "the young woman," as his mother called her, and those relations had to be followed to their natural and righteous end. Talking together over possibilities, Mr. Peregrine Palmer had agreed with his wife that, Mercy being so far from a beauty, it might not be such a bad match, would not at least be one to be ashamed of, if she did marry the impoverished chief of a highland clan with a baronetcy in his pocket. Having bought the land cheap, he could afford to let a part, perhaps even the whole of it, go back with his daughter, thus restoring to its former position an ancient and honourable family. The husband of his younger daughter would then be head of one of the very few highland families yet in possession of their ancestral acres--a distinction he would owe to Peregrine Palmer! It was a pleasant thought to the kindly, consequential, common little man. Mrs. Palmer, therefore, when the chief called upon her, received him with more than her previous cordiality. His mother would have been glad to see him return from his call somewhat dejected; he entered so radiant and handsome, that her heart sank within her. Was she actually on the point of being allied through the child of her bosom to a distiller and brewer--a man who had grown rich on the ruin of thousands of his fellow countrymen? To what depths might not the most ancient family sink! For any poverty, she said to herself, she was prepared--but how was she to endure disgrace! Alas for the clan, whose history was about to cease--smothered in the defiling garment of ill-gotten wealth! Miserable, humiliating close to ancient story! She had no doubt as to her son's intention, although he had said nothing; she KNEW that his refusal of dower would be his plea in justification; but would that deliver them from the degrading approval of the world? How many, if they ever heard of it, would believe that the poor, high-souled Macruadh declined to receive a single hundred from his father-in-law's affluence! That he took his daughter poor as she was born--his one stipulation that she should be clean from her father's mud! For one to whom there would even be a chance of stating the truth of the matter, a hundred would say, "That's your plan! The only salvation for your shattered houses! Point them up well with the bird-lime of the brewer, the quack, or the money-lender, and they'll last till doom'sday!" Thus bitterly spoke the mother. She brooded and scorned, raged inwardly, and took to herself dishonour, until evidently she was wasting. The chief's heart was troubled; could it be that she doubted his strength to resist temptation? He must make haste and have the whole thing settled! And first of all speak definitely to Mercy on the matter! He had appointed to meet her the same evening, and went long before the hour to watch for her appearing. He climbed the hill, and lay down in the heather whence he could see the door of the New House, and Mercy the moment she should come out of it. He lay there till the sun was down, and the stars began to appear. At length--and even then it was many minutes to the time--he saw the door open, and Mercy walk slowly to the gate. He rose and went down the hill. She saw him, watched him descending, and the moment he reached the road, went to meet him. They walked slowly down the road, without a word spoken, until they felt themselves alone. "You look so lovely!" said the chief. "In the twilight, I suppose!" said Mercy. "Perhaps; you are a creature of the twilight, or the night rather, with your great black eyes!" "I don't like you to speak to me so! You never did before! You know I am not lovely! I am very plain!" She was evidently not pleased. "What have I done to vex you, Mercy?" he rejoined. "Why should you mind my saying what is true?" She bit her lip, and could hardly speak to answer him. Often in London she had been morally sickened by the false rubbish talked to her sister, and had boasted to herself that the chief had never paid her a compliment. Now he had done it! She took her hand from his arm. "I think I will go home!" she said. Alister stopped and turned to her. The last gleam of the west was reflected from her eyes, and all the sadness of the fading light seemed gathered into them. "My child!" he said, all that was fatherly in the chief rising at the sight, "who has been making you unhappy?" "You," she answered, looking him in the face. "How? I do not understand!" he returned, gazing at her bewildered. "You have just paid me a compliment--a thing you never did before--a thing I never heard before from any but a fool! How could you say I was beautiful! You know I am not beautiful! It breaks my heart to think you could say what you didn't believe!" "Mercy!" answered the chief, "if I said you were beautiful, and to my eyes you were not, it would yet be true; for to my heart, which sees deeper than my eyes, you are more beautiful than any other ever was or ever will be. I know you are not beautiful in the world's meaning, but you are very lovely--and it was lovely I said you were!" "Lovely because you love me? Is that what you meant?" "Yes, that and more. Your eyes are beautiful, and your hair is beautiful, and your expression is lovely. But I am not flattering you--I am not even paying you compliments, for those things are not yours; God made them, and has given them to me!" She put her hand in his arm again, and there was no more love-making. "But Mercy," said the chief, when they had walked some distance without speaking, "do you think you could live here always, and never see London again?" "I would not care if London were scratched out." "Could you be content to be a farmer's wife?" "If he was a very good farmer," she answered, looking up archly. "Am I a good enough farmer, then, to serve your turn?" "Good enough if I were ten times better. Do you really mean it, Macruadh?" "With all my heart. Only there is one thing I am very anxious about." "What is that?" "How your father will take my condition." "He will allow, I think, that it is good enough for me--and more than I deserve." "That is not what I mean; it is that I have a certain condition to make." "Else you won't marry me? That seems strange! Of course I will do anything you would wish me to do! A condition!" she repeated, ponderingly, with just a little dissatisfaction in the tone. Alister wondered she was not angry. But she trusted him too well to take offence readily. "Yes," he rejoined, "a real condition! Terms belong naturally to the giver, not the petitioner; I hope with all my heart it will not offend him. It will not offend you, I think." "Let me hear your condition," said Mercy, looking at him curiously, her honest eyes shining in the faint light. "I want him to let me take you just as you are, without a shilling of his money to spoil the gift. I want you in and for yourself." "I dare not think you one who would rather not be obliged to his wife for anything!" said Mercy. "That cannot be it!" She spoke with just a shadow of displeasure. He did not answer. He was in great dread of hurting her, and his plain reason could not fail to hurt her. "Well," she resumed, as he did not reply, "there are fathers, I daresay, who would not count that a hard condition!" "Of course your father will not like the idea of your marrying so poor a man!" "If he should insist on your having something with me, you will not refuse, will you? Why should you mind it?" Alister was silent. The thing had already begun to grow dreadful! How could he tell her his reasons! Was it necessary to tell her? If he had to explain, it must be to her father, not to her! How, until absolutely compelled, reveal the horrible fact that her father was despised by her lover! She might believe it her part to refuse such love! He trembled lest she should urge him. But Mercy, thinking she had been very bold already, also held her peace. They tried to talk about other things, but with little success, and when they parted, it was with a sense on both sides that something had got between them. The night through Mercy hardly slept for trying to discover what his aversion to her dowry might mean. No princedom was worth contrasting with poverty and her farmer-chief, but why should not his love be able to carry her few thousands? It was impossible his great soul should grudge his wife's superiority in the one poor trifle of money! Was not the whole family superior to money! Had she, alas, been too confident in their greatness? Must she be brought to confess that their grand ways had their little heart of pride? Did they not regard themselves as the ancient aristocracy of the country! Yes, it must be! The chief despised the origin of her father's riches! But, although so far in the direction of the fact, she had no suspicion of anything more than landed pride looking down upon manufacture and trade. She suspected no moral root of even a share in the chief's difficulty. Naturally, she was offended. How differently Christina would have met the least hint of a CONDITION, she thought. She had been too ready to show and confess her love! Had she stood off a little, she might have escaped this humiliation! But would that have been honest? Must she not first of all be true? Was the chief, whatever his pride, capable of being ungenerous? Questions like these kept coming and going throughout the night. Hither and thither went her thoughts, refusing to be controlled. The morning came, the sun rose, and she could not find rest. She had come to see how ideally delightful it was just to wait God's will of love, yet, in this her first trouble, she actually forgot to think of God, never asked him to look after the thing for her, never said, "Thy will be done!" And when at length weariness overpowered her, fell asleep like a heathen, without a word from her heart to the heart. Alister missed Ian sorely. He prayed to God, but was too troubled to feel him near. Trouble imagined may seem easy to meet; trouble actual is quite another thing! His mother, perhaps, was to have her desire; Mercy, perhaps, would not marry a man who disapproved of her family! Between them already was what could not be talked about! He could not set free his heart to her! When Mercy woke, the old love was awake also; let Alister's reason be what it might, it was not for her to resent it! The life he led was so much grander than a life spent in making money, that he must feel himself superior! Throned in the hearts, and influencing the characters of men, was he not in a far nobler position than money could give him? From her night of doubt and bitterness Mercy issued more loving and humble. What should she be now, she said to herself, if Alister had not taught her? He had been good to her as never father or brother! She would trust him! She would believe him right! Had he hurt her pride? It was well her pride should be hurt! Her mind was at rest. But Alister must continue in pain and dread until he had spoken to her father. Knowing then the worst, he might use argument with Mercy; the moment for that was not yet come! If he consented that his daughter should leave him undowered, an explanation with Mercy might be postponed. When the honour of her husband was more to her than the false credit of her family, when she had had time to understand principles which, born and brought up as she had been, she might not yet be able to see into, then it would be time to explain! One with him, she would see things as he saw them! Till her father came, he would avoid the subject! All the morning he was busy in the cornyard--with his hands in preparing new stances for ricks, with his heart in try ing to content himself beforehand with whatever fate the Lord might intend for him. As yet he was more of a Christian philosopher than a philosophical Christian. The thing most disappointing to him he would treat as the will of God for him, and try to make up his mind to it, persuading himself it was the right and best thing--as if he knew it the will of God. He was thus working in the region of supposition, and not of revealed duty; in his own imagination, and not in the will of God. If this should not prove the will of God concerning him, then he was spending his strength for nought. There is something in the very presence and actuality of a thing to make one able to bear it; but a man may weaken himself for bearing what God intends him to bear, by trying to bear what God does not intend him to bear. The chief was forestalling the morrow like an unbeliever--not without some moral advantage, I dare say, but with spiritual loss. We have no right to school ourselves to an imaginary duty. When we do not know, then what he lays upon us is NOT TO KNOW, and to be content not to know. The philosopher is he who lives in the thought of things, the Christian is he who lives in the things themselves. The philosopher occupies himself with God's decree, the Christian with God's will; the philosopher with what God may intend, the Christian with what God wants HIM TO DO. The laird looked up and there were the young ladies! It was the first time Christina had come nigh the cottage since Ian's departure. "Can you tell me, Macruadh," she said, "what makes Mrs. Conal so spiteful always? When we bade her good morning a few minutes ago, she overwhelmed us with a torrent of abuse!" "How did you know it was abuse?" "We understand enough of Gaelic to know it was not exactly blessing us she was. It is not necessary to know cat-language to distinguish between purring and spitting! What harm have we done? Her voice was fierce, and her eyes were like two live peats flaming at us! Do speak to her." "It would be of no use!" "Where's the good of being chief then? I don't ask you to make the old woman civil, but I think you might keep her from insulting your friends! I begin to think your chiefdom a sham!" "I doubt indeed if it reaches to the tongues of the clan! But let us go and tell my mother. She may be able to do something with her!" Christina went into the cottage; the chief drew Mercy back. "What do you think the first duty of married people, Mercy--to each other, I mean," he said. "To be always what they look," answered Mercy. "Yes, but I mean actively. What is it their first duty to do towards each other?" "I can't answer that without thinking." "Is it not each to help the other to do the will of God?" "I would say YES if I were sure I really meant it." "You will mean it one day." "Are you sure God will teach me?" "I think he cares more to do that than anything else." "More than to save us?" "What is saving but taking us out of the dark into the light? There is no salvation but to know God and grow like him."	{ "id": "5968" }
7	A GENEROUS DOWRY.	The only hope of the chief's mother was in what the girl's father might say to her son's proposal. Would not his pride revolt against giving his daughter to a man who would not receive his blessing in money? Mr. Peregrine Palmer arrived, and the next day Alister called upon him. Not unprepared for the proposal of the chief, Mercy's father had nothing to urge against it. Her suitor's name was almost an historical one, for it stood high in the home-annals of Scotland. And the new laird, who had always a vague sense of injury in the lack of an illustrious pedigree of his own to send forward, was not un willing that a man more justly treated than himself should supply the SOLATIUM to his daughter's children. He received the Macruadh, therefore, if a little pompously, yet with kindness. And the moment they were seated Alister laid his request before him. "Mr. Palmer," he said, "I come to ask the hand of your daughter Mercy. I have not much beyond myself to offer her, but I can tell you precisely what there is." Mr. Peregrine Palmer sat for a moment looking important. He seemed to see much to ponder in the proposal. "Well, Macruadh," he said at length, hesitating with hum and with haw, "the thing is--well, to speak the truth, you take me a good deal by surprise! I do not know how the thing may appear to Mrs. Palmer. And then the girl herself, you will allow, ought, in a free country, to have a word in the matter! WE give our girls absolute liberty; their own hearts must guide them--that is, where there is no serious exception to be taken. Honestly, it is not the kind of match we should have chosen! It is not as if things were with you now as once, when the land was all your own, and--and--you--pardon me, I am a father--did not have to work with your own hands!" Had he been there on any other errand the chief would have stated his opinion that it was degrading to a man to draw income from anything he would count it degrading to put his own hand to; but there was so much he might be compelled to say to the displeasure of Mr. Palmer while asking of him the greatest gift he had to bestow, that he would say nothing unpalatable which he was not compelled to say. "My ancestors," he answered, willing to give the objection a pleasant turn, "would certainly have preferred helping themselves to the produce of lowland fields! My great-great-grandfather, scorning to ask any man for his daughter, carried her off without a word!" "I am glad the peculiarity has not shown itself hereditary," said Mr. Palmer laughing. "But if I have little to offer, I expect nothing with her," said the chief abruptly. "I want only herself!" "A very loverly mode of speaking! But it is needless to say no daughter of mine shall leave me without a certainty, one way or the other, of suitable maintenance. You know the old proverb, Macruadh,--'When poverty comes in at the door,'--?" "There is hardly a question of poverty in the sense the proverb intends!" answered the chief smiling. "Of course! Of course! At the same time you cannot keep the wolf too far from the door. I would not, for my part, care to say I had given my daughter to a poor farmer in the north. Two men, it is, I believe, you employ, Macruadh?" The chief answered with a nod. "I have other daughters to settle--not to mention my sons," pursued the great little man, "--but--but I will find a time to talk the matter over with Mrs. Palmer, and see what I can do for you. Meanwhile you may reckon you have a friend at court; all I have seen makes me judge well of you. Where we do not think alike, I can yet say for you that your faults lean to virtue's side, and are such as my daughter at least will be no loser by. Good morning, Macruadh." Mr. Peregrine Palmer rose; and the chief, perplexed and indignant, but anxious not to prejudice, his very doubtful cause, rose also. "You scarcely understand me, Mr. Palmer," he said. "On the possibility of being honoured with your daughter's hand, you must allow me to say distinctly beforehand, that I must decline receiving anything with her. When will you allow me to wait upon you again?" "I will write. Good morning." The interview was certainly not much to the assuagement of the chief's anxiety. He went home with the feeling that he had submitted to be patronized, almost insulted by a paltry fellow whose consequence rested on his ill-made money--a man who owed everything to a false and degrading appetite in his neighbours! Nothing could have made him put up with him but the love of Mercy, his dove in a crow's nest! But it would be all in vain, for he could not lie! Truth, indeed, if not less of a virtue, was less of a heroism in the chief than in most men, for he COULD NOT lie. Had he been tempted to try, he would have reddened, stammered, broken down, with the full shame, and none of the success of a falsehood. For a week, he heard nothing; there seemed small anxiety to welcome him into the Palmer family! Then came a letter. It implied, almost said that some difficulty had been felt as to his reception by EVERY member of the family--which the chief must himself see to have been only natural! But while money was of no con sequence to Mr. Palmer, it was of the greatest consequence that his daughter should seem to make a good match; therefore, as only in respect of POSITION was the alliance objectionable, he had concluded to set that right, and in giving him his daughter, to restore the chief's family to its former dignity, by making over to him the Clanruadh property now in his possession by purchase. While he thus did his duty by his daughter, he hoped the Macruadh would accept the arrangement as a mark of esteem for himself. Two conditions only he would make--the first, that, as long as he lived, the shooting should be Mr. Palmer's, to use or to let, and should extend over the whole estate; the second, that the chief should assume the baronetcy which belonged to him. My reader will regard the proposition as not ungenerous, however much the money value of the land lay in the shooting. As Alister took leave of his mother for the night, he gave her the letter. She took it, read it slowly, laughed angrily, smiled scornfully, wept bitterly, crushed it in her hand, and walked up to her room with her head high. All the time she was preparing for her bed, she was talking in her spirit with her husband. When she lay down she became a mere prey to her own thoughts, and was pulled, and torn, and hurt by them for hours ere she set herself to rule them. For the first time in her life she distrusted her son. She did not know what he would do! The temptation would surely be too strong for him! Two good things were set over against one evil thing--an evil thing, however, with which nobody would associate blame, an evil thing which would raise him high in the respect of everyone whose respect was not worth having! --the woman he loved and the land of his ancestors on the one side, and only the money that bought the land for him on the other! --would he hold out? He must take the three together, or have none of them! Her fear for him grew and possessed her. She grew cold as death. Why did he give her the letter, and go without saying a word? She knew well the arguments he would adduce! Henceforward and for ever there would be a gulf between them! The poor religion he had would never serve to keep him straight! What was it but a compromise with pride and self-sufficiency! It could bear no such strain! He acknowledged God, but not God reconciled in Christ, only God such as unregenerate man would have him! And when Ian came home, he would be sure to side with Alister! There was but one excuse for the poor boy--and that a miserable one: the blinding of love! Yes there was more excuse than that: to be lord of the old lands, with the old clan growing and gathering again about its chief! It was a temptation fit to ruin an archangel! What could he not do then for his people! What could he not do for the land! And for her, she might have her Ian always at home with her! God forbid she should buy even such bliss at such a cost! She was only thinking, she said to herself, how, if the thing had to be, she would make the best of it: she was bound as a mother to do that! But the edge of the wedge was in. She said to herself afterwards, that the enemy of her soul must have been lying in wait for her that night; she almost believed in some bodily presence of him in her room: how otherwise could she account for her fall! he must have been permitted to tempt her, because, in condemning evil, she had given way to contempt and worldly pride. Her thoughts unchecked flowed forward. They lingered brooding for a time on the joys that might be hers--the joys of the mother of a chief over territory as well as hearts. Then they stole round, and began to flow the other way. Ere the thing had come she began to make the best of it for the sake of her son and the bond between them; then she began to excuse it for the sake of the clan; and now she began to justify it a little for the sake of the world! Everything that could favour the acceptance of the offer came up clear before her. The land was the same as it always had been! it had never been in the distillery! it had never been in the brew-house! it was clean, whoever had transacted concerning it, through whatever hands it had passed! A good cow was a good cow, had she been twenty times reaved! For Mr. Palmer to give and Alister to take the land back, would be some amends to the nation, grievously injured in the money of its purchase! The deed would restore to the redeeming and uplifting influence of her son many who were fast perishing from poverty and whisky; for, their houses and crofts once more in the power of their chief, he would again be their landlord as well! It would be a pure exercise of the law of compensation! Hundreds who had gone abroad would return to replenish the old glens with the true national wealth--with men and women, and children growing to be men and women, for the hour of their country's need! These were the true, the golden crops! The glorious time she had herself seen would return, when Strathruadh could alone send out a regiment of the soldiers that may be defeated, but will not live to know it. The dream of her boys would come true! they would rebuild the old castle, and make it a landmark in the history of the highlands! But while she stood elate upon this high-soaring peak of the dark mountains of ambition, sudden before her mind's eye rose the face of her husband, sudden his voice was in her ear; he seemed to stand above her in the pulpit, reading from the prophet Isaiah the four Woes that begin four contiguous chapters:--"Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!" --"Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! Add ye year to year; let them kill sacrifices; yet I will distress Ariel." --"Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin!" --"Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the holy one of Israel, neither seek the Lord!" Then followed the words opening the next chapter:--"Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest." All this, in solemn order, one woe after the other, she heard in the very voice of her husband; in awful spiritual procession, they passed before her listening mind! She grew cold as the dead, and shuddered and shivered. She looked over the edge into the heart of a black gulf, into which she had been on the point of casting herself--say rather, down whose side, searching for an easy descent, she had already slid a long way, when the voice from above recalled her! She covered her face with her hands and wept--ashamed before God, ashamed before her husband. It was a shame unutterable that the thing should even have looked tempting! She cried for forgiveness, rose, and sought Alister's room. Seldom since he was a man had she visited her elder son in his chamber. She cherished for him, as chief, something of the reverence of the clan. The same familiarity had never existed between them as between her and Ian. Now she was going to wake him, and hold a solemn talk with him. Not a moment longer should he stand leaning over the gulf into which she had herself well nigh fallen! She found him awake, and troubled, though not with an eternal trouble such as hers. "I thought I should find you asleep, Alister!" she said. "It was not very likely, mother!" he answered gently. "You too have been tried with terrible thoughts?" "I have been tried, but hardly with terrible thoughts: I know that Mercy loves me!" "Ah, my son, my dear son! love itself is the terrible thing! It has drawn many a man from the way of peace!" "Did it draw you and my father from the way of peace?" asked Alister. "Not for a moment!" she answered. "It made our steps firmer in the way." "Then why should you fear it will draw me from it? I hope I have never made you think I was not following my father and you!" "Who knows what either of us might have done, with such a temptation as yours!" "Either you say, mother, that my father was not so good as I think him, or that he did what he did in his own strength!" "' Let him that thinketh '--you know the rest!" rejoined the mother. "I don't think I am tempted to anything just now." "There it is, you see! --the temptation so subtle that you do not suspect its character!" "I am confident my father would have done just as I mean to do!" "What do you mean to do?" "Is it my own mother asks me? Does she distrust her husband and her son together?" It began to dawn on the mother that she had fallen into her own temptation through distrust of her son. Because she-distrusted him, she sought excuse for him, and excuse had turned to all but justification: she had given place to the devil! But she must be sure about Alister! She had had enough of the wiles of Satan: she must not trust her impressions! The enemy might even now be bent on deceiving her afresh! For a moment she kept silence, then said:-- "It would be a grand thing to have the whole country-side your own again--wouldn't it, Alister?" "It would, mother!" he answered. "And have all your people quite under your own care?" "A grand thing, indeed, mother!" "How can you say then it is no temptation to you?" "Because it is none." "How is that?" "I would not have my clan under a factor of Satan's, mother!" "I do not understand you!" "What else should I be, if I accepted the oversight of them on terms of allegiance to him! That was how he tempted Jesus. I will not be the devil's steward, to call any land or any people mine!" His mother kissed him on the forehead, walked erect from the room, and went to her own to humble herself afresh. In the morning, Alister took his dinner of bread and cheese in his pocket, and set out for the tomb on the hill-top. There he remained until the evening, and wrote his answer, sorely missing Ian. He begged Mr. Peregrine Palmer to dismiss the idea of enriching him, thanked him for his great liberality, but declared himself entirely content, and determined not to change his position. He could not and would not avail himself of his generosity. Mr. Palmer, unable to suspect the reasons at work in the chief's mind, pleased with the genuineness of his acknowledgment, and regarding him as a silly fellow who would quixotically outdo him in magnanimity, answered in a more familiar, almost jocular strain. He must not be unreasonable, he said; pride was no doubt an estimable weakness, but it might be carried too far; men must act upon realities not fancies; he must learn to have an eye to the main chance, and eschew heroics: what was life without money! It was not as if he gave it grudgingly, for he made him heartily welcome. The property was in truth but a flea-bite to him! He hoped the Macruadh would live long to enjoy it, and make his father-in-law the great grandfather of chiefs, perpetuating his memory to ages unborn. There was more to the same effect, void neither of eloquence nor of a certain good-heartedness, which the laird both recognized and felt. It was again his painful turn. He had now to make his refusal as positive as words could make it. He said he was sorry to appear headstrong, perhaps uncivil and ungrateful, but he could not and would not accept anything beyond the priceless gift of Mercy's hand. Not even then did Peregrine Palmer divine that his offered gift was despised; that idea was to him all but impossible of conception. He read merely opposition, and was determined to have his way. Next time he too wrote positively, though far from unkindly:--the Macruadh must take the land with his daughter, or leave both! The chief replied that he could not yield his claim to Mercy, for he loved her, and believed she loved him; therefore begged Mr. Peregrine Palmer, of his generosity, to leave the decision with his daughter. The next was a letter from Mercy, entreating Alister not to hurt her father by seeming to doubt the kindness of his intentions. She assured him her father was not the man to interfere with his management of the estate, the shooting was all he cared about; and if that was the difficulty, she imagined even that might be got over. She ended praying that he would, for her sake, cease making much of a trifle, for such the greatest property in the world must be betwixt them. No man, she said, could love a woman right, who would not be under the poorest obligation to her people! The chief answered her in the tenderest way, assuring her that if the property had been hers he would only have blessed her for it; that he was not making much ado about nothing; that pride, or unwillingness to be indebted, had nothing to do with his determination; that the thing was with him in very truth a matter of conscience. He implored her therefore from the bottom of his heart to do her best to persuade her father--if she would save him who loved her more than his own soul, from a misery God only could make him able to bear. Mercy was bewildered. She neither understood nor suspected. She wrote again, saying her father was now thoroughly angry; that she found herself without argument, the thing being incomprehensible to her as to her father; that she could not see where the conscience of the thing lay. Her terror was, that, if he persisted, she would be driven to think he did not care for her; his behaviour she had tried in vain to reconcile with what he had taught her; if he destroyed her faith in him, all her faith might go, and she be left without God as well as without him! Then Alister saw that necessity had culminated, and that it was no longer possible to hold anything back. Whatever other suffering he might cause her, Mercy must not be left to think him capable of sacrificing her to an absurdity! She must know the truth of the matter, and how it was to him of the deepest conscience! He must let her see that if he allowed her to persuade him, it would be to go about thenceforward consumed of self-contempt, a slave to the property, no more its owner than if he had stolen it, and in danger of committing suicide to escape hating his wife! For the man without a tender conscience, cannot imagine the state to which another may come, who carries one about with him, stinging and accusing him all day long. So, out of a heart aching with very fullness, Alister wrote the truth to Mercy. And Mercy, though it filled her with grief and shame, had so much love for the truth, and for the man who had waked that love, that she understood him, and loved him through all the pain of his words; loved him the more for daring the risk of losing her; loved him yet the more for cleaving to her while loathing the mere thought of sharing her wealth; loved him most of all that he was immaculate in truth. She carried the letter to her father's room, laid it before him without a word, and went out again. The storm gathered swiftly, and burst at once. Not two minutes seemed to have passed when she heard his door open, and a voice of wrathful displeasure call out her name. She returned--in fear, but in fortitude. Then first she knew her father! --for although wrath and injustice were at home in him, they seldom showed themselves out of doors. He treated her as a willing party to an unspeakable insult from a highland boor to her own father. To hand him such a letter was the same as to have written it herself! She identified herself with the writer when she became the bearer of the mangy hound's insolence! He raged at Mercy as in truth he had never raged before. If once she spoke to the fellow again, he would turn her out of the house! She would have left the room. He locked the door, set a chair before his writing table, and ordered her to sit there and write to his dictation. But no power on earth or under it would have prevailed to make Mercy write as her own the words that were not hers. "You must excuse me, papa!" she said in a tone unheard from her before. This raising of the rampart of human dignity, crowned with refusal, between him and his own child, galled him afresh. "Then you shall be compelled!" he said, with an oath through his clenched teeth. Mercy stood silent and motionless. "Go to your room. By heaven you shall stay there till you do as I tell you!" He was between her and the door. "You need not think to gain your point by obstinacy," he added. "I swear that not another word shall pass between you and that blockhead of a chief--not if I have to turn watch-dog myself!" He made way for her, but did not open the door. She left the room too angry to cry, and went to her own. Her fear of her father had vanished. With Alister on her side she could stand against the world! She went to her window. She could not see the cottage from it, but she could see the ruin, and the hill of the crescent fire, on which she had passed through the shadow of death. Gazing on the hill she remembered what Alister would have her do, and with her Father in heaven sought shelter from her father on earth.	{ "id": "5968" }
8	MISTRESS CONAL.	Mr. Peregrine Palmer's generosity had in part rested on the idea of securing the estate against reverse of fortune, sufficiently possible though not expected; while with the improvements almost in hand, the shooting would make him a large return. He felt the more wronged by the ridiculous scruples of the chief--in which after all, though he could not have said why, he did not quite believe. It never occurred to him that, even had the land been so come by that the chief could accept a gift of it, he would, upon the discovery that it had been so secured from the donor's creditors, at once have insisted on placing it at their disposal. His wrath proceeded to vent itself in hastening the realization of his schemes of improvement, for he was well aware they would be worse than distasteful to the Macruadh. Their first requirement was the removal of every peasant within his power capable of violating the sanctity of the deer forest into which he and his next neighbour had agreed to turn the whole of their property. While the settlement of his daughter was pending, he had seen that the point might cause trouble unless previously understood between him and the chief; but he never doubted the recovery of the land would reconcile the latter to the loss of the men. Now he chuckled with wrathful chuckle to think how entirely he had him in his power for justifiable annoyance; for he believed himself about to do nothing but good to THE COUNTRY in removing from it its miserable inhabitants, whom the sentimental indulgence of their so-called chief kept contented with their poverty, and with whom interference must now enrage him. How he hated the whole wretched pack! Mr. Palmer's doing of good to the country consisted in making the land yield more money into the pockets of Mr. Brander and himself by feeding wild animals instead of men. To tell such land-owners that they are simply running a tilt at the creative energy, can be of no use: they do not believe in God, however much they may protest and imagine they do. The next day but one, he sent Mistress Conal the message that she must be out of her hut, goods and gear, within a fortnight. He was not sure that the thing was legally correct, but he would risk it. She might go to law if she would, but he would make a beginning with her! The chief might take up her quarrel if he chose: nothing would please Mr. Palmer more than to involve him in a law-suit, clear him out, and send him adrift! His money might be contemptible, but the chief should find it at least dangerous! Contempt would not stave off a land-slip! Mistress Conal, with a rage and scorn that made her feel every inch a witch, and accompanied by her black cat, which might or might not be the innocent animal the neighbours did not think him, hurried to the Macruadh, and informed him that "the lowland thief" had given her notice to quit the house of her fathers within a fortnight. "I fear much we cannot help it! the house is on his land!" said the chief sorrowfully. "His land!" echoed the old woman. "Is the nest of the old eagle his land? Can he make his heather white or his ptarmigan black? Will he dry up the lochs, and stay the rivers? Will he remove the mountains from their places, or cause the generations of men to cease from the earth? Defend me, chief! I come to you for the help that was never sought in vain from the Macruadh!" "What help I have is yours without the asking," returned the chief. "I cannot do more than is in my power! One thing only I can promise you--that you shall lack neither food nor shelter." "My chief will abandon me to the wolf!" she cried. "Never! But I can only protect you, not your house. He may have no right to turn you out at such short notice; but it could only be a matter of weeks. To go to law with him would but leave me without a roof to shelter you when your own was gone!" "The dead would have shown him into the dark, ere he turned me into the cold!" she muttered, and turning, left him. The chief was greatly troubled. He had heard nothing of such an intention on the part of his neighbour. Could it be for revenge? He had heard nothing yet of his answer to Mercy! All he could do was to represent to Mr. Palmer the trouble the poor woman was in, and let him know that the proceeding threatened would render him very unpopular in the strath. This he thought it best to do by letter. It could not enrage Mr. Palmer more, but it enraged him afresh. He vowed that the moment the time was up, out the old witch should go, neck and crop; and with the help of Mr. Brander, provided men for the enforcement of his purpose who did not belong to the neighbourhood. The chief kept hoping to hear from the New House, but neither his letter to Mercy nor to her father received any answer. How he wished for Ian to tell him what he ought to do! His mother could not help him. He saw nothing for it but wait events. Day after day passed, and he heard nothing. He would have tried to find out the state of things at the New House, but until war was declared that would not be right! Mr. Palmer might be seeking how with dignity to move in the matter, for certainly the chief had placed him in a position yet more unpleasant than his own! He must wait on! The very day fortnight after the notice given, about three o'clock in the afternoon, came flying to the chief a ragged little urchin of the village, too breathless almost to make intelligible his news--that there were men at Mistress Conal's who would not go out of her house, and she and her old black cat were swearing at them. The chief ran: could the new laird be actually unhousing the aged, helpless woman? It was the part of a devil and not of a man! As he neared the place--there were her poor possessions already on the roadside! --her one chair and stool, her bedding, her three-footed pot, her girdle, her big chest, all that she could call hers in the world! and when he came in sight of the cottage, there she was being brought out of it, struggling, screaming, and cursing, in the grasp of two men! Fierce in its glow was the torrent of Gaelic that rushed from the crater of her lips, molten in the volcanic depths of her indignant soul. When one thinks of the appalling amount of rage exhausted by poor humans upon wrong, the energy of indignation, whether issued or suppressed, and how little it has done to right wrong, to draw acknowledgment or amends from self-satisfied insolence, he naturally asks what becomes of so much vital force. Can it fare differently from other forces, and be lost? The energy of evil is turned into the mill-race of good; but the wrath of man, even his righteous wrath, worketh not the righteousness of God! What becomes of it? If it be not lost, and have but changed its form, in what shape shall we look for it? "Set her down," cried the chief. "I will take care of her." When she heard the voice of her champion, the old woman let go a cat-like screech of triumph, and her gliding Gaelic, smoothness itself in articulation, flowed yet firier in word, and fiercer in tone. But the who were thus ejecting her--hangers on of the sheriff-court in the county town, employed to give a colour of law to the doubtful proceeding--did not know the chief. "Oh, we'll set her down," answered one of them insolently, "--and glad enough too! but we'll have her on the public road with her sticks first!" Infuriated by the man's disregard of her chief, Mistress Conal struck her nails into his face, and with a curse he flung her from him. She turned instantly on the other with the same argument ad hominem, and found herself staggering on her own weak limbs to a severe fall, when the chief caught and saved her. She struggled hard to break from him and rush again into the hut, declaring she would not leave it if they burned her alive in it, but he held her fast. There was a pause, for one or two who had accompanied the men employed, knew the chief, and their reluctance to go on with the ruthless deed in his presence, influenced the rest. Report of the ejection had spread, and the neighbours came running from the village. A crowd seemed to be gathering. Again and again Mistress Conal tried to escape from Alister and rush into the cottage. "You too, my chief!" she cried. "You turned against the poor of your people!" "No, Mistress Conal," he answered. "I am too much your friend to let you kill yourself!" "We have orders, Macruadh, to set fire to the hovel," said one of the men, touching his hat respectfully. "They'll roast my black one!" shrieked the old woman. "Small fear for him," said a man's voice from the little crowd, "if half be true--!" Apparently the speaker dared no more. "Fire won't singe a hair of him, Mistress Conal," said another voice. "You know it; he's used to it!" "Come along, and let's get it over!" cried the leader of the ejection-party. "It--won't take many minutes once it's well a going, and there's fire enough on the hearth to set Ben Cruachan in a blaze!" "Is everything out of it?" demanded the chief. "All but her cat. We've done our best, sir, and searched everywhere, but he's not to be found. There's nothing else left." "It's a lie!" screamed Mistress Conal. "Is there not a great pile of peats, carried on my own back from the moss! Ach, you robbers! Would you burn the good peats?" "What good will the peats be to you, woman," said one of them not unkindly, "when you have no hearth?" She gave a loud wail, but checked it. "I will burn them on the road," she said. "They will keep me a few hours from the dark! When I die I will go straight up to God and implore his curse upon you, on your bed and board, your hands and tools, your body and soul. May your every prayer be lost in the wide murk, and never come at his ears! May--" "Hush! hush!" interposed the chief with great gentleness. "You do not know what you are saying. But you do know who tells us to forgive our enemies!" "It's well for HIM to forgive," she screamed, "sitting on his grand throne, and leaving me to be turned out of my blessed house, on to the cold road!" "Nannie!" said the chief, calling her by her name, "because a man is unjust to you, is that a reason for you to be unjust to him who died for you? You know as well as he, that you will not be left out on the cold road. He knows, and so do you, that while I have a house over my head, there is a warm corner in it for you! And as for his sitting on his throne, you know that all these years he has been trying to take you up beside him, and can't get you to set your foot on the first step of it! Be ashamed of yourself, Nannie!" She was silent. "Bring out her peats," he said, turning to the bystanders; "we have small need, with winter on the road, to waste any of God's gifts!" They obeyed. But as they carried them out, and down to the road, the number of Mistress Conal's friends kept growing, and a laying together of heads began, and a gathering of human fire under glooming eyebrows. It looked threatening. Suddenly Mistress Conal broke out in a wild yet awful speech, wherein truth indeed was the fuel, but earthly wrath supplied the prophetic fire. Her friends suspended their talk, and her foes their work, to listen. English is by no means equally poetic with the Gaelic, regarded as a language, and ill-serves to represent her utterance. Much that seems natural in the one language, seems forced and unreal amidst the less imaginative forms of the other. I will nevertheless attempt in English what can prove little better than an imitation of her prophetic outpouring. It was like a sermon in this, that she began with a text:-- "Woe unto them," she said--and her voice sounded like the wind among the great stones of a hillside--"that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" This woe she followed with woe upon woe, and curse upon curse, now from the Bible, now from some old poem of the country, and now from the bitterness of her own heart. Then she broke out in purely native eloquence:-- "Who art thou, O man, born of a woman, to say to thy brother, 'Depart from this earth: here is no footing for thee: all the room had been taken for me ere thou wast heard of! What right hast thou in a world where I want room for the red deer, and the big sheep, and the brown cattle? Go up, thou infant bald-head! Is there not room above, in the fields of the air? Is there not room below with the dead? Verily there is none here upon the earth!' Who art thou, I say, to speak thus to thy fellow, as if he entered the world by another door than thyself! Because thou art rich, is he not also a man? --a man made in the image of the same God? Who but God sent him? And who but God, save thy father was indeed the devil, hath sent thee? Thou hast to make room for thy brother! What brother of thy house, when a child is born into it, would presume to say, 'Let him begone, and speedily! I do not want him! There is no room for him! I require it all for myself!' Wilt thou say of any man, 'He is not my brother,' when God says he is! If thou say, 'Am I therefore his keeper?' God for that saying will brand thee with the brand of Cain. Yea, the hour will come when those ye will not give room to breathe, will rise panting in the agony, yea fury of their need, and cry, 'If we may neither eat nor lie down by their leave, lo, we are strong! let us take what they will not give! If we die we but die!' Then shall there be blood to the knees of the fighting men, yea, to the horses' bridles; and the earth shall be left desolate because of you, foul feeders on the flesh and blood, on the bodies and souls of men! In the pit of hell you will find room enough, but no drop of water; and it will comfort you little that ye lived merrily among pining men! Which of us has coveted your silver or your gold? Which of us has stretched out the hand to take of your wheat or your barley? All we ask is room to live! But because ye would see the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, ye have crushed and straitened us till we are ready to cry out, 'God, for thy mercy's sake, let us die, lest we be guilty of our own blood!'" A solitary man had come down the hill behind, and stood alone listening. It was the mover of the wickedness. In the old time the rights of the people in the land were fully recognized; but when the chiefs of Clanruadh sold it, they could not indeed sell the rights that were not theirs, but they forgot to secure them for the helpless, and they were now in the grasp of the selfish and greedy, the devourers of the poor. He did not understand a word the woman was saying, but he was pleased to look on her rage, and see the man who had insulted him suffer with her. When he began to note the glances of lurid fire which every now and then turned upon him during Mistress Conal's speech, he scorned the indication: such poor creatures dared venture nothing, he thought, against the mere appearance of law. Under what he counted the chiefs contempt, he had already grown worse; and the thought that perhaps the great world might one day look upon him with like contempt, wrought in him bitterly; he had not the assurance of rectitude which makes contempt hurtless. He was crueller now than before the chief's letter to his daughter. When Mistress Conal saw him, she addressed herself to him directly. What he would have felt had he understood, I cannot tell. Never in this life did he know how the weak can despise the strong, how the poor can scorn the rich! "Worm!" she said, "uncontent with holding the land, eating the earth that another may not share! the worms eat but what their bodies will hold, and thou canst devour but the fill of thy life! The hour is at hand when the earth will swallow thee, and thy fellow worms will eat thee, as thou hast eaten men. The possessions of thy brethren thou hast consumed, so that they are not! The holy and beautiful house of my fathers,--" She spoke of her poor little cottage, but in the words lay spiritual fact. " --mock not its poverty!" she went on, as if forestalling contempt; "for is it not to me a holy house where the woman lay in the agony whence first I opened my eyes to the sun? Is it not a holy house where my father prayed morning and evening, and read the words of grace and comfort? Is it not to me sacred as the cottage at Nazareth to the poor man who lived there with his peasants? And is not that a beautiful house in which a woman's ear did first listen to the words of love? Old and despised I am, but once I was younger than any of you, and ye will be old and decrepit as I, if the curse of God do not cut you off too soon. My Alister would have taken any two of you and knocked your heads together. He died fighting for his country; and for his sake the voice of man's love has never again entered my heart! I knew a true man, and could be true also. Would to God I were with him! You man-trapping, land-reaving, house-burning Sasunnach, do your worst! I care not." She ceased, and the spell was broken. "Come, come!" said one of the men impatiently. "Tom, you get a peat, and set it on the top of the wall, under the roof. You, too, George! --and be quick. Peats all around! there are plenty on the hearth! --How's the wind blowing? --You, Henry, make a few holes in the wall here, outside, and we'll set live peats in them. It's time there was an end to this!" "You're right; but there's a better way to end it!" returned one of the clan, and gave him a shove that sent him to the ground. "Men, do your duty!" cried Mr. Palmer from behind. " _I_ am here--to see you do it! Never mind the old woman! Of course she thinks it hard; but hard things have got to be done! it's the way of the world, and all for the best." "Mr. Palmer," said another of the clan, "the old woman has the right of you: she and hers have lived there, in that cottage, for nigh a hundred years." "She has no right. If she thinks she has, let her go to the law for it. In the meantime I choose to turn her off my land. What's mine's mine, as I mean every man jack of you to know--chief and beggar!" The Macruadh walked up to him. "Pardon me, sir," he said: "I doubt much if you have a legal right to disturb the poor woman. She has never paid rent for her hut, and it has always been looked upon as her property." "Then the chief that sold it swindled both me and her!" stammered Mr. Palmer, white with rage. "But as for you who call yourself a chief, you are the most insolent, ill-bred fellow I ever had to do with, and I have not another word to say to you!" A silence like that before a thunderstorm succeeded: not a man of the clan could for the moment trust his hearing. But there is nothing the Celtic nature resents like rudeness: half a dozen at once of the Macruadhs rushed upon the insulter of their chief, intent on his punishment. "One of you touch him," cried Alister, "and I will knock him down. I would if he were my foster-brother!" Each eager assailant stood like a block. "Finish your work, men!" shouted Mr. Palmer. To do him justice, he was no coward. "Clansmen," said the chief, "let him have his way. I do not see how to resist the wrong without bringing more evil upon us than we can meet. We must leave it to him who says 'Vengeance is mine.'" The Macruadhs murmured their obedience, and stood sullenly looking on. The disseizors went into the hut, and carried out the last of the fuel. Then they scooped holes in the turf walls, inside to leeward, outside to windward, and taking live peats from the hearth, put them in the holes. A few minutes, and poor Nannie's "holy and beautiful house" was a great fire. When they began to apply the peats, Alister would at once have taken the old woman away, but he dreaded an outbreak, and lingered. When the fire began to run up the roof, Mistress Conal broke from him, and darted to the door. Every one rushed to seize her, Mr. Palmer with the rest. "Blackie! Blackie! Blackie!" she shrieked like a madwoman. While the men encumbered each other in their endeavours to get her away, down shot the cat from the blazing roof, a fizz of fire in his black fur, his tail as thick as his neck, an infernal howling screech of hatred in his horrible throat, and, wild with rage and fear, flung himself straight upon Mr. Palmer. A roar of delighted laughter burst forth. He bawled out--and his bawl was mingled with a scream--to take the brute off him, and his own men hurried to his rescue; but the fury-frantic animal had dug his claws and teeth into his face, and clung to him so that they had to choke him off. The chief caught up Mistress Conal and carried her away: there was no danger of any one hurting Mr. Palmer now! He bore her on one arm like a child, and indeed she was not much heavier. But she kept her face turned and her eyes fixed on her burning home, and leaning over the shoulder of the chief, poured out, as he carried her farther and farther from the scene of the outrage, a flood of maledictory prophecy against the doers of the deed. The laird said never a word, never looked behind him, while she, almost tumbling down his back as she cursed with outstretched arms, deafened him with her raging. He walked steadily down the path to the road, where he stepped into the midst of her goods and chattels. The sight of them diverted a little the current of her wrath. "Where are you going, Macruadh?" she cried, as he walked on. "See you not my property lying to the hand of the thief? Know you not that the greedy Sasunnach will sweep everything away!" "I can't carry them and you too, Mistress Conal!" said the chief gayly. "Set me down then. Who ever asked you to carry me! And where would you be carrying me? My place is with my things!" "Your place is with me, Mistress Conal! I belong to you, and you belong to me, and I am taking you home to my mother." At the word, silence fell, not on the lips, but on the soul of the raving prophetess: the chief she loved, his mother she feared. "Set me down, Macruadh!" she pleaded in gentle tone. "Don't carry me to her empty-handed! Set me down straight; I will load my back with my goods, and bear them to my lady, and throw them at her feet." "As soon as we get to the cottage," said the chief, striding on with his reluctant burden, "I will send up two men with wheelbarrows to bring them home." "HOME, said you?" cried the old woman, and burst into the tearless wailing of a child; "there is a home for me no more! My house was all that was left me of my people, and it is your own that make a house a home! In the long winter nights, when I sat by the fire and heard the wind howl, and the snow pat, pat like the small hands of my little brothers on the window, my heart grew glad within me, and the dead came back to my soul! When I took the book, I heard the spirit of my father reading through my own lips! And oh, my mother! my mother!" She ceased as if in despair. "Surely, Nannie, you will be at home with your chief!" said Alister. "My house is your house now, and your dead will come to it and be welcome!" "It is their chief's house, and they will!" she returned hopefully. "They loved their chief. --Shall we not make a fine clan when we're all gathered, we Macmadhs! Man nor woman can say I did anything to disgrace it!" "Lest we should disgrace it," answered the chief, "we must bear with patience what is sent upon it." He carried her into the drawing-room and told her story, then stood, to the delighted amusement of his mother, with his little old sister in his arms, waiting her orders, like a big boy carrying the baby, who now and then moaned a little, but did not speak. Mrs. Macruadh called Nancy, and told her to bring the tea-tray, and then, get ready for Mistress Conal the room next Nancy's own, that she might be near to wait on her; and thither, when warmed and fed, the chief carried her. But the terrible excitement had so thinned the mainspring of her time-watch, that it soon broke. She did not live many weeks. From the first she sank into great dejection, and her mind wandered. She said her father never came to see her now; that he was displeased with her for leaving the house; and that she knew now she ought to have stayed and been burned in it. The chief reminded her that she had no choice, but had been carried bodily away. "Yes, yes," she answered; "but they do not know that! I must make haste and tell them! Who can bear her own people to think ill of her! --I'm coming! I'm coming! I'll tell you all about it! I'm an honest woman yet!" Another thing troubled her sorely, for which she would hear no consolation; Blackie had vanished! --whether he was killed at the time of his onslaught on Mr. Palmer, or was afterwards shot; whether, disgusted with the treatment of his old home, or the memory of what he had there suffered, he had fled the strath, and gone to the wild cats among the hills, or back to the place which some averred he came from, no one could tell. In her wanderings she talked more of her cat than of anything else, and would say things that with some would have gone far to justify the belief that the animal was by nature on familiar terms with the element which had yet driven him from his temporary home. Nancy was more than uneasy at having the witch so near, but by no means neglected her duty to her. One night she woke, and had for some time lain listening whether she stirred or not, when suddenly quavered through the dark the most horrible cat-cry she had ever heard. In abject terror she covered her head, and lay shuddering. The cry came again, and kept coming at regular intervals, but drawing nearer and nearer. Its expression was of intense and increasing pain. The creature whence it issued seemed to come close to the house, then with difficulty to scramble up on the roof, where it went on yowling, and screeching, and throwing itself about as if tying itself in knots, Nancy said, until at last it gave a great choking, gobbling scream, and fell to the ground, after which all was quiet. Persuading herself it was only a cat, she tried to sleep, and at length succeeded. When she woke in the morning, the first thing she did was to go out, fully expecting to find the cat lying at the foot of the wall. No cat was there. She went then as usual to attend to the old woman. Mistress Conal was dead and cold. The clan followed her body to the grave, and the black cat was never seen.	{ "id": "5968" }
9	THE MARCHES.	It was plainly of no use for the chief to attempt mollifying Mr. Palmer. So long as it was possible for him to be what he was, it must be impossible for him to understand the conscience that compelled the chief to refuse participation in the results of his life. Where a man's own conscience is content, how shall he listen to the remonstrance of another man's! But even if he could have understood that the offence was unavoidable, that would rather have increased than diminished the pain of the hurt; as it was, the chief's determination must seem to Mr. Palmer an unprovoked insult! Thus reflecting, Alister tried all he could to be fair to the man whom he had driven to cut his acquaintance. It was now a lonely time for Alister, lonelier than any ever before. Ian was not within reach even by letter; Mercy was shut up from him: he had not seen or heard from her since writing his explanation; and his mother did not sympathize with his dearest earthly desire: she would be greatly relieved, yea heartily glad, if Mercy was denied him! She loved Ian more than the chief, yet could have better borne to see him the husband of Mercy; what was wanting to the equality of her love was in this regard more than balanced by her respect for the chief of the clan and head of the family. Alister's light was thus left to burn in very darkness, that it might burn the better; for as strength is made perfect through weakness, so does the light, within grow by darkness. It was the people that sat in darkness that saw a great light. He was brought closer than ever to first principles; had to think and judge more than ever of the right thing to do--first of all, the right thing with regard to Mercy. Of giving her up, there was of course no thought; so long as she would be his, he was hers as entirely as the bonds of any marriage could make him! But she owed something to her father! and of all men the patriarchal chief was the last to dare interfere with the RIGHTS of a father. BUT THEY MUST BE RIGHTS, not rights turned into, or founded upon wrongs. With the first in acknowledging true, he would not be with the last even, in yielding to false rights! The question was, what were the rights of a father? One thing was clear, that it was the duty, therefore the right of a father, to prevent his child from giving herself away before she could know what she did; and Mercy was not yet of age. That one woman might be capable of knowing at fifteen, and another not at fifty, left untouched the necessity for fixing a limit. It was his own duty and right, on the other hand, to do what he could to prevent her from being in any way deceived concerning him. It was essential that nothing should be done, resolved, or yielded, by the girl, through any misunderstanding he could forestall, or because of any falsehood he could frustrate. He must therefore contrive to hold some communication with her! First of all, however, he must learn how she was treated! It was not only in fiction or the ancient clan-histories that tyrannical and cruel things were done! A tragedy is even more a tragedy that it has not much diversity of incident, that it is acted in commonplace surroundings, and that the agents of it are commonplace persons--fathers and mothers acting from the best of low or selfish motives. Where either Mammon or Society is worshipped, in love, longing, or fear, there is room for any falsehood, any cruelty, any suffering. There were several of the clan employed about the New House of whom Alister might have sought information; but he was of another construction from the man of fashion in the old plays, whose first love-strategy is always to bribe the lady's maid: the chief scorned to learn anything through those of a man's own household. He fired a gun, and ran up a flag on the old castle, which brought Rob of the Angels at full speed, and comforted the heart of Mercy sitting disconsolate at her window: it was her chiefs doing, and might have to do with her! Having told Rob the state of matters between him and the New House-- "I need not desire you, Rob," he concluded, "to be silent! You may of course let your father know, but never a soul besides. From this moment, every hour your father does not actually need you, be somewhere on the hills where you can see the New House. I want to learn first whether she goes out at all. With the dark you must draw nearer the house. But I will have no questioning of the servants or anyone employed about it; I will never use a man's pay to thwart his plans, nor yet make any man even unconsciously a traitor." Rob understood and departed; but before he had news for his master an event occurred which superseded his service. The neighbours, Mr. Peregrine Palmer and Mr. Brander, had begun to enclose their joint estates for a deer-forest, and had engaged men to act as curators. They were from the neighbourhood, but none of them belonged to Strathruadh, and not one knew the boundaries of the district they had to patrol; nor indeed were the boundaries everywhere precisely determined: why should they be, where all was heather and rock? Until game-sprinkled space grew valuable, who would care whether this or that lump of limestone, rooted in the solid earth, were the actual property of the one or the other! Either would make the other welcome to blast and cart it away! There was just one person who knew all about the boundaries that was to be known; he could not in places draw their lines with absolute assurance, but he had better grounds for his conclusions than anyone else could have; this was Hector of the Stags. For who so likely to understand them as he who knew the surface within them as well as the clay-floor of his own hut? If he did not everywhere know where the marchline fell, at least he knew perfectly where it ought to fall. It happened just at this time that THE MISTRESS told Hector she would be glad of a deer, intending to cure part for winter use; the next day, therefore,--the first of Rob of the Angels' secret service--he stalked one across the hill-farm, got a shot at it near the cave-house, brought it down, and was busy breaking it, when two men who had come creeping up behind, threw themselves upon him, and managed, well for themselves, to secure him before he had a chance of defending himself. Finding he was deaf and dumb, one of them knew who he must be, and would have let him go; but the other, eager to ingratiate himself with the new laird, used such, argument to the contrary as prevailed with his companion, and they set out for the New House, Hector between them with his hands tied. Annoyed and angry at being thus treated like a malefactor, he yet found amusement in the notion of their mistake. But he found it awkward to be unable to use that readiest weapon of human defence, the tongue. If only his EARS AND MOUTH, as he called Rob in their own speech, had been with him! When he saw, however, where they were taking him, he was comforted, for Rob was almost certain to see him: wherever he was, he was watching the New House! He went composedly along with them therefore, fuming and snorting, not caring to escape. When Rob caught sight of the three, he could not think how it was that his father walked so unlike himself. He could not be hurt, for his step was strong and steady as ever; not the less was there something of the rhythm gone out of his motion! there was "a broken music" in his gait! He took the telescope which the chief had lent him, and turned it upon him. Discovering then that his father's hands were bound behind his back, fiercest indignation overwhelmed the soul of Rob of the Angels. His father bound like a criminal! --his father, the best of men! What could the devils mean? Ah, they were taking him to the New House! He shut up his telescope, laid it down by a stone, and bounded to meet them, sharpening his knife on his hand as he went. The moment they were near enough, signs, unintelligible to the keepers, began to pass between the father and son: Rob's meant that he must let him pass unnoticed; Hector's that he understood. So, with but the usual salutation of a stranger, Rob passed them. The same moment he turned, and with one swift sweep of his knife, severed the bonds of his father. The old man stepped back, and father and son stood fronting the enemy. "Now," said Rob, "if you are honest men, stand to it! How dared you bind Hector of the Stags?" "Because he is not an honest man," replied one of them. Rob answered him with a blow. The man made at him, but Hector stepped between. "Say that again of my father," cried Rob, "who has no speech to defend himself, and I will drive my knife into you." "We are only doing our duty!" said the other. "We came upon him there cutting up the deer he had just killed on the new laird's land." "Who are you to say which is the stranger's, and which the Macruadh's? Neither my father nor I have ever seen the faces of you in the country! Will you pretend to know the marches better than my father, who was born and bred in the heather, and knows every stone on the face of the hills?" "We can't help where he was born or what he knows! he was on our land!" "He is the Macruadh's keeper, and was on his own land. You will get yourselves into trouble!" "We'll take our chance!" "Take your man then!" "If he try to escape, I swear by the bones of my grandfather," said the more inimical of the two, inheritor of a clan-feud with the Macruadhs, "I will shoot him." Bob of the Angels burst into a scornful laugh. "You will! will you?" "I will not kill him; I don't want to be hanged for him! but I will empty my shot-barrel into the legs of him! So take your chance; you are warned!" They had Hector's gun, and Rob had no weapon but his knife. Nor was he inclined to use either now he had cooled a little. He turned to his father. The old man understood perfectly what had passed between them, and signed to Rob that he would go on to the New House, and Rob might run and let the chief know what had happened. The same thing was in Rob's mind, for he saw how it would favour the desires of his chief, bringing them all naturally about the place. But he must first go with his father on the chance of learning something. "We will go with you," he said. "We don't want YOU!" "But I mean to go! --My father is not able to speak for himself!" "You know nothing." "I know what he knows. The lie does not grow in our strath." "You crow high, my cock!" "No higher than I strike," answered Rob. In the eyes of the men Rob was small and weak; but there was something in him notwithstanding that looked dangerous, and, though far from cowards, they thought it as well to leave him alone. Mercy at her window, where was her usual seat now, saw them coming, and instinctively connected their appearance with her father's new measures of protection; and when the men turned toward the kitchen, she ran down to learn what she could. Rob greeted her with a smile as he entered. "I am going to fetch the Macruadh," he whispered, and turning went out again. He told the chief that at the word her face lighted up as with the rise of the moon. One of the maids went and told her master that they had got a poacher in the kitchen. Mr. Palmer's eyes lightened under his black brows when he saw the captive, whom he knew by sight and by report. His men told him the story their own way, never hinting a doubt as to whose was the land on which the deer had been killed. "Where is the nearest magistrate?" he inquired with grand severity. "The nearest is the Macruadh, sir!" answered a highlander who had come from work in the garden to see what was going on. "I cannot apply to him; the fellow is one of his own men!" "The Macruadh does what is just!" rejoined the man. His master vouchsafed him no reply. He would not show his wrath against the chief: it would be undignified! "Take him to the tool-house, and lock him up till I think what to do with him. Bring me the key." The butler led the way, and Hector followed between his captors. They might have been showing him to his bed-room, so calm was he: Bob gone to fetch the chief, his imprisonment could not last! --and for the indignity, was he not in the right! As Mr. Palmer left the kitchen, his eye fell on Mercy. "Go to your room," he said angrily, and turned from her. She obeyed in silence, consoling herself that from her window she could see the arrival of the chief. Nor had she watched long when she saw him coming along the road with Rob. At the gate she lost sight of them. Presently she heard voices in the hall, and crept down the stair far enough to hear. "I could commit you for a breach of the peace, Mr. Palmer," she heard the chief say. "You ought to have brought the man to me. As a magistrate I order his release. But I give my word he shall be forthcoming when legally required." "Your word is no bail. The man was taken poaching; I have him, and I will keep him." "Let me see him then, that I may learn from himself where he shot the deer." "He shall go before Mr. Brander." "Then I beg you will take him at once. I will go with him. But listen a moment, Mr. Palmer. When this same man, my keeper, took your guest poaching on my ground, I let Mr. Sercombe go. I could have committed him as you would commit Hector. I ask you in return to let Hector go. Being deaf and dumb, and the hills the joy of his life, confinement will be terrible to him." "I will do nothing of the kind. You could never have committed a gentleman for a mistake. This is quite a different thing!" "It is a different thing, for Hector cannot have made a mistake. He could not have followed a deer on to your ground without knowing it!" "I make no question of that!" "He says he was not on your property." "Says!" "He is not a man to lie!" Mr. Palmer smiled. "Once more I pray you, let us see him together." "You shall not see him." "Then take him at once before Mr. Brander." "Mr. Brander is not at home." "Take him before SOME magistrate--I care not who. There is Mr. Chisholm!" "I will take him when and where it suits me." "Then as a magistrate I will set him at liberty. I am sorry to make myself unpleasant to you. Of all things I would have avoided it. But I cannot let the man suffer unjustly. Where have you put him?" "Where you will not find him." "He is one of my people; I must have him!" "Your people! A set of idle, poaching fellows! By heaven, the strath shall be rid of the pack of them before another year is out!" "While I have land in it with room for them to stand upon, the strath shall not be rid of them! --But this is idle! Where have you put Hector of the Stags?" Mr. Palmer laughed. "In safe keeping. There is no occasion to be uneasy about him! He shall have plenty to eat and drink, be well punished, and show the rest of the rascals the way out of the country!" "Then I must find him! You compel me!" So saying, the chief, with intent to begin his search at the top of the house in the hope of seeing Mercy, darted up the stair. She heard him coming, went a few steps higher, and waited. On the landing he saw her, white, with flashing eyes. Their hands clasped each other--for a moment only, but the moment was of eternity, not of time. "You will find Hector in the tool-house," she said aloud. "You shameless hussey!" cried her father, following the chief in a fury. Mercy ran up the stair. The chief turned and faced Mr. Palmer. "You have no business in my house!" "I have the right of a magistrate." "You have no right. Leave it at once." "Allow me to pass." "You ought to be ashamed of yourself--making a girl turn traitor to her own father!" "You ought to be proud of a daughter with the conscience and courage to turn against you!" The chief passed Mr. Palmer, and running down the stair, joined Rob of the Angels where he stood at the door in a group composed of the keepers and most of the servants. "Do you know the tool-house?" he said to Rob. "Yes, Macruadh." "Lead the way then. Your father is there." "On no account let them open the door," cried Mr. Palmer. "They may hold through it what communication they please." "You will not be saying much to a deaf man through inch boards!" remarked the clansman from the garden. Mr. Palmer hurried after them, and his men followed. Alister found the door fast and solid, without handle. He turned a look on his companion, and was about to run his weight against the lock. "It is too strong," said Rob. "Hector of the Stags must open it!" "But how? You cannot even let him know what you want!" Rob gave a smile, and going up to the door, laid himself against it, as close as he could stand, with his face upon it, and so stood silent. Mr. Palmer coming up with his attendants, all stood for a few moments in silence, wondering at Rob: he must be holding communication with his father--but how? Sounds began inside--first a tumbling of tools about, then an attack on the lock. "Come! come! this won't do!" said Mr. Palmer, approaching the door. "Prevent it then," said the chief. "Do what you will you cannot make him hear you, and while the door is between you, he cannot see you! If you do not open it, he will!" "Run," said Mr. Palmer to the butler; "you will find the key on my table! I don't want the lock ruined!" But there was no stopping the thing! Before the butler came back, the lock fell, the door opened, and out came Hector, wiping his brow with his sleeve, and looking as if he enjoyed the fun. The keepers darted forward. "Stand off!" said the chief stepping between. "I don't want to hurt you, but if you attempt to lay hands on him, I will." One of the men dodged round, and laid hold of Hector from behind; the other made a move towards him in front. Hector stood motionless for an instant, watching his chief, but when he saw him knock down the man before him, he had his own assailant by the throat in an instant, gave him a shake, and threw him beside his companion. "You shall suffer for this, Macruadh!" cried Mr. Palmer, coming close up to him, and speaking in a low, determined tone, carrying a conviction of unchangeableness. "Better leave what may not be the worst alone!" returned the chief. "It is of no use telling you how sorry I am to have to make myself disagreeable to you; but I give you fair warning that I will accept no refusal of the hand of your daughter from any but herself. As you have chosen to break with me, I accept your declaration of war, and tell you plainly I will do all I can to win your daughter, never asking your leave in respect of anything I may think it well to do. You will find there are stronger forces in the world than money. Henceforward I hold myself clear of any personal obligation to you except as Mercy's father and my enemy." From very rage Mr. Palmer was incapable of answering him. Alister turned from him, and in his excitement mechanically followed Rob, who was turning a corner of the house. It was not the way to the gate, but Rob had seen Mercy peeping round that same corner--anxious in truth about her father; she feared nothing for Alister. He came at once upon Mercy and Rob talking together. Rob withdrew and joined his father a little way off; they retired a few more paces, and stood waiting their chief's orders. "How AM I to see you again, Mercy?" said the chief hurriedly. "Can't you think of some way? Think quick." Now Mercy, as she sat alone at her window, had not unfrequently imagined the chief standing below on the walk, or just beyond in the belt of shrubbery; and now once more in her mind's eye suddenly seeing him there, she answered hurriedly, "Come under my window to-night." "I do not know which it is." "You see it from the castle. I will put a candle in it." "What hour?" "ANY time after midnight. I will sit there till you come." "Thank you," said the chief, and departed with his attendants. Mercy hastened into the house by a back door, but had to cross the hall to reach the stair. As she ran up, her father came in at the front door, saw her, and called her. She went down again to meet the tempest of his rage, which now broke upon her in gathered fury. He called her a treacherous, unnatural child, with every name he thought bad enough to characterize her conduct. Had she been to him as Began or Goneril, he could hardly have found worse names for her. She stood pale, but looked him in the face. Her mother came trembling as near as she dared, withered by her terror to almost twice her age. Mr. Palmer in his fury took a step towards Mercy as if he would strike her. Mercy did not move a muscle, but stood ready for the blow. Then love overcame her fear, and the wife and mother threw herself between, her arms round her husband, as if rather to protect him from the deed than her daughter from its hurt. "Go to your room, Mercy," she said. Mercy turned and went. She could not understand herself. She used to be afraid of her father when she knew no reason; now that all the bad in his nature and breeding took form and utterance, she found herself calm! But the thing that quieted her was in reality her sorrow that he should carry himself so wildly. What she thought was, if the mere sense of not being in the wrong made one able to endure so much, what must not the truth's sake enable one to bear! She sat down at her window to gaze and brood. When her father cooled down, he was annoyed with himself, not that he had been unjust, but that he had behaved with so little dignity. With brows black as evil, he sat degraded in his own eyes, resenting the degradation on his daughter. Every time he thought of her, new rage arose in his heart. He had been proud of his family autocracy. So seldom had it been necessary to enforce his authority, that he never doubted his wishes had but to be known to be obeyed. Born tyrannical, the characterless submission of his wife had nourished the tyrannical in him. Now, all at once, a daughter, the ugly one, from whom no credit was to be looked for, dared to defy him for a clown figuring in a worn-out rag of chieftainship--the musty fiction of a clan--half a dozen shepherds, crofters, weavers, and shoemakers, not the shadow of a gentleman among them! --a man who ate brose, went with bare knees, worked like any hind, and did not dare offend his wretched relations by calling his paltry farm his own! --for the sake of such a fellow, with a highland twang that disgusted his fastidious ear, his own daughter made a mock of his authority, treated him as a nobody! In his own house she had risen against him, and betrayed him to the insults of his enemy! His conscious importance, partly from doubt in itself, boiled and fumed, bubbled and steamed in the caldron of his angry brain. Not one, but many suns would go down upon such a wrath! "I wish I might never set eyes on the girl again!" he said to his wife. "A small enough loss the sight of her would be, the ugly, common-looking thing! I beg you will save me from it in future as much as you can. She makes me feel as if I should go out of my mind! --so calm, forsooth! so meek! so self-sufficient! --oh, quite a saint! --and so strong-minded! --equal to throwing her father over for a fellow she never saw till a year ago!" "She shall have her dinner sent up to her as usual," answered his wife with a sigh. "But, really, Peregrine, my dear, you must compose yourself! Love has driven many a woman to extremes!" "Love! Why should she love such a fellow? I see nothing in him to love! WHY should she love him? Tell me that! Give me one good reason for her folly, and I will forgive her--do anything for her! --anything but let her have the rascal! That I WILL NOT! Take for your son-in-law an ape that loathes your money, calls it filthy lucre--and means it! Not if I can help it! --Don't let me see her! I shall come to hate her! and that I would rather not; a man must love and cherish his own flesh! I shall go away, I must! --to get rid of the hateful face of the minx, with its selfrighteous, injured look staring at you!" "If you do, you can't expect me to prevent her from seeing him!" "Lock her up in the coal-hole--bury her if you like! I shall never ask what you have done with her! Never to see her again is all I care about!" "Ah, if she were really dead, you would want to see her again--after a while!" "I wish then she was dead, that I might want to see her again! It won't be sooner! Ten times rather than know her married to that beast, I would see her dead and buried!" The mother held her peace. He did not mean it, she said to herself. It was only his anger! But he did mean it; at that moment he would with joy have heard the earth fall on her coffin. Notwithstanding her faculty for shutting out the painful, her persistent self-assuring that it would blow over, and her confidence that things would by and by resume their course, Mrs. Palmer was in those days very unhappy. The former quiet once restored, she would take Mercy in hand, and reasoning with her, soon persuade her to what she pleased! It was her husband's severity that had brought it to this! The accomplice of her husband, she did not understand that influence works only between such as inhabit the same spiritual sphere: the daughter had been lifted into a region far above all the arguments of her mother--arguments poor in life, and base in reach.	{ "id": "5968" }
10	MIDNIGHT.	Mercy sat alone but not lonely at her window. A joy in her heart made her independent for the time of human intercourse. Life at the moment was livable without it, for there was no bar between her and her lover. The evening drew on. They sent her food. She forgot to eat it, and sat looking, till the lines of the horizon seemed grown into her mind like an etching. She watched the slow dusk swell and gather--with such delicate, soft-blending gradations in the birth of night as Edwin Waugh loves to seize and word-paint. Through all its fine evanescent change of thought and feeling she watched unconsciously; and the growth, death, and burial of that twilight were ever after a substratum to all the sadness and all the hope that visited her. Through palest eastern rose, through silvery gold and golden green and brown, the daylight passed into the shadow of the light, and the stars, like hope in despair, began to show themselves where they always were, and the night came on, and deeper and deeper sank the silence. Household sound expired, and no step came near her door. Her father had given orders, and was obeyed. Christina has stolen indeed from her own room and listened at hers, but hearing nor sound nor motion, had concluded it better for Mercy as well as safer for herself, to return. So she sat the sole wakeful thing in the house, for even her father slept. The earth had grown vague and dim, looking as it must look to the dead. Its oppressive solidity, its obtrusive HERENESS, dissolved in the dark, it left the soul to live its own life. She could still trace the meeting of earth and sky, each the evidence of the other, but the earth was content to be and not assert, and the sky lived only in the points of light that dotted its vaulted quiet. Sound itself seemed asleep, and filling the air with the repose of its slumber. Absolute silence the soul cannot grasp; therefore deepest silence seems ever, in Wordsworth's lovely phrase, wandering into sound, for silence is but the thin shadow of harmony--say rather creation's ear agape for sound, the waiting matrix of interwoven melodies, the sphere-bowl standing empty for the wine of the spirit. There may be yet another reason beyond its too great depth or height or strength, why we should be deaf to the spheral music; it may be that the absolute perfection of its harmony can take to our ears but the shape of silence. Content and patient, Mercy sat watching. It was just past midnight, but she had not yet lighted a candle, when something struck the window as with the soft blow of a moth's wing. Her heart gave a great leap. She listened breathless. Nothing followed. It must have been some flying night-thing, though surely too late in the year for a moth! It came again! She dared not speak. She softly opened the window. The darkness had thinned on the horizon, and the half-moon was lifting a corner above the edge of the world. Something in the shrubbery answered her shine, and without rustle of branch, quiet as a ghost, the chief stepped into the open space. Mercy leaned toward him and said, "Hush! speak low." "There is no need to say much," he answered. "I come only to tell you that, as man may, I am with you always." "How quietly you came! I did not hear a sound!" "I have been two hours here in the shrubbery." "And I not once to suspect it! You might have given me some hint! A very small one would have been enough! Why did you not let me know?" "It was not your hour; it is twelve but now; the moon comes to say so. I came for the luxury of expectation, and the delight of knowing you better attended than you thought: you knew me with you in spirit; I was with you in the body too!" "My chief!" she said softly. "I shall always find you nearer and better than I was able to think! I know I do not know how good you are." "I am good toward you, Mercy! I love you!" A long silence, save of shining eyes, followed. "We are waiting for God!" said Alister at length. "Waiting is loving," answered Mercy. She leaned out, looking down to her heaven. The moon had been climbing the sky, veiled in a little cloud. The cloud vanished, and her light fell on the chief. "Have you been to a ball?" said Mercy. "No, Mercy. I doubt if there will be any dancing more in Strathruadh!" "Then why are you in court dress?" "When should a Celt, who of all the world loves radiance and colour, put on his gay attire? For the multitude, or for the one?" "Thank you. Is it a compliment? --But after your love, everything fine seems only natural!" "In love there are no compliments; truth only walks the sacred path between the two doors. I will love you as my father loved my mother, and loves her still." "I do like to see you shining! It was kind of you to dress for the moon and me!" "Whoever loves the truth must love shining things! God is the father of lights, even of the lights hid in the dark earth--sapphires and rubies, and all the families of splendour." "I shall always see you like that!" "There is one thing I want to say to you, Mercy:--you will not think me indifferent however long I may be in proposing a definite plan for our future! We must wait upon God!" "I shall think nothing you would not have me think. A little while ago I might have dreamed anything, for I was fast asleep. I was dead till you waked me. If I were what girls call IN LOVE, I should be impatient to be with you; but I love you much more than that, and do not need to be always with you. You have made me able to think, and I can think about you! I was but a child, and you made a woman of me!" "God and Ian did," said Alister. "Yes, but through you, and I want to be worthy of you. A woman to whom a man's love was so little comfort that she pined away and died because she could not be married to him, would not be a wife worthy of my chief!" "Then you will always trust me?" "I will. When one really knows another, then all is safe!" "How many people do you know?" asked the chief. She thought a moment, and with a little laugh, replied, "You." "Pardon me, Mercy, but I do want to know how your father treats you!" "We will not talk about him, please. He is my father! --and so far yours that you are bound to make what excuse you can for him." "That I am bound to do, if he were no father to either of us. It is what God is always doing for us! --only he will never let us off." "He has had no one to teach him, Alister! and has always been rich, and accustomed to have his own way! I begin to think one punishment of making money in a wrong manner is to be prosperous in it!" "I am sure you are right! But will you be able to bear poverty, Mercy?" "Yes," she answered, but so carelessly that she seemed to speak without having thought. "You do not know what poverty means!" rejoined Alister. "We may have to endure much for our people!" "It means YOU any way, does it not? If you and poverty come together, welcome you and your friend! --I see I must confess a thing! Do you remember telling me to read Julius Caesar?" "Yes." "Do you remember how Portia gave herself a wound, that she might prove to her husband she was able to keep a secret?" "Yes, surely!" "I have my meals in my room now, so I can do as I please, and I never eat the nice things dear mother always sends me, but potatoes, and porridge, and bread and milk." "What IS that for, Mercy?" "To show you I am worthy of being poor--able at least to be poor. I have not once tasted anything VERY nice since the letter that made my father so angry." "You darling!" Of all men a highlander understands independence of the KIND of food. "But," continued Alister, "you need not go on with it; I am quite convinced; and we must take with thanksgiving what God gives us. Besides, you have to grow yet!" "Alister! and me like a May-pole!" "You are tall enough, but we are creatures of three dimensions, and need more than height. You must eat, or you will certainly be ill!" "Oh, I eat! But just as you please! Only it wouldn't do me the least harm so long as you didn't mind! It was as much to prove to myself I could, as to you! But don't you think it must be nearly time for people to wake from their first sleep?" The same instant there was a little noise--like a sob. Mercy started, and when she looked again Alister had vanished--as noiselessly as he came. For a moment she sat afraid to move. A wind came blowing upon her from the window: some one had opened her door! What if it were her father! She compelled herself to turn her head. It was something white! --it was Christina! She came to her through the shadow of the moonlight, put her arms round her, and pressed to her face a wet cheek. For a moment or two neither spoke. "I heard a little, Mercy!" sobbed Christina. "Forgive me; I meant no harm; I only wanted to know if you were awake; I was coming to see you." "Thank you, Chrissy! That was good of you!" "You are a dear! --and so is your chief! I am sorry I scared him! It made me so miserable to hear you so happy that I could not help it! Would you mind forgiving me, dear?" "I don't mind your hearing a bit. I am glad you should know how the chief loves me!" "But you must be careful, dear! Papa might pretend to take him for a robber, and shoot him!" "Oh, no, Chrissy! He wouldn't do that!" "I would not be too sure! I hadn't an idea before what papa was like! Oh what men are, and what they can be! I shall never hold up my head again!" With this incoherent speech, to Mercy's astonishment and consternation she burst into tears. Mercy tried to comfort her, but did not know how. She had seen for some time that there was a difference in her, that something was the matter, and wondered whether she could be missing Ian, but it was merest surmise. Perhaps now she would tell her! She was weeping like a child on her shoulder. Presently she began to tremble. Mercy coaxed her into her bed, and undressing quickly, lay down beside her, and took her in her arms to make her warm. Before the morning, with many breaks of sobbing and weeping, Christina had told Mercy her story. "I wish you would let me tell the chief!" she said. "He would know how to comfort you." "Thank you!" said Christina, with not a little indignation. "I forgot I was talking to a girl as good as married, who would not keep my secrets any more than her own!" She would have arisen at once to go to her own room, and the night that had brought such joy to Mercy threatened to end very sadly. She threw her arms round Christina's waist, locked her hands together, and held her fast. "Hear me, Chrissy, darling! I am a great big huge brute," she cried. "But I was only stupid. I would not tell a secret of yours even to Alister--not for worlds! If I did, he would be nearer despising me than I should know how to bear. I will not tell him. Did I ever break my word to you, Chrissy?" "No, never, Mercy!" responded Christina, and turning she put her arms round her. "Besides," she went on, "why should I go to anyone for counsel? Could I have a better counsellor than Ian? Is he not my friend? Oh, he is! he is! he said so! he said so!" The words prefaced another storm of tears. "He is going to write to me," she sobbed, as soon as she could again speak. "Perhaps he will love you yet, Chrissy!" "No, no; he will never love me that way! For goodness' sake don't hint at such a thing! I should not be able to write a word to him, if I thought that! I should feel a wolf in sheep's clothing! I have done with tricks and pretendings! Ian shall never say to himself, 'I wish I had not trusted that girl! I thought she was going to be honest! But what's bred in the bone--!' I declare, Mercy, I should blush myself out of being to learn he thought of me like that! I mean to be worthy of his friendship! His friendship is better than any other man's love! I will be worthy of it!" The poor girl burst yet again into tears--not so bitter as before, and ended them all at once with a kiss to Mercy. "For his sake," she said, "I am going to take care of Alister and you!" "Thank you! thank you, Chrissy! Only you must not do anything to offend papa! It is hard enough on him as it is! I cannot give up the chief to please him, for he has been a father to my better self; but we must do nothing to trouble him that we can help!"	{ "id": "5968" }
11	SOMETHING STRANGE.	Alister did not feel inclined to go home. The night was more like Mercy, and he lingered with the night, inhabiting the dream that it was Mercy's house, and she in the next room. He turned into the castle, climbed the broken steps, and sat on the corner of the wall, the blank hill before him, asleep standing, with the New House on its shoulder, and the moonlight reflected from Mercy's window under which he had so lately stood. He sat for an hour, and when he came down, was as much disinclined to go home as before: he could not rest in his chamber, with no Ian on the other side of its wall! He went straying down the road, into the valley, along the burnside, up the steep beyond it, and away to the hill-farm and the tomb. The moon was with him all the way, but she seemed thinking to herself rather than talking to him. Why should the strange, burnt-out old cinder of a satellite be the star of lovers? The answer lies hid, I suspect, in the mysteries of light reflected. He wandered along, careless of time, of moonset, star-shine, or sunrise, brooding on many things in the rayless radiance of his love, and by the time he reached the tomb, was weary with excitement and lack of sleep. Taking the key from where it was cunningly hidden, he unlocked the door and entered. He started back at sight of a gray-haired old man, seated on one of the stone chairs, and leaning sadly over the fireless hearth: it must be his uncle! The same moment he saw it was a ray from the sinking moon, entering by the small, deep window, and shining feebly on the chair. He struck a light, kindled the peats on the hearth, and went for water. Returning from the well he found the house dark as before; and there was the old man again, cowering over the extinguished fire! The idea lasted but a moment; once more the level light of the moon lay cold and gray upon the stone chair! He tried to laugh at his fancifulness, but did not quite succeed. Several times on the way up, he had thought of his old uncle: this must have given the shape to the moonlight and the stone! He made many attempts to recall the illusion, but in vain. He relighted the fire, and put on the kettle. Going then for a book to read till the water boiled, he remembered a letter which, in the excitement of the afternoon, he had put in his pocket unread, and forgotten. It was from the family lawyer in Glasgow, informing him that the bank in which his uncle had deposited the proceeds of his sale of the land, was in a state of absolute and irrecoverable collapse; there was not the slightest hope of retrieving any portion of the wreck. Alister did not jump up and pace the room in the rage of disappointment; neither did he sit as one stunned and forlorn of sense. He felt some bitterness in the loss of the hope of making up to his people for his uncle's wrong; but it was clear that if God had cared for his having the money, he would have cared that he should have it. Here was an opportunity for absolute faith and contentment in the will that looks after all our affairs, the small as well as the great. Those who think their affairs too insignificant for God's regard, will justify themselves in lying crushed under their seeming ruin. Either we live in the heart of an eternal thought, or we are the product and sport of that which is lower than we. "It was evil money!" said the chief to himself; "it was the sale of a birthright for a mess of pottage! I would have turned it back into the right channel, the good of my people! but after all, what can money do? It was discontent with poverty that began the ruin of the highlands! If the heads of the people had but lived pure, active, sober, unostentatious lives, satisfied to be poor, poverty would never have overwhelmed them! The highlands would have made Scotland great with the greatness of men dignified by high-hearted contentment, and strong with the strength of men who could do without!" Therewith it dawned upon Alister how, when he longed to help his people, his thoughts had always turned, not to God first, but to the money his uncle had left him. He had trusted in a fancy--no less a fancy when in his uncle's possession than when cast into the quicksand of the bank; for trust in money that is, is no less vain, and is farther from redress, than trust in money that is not. In God alone can trust repose. His heart had been so faithless that he did not know it was! He thought he loved God as the first and last, the beginning, middle, and end of all things, and he had been trusting, not in God, but in uncertain riches, that is in vile Mammon! It was a painful and humiliating discovery. "It was well," he said, "that my false deity should be taken from me! For my idolatry perhaps, a good gift has failed to reach my people! I must be more to them than ever, to make up to them for their loss with better than money!" He fell on his knees, and thanked God for the wind that had blown cold through his spirit, and slain at least one evil thing; and when he rose, all that was left of his trouble was a lump in his throat, which melted away as he walked home through the morning air on the hills. For he could not delay; he must let his mother know their trouble, and, as one who had already received help from on high, help her to bear it! If the messenger of Satan had buffeted him, he had but broken a way for strength! But at first he could not enjoy as he was wont the glory of the morning. It troubled him. Would a single note in the song of the sons of the morning fail because God did or would not do a thing? Could God deserve less than thanks perfect from any one of his creatures? That man could not know God who thanked him but for what men call good things, nor took the evil as from the same love! He scorned himself, and lifted up his heart. As he reached the brow of his last descent, the sun rose, and with it his soul arose and shone, for its light was come, and the glory of the Lord was risen upon it. "Let God," he said, "take from us what he will: himself he can only give!" Joyful he went down the hill. God was, and all was well!	{ "id": "5968" }
12	THE POWER OF DARKNESS.	He found his mother at breakfast, wondering what had become of him. "Are you equal to a bit of bad news, mother?" he asked with a smile. The mother's thoughts flew instantly to Ian. "Oh, it's nothing about Ian!" said the chief, answering her look. Its expression changed; she hoped now it was some fresh obstacle between him and Mercy. "No, mother, it is not that either!" said Alister, again answering her look--with a sad one of his own, for the lack of his mother's sympathy was the sorest trouble he had. "It is only that uncle's money is gone--all gone." She sat silent for a moment, gave a little sigh, and said, "Well, it will all be over soon! In the meantime things are no worse than they were! His will be done!" "I should have liked to make a few friends with the mammon of unrighteousness before we were turned out naked!" "We shall have plenty," answered the mother, "--God himself, and a few beside! If you could make friends with the mammon, you can make friends without it!" "Yes, that is happily true! Ian says it was only a lesson for the wise and prudent with money in their pockets--a lesson suited to their limited reception!" As they spoke, Nancy entered. "Please, laird," she said, "Donal shoemaker is wanting to see you." "Tell him to come in," answered the chief. Donal entered and stood up by the door, with his bonnet under his arm--a little man with puckered face, the puckers radiating from or centering in the mouth, which he seemed to untie like a money-hag, and pull open by means of a smile, before he began to speak. The chief shook hands with him, and asked how he could serve him. "It will not be to your pleasure to know, Macruadh," said Donal, humbly declining to sit, "that I have received this day notice to quit my house and garden!" The house was a turf-cottage, and the garden might grow two bushels and a half of potatoes. "Are you far behind with your rent?" "Not a quarter, Macruadh." "Then what does it mean?" "It means, sir, that Strathruadh is to be given to the red deer, and the son of man have nowhere to lay his head. I am the first at your door with my sorrow, but before the day is over you will have--" Here he named four or five who had received like notice to quit. "It is a sad business!" said the chief sorrowfully. "Is it law, sir?" "It is not easy to say what is law, Donal; certainly it is not gospel! As a matter of course you will not be without shelter, so long as I may call stone or turf mine, but things are looking bad! Things as well as souls are in God's hands however!" "I learn from the new men on the hills," resumed Donal, "that the new lairds have conspired to exterminate us. They have discovered, apparently, that the earth was not made for man, but for rich men and beasts!" Here the little man paused, and his insignificant face grew in expression grand. "But the day of the Lord will come," he went on, "as a thief in the night. Vengeance is his, and he will know where to give many stripes, and where few. --What would you have us do, laird?" "I will go with you to the village." "No, if you please, sir! Better men will be at your door presently to put the same question, for they will do nothing without the Macruadh. We are no more on your land, great is our sorrow, chief, but we are of your blood, you are our lord, and your will is ours. You have been a nursing father to us, Macruadh!" "I would fain be!" answered the chief. "They will want to know whether these strangers have the right to turn us out; and if they have not the right to disseize, whether we have not the right to resist. If you would have us fight, and will head us, we will fall to a man--for fall we must; we cannot think to stand before the redcoats." "No, no, Donal! It is not a question of the truth; that we should be bound to die for, of course. It is only our rights that are concerned, and they are not worth dying for. That would be mere pride, and denial of God who is fighting for us. At least so it seems at the moment to me!" "Some of us would fain fight and have done with it, sir!" The chief could not help smiling with pleasure at the little man's warlike readiness: he knew it was no empty boast; what there was of him was good stuff. "You have a wife and children, Donal!" he said; "what would become of them if you fell?" "My sister was turned out in the cold spring," answered Donal, "and died in Glencalvu! It would be better to die together!" "But, Donal, none of yours will die of cold, and I can't let you fight, because the wives and children would all come on my hands, and I should have too many for my meal! No, we must not fight. We may have a right to fight, I do not know; but I am sure we have at least the right to abstain from fighting. Don't let us confound right and duty, Donal--neither in thing nor in word!" "Will the law not help us, Macruadh?" "The law is such a slow coach! our enemies are so rich! and the lawyers have little love of righteousness! Most of them would see the dust on our heads to have the picking of our bones! Stick nor stone would be left us before anything came of it!" "But, sir," said Donal, "is it the part of brave men to give up their rights?" "No man can take from us our rights," answered the chief, "but any man rich enough may keep us from getting the good of them. I say again we are not bound to insist on our rights. We may decline to do so, and that way leave them to God to look after for us." "God does not always give men their rights, sir! I don't believe he cares about our small matters!" "Nothing that God does not care about can be worth our caring about. But, Donal, how dare you say what you do? Have you lived to all eternity? How do you know what you say? GOD DOES care for our rights. A day is coming, as you have just said, when he will judge the oppressors of their brethren." "We shall be all dead and buried long before then!" "As he pleases, Donal! He is my chief. I will have what he wills, not what I should like! A thousand years I will wait for my rights if he chooses. I will trust him to do splendidly for me. No; I will have no other way than my chief's! He will set everything straight!" "You must be right, sir! only I can't help wishing for the old times, when a man could strike a blow for himself!" With all who came Alister held similar talk; for though they were not all so warlike as the cobbler, they keenly felt the wrong that was done them, and would mostly, but for a doubt of its rectitude, have opposed force with force. It would at least bring their case before the country! "The case is before a higher tribunal," answered the laird; "and one's country is no incarnation of justice! How could she be, made up mostly of such as do not love fair play except in the abstract, or for themselves! The wise thing is to submit to wrong." It is in ordering our own thoughts and our own actions, that we have first to stand up for the right; our business is not to protect ourselves from our neighbour's wrong, but our neighbour from our wrong. This is to slay evil; the other is to make it multiply. A man who would pull out even a mote from his brother's eye, must first pull out the beam from his own eye, must be righteous against his own selfishness. That is the only way to wound the root of evil. He who teaches his neighbour to insist on his rights, is not a teacher of righteousness. He who, by fulfilling his own duties, teaches his neighbour to give every man the fair play he owes him, is a fellow-worker with God. But although not a few of the villagers spoke in wrath and counselled resistance, not one of them rejoiced in the anticipation of disorder. Heartily did Rob of the Angels insist on peace, but his words had the less force that he was puny in person, and, although capable of great endurance, unnoted for deeds of strength. Evil birds carried the words of natural and righteous anger to the ears of the new laird; no good birds bore the words of appeasement: he concluded after his kind that their chief countenanced a determined resistance. On all sides the horizon was dark about the remnant of Clanruadh. Poorly as they lived in Strathruadh, they knew no place else where they could live at all. Separated, and so disabled from making common cause against want, they must perish! But their horizon was not heaven, and God was beyond it. It was a great comfort to the chief that in the matter of his clan his mother agreed with him altogether: to the last penny of their having they must help their people! Those who feel as if the land were their own, do fearful wrong to their own souls! What grandest opportunities of growing divine they lose! Instead of being man-nobles, leading a sumptuous life until it no longer looks sumptuous, they might be God-nobles--saviours of men, yielding themselves to and for their brethren! What friends might they not make with the mammon of unrighteousness, instead of passing hence into a region where no doors, no arms will be open to them! Things are ours that we may use them for all--sometimes that we may sacrifice them. God had but one precious thing, and he gave that! The chief, although he saw that the proceedings of Mr. Palmer and Mr. Brander must have been determined upon while his relation to Mercy was yet undeclared, could not help imagining how differently it might have gone with his people, had he been married to Mercy, and in a good understanding with her father. Had he crippled his reach toward men by the narrowness of his conscience toward God? So long as he did what seemed right, he must regret no consequences, even for the sake of others! God would mind others as well as him! Every sequence of right, even to the sword and fire, are God's care; he will justify himself in the eyes of the true, nor heed the judgment of the false. One thing was clear--that it would do but harm to beg of Mr. Palmer any pity for his people: it would but give zest to his rejoicing in iniquity! Something nevertheless must be determined, and speedily, for winter was at hand. The Macruadh had to consider not only the immediate accommodation of the ejected but how they were to be maintained. Such was his difficulty that he began to long for such news from Ian as would justify an exodus from their own country, not the less a land of bondage, to a home in the wilderness. But ah, what would then the land of his fathers without its people be to him! It would be no more worthy the name of land, no longer fit to be called a possession! He knew then that the true love of the land is one with the love of its people. To live on it after they were gone, would be like making a home of the family mausoleum. The rich "pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor," but what would any land become without the poor in it? The poor are blessed because by their poverty they are open to divine influences; they are the buckets set out to catch the rain of heaven; they are the salt of the earth! The poor are to be always with a nation for its best blessing, or for its condemnation and ruin. The chief saw the valleys desolate of the men readiest and ablest to fight the battles of his country. For the sake of greedy, low-minded fellows, the summons of her war-pipes would be heard in them no more, or would sound in vain among the manless rocks; from sheilin, cottage, or clachan, would spring no kilted warriors with battle response! The red deer and the big sheep had taken the place of men over countless miles of mountain and moor and strath! His heart bled for the sufferings and wrongs of those whose ancestors died to keep the country free that was now expelling their progeny. But the vengeance had begun to gather, though neither his generation nor ours has seen it break. It must be that offences come, but woe unto them by whom they come!	{ "id": "5968" }
13	THE NEW STANCE.	The Macruadh cast his mind's and his body's eye too upon the small strip of ground on the west side of the castle-ridge, between it and the tiny tributary of the strath burn which was here the boundary between the lands of the two lairds. The slope of the ridge on this side was not so steep, and before the rock sank into the alluvial soil of the valley, it became for a few yards nearly level--sufficiently so, with a little smoothing and raising, to serve for a foundation; while in front was a narrow but rich piece of ground, the bank of the little brook. Before many days were over, men were at work there, in full sight of the upper windows of the New House. It was not at first clear what they were about; but soon began to rise, plain enough, the walls of cottages, some of stone, and some of turf; Mr. Palmer saw a new village already in process of construction, to take the place of that about to be destroyed! The despicable enemy had moved his camp, to pitch it under his very walls! It filled him with the rage of defeat. The poor man who scorned him was going to be too much for him! Not yet was he any nearer to being placed alone in the midst of the earth. He thought to have rid himself of all those hateful faces, full of their chiefs contempt, he imagined, ever eyeing him as an intruder on his own land; but here instead was their filthy little hamlet of hovels growing like a fungus just under his nose, expressly to spite him! Thinking to destroy it, he had merely sent for it! When the wind was in the east, the smoke of their miserable cabins would be blown right in at his dining-room windows! It was useless to expostulate! That he would not like it was of course the chief's first reason for choosing that one spot as the site of his new rookery! The fellow had stolen a march upon him! And what had he done beyond what was absolutely necessary for the improvement of his property! The people were in his way, and he only wanted to get rid of them! And here their chief had brought them almost into his garden! Doubtless if his land had come near enough, he would have built his sty at the very gate of his shrubbery! --the fellow could not like having them so near himself! He let his whole household see how annoying the thing was to him. He never doubted it was done purely to irritate him. Christina ventured the suggestion that Mr. Brander and not the chief was the author of the inconvenience. What did that matter! he returned. What right had the chief, as she called him, to interfere between a landlord and his tenants? Christina hinted that, evicted by their landlord, they ceased to be his tenants, and even were he not their chief, he could not be said to interfere in giving help to the destitute. Thereupon he burst at her in a way that terrified her, and she had never even been checked by him before, had often been impertinent to him without rebuke. The man seemed entirely changed, but in truth he was no whit changed: things had but occurred capable of bringing out the facts of his nature. Her mother, who had not dared to speak at the time, expostulated with her afterward. "Why should papa never be told the truth?" objected Christina. Her mother was on the point of replying, "Because he will not hear it," but saw she owed it to her husband not to say so to his child. Mercy said to herself, "It is not to annoy my father he does it, but to do what he can for his people! He does not even know how unpleasant it is to my father to have them so near! It must be one of the punishments of riches that they make the sight of poverty so disagreeable! To luxury, poverty is a living reproach." She longed to see Alister: something might perhaps be done to mitigate the offence. But her father would never consent to use her influence! Perhaps her mother might! She suggested therefore that Alister would do nothing for the sake of annoying her father, and could have no idea how annoying this thing was to him: if her mother would contrive her seeing him, she would represent it to him! Mrs. Palmer was of Mercy's opinion regarding the purity of Alister's intent, and promised to think the matter over. The next night her husband was going to spend at Mr. Brander's: the project might be carried out in safety! The thing should be done! They would go together, in the hope of persuading the chief to change the site of his new village! When it was dark they walked to the cottage, and knocking at the door, asked Nancy if the chief were at home. The girl invited them to enter, though not with her usual cordiality; but Mrs. Palmer declined, requesting her to let the chief know they were there, desirous of a word with him. Alister was at the door in a moment, and wanted them to go in and see his mother, but an instant's reflection made him glad of their refusal. "I am so sorry for all that has happened!" said Mrs. Palmer. "You know I can have had nothing to do with it! There is not a man I should like for a son-in-law better than yourself, Macruadh; but I am helpless." "I quite understand," replied the chief, "and thank you heartily for your kindness. Is there anything I can do for you?" "Mercy has something she wants to speak to you about." "It was so good of you to bring her! --What is it, Mercy?" Without the least hesitation, Mercy told him her father's fancy that he was building the new village to spite him, seeing it could not be a pleasure to himself to have the smoke from its chimneys blowing in at door and windows as often as the wind was from the sea. "I am sorry but not surprised your father should think so, Mercy. To trouble him is as much against my feelings as my interests. And certainly it is for no convenience or comfort to ourselves, that my mother and I have determined on having the village immediately below us." "I thought," said Mercy, "that if you knew how it vexed papa, you would--But I am afraid it may be for some reason that cannot be helped!" "Indeed it is; I too am afraid it cannot be helped! I must think of my people! You see, if I put them on the other side of the ridge, they would be exposed to the east wind--and the more that every door and window would have to be to the east. You know yourselves how bitterly it blows down the strath! Besides, we should there have to build over good land much too damp to be healthy, every foot of which will be wanted to feed them! There they are on the rock. I might, of course, put them on the hillside, but I have no place so sheltered as here, and they would have no gardens. And then it gives me an opportunity, such as chief never had before, of teaching them some things I could not otherwise. Would it be reasonable, Mercy, to sacrifice the good of so many poor people to spare one rich man one single annoyance, which is yet no hurt? Would it be right? Ought I not rather to suffer the rise of yet greater obstacles between you and me?" "Yes, Alister, yes!" cried Mercy. "You must not change anything. I am only sorry my father cannot be taught that you have no ill will to him in what you do." "I cannot think it would make much difference. He will never give you to me, Mercy. But be true, and God will." "Would you mind letting the flag fly, Alister? I should have something to look at!" "I will; and when I want particularly to see you, I will haul it down. Then, if you hang a handkerchief from your window, I will come to you."	{ "id": "5968" }
14	THE PEAT-MOSS.	For the first winter the Clanruadh had not much to fear--hardly more than usual: they had their small provision of potatoes and meal, and some a poor trifle of money. But "Lady Macruadh" was anxious lest the new cottages should not be quite dry, and gave a general order that fires were to be burned in them for some time before they were occupied: for this they must use their present stock of dry peats, and more must be provided for the winter. The available strength of the clan would be required to get the fresh stock under cover before the weather broke. The peat-moss from which they cut their fuel, was at some distance from the castle, on the outskirts of the hill-farm. It was the nearest moss to the glen, and the old chief, when he parted with so much of the land, took care to except it, knowing well that his remaining people could not without it live through a winter. But as, of course, his brother, the minister, who succeeded him, and the present chieftain, had freely allowed all the tenants on the land sold to supply themselves from it as before, the notion had been generated that the moss was not part of the chief's remaining property. When the report was carried to Mr. Peregrine Palmer, that the tenants Mr. Brander and he were about to eject, and who were in consequence affronting him with a new hamlet on the very verge of his land, were providing themselves with a stock of fuel greatly in excess of what they had usually laid in for the winter--that in fact they were cutting large quantities of peat, besides the turf for their new cottages; without making the smallest inquiry, or suspecting for a moment that the proceeding might be justifiable, he determined, after a brief consultation with men who knew nothing but said anything, to put a stop to the supposed presumption. A few of the peats cut in the summer had not yet been removed, not having dried so well as the rest, and the owners of some of these, two widows, went one day to fetch them home to the new village, when, as it happened, there were none of the clan besides in the moss. They filled their creels, helped each other to get them on their backs, and were setting out on their weary tramp home, when up rose two of Mr. Palmer's men, who had been watching them, cut their ropes and took their loads, emptied the peats into a moss-hag full of water, and threw the creels after them. The poor women poured out their wrath on the men, telling them they would go straight to the chief, but were answered only with mockery of their chief and themselves. They turned in despair, and with their outcry filled the hollows of the hills as they went, bemoaning the loss of their peats and their creels, and raging at the wrong they had received. One of them, a characterless creature in the eyes of her neighbours, harmless, and always in want, had faith in her chief, for she had done nothing to make her ashamed, and would go to him at once: he had always a word and a smile and a hand-shake for her, she said; the other, commonly called Craftie, was unwilling: her character did not stand high, and she feared the face of the Macruadh. "He does not like me!" said Craftie. "When a woman is in trouble," said the other, "the Macruadh makes no questions. You come with me! He will be glad of something to do for you." In her confidence she persuaded her companion, and together they went to the chief. Having gathered courage to appear, Craftie needed none to speak: where that was the call, she was never slow to respond. "Craftie," said the chief, "is what you are telling me true?" "Ask HER," answered Craftie, who knew that asseveration on her part was not all-convincing. "She speaks the truth, Macruadh," said the other. "I will take my oath to it." "Your word is enough," replied the chief, "--as Craftie knew when she brought you with her." "Please, laird, it was myself brought Craftie; she was not willing to come!" "Craftie," said the chief, "I wish I could make a friend of you! But you know I can't!" "I do know it, Macruadh, and I am sorry for it, many is the good time! But my door never had any latch, and the word is out before I can think to keep it back!" "And so you send another and another to back the first! Ah, Craftie! If purgatory don't do something for you, then--!" "Indeed and I hope I shall fall into it on my way farther, chief!" said Craftie, who happened to be a catholic. "But now," resumed the chief, "when will you be going for the rest of your peats?" "They're sure to be on the watch for us; and there's no saying what they mightn't do another time!" was the indirect and hesitating answer. "I will go with you." "When you please, then, chief." So the next day the poor women went again, and the chief went with them, their guard and servant. If there were any on the watch, they did not appear. The Macruadh fished out their creels, and put them to dry, then helped them to fill those they had borrowed for the occasion. Returning, he carried now the one, now the other creel, so that one of the women was always free. The new laird met them on the road, and recognized with a scornful pleasure the chief bending under his burden. That was the fellow who would so fain be HIS son-in-law! About this time Sercombe and Valentine came again to the New House. Sercombe, although he had of late had no encouragement from Christina, was not therefore prepared to give her up, and came "to press the siege." He found the lady's reception of him so far from cordial, however, that he could not but suspect some new adverse influence. He saw too that Mercy was in disgrace; and, as Ian was gone, concluded there must have been something between them: had the chief been "trying it on with" Christina? The brute was always getting in his way! But some chance of serving him out was certain to turn, up! For the first suitable day Alister had arranged an expedition from the village, with all the carts that could be got together, to bring home as many peats as horses and men and women could together carry. The company was seen setting out, and report of it carried at once to Mr. Palmer; for he had set watch on the doings of the clan. Within half an hour he too set out with the messenger, accompanied by Sercombe, in grim delight at the prospect of a row. Valentine went also, willing enough to see what would happen, though with no ill will toward the chief. They were all furnished as for a day's shooting, and expected to be joined by some of the keepers on their way. The chief, in view of possible assault, had taken care that not one of his men should have a gun. Even Hector of the Stags he requested to leave his at home. They went in little groups, some about the creeping carts, in which were the older women and younger children, some a good way ahead, some scattered behind, but the main body attending the chief, who talked to them as they went. They looked a very poor company, but God saw past their poverty. The chief himself, save in size and strength, had not a flourishing appearance. He was very thoughtful: much lay on his shoulders, and Ian was not there to help! His clothes, all their clothes were shabby, with a crumpled, blown-about look--like drifts, in their many faded colours, of autumnal leaves. They had about them all a forgotten air--looked thin and wan like a ghostly funeral to the second sight--as if they had walked so long they had forgotten how to sleep, and the grave would not have them. Except in their chief, there was nothing left of the martial glance and gait and show, once so notable in every gathering of the Clanruadh, when the men were all soldiers born, and the women were mothers, daughters, and wives of soldiers. Their former stately grace had vanished from the women; they were weather-worn and bowed with labour too heavy for their strength, too long for their endurance; they were weak from lack of fit human food, from lack of hope, and the dreariness of the outlook, the ever gray spiritual horizon; they were numbed with the cold that has ceased to be felt, the deadening sense of life as a weight to be borne, not a strength to rejoice in. But they were not abject yet; there was one that loved them--their chief and their friend! Below their level was a deeper depth, in which, alas, lie many of like heart and, passions with them, trodden into the mire by Dives and his stewards! The carts were small, with puny horses, long-tailed and droop-necked, in harness of more rope than leather. They had a look of old men, an aspect weirdly venerable, as of life and labour prolonged after due time, as of creatures kept from the grave and their last sleep to work a little longer. Scrambling up the steep places they were like that rare sea-bird which, unable to fly for shortness of wing, makes of its beak a third leg, to help it up the cliff: these horses seemed to make fifth legs of their necks and noses. The chief's horses alone, always at the service of the clan, looked well fed, well kept, and strong, and the clan was proud of them. "And what news is there from Ian?" asked an old man of his chief. "Not much news yet, but I hope for more soon. It will be so easy to let you hear all his letters, when we can meet any moment in the barn!" "I fear he will be wanting us all to go after the rest!" said one of the women. "There might be a worse thing!" answered her neighbour. "A worse thing than leave the hills where we were born? --No! There is no worse for me! I trust in God I shall be buried where I grew up!" "Then you will leave the hills sure enough!" said the chief. "Not so sure, Macruadh! We shall rest in our graves till the resurrection!" said an old man. "Only our bodies," returned Alister. "Well, and what will my body be but myself! Much I would make of myself without my body! I will stay with my body, and let my soul step about, waiting for me, and craving a shot at the stags with the big branches! No, I won't be going from my own strath!" "You would not like to be left in it alone, with none but unfriendly Sasunnachs about you--not one of your own people to close your eyes?" "Indeed it would not be pleasant. But the winds would be the same; and the hills would be the same; and the smell of the earth would be the same; and they would be our own worms that came crawling over me to eat me! No; I won't leave the strath till I die--and I won't leave it then!" "That is very well, John!" said the woman; "but if you were all day with your little ones--all of them all day looking hunger in your face, you would think it a blessed country wherever it was that gave you bread to put in their mouths!" "And how to keep calling this home!" said another. "Why, it will soon be everywhere a crime to set foot on a hill, for frightening of the deer! I was walking last month in a part of the county I did not know, when I came to a wall that went out of my sight, seeming to go all round a big hill. I said to myself, 'Is no poor man to climb to heaven any more?' And with that I came to a bill stuck on a post, which answered me; for it said thus: 'Any well-dressed person, who will give his word not to leave the path, may have permission to go to the top of the hill, by applying to--'--I forget the name of the doorkeeper, but sure he was not of God, seeing his door was not to let a poor man in, but to keep him out!" "They do well to starve us before they choke us: we might else fight when it comes to the air to breathe!" "Have patience, my sons," said the chief. "God will not forget us." "What better are we for that? It would be all the same if he did forget us!" growled a young fellow shambling along without shoes. "Shame! Shame!" cried several voices. "Has not God left us the Macruadh? Does he not share everything with us?" "The best coat in the clan is on his own back!" muttered the lad, careless whether he were heard or not. "You scoundrel!" cried another; "yours is a warmer one!" The chief heard all, and held his peace. It was true he had the best coat! "I tell you what," said Donal shoemaker, "if the chief give you the stick, not one of us will say it was more than you deserved! If he will put it into my hands, not to defile his own, I will take and give it with all my heart. Everybody knows you for the idlest vagabond in the village! Why, the chief with his own hands works ten times as much!" "That's how he takes the bread out of my mouth--doing his work himself!" rejoined the youth, who had been to Glasgow, and thought he had learned a thing or two. The chief recovered from his impulse to pull off his coat and give it him. "I will make you an offer, my lad," he said instead: "come to the farm and take my place. For every fair day's work you shall have a fair day's wages, and, for every bit of idleness, a fair thrashing. Do you agree?" The youth pretended to laugh the thing off, but slunk away, and was seen no more till eating time arrived, and "Lady Macruadh's" well-filled baskets were opened. "And who wouldn't see a better coat on his chief!" cried the little tailor. "I would clip my own to make lappets for his!" They reached the moss. It lay in a fold of the hills, desert and dreary, full of great hollows and holes whence the peat had been taken, now filled with water, black and terrible,--a land hideous by day, and at night full of danger and lonely horror. Everywhere stood piles of peats set up to dry, with many openings through and through, windy drains to gather and remove their moisture. Here and there was a tuft of dry grass, a bush of heather, or a few slender-stalked, hoary heads of CANNACH or cotton-grass; it was a land of devoted desolation, doing nothing for itself, this bountiful store of life and warmth for the winter-sieged houses of the strath. They went heartily to work. They cut turf for their walls and peats for their fires; they loaded the carts from the driest piles, and made new piles of the fresh wet peats they dug. It was approaching noon, and some of the old women were getting the food out of "my lady's" baskets, when over the nearest ridge beyond rose men to the number of seven, carrying guns. Rob of the Angels was the first to spy them. He pointed them out to his father, and presently they two disappeared together. The rest went on with their work, but the chief could see that, stooping to their labour, they cast upward and sidelong glances at them, reading hostility in their approach. Suddenly, as by common consent, they all ceased working, stood erect, and looked out like men on their guard. But the chief making them a sign, they resumed their labour as if they saw nothing. Mr. Peregrine Palmer had laid it upon himself to act with becoming calmness and dignity. But it would amaze most people to be told how little their order is self-restraint, their regular conduct their own--how much of the savage and how little of the civilized man goes to form their being--how much their decent behaviour is owing to the moral pressure, like that of the atmosphere, of the laws and persons and habits and opinions that surround them. Witness how many, who seemed respectable people at home, become vulgar, self-indulgent, ruffianly, cruel even, in the wilder parts of the colonies! No man who has not, through restraint, learned not to need restraint, but be as well behaved among savages as in society, has yet become a true man. No perfection of mere civilization kills the savage in a man: the savage is there all the time till the man pass through the birth from above. Till then, he is no certain hiding-place from the wind, no sure covert from the tempest. Mr. Palmer was in the worst of positions as to protection against himself. Possessed of large property, he owed his position to evil and not to good. Not only had he done nothing to raise those through whom he made his money, but the very making of their money his, was plunging them deeper and deeper in poverty and vice: his success was the ruin of many. Yet was he full of his own imagined importance--or had been full until now that he felt a worm at the root of his gourd--the contempt of one man for his wealth and position. Well might such a man hate such another--and the more that his daughter loved him! All the chief's schemes and ways were founded on such opposite principles to his own that of necessity they annoyed him at every point, and, incapable of perceiving their true nature, he imagined his annoyance their object and end. And now here was his enemy insolently daring, as Mr. Palmer fully believed, to trespass in person on his land! Add to all this, that here Mr. Peregrine Palmer was in a place whose remoteness lightened the pressure of conventional restraints, while its wildness tended to rouse all the old savage in him--its very look suggesting to the city-man its fitness for an unlawful deed for a lawful end. Persons more RESPECTABLE than Mr. Palmer are capable of doing the most wicked and lawless things when their selfish sense of their own right is uppermost. Witness the occasionally iniquitous judgments of country magistrates in their own interest--how they drive law even to cruelty! "Are you not aware you are trespassing on my land, Macruadh?" cried the new laird, across several holes full of black water which obstructed his nearer approach. "On the contrary, Mr. Palmer," replied the chief, "I am perfectly aware that I am not!" "You have no right to cut peats there without my permission!" "I beg your pardon: you have no right to stand where you speak the words without my permission. But you are quite welcome." "I am satisfied there is not a word of truth in what you say," rejoined Mr. Palmer. "I desire you to order your people away at once." "That I cannot do. It would be to require their consent to die of cold." "Let them die! What are they to me--or to anybody! Order them off, or it will be the worse for them--and for you too!" "Excuse me; I cannot." "I give you one more warning. Go yourself, and they will follow." "I will not." "Go, or I will compel you." As he spoke, he half raised his gun. "You dare not!" said the chief, drawing himself up indignantly. Together Mr. Palmer and Mr. Sercombe raised their guns to their shoulders, and one of them fired. To give Mr. Palmer the benefit of a doubt, he was not quite at home with his gun, and would use a hair-trigger. The same instant each found himself, breath and consciousness equally scant, floundering, gun and all, in the black bog water on whose edge he had stood. There now stood Rob of the Angels, gazing after them into the depth, with the look of an avenging seraph, his father beside him, grim as a gratified Fate. Such a roar of rage rose from the clansmen with the shot, and so many came bounding with sticks and spades over the rough ground, that the keepers, knowing, if each killed his two men, they would not after escape with their lives, judged it more prudent to wait orders. Only Valentine came running in terror to the help of his father. "Don't be frightened," said Rob; "we only wanted to wet their powder!" "But they'll be drowned!" cried the lad, almost weeping. "Not a hair of them!" answered Bob. "We'll have them out in a moment! But please tell your men, if they dare to lift a gun, we'll serve them the same. It wets the horn, and it cools the man!" A minute more, and the two men lay coughing and gasping on the crumbly bank, for in their utter surprizal they had let more of the nasty soft water inside than was good for them. With his first breath Sercombe began to swear. "Drop that, sir, if you please," said Rob, "or in you go again!" He began to reply with a volley of oaths, but began only, for the same instant the black water was again choking him. Might Hector of the Stags have had his way, he would have kept there the murderer of AN CABRACH MOR till he had to be dived for. Rob on his part was determined he should not come out until he gave his word that he would not swear. "Come! Come!" gasped Sercombe at length, after many attempts to get out which, the bystanders easily foiled--"you don't mean to drown me, do you?" "We mean to drown your bad language. Promise to use no more on this peat-moss," returned Rob. "Damn the promise you get from me!" he gasped. "Men must have patience with a suffering brother!" remarked Bob, and seated himself, with a few words in Gaelic which drew a hearty laugh from the men about him, on a heap of turf to watch the unyielding flounder in the peat-hole, where there was no room to swim. He had begun to think the man would drown in his contumacy, when his ears welcomed the despairing words-- "Take me out, and I will promise anything." He was scarcely able to move till one of the keepers gave him whisky, but in a few minutes he was crawling homeward after his host, who, parent of little streams, was doing his best to walk over rocks and through bogs with the help of Valentine's arm, chattering rather than muttering something about "proper legal fashion." In the mean time the chief lay shot in the right arm and chest, but not dangerously wounded by the scattering lead. He had lost a good deal of blood, and was faint--a sensation new to him. The women had done what they could, but that was only binding his arm, laying him in a dry place, and giving him water. He would not let them recall the men till the enemy was gone. When they knew what had happened they were in sad trouble--Rob of the Angels especially that he had not been quick enough to prevent the firing of the gun. The chief would have him get the shot out of his arm with his knife; but Rob, instead, started off at full speed, running as no man else in the county could run, to fetch the doctor to the castle. At the chief's desire, they made a hurried meal, and then resumed the loading of the carts, preparing one of them for his transport. When it was half full, they covered the peats with a layer of dry elastic turf, then made on that a bed of heather, tops uppermost; and more to please them than that he could not walk, Alister consented to be laid on this luxurious invalid-carriage, and borne home over the rough roads like a disabled warrior. They arrived some time before the doctor.	{ "id": "5968" }
15	A DARING VISIT.	Mercy soon learned that some sort of encounter had taken place between her father's shooting party and some of the clan; also that the chief was hurt, but not in what manner--for by silent agreement that was not mentioned: it might seem to put them in the wrong! She had heard enough, however, to fill her with anxiety. Her window commanding the ridge by the castle, she seated herself to watch that point with her opera-glass. When the hill-party came from behind the ruin, she missed his tall figure amongst his people, and presently discovered him lying very white on one of the carts. Her heart became as water within her. But instant contriving how she could reach him, kept her up. By and by Christina came to tell her she had just heard from one of the servants that the Macruadh was shot. Mercy, having seen him alive, heard the frightful news with tolerable calmness. Christina said she would do her best to discover before the morning how much he was hurt; no one in the house seemed able to tell her! Mercy, to avoid implicating her sister, held her peace as to her own intention. As soon as it was dark she prepared to steal from the house, dreading nothing but prevention. When her dinner was brought her, and she knew they were all safe in the dining-room, she drew her plaid over her head, and leaving her food untasted, stole half down the stair, whence watching her opportunity between the comings and goings of the waiting servants, she presently got away unseen, crept softly past the windows, and when out of the shrubbery, darted off at her full speed. Her breath was all but gone when she knocked at the drawing-room door of the cottage. It opened, and there stood the mother of her chief! The moment Mrs. Macruadh saw her, leaving her no time to say a word, she bore down upon her like one vessel that would sink another, pushing her from the door, and pulling it to behind her, stern as righteous Fate. Mercy was not going to be put down, however: she was doing nothing wrong! "How is the Macruadh, please?" she managed to say. "Alive, but terribly hurt," answered his mother, and would have borne her out of the open door of the cottage, towards the latch of which she reached her hand while yet a yard from it. Her action said, "Why WILL Nancy leave the door open!" "Please, please, what is it?" panted Mercy, standing her ground. "How is he hurt?" She turned upon her almost fiercely. "This is what YOU have done for him!" she said, with right ungenerous reproach. "Your father fired at him, on my son's own land, and shot him in the chest." "Is he in danger?" gasped Mercy, leaning against the wall, and trembling so she could scarcely stand. "I fear he is in GREAT danger. If only the doctor would come!" "You wouldn't mind my sitting in the kitchen till he does?" whispered Mercy, her voice all but gone. "I could not allow it. I will not connive at your coming here without the knowledge of your parents! It is not at all a proper thing for a young lady to do!" "Then I will wait outside!" said Mercy, her quick temper waking in spite of her anxiety: she had anticipated coldness, but not treatment like this! "There is one, I think, Mrs. Macruadh," she added, "who will not find fault with me for it!" "At least he will not tell you so for some time!" The door had not been quite closed, and it opened noiselessly. "She does not mean me, mother," said Alister; "she means Jesus Christ. He would say to you, LET HER ALONE. He does not care for Society. Its ways are not his ways, nor its laws his laws. Come in, Mercy. I am sorry my mother's trouble about me should have made her inhospitable to you!" "I cannot come in, Alister, if she will not let me!" answered Mercy. "Pray walk in!" said Mrs. Macruadh. She would have passed Mercy, going toward the kitchen, but the TRANCE was narrow, and Mercy did not move. "You see, Alister, I cannot!" she insisted. "That would not please, would it?" she added reverently. "Tell me how you are, and I will go, and come again to-morrow." Alister told her what had befallen, making little of the affair, and saying he suspected it was an accident. "Oh, thank you!" she said, with a sigh of relief. "I meant to sit by the castle wall till the doctor came; but now I shall get back before they discover I am gone." Without a word more, she turned and ran from the house, and reached her room unmissed and unseen. The next was a dreary hour--the most painful that mother and son had ever passed together. The mother was all this time buttressing her pride with her grief, and the son was cut to the heart that he should have had to take part against his mother. But when the doctor came at length, and the mother saw him take out his instruments, the pride that parted her from her boy melted away. "Forgive me, Alister!" she whispered; and his happy kiss comforted her repentant soul. When the small operations were over, and Alister was in bed, she would have gone to let Mercy know all she could tell her. But she must not: it would work mischief in the house! She sat down by Alister's bedside, and watched him all night. He slept well, being in such a healthful condition of body that his loss of blood, and the presence of the few shot that could not be found, did him little harm. He yielded to his mother's entreaties to spend the morning in bed, but was up long before the evening in the hope of Mercy's coming, confident that his mother would now be like herself to her. She came; the mother took her in her arms, and begged her forgiveness; nor, having thus embraced her, could she any more treat her relation to her son with coldness. If the girl was ready, as her conduct showed, to leave all for Alister, she had saved her soul alive, she was no more one of the enemy! Thus was the mother repaid for her righteous education of her son: through him her pride received almost a mortal blow, her justice grew more discriminating, and her righteousness more generous. In a few days the chief was out, and looking quite himself.	{ "id": "5968" }
16	THE FLITTING.	The time was drawing nigh when the warning of ejection would doubtless begin to be put in force; and the chief hearing, through Rob of the Angels, that attempts were making to stir the people up, determined to render them futile: they must be a trick of the enemy to get them into trouble! Taking counsel therefore with the best of the villagers, both women and men, he was confirmed in the idea that they had better all remove together, before the limit of the earliest notice was expired. But his councillors agreed with him that the people should not be told to get themselves in readiness except at a moment's notice to move. In the meantime he pushed on their labour at the new village. In the afternoon preceding the day on which certain of the clan were to be the first cast out of their homes, the chief went to the village, and going from house to house, told his people to have everything in order for flitting that very night, so that in the morning there should not be an old shoe left behind; and to let no rumour of their purpose get abroad. They would thus have a good laugh at the enemy, who was reported to have applied for military assistance as a precautionary measure. His horses should be ready, and as soon as it was dark they would begin to cart and carry, and be snug in their new houses before the morning! All agreed, and a tumult of preparation began. "Lady Macruadh" came with help and counsel, and took the children in charge while the mothers bustled. It was amazing how much had to be done to remove so small an amount of property. The chief's three carts were first laden; then the men and women loaded each other. The chief took on his hack the biggest load of all, except indeed it were Hector's. To and fro went the carts, and to and fro went the men and women, I know not how many journeys, upheld by companionship, merriment, hope, and the clan-mother's plentiful provision of tea, coffee, milk, bread and butter, cold mutton and ham--luxurious fare to all. As the sun was rising they closed every door, and walked for the last time, laden with the last of their goods, out of the place of their oppression, leaving behind them not a cock to crow, a peat to burn, or a scrap that was worth stealing--all removed in such order and silence that not one, even at the New House, had a suspicion of what was going on. Mercy, indeed, as she sat looking from her window like Daniel praying toward Jerusalem, her constant custom now, even when there was no moon to show what lay before her, did think she heard strange sounds come faintly through the night from the valley below--even thought she caught shadowy glimpses of a shapeless, gnome-like train moving along the road; but she only wondered if the Highlands had suddenly gifted her with the second sight, and these were the brain-phantasms of coming events. She listened and gazed, but could not be sure that she heard or saw. When she looked out in the morning, however, she understood, for the castle-ridge was almost hidden in the smoke that poured from every chimney of the new village. Her heart swelled with joy to think of her chief with all his people under his eyes, and within reach of his voice. From her window they seemed so many friends gathered to comfort her solitude, or the camp of an army come to set her free. Hector and Rob, with one or two more of the clan, hid themselves to watch those who came to evict the first of the villagers. There were no military. Two sheriff's officers, a good many constables, and a few vagabonds, made up the party. Rob's keen eye enabled him to distinguish the very moment when first they began to be aware of something unusual about the place; he saw them presently halt and look at each other as if the duty before them were not altogether CANNY. At no time would there be many signs of life in the poor hamlet, but there would always be some sounds of handicraft, some shuttle or hammer going, some cries of children weeping or at play, some noises of animals, some ascending smoke, some issuing or entering shape! They feared an ambush, a sudden onslaught. Warily they stepped into the place, sharply and warily they looked about them in the street, slowly and with circumspection they opened door after door, afraid of what might be lurking behind to pounce upon them at unawares. Only after searching every house, and discovering not the smallest sign of the presence of living creature, did they recognize their fool's-errand. And all the time there was the new village, smoking hard, under the very windows, as he chose himself to say, of its chief adversary!	{ "id": "5968" }
17	THE NEW VILLAGE.	The winter came down upon them early, and the chief and his mother had a sore time of it. Well as they had known it before, the poverty of their people was far better understood by them now. Unable to endure the sight of it, and spending more and more to meet it, they saw it impossible for them to hold out. For a long time their succour had been draining if not exhausting the poor resources of the chief; he had borne up in the hope of the money he was so soon to receive; and now there was none, and the need greater than ever! He was not troubled, for his faith was simple and strong; but his faith made him the more desirous of doing his part for the coming deliverance: faith in God compels and enables a man to be fellow-worker with God. He was now waiting the judgment of Ian concerning the prospects of the settlers in that part of Canada to which he had gone, hoping it might help him to some resolve in view of the worse difficulties at hand. In the meantime the clan was more comfortable, and passed the winter more happily, than for many years. First of all, they had access to the chief at any moment. Then he had prepared a room in his own house where were always fire and light for such as would read what books he was able to lend them, or play at quiet games. To them its humble arrangements were sumptuous. And best of all, he would, in the long dark fore-nights, as the lowland Scotch call them, read aloud, at one time in Gaelic, at another in English, things that gave them great delight. Donal shoemaker was filled with joy unutterable by the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. If only this state of things could be kept up--with Ian back, and Mercy married to the chief! thought the mother. But it was not to be; that grew plainer every day. Mr. Palmer would gladly have spent his winter elsewhere, leaving his family behind him; but as things were, he could not leave them, and as certain other things were, he did not care to take them to London. Besides, for them all to leave now, would be to confess defeat; and who could tell what hurt to his forest might not follow in his absence from the cowardly hatred of the peasants! He was resolved to see the thing out. But above all, he must keep that worthless girl, Mercy, under his own eye! "That's what comes of NOT drinking!" he would say to himself; "a man grows as proud as Satan, and makes himself a curse to his neighbours!" Then he would sigh like a man ill-used and disconsolate. Both Mercy and the chief thought it better not to venture much, but they did occasionally contrive to meet for a few minutes--by the help of Christina generally. Twice only was Mercy's handkerchief hung from the window, when her longing for his voice had grown almost too strong for her to bear. The signal brought him both times through the wild wintry storm, joyous as a bird through the summer air. Once or twice they met just outside the gate, Mercy flying like a snow-bird to the tryst, and as swiftly back through the keen blue frost, when her breath as she ran seemed to linger in the air like smoke, and threaten to betray her. At length came the much desired letter from Ian, full of matter for the enabling of the chief's decision. Two things had long been clear to Alister--that, even if the ground he had could keep his people alive, it certainly could not keep them all employed; and that, if they went elsewhere, especially to any town, it might induce for many, and ensure for their children, a lamentable descent in the moral scale. He was their shepherd, and must lose none of them! therefore, first of all, he must not lose sight of them! It was now clear also, that the best and most desirable thing was, that the poor remnant of the clan should leave their native country, and betake themselves where not a few of their own people, among them Lachlan and Annie, would welcome them to probable ease and comfort. There he would buy land, settle with them, and build a village. Some would cultivate the soil under their chief; others would pursue their trades for the good of the community and themselves! And now came once more the love of land face to face with the love of men, and in the chief's heart paled before it. For there was but one way to get the needful money: the last of the Macruadh property must go! Not for one moment did it rouse a grudging thought in the chief: it was for the sake of the men and women and children whose lives would be required of him! The land itself must yield, them wings to forsake it withal, and fly beyond the sea!	{ "id": "5968" }
18	A FRIENDLY OFFER	It was agreed between mother and son to submit the matter to Ian, and if he should, be of the same mind, at once to negotiate the sale of the land, in order to carry the clan to Canada. They wrote therefore to Ian, and composed themselves to await his answer. It was a sorrowful thing to Alister to seem for a moment to follow the example of the recreant chiefs whose defection to feudalism was the prelude to their treachery toward their people, and whose faithlessness had ruined the highlands. But unlike Glengarry or "Esau" Reay, he desired to sell his land that he might keep his people, care for them, and share with them: his people safe, what mattered the acres! Reflecting on the thing, he saw, in the case of Ian's approval of the sale, no reason why he should not show friendliness where none was expected, and give Mr. Peregrine Palmer the first chance of purchase. He thought also, with his usual hopefulness, that the time might come when the clan, laying its savings together, would be able to redeem its ancient homesteads, and then it might be an advantage that they were all in the possession of one man. Such things had been, and might be again! The Lord could bring again the captivity of Clanruahd as well as that of Zion! Two months passed, and they had Ian's answer--when it was well on into the spring, and weather good for a sea-voyage was upon its way. Because of the loss of their uncle's money, and the good prospect of comfort in return for labour, hard but not killing, Ian entirely approved of the proposal. From that moment the thing was no longer discussed, but how best to carry it out. The chief assembled the clan in the barn, read his brother's letter, and in a simple speech acquainted them with the situation. He told them of the loss of the money to which he had looked for the power to aid them; reminded them that there was neither employment nor subsistence enough on the land--not even if his mother and he were to live like the rest of them, which if necessary they were quite prepared to do; and stated his resolve to part with the remnant of it in order to provide the means of their migrating in a body to Canada, where not a few old friends were eager to welcome them. There they would buy land, he said, of which every man that would cultivate it should have a portion enough to live upon, while those with trades should have every facility for following them. All, he believed, would fare well in return for hard work, and they would be in the power of no man. There was even a possibility, he hoped, that, if they lived and laboured well, they might one day buy back the home they had left; or if not they, their sons and daughters might return from their captivity, and restore the house of their fathers. If anyone would not go, he would do for him what seemed fair. Donal shoemaker rose, unpuckered his face, slackened the purse-strings of his mouth, and said, "Where my chief goes, I will go; where my chief lives, I will live; and where my chief is buried, God grant I may be buried also, with all my family!" He sat down, covered his face with his hands, and wept and sobbed. One voice rose from all present: "We'll go, Macruadh! We'll go! Our chief is our home!" The chief's heart swelled with mingled gladness and grief, but he answered quietly, "Then you must at once begin your preparations; we ought not to be in a hurry at the last." An immediate stir, movement, bustle, followed. There was much talking, and many sunny faces, over which kept sweeping the clouds of sorrow. The next morning the chief went to the New House, and desired to see Mr. Palmer. He was shown into what the new laird called his study. Mr. Palmer's first thought was that he had come to call him to account for firing at him. He neither spoke nor advanced a step to meet him. The chief stood still some yards from him, and said as pleasantly as he could,-- "You are surprised to see me, Mr. Palmer!" "I am." "I come to ask if you would like to buy my land?" "Already!" said Mr. Palmer, cast on his enemy a glare of victory, and so stood regarding him. The chief did not reply. "Well!" said Mr. Palmer. "I wait your answer," returned the chief. "Did it never strike you that insolence might be carried too far?" "I came for your sake more than my own," rejoined the chief, without even a shadow of anger. "I have no particular desire you should take the land, but thought it reasonable you should have the first offer." "What a dull ox the fellow must take me for!" remarked the new laird to himself. "It's all a dodge to get into the house! As if he would sell ME his land! Or could think I would hold any communication with him! Buy his land! It's some trick, I'll lay my soul! The infernal scoundrel! Such a mean-spirited wretch too! Takes an ounce of shot in the stomach, and never says 'What the devil do you mean by it?' I don't believe the savage ever felt it!" Something like this passed with thought's own swiftness through the mind of Mr. Palmer, as he stood looking the chief from head to foot, yet in his inmost person feeling small before him. "If you cannot at once make up your mind," said Alister, "I will give you till to-morrow to think it over." "When you have learned to behave like a gentleman," answered the new laird, "let me know, and I will refer you to my factor." He turned and rang the hell. Alister bowed, and did not wait for the servant. It must be said for Mr. Palmer, however, that that morning Christina had positively refused to listen to a word more from Mr. Sercombe. In the afternoon, Alister set out for London.	{ "id": "5968" }
19	ANOTHER EXPULSION.	Mr. Peregrine Palmer brooded more and more upon what he counted the contempt of the chief. It became in him almost a fixed idea. It had already sent out several suckers, and had, amongst others, developed the notion that he was despised by those from whom first of all he looked for the appreciation after which his soul thirsted--his own family. He grew therefore yet more moody, and his moodiness and distrust developed suspicion. It is scarce credible what a crushing influence the judgment he pretended to scorn, thus exercised upon him. It was not that he acknowledged in it the smallest justice; neither was it that he cared altogether for what such a fanatical fool as the chief might think; but he reflected that if one could so despise his money because of its source, there might be others, might be many who did so. At the same time, had he been sure of the approbation of all the world beside, it would have troubled him not a little, in his thirst after recognition, that any gentleman, one of family especially, however old-fashioned and absurd he might be, should look down upon him. His smouldering, causelessly excited anger, his evident struggle to throw off an oppression, and the fierce resentment of the chief's judgment which he would now and then betray, revealed how closely the offence clung to his consciousness. Flattering himself from her calmness that Mercy had got over her foolish liking for the "boor," as he would not unfrequently style the chief, he had listened to the prayers of her mother, and submitted to her company at the dinner-table; but he continued to treat her as one who had committed a shameful fault. That evening, the great little man could hardly eat for recurrent wrathful memories of the interview of the morning. Perhaps his most painful reflection was that he had not been quick enough to embrace the opportunity of annihilating his enemy. Thunder lowered portentous in his black brows, and not until he had drunk several glasses of wine did a word come from his lips. His presence was purgatory without the purifying element. "What do you think that fellow has been here about this morning?" he said at length. "What fellow?" asked his wife unnecessarily, for she knew what visitor had been shown into the study. "The highland fellow," he answered, "that claims to do what he pleases on my property!" Mercy's face grew hot. " --Came actually to offer me the refusal of his land! --the merest trick to get into the house--confound him! As much as told me, if I did not buy it off-hand, I should not have the chance again! The cheek of the brute! To dare show his face in my house after trifling with my daughter's affections on the pretence that he could not marry a girl whose father was in trade!" Mercy felt she would be false to the man she loved, and whom she knew to be true, if she did not speak. She had no thought of defending him, but simply of witnessing to him. "I beg your pardon, papa," she said, "but the Macruadh never trifled with me. He loves me, and has not given me up. If he told you he was going to part with his land, he is going to part with it, and came to you first because he must return good for evil. I saw him from my window ride off as if he were going to meet the afternoon coach." She would not have been allowed to say so much, had not her father been speechless with rage. This was more than he or any man could bear! He rose from the table, his eyes blazing. "Return ME good for evil!" he exclaimed; "--a beast who has done me more wrong than ever I did in all my life! a scoundrel bumpkin who loses not an opportunity of insulting me as never was man insulted before! You are an insolent, heartless, depraved girl! --ready to sacrifice yourself, body and soul, to a man who despises you and yours with the pride of a savage! You hussey, I can scarce keep my hands off you!" He came toward her with a threatful stride. She rose, pushed back her chair, and stood facing him. "Strike me," she said with a choking voice, "if you will, papa; but mamma knows I am not what you call me! I should be false and cowardly if I did not speak the truth for the man to whom I owe"--she was going to say "more than to any other human being," but she checked herself. "If the beggar is your god," said her father, and struck her on the cheek with his open hand, "you can go to him!" He took her by the arm, and pushed her before him out of the room, and across the hall; then opening the door, shoved her from him into the garden, and flung the door to behind her. The rain was falling in torrents, the night was very dark, and when the door shut, she felt as if she had lost her eyesight. It was terrible! --but, thank God, she was free! Without a moment's hesitation--while her mother wept and pleaded, Christina stood burning with indignation, the two little ones sat white with open mouths, and the servants hurried about scared, but trying to look as if nothing had happened--Mercy fled into the dark. She stumbled into the shrubbery several times, but at last reached the gate, and while they imagined her standing before the house waiting to be let in, was running from it as from the jaws of the pit, in terror of a voice calling her back. The pouring rain was sweet to her whole indignant person, and especially to the cheek where burned the brand of her father's blow. The way was deep in mud, and she slipped and fell more than once as she ran. Mrs. Macruadh was sitting in the little parlour, no one but Nancy in the house, when the door opened, and in came the wild-looking girl, draggled and spent, and dropped kneeling at her feet. Great masses of long black hair hung dripping with rain about her shoulders. Her dress was torn and wet, and soiled with clay from the road and earth from the shrubbery. One cheek was white, and the other had a red patch on it. "My poor child!" cried the mother; "what has happened? Alister is away!" "I know that," panted Mercy. "I saw him go, but I thought you would take me in--though you do not like me much!" "Not like you, my child!" echoed the mother tenderly. "I love you! Are you not my Alister's choice? There are things I could have wished otherwise, but--" "Well could I wish them otherwise too!" interposed Mercy. "I do not wish another father; and I am not quite able to wish he hadn't struck me and put me out into the dark and the rain, but--" "Struck you and put you out! My child! What did he do it for?" "Perhaps I deserved it: it is difficult to know how to behave to a father! A father is supposed to be one whom you not only love, as I do mine, but of whom you can be proud as well! I can't be proud of mine, and don't know quite how to behave to him. Perhaps I ought to have held my peace, but when he said things that were not--not correct about Alister, misinterpreting him altogether, I felt it cowardly and false to hold my tongue. So I said I did not believe that was what Alister meant. It is but a quarter of an hour ago, and it looks a fortnight! I don't think I quite know what I am saying!" She ceased, laid her head on Mrs. Macruadh's knee, then sank to the floor, and lay motionless. All the compassion of the woman, all the protective pride of the chieftainess, woke in the mother. She raised the girl in her arms, and vowed that not one of her house should set eyes on her again without the consent of her son. He should see how his mother cared for what was his! --how wide her arms, how big her heart, to take in what he loved! Dear to him, the daughter of the man she despised should be as the apple of her eye! They would of course repent and want her back, but they should not have her; neither should a sound of threat or demand reach the darling's ears. She should be in peace until Alister came to determine her future. There was the mark of the wicked hand on the sweet sallow cheek! She was not beautiful, but she would love her the more to make up! Thank God, they had turned her out, and that made her free of them! They should not have her again; Alister should have her! --and from the hand of his mother! She got her to bed, and sent for Rob of the Angels. With injunctions to silence, she told him to fetch his father, and be ready as soon as possible to drive a cart to the chief's cave, there to make everything comfortable for herself and Miss Mercy Palmer. Mercy slept well, and as the day was breaking Mrs. Macruadh woke her and helped her to dress. Then they walked together through the lovely spring morning to the turn of the valley-road, where a cart was waiting them, half-filled with oat-straw. They got in, and were borne up and up at a walking-pace to the spot Mercy knew so well. Never by swiftest coach had she enjoyed a journey so much as that slow crawl up the mountains in the rough springless cart of her ploughman lover! She felt so protected, so happy, so hopeful. Alister's mother was indeed a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest! Having consented to be her mother, she could mother her no way but entirely. An outcast for the sake of her Alister, she should have the warmest corner of her heart next to him and Ian! Into the tomb they went, and found everything strangely comfortable--the stone-floor covered with warm and woolly skins of black-faced sheep, a great fire glowing, plenty of provisions hung and stored, and the deaf, keen-eyed father with the swift keen-eared son for attendants. "You will not mind sharing your bed with me--will you, my child?" said Mrs. Macruadh: "Our accommodation is scanty. But we shall be safe from intrusion. Only those two faithful men know where we are." "Mother will be terribly frightened!" said Mercy. "I thought of that, and left a note with Nancy, telling her you were safe and well, but giving no hint of where. I said that her dove had flown to my bosom for shelter, and there she should have it." Mercy answered with a passionate embrace.	{ "id": "5968" }
20	ALISTER'S PRINCESS.	Ten peaceful days they spent in the cave-house. It was cold outside, but the clear air of the hill-top was delicious, and inside it was warm and dry. There were plenty of books, and Mercy never felt the time a moment too long. The mother talked freely of her sons, and of their father, of the history of the clan, of her own girlhood, and of the hopes and intentions of her sons. "Will you go with him, Mercy?" she asked, laying her hand on hers. "I would rather be his servant," answered Mercy, "than remain at home: there is no life there!" "There is life wherever there is the will to live--that is, to do the thing that is given one to do," said the mother. In writing she told Alister nothing of what had happened: he might hurry home without completing his business! Undisturbed by fresh anxiety, he settled everything, parted with his property to an old friend of the family, and received what would suffice for his further intents. He also chartered a vessel to take them over the sea, and to save weariness and expense, arranged for it to go northward as far as a certain bay on the coast, and there take the clan on board. When at length he reached home, Nancy informed him that his mother was at the hill-house, and begged he would go there to her. He was a good deal perplexed: she very seldom went there, and had never before gone for the night! and it was so early in the season! He set out immediately. It was twilight when he reached the top of the hill, and no light shone from the little windows of the tomb. That day Mercy had been amusing her protectress with imitations, in which kind she had some gift, of certain of her London acquaintance: when the mother heard her son's approaching step, a thought came to her. "Here! Quick!" she said; "Put on my cap and shawl, and sit in this chair. I will go into the bedroom. Then do as you like." When the chief entered, he saw the form of his mother, as he thought, bending over the peat-fire, which had sunk rather low: in his imagination he saw again the form of his uncle as on that night in the low moonlight. She did not move, did not even look up. He stood still for a moment; a strange feeling possessed him of something not being as it ought to be. But he recovered himself with an effort, and kneeling beside her, put his arms round her--not a little frightened at her continued silence. "What is the matter, mother dear?" he said. "Why have you come up to this lonely place?" When first Mercy felt his arms, she could not have spoken if she would--her heart seemed to grow too large for her body. But in a moment or two she controlled herself, and was able to say--sufficiently in his mother's tone and manner to keep up the initiated misconception: "They put me out of the house, Alister." "Put you out of the house!" he returned, like one hearing and talking in a dream. "Who dared interfere with you, mother? Am I losing my senses? I seem not to understand my own words!" "Mr. Palmer." "Mr. Palmer! Was it to him I sold the land in London? What could he have to do with you, mother? How did they allow him to come near the house in my absence? Oh, I see! He came and worried you so about Mercy that you were glad to take refuge from him up here! --I understand now!" He ended in a tone of great relief: he felt as if he had just recovered his senses. "No, that was not it. But we are going so soon, there would have been no good in fighting it out. We ARE going soon, are we not?" "Indeed we are, please God!" replied the chief, who had relapsed into bewilderment. "That is well--for you more than anybody. Would you believe it--the worthless girl vows she will never leave her mother's house!" "Ah, mother, YOU never heard her say so! I know Mercy better than that! She will leave it when I say COME. But that won't be now. I must wait, and come and fetch her when she is of age." "She is not worthy of you." "She is worthy of me if I were twenty times worthier! Mother, mother! What has turned you against us again? It is not like you to change about so! I cannot bear to find you changeable! I should have sworn you were just the one to understand her perfectly! I cannot bear you should let unworthy reasons prejudice you against anyone! --If you say a word more against her, I will go and sit outside with the moon. She is not up yet, but she will be presently--and though she is rather old and silly, I shall find her much better company than you, mother dear!" He spoke playfully, but was grievously puzzled. "To whom are you talking, Alister? --yourself or a ghost?" Alister started up, and saw his mother coming from the bedroom with a candle in her hand! He stood stupefied. He looked again at the seated figure, still bending over the fire. Who was it if not his mother? With a wild burst of almost hysteric laughter, Mercy sprang to her feet, and threw herself in his arms. It was not the less a new bewilderment that it was an unspeakably delightful change from the last. Was he awake or dreaming? Was the dream of his boyhood come true? or was he dreaming it on in manhood? It was come true! The princess was arrived! She was here in his cave to be his own! A great calm and a boundless hope filled the heart of Alister. The night was far advanced when he left them to go home. Nor did he find his way home, but wandered all night about the tomb, making long rounds and still returning like an angel sent to hover and watch until the morning. When he astonished them by entering as they sat at breakfast, and told them how he had passed the night, it thrilled Mercy's heart to know that, while she slept and was dreaming about him, he was awake and thinking about her. "What is only dreaming in me, is thinking in you, Alister!" she said. "I was thinking," returned Alister, "that as you did not know I was watching you, so, when we feel as if God were nowhere, he is watching over us with an eternal consciousness, above and beyond our every hope and fear, untouched by the varying faith and fluctuating moods of his children." After breakfast he went to see the clergyman of the parish, who lived some miles away; the result of which visit was that in a few days they were married. First, however, he went once more to the New House, desiring to tell Mr. Palmer what had been and was about to be done. He refused to see him, and would not allow his wife or Christina to go to him. The wedding was solemnized at noon within the ruined walls of the old castle. The withered remnant of the clan, with pipes playing, guns firing, and shouts of celebration, marched to the cave-house to fetch thence the bride. When the ceremony was over, a feast was ready for all in the barn, and much dancing followed. When evening came, with a half-moon hanging faint in the limpid blue, and the stars looking large through the mist of ungathered tears--those of nature, not the lovers; with a wind like the breath of a sleeping child, sweet and soft, and full of dreams of summer; the mountains and hills asleep around them like a flock of day-wearied things, and haunted by the angels of Rob's visions--the lovers, taking leave only of the mother, stole away to walk through the heavenly sapphire of the still night, up the hills and over the rushing streams of the spring, to the cave of their rest--no ill omen but lovely symbol to such as could see in the tomb the porch of paradise. Where should true lovers make their bed but on the threshold of eternity!	{ "id": "5968" }
21	THE FAREWELL.	A month passed, and the flag of their exile was seen flying in the bay. The same hour the chief's horses were put to, the carts were loaded, their last things gathered. Few farewells had to be made, for the whole clan, except two that had gone to the bad, turned out at the minute appointed. The chief arranged them in marching column. Foremost went the pipes; the chief, his wife, and his mother, came next; Hector of the Stags, carrying the double-barrelled rifle the chief had given him, Rob of the Angels, and Donal shoemaker, followed. Then came the women and children; next, the carts, with a few, who could not walk, on the top of the baggage; the men brought up the rear. Four or five favourite dogs were the skirmishers of the column. The road to the bay led them past the gate of the New House. The chief called a halt, and went with his wife to seek a last interview. Mr. Peregrine Palmer kept his room, but Mrs. Palmer bade her daughter a loving farewell--more relieved than she cared to show, that the cause of so much discomfort was going so far away. The children wept. Christina bade her sister good-bye with a hopeless, almost envious look: Mercy, who did not love him, would see Ian! She who would give her soul for him was never to look on him again in this world! Kissing Mercy once more, she choked down a sob, and whispered, "Give my love--no, my heart, to Ian, and tell him I AM trying." They all walked together to the gate, and there the chief's mother took her leave of the ladies of the New House. The pipes struck up; the column moved on. When they came to the corner which would hide from them their native strath, the march changed to a lament, and with the opening wail, all stopped and turned for a farewell look. Men and women, the chief alone excepted, burst into weeping, and the sound of their lamentation went wandering through the hills with an adieu to every loved spot. And this was what the pipes said: We shall never see you more, Never more, never more! Till the sea be dry, and the world be bare, And the dews have ceased to fall, And the rivers have ceased to run, We shall never see you more, Never more, never more! They stood and gazed, and the pipes went on lamenting, and the women went on weeping. "This is heathenish!" said Alister to himself, and stopped the piper. "My friends," he cried, in Gaelic of course, "look at me: my eyes are dry! Where Jesus, the Son of God, is--there is my home! He is here, and he is over the sea, and my home is everywhere! I have lost my land and my country, but I take with me my people, and make no moan over my exile! Hearts are more than hills. Farewell Strathruadh of my childhood! Place of my dreams, I shall visit you again in my sleep! And again I shall see you in happier times, please God, with my friends around me!" He took off his bonnet. All the men too uncovered for a moment, then turned to follow their chief. The pipes struck up Macrimmon's lament, Till an crodh a Dhonnachaidh (TURN THE KINE, DUNCAN). Not one looked behind him again till they reached the shore. There, out in the bay, the biggest ship any of the clan had ever seen was waiting to receive them. When Mr. Peregrine Palmer saw that the land might in truth be for sale, he would gladly have bought it, but found to his chagrin that he was too late. It was just like the fellow, he said, to mock him with the chance of buying it! He took care to come himself, and not send a man he could have believed! The clan throve in the clearings of the pine forests. The hill-men stared at their harvests as if they saw them growing. Their many children were strong and healthy, and called Scotland their home. In an outlying and barren part of the chief's land, they came upon rock oil. It was so plentiful that as soon as carriage became possible, the chief and his people began to grow rich. News came to them that Mr. Peregrine Palmer was in difficulties, and desirous of parting with his highland estate. The chief was now able to buy it ten times over. He gave his agent in London directions to secure it for him, with any other land conterminous that might come into the market. But he would not at once return to occupy it, for his mother dreaded the sea, and thought to start soon for another home. Also he would rather have his boys grow where they were, and as men face the temptations beyond: where could they find such teaching as that of their uncle Ian! Both father and uncle would have them ALIVE before encountering what the world calls LIFE. But the Macruadh yet dreams of the time when those of the clan then left in the world, accompanied, he hopes, by some of those that went out before them, shall go back to repeople the old waste places, and from a wilderness of white sheep and red deer, make the mountain land a nursery of honest, unambitious, brave men and strong-hearted women, loving God and their neighbour; where no man will think of himself at his brother's cost, no man grow rich by his neighbour's ruin, no man lay field to field, to treasure up for himself wrath against the day of wrath. THE END.	{ "id": "5968" }
1	ONE SOWETH	‘If it be a duty to respect other men’s claims, so also is it a duty to maintain our own.’ IT is in the staging of her comedies that fate shows herself superior to mere human invention. While we, with careful regard to scenery, place our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them play their old old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set by the carpenter for a farce. She deals out the parts with a fine inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo, while the poetic youth with lantern jaw and an impaired digestion finds no Juliet to match his love. Fate, with that playfulness which some take too seriously or quite amiss, set her queer stage as long ago as 1838 for the comedy of certain lives, and rang up the curtain one dark evening on no fitter scene than the high road from Gateshead to Durham. It was raining hard, and a fresh breeze from the south-east swept a salt rime from the North Sea across a tract of land as bare and bleak as the waters of that grim ocean. A hard, cold land this, where the iron that has filled men’s purses has also entered their souls. There had been a great meeting at Chester-le-Street of those who were at this time beginning to be known as Chartists, and, the Act having been lately passed that torchlight meetings were illegal, this assembly had gathered by the light of a waning moon long since hidden by the clouds. Amid the storm of wind and rain, orators had expounded views as wild as the night itself, to which the hard-visaged sons of Northumbria had listened with grunts of approval or muttered words of discontent. A dangerous game to play—this stirring up of the people’s heart, and one that may at any moment turn to the deepest earnest. Few thought at this time that the movement awakening in the working centres of the North and Midlands was destined to spread with the strange rapidity of popular passion—to spread and live for a decade. Few of the Chartists expected to see the fulfilment of half of their desires. Yet, to-day, a moiety of the People’s Charter has been granted. These voices crying in the night demanded an extended suffrage, vote by ballot, and freedom for rich and poor alike to sit in Parliament. Within the scope of one reign these demands have been granted. The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred others held in England at the same time. It was illegal, and yet the authorities dared not to pronounce it so. It might prove dangerous to those taking part in it. Lawyers said that the leaders laid themselves open to the charge of high treason. In this assembly as in others there were wirepullers—men playing their own game, and from the safety of the rear pushing on those in front. With one of these we have to do. With his mistake Fate raised the curtain, and on the horizon of several lives arose a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Geoffrey Horner lived before his time, insomuch as he was a gentleman-Radical. He was clever, and the world heeded not. He was brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, and the world refused to be astonished. Here were the makings of a malcontent. A well-born Radical is one whom the world has refused to accept at his own valuation. A wise man is ready to strike a bargain with Fate. The wisest are those who ask much and then take half. It is the coward who asks too little, and the fool who imagines that he will receive without demanding. Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed their reliance thereon. He had come from Durham with a contingent of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company with the local leaders. These were intelligent mechanics seeking clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their fellows. At their heels tramped the rank and file of the great movement. The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of things to come—of Newport and the march of twenty thousand men, of violence and bloodshed, of strife between brethren, and of justice nonplussed and hesitating. The toil-worn miners were mostly silent, their dimly enlightened intellects uneasily stirred by the words they had lately heard—their stubborn hearts full of a great hope with a minute misgiving at the back of it. With this dangerous material Geoffrey Horner proposed to play his game. Suddenly a voice was raised. ‘Mates,’ it cried, at the cross-roads, ‘let’s go and smash Pleydell’s windows!’ And a muttered acquiescence to the proposal swept through the moving mass like a sullen breeze through reeds. The desire for action rustled among these men of few words and mighty arms. Horner hurriedly consulted his colleagues. Was it wise to attempt to exert an authority which was merely nominal? The principles of Chartism were at this time to keep within the limits of the law, and yet to hint, when such a course was safe, that stronger measures lay behind mere words. Their fatal habit was to strike softly. In peace and war, at home and abroad, there is but one humane and safe rule: Hesitate to strike—strike hard. Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated the Charter with contempt. He was one of those who had voted with the majority against the measures it embodied. In addition to these damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some renown—an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave his son a peerage. To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny against which their protest was raised. Geoffrey Horner looked on him as a political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning party. The blow was easy to strike. Horner hesitated—at the cross roads of other lives than his own—and held his tongue. The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself to the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards the by-road leading to Dene Hall. The others—the minority—followed as minorities do, because they distrusted themselves. Some one struck up a song with words lately published in the ‘Northern Liberator’ and set to a well-known local air. The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner table when the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of coverts and guns ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices. Sir John Pleydell, an alert man still, despite his grey hair and drawn, careworn face, looked up sharply. He had been sitting silently fingering the stem of his wineglass—a habit of his when the ladies quitted the room—and, although he had shot as well as, perhaps better than, any present, had taken but little part in the conversation. He had, in fact, only half listened, and when a rare smile passed across his grey face it invariably owed its existence to some sally made by his son, Alfred Pleydell, gay, light-hearted, _débonnaire_, at the far end of the table. When Sir John’s thoughtful eyes rested on his motherless son, a dull and suppressed light gleamed momentarily beneath his heavy lids. Superficial observers said that John Pleydell was an ambitious man; ‘not for himself,’ added the few who saw deeper. When his quick mind now took in the import of the sound that broke the outer silence of the night, Sir John’s glance sought his son’s face. In moments of alarm the glance flies to where the heart is. ‘What is that?’ asked Alfred Pleydell, standing up. ‘The Chartists,’ said Sir John. Alfred looked round. He was a soldier, though the ink had hardly dried upon the parchment that made him one—the only soldier in the room. ‘We are eleven here,’ he said, ‘and two men downstairs—some of you fellows have your valets too—say fifteen in all. We cannot stand this, you know.’ As he spoke the first volley of stones crashed through the windows, and the broken glass rattled to the floor behind the shutters. The cries of the ladies in the drawing-room could be heard, and all the men sprang to their feet. With blazing eyes Alfred Pleydell ran to the door, but his father was there before him. ‘Not you,’ said the elder man, quiet but a little paler than usual; ‘I will go and speak to them. They will not dare to touch me. They are probably running away by this time.’ ‘Then we’ll run after ’em,’ answered Alfred with a fine spirit, and something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice, awoke that demon of combativeness which lies dormant in men of the Anglo-Saxon race. ‘Come on, you fellows!’ cried the boy with a queer glad laugh, and without knowing that he did it Sir John stood aside, his heart warm with a sudden pride, his blood stirred by something that had not moved it these thirty years. The guests crowded out of the room—old men who should have known better—laughing as they threw aside their dinner napkins. What a strange thing is man, peaceful through long years, and at a moment’s notice a mere fighting devil. ‘Come on, we’ll teach them to break windows!’ repeated Alfred Pleydell, running to the stick rack. The rain rattled on the skylight of the square hall, and the wind roared down the open chimney. Among the men hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks and cramming caps upon their heads were some who had tasted of rheumatism, but they never thought of an overcoat. ‘We’ll know each other by our shirt fronts,’ said a quiet man who was standing on a chair in order to reach an Indian club suspended on the wall. Alfred was at the door leading through to the servants’ quarters, and his summons brought several men from the pantry and kitchens. ‘Come on!’ he cried, ‘take anything you can find—stick or poker—yes, and those old guns, use ’em like a club, hit very hard and very often. We’ll charge the devils—there’s nothing like a charge—come on!’ And he was already out of the door with a dozen at his heels. The change from the lighted rooms to the outer darkness made them pause a moment, during which time the defenders had leisure to group themselves around Alfred Pleydell. A hoarse shout, which indeed drowned Geoffrey Horner’s voice, showed where the assailants stood. Horner had found his tongue after the first volley of stones. It was the policy of the Chartist leaders and wirepullers to suggest rather than demonstrate physical force. Enough had been done to call attention to the Chester-le-Street meeting, and give it the desired prominence in the eyes of the nation. ‘Get back, go to your homes!’ he was shouting, with upraised arms, when the hoarse cry of his adherents and the flood of light from the opened door made him turn hastily. In a moment he saw the meaning of this development, but it was too late. With a cheer, Alfred Pleydell, little more than a boy, led the charge, and seeing Horner in front, ran at him with upraised stick. Horner half warded the blow, which came whistling down his own stick and paralysed his thumb. He returned the stroke with a sudden fury, striking Pleydell full on the head. Then, because he had a young wife and child at home, he pushed his way through the struggling crowd, and ran away in the darkness. As he ran he could hear his late adherents dispersing in all directions, like sheep before a dog. He heard a voice calling: ‘Alfred! Alfred!’ And Horner, who an hour—nay, ten minutes—earlier had had no thought of violence, ran his fastest along the road by which he had lately come. His heart was as water within his breast, and his staring eyes played their part mechanically. He did not fall, but he noted nothing, and had no knowledge whither he was running. Alfred Pleydell lay quite still on the lawn in front of his father’s house.	{ "id": "5987" }
2	ANOTHER REAPETH	‘Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt.’ DURING the course of a harum-scarum youth in the city of Dublin certain persons had been known to predict that Mr. Frederick Conyngham had a future before him. Mostly pleasant-spoken Irish persons these, who had the racial habit of saying that which is likely to be welcome. Many of them added, ‘the young divil,’ under their breath, in a pious hope of thereby cleansing their souls from guilt. ‘I suppose I’m idle, and what is worse, I know I’m a fool,’ said Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a toleration which was undeserved, took him severely to task before sending him up for the Bar examination. The tutor said nothing, but he suspected that this, his wildest pupil, was no fool. Truth to tell, Frederick Conyngham had devoted little thought to the matter of which he spoke, namely, himself, and was perhaps none the worse for that. A young man who thinks too often usually falls into the error of also thinking too much, of himself. The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course Frederick was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen’s Counsel, with an accent like rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and entitled so to call himself. All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in his rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking of Sir John Pleydell’s windows, was engaged in realising that the predicted future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise nearer than it had been in his mother’s lifetime. This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb his equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the fire, he murmured a popular air in a careless voice. The firelight showed his face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of his birth undoubted. Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin, closely curling hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman. Something, however, in the cut of his lips—something close and firm—suggested an admixture of Anglo-Saxon blood. The man looked as if he might have had an English mother. It was perhaps this formation of the mouth that had led those pleasant-spoken persons to name to his relatives their conviction that Conyngham had a future before him. The best liars are those who base their fancy upon fact. They knew that the ordinary thoroughbred Irishman has usually a cheerful enough life before him, but not that which is vaguely called a future. Fred Conyngham looked like a man who could hold to his purpose, but at this moment he also had the unfortunate appearance of not possessing one to hold to. He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl against the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled, without moving, in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense of humour and a full comprehension of the harmless practical joke. A moment later the dog sat up and listened with an interest that gradually increased until the door opened and Geoffrey Horner came into the room. ‘Faith, it’s Horner!’ said Conyngham. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘The North.’ ‘Ah—sit down. What have you been doing up there—tub-thumping?’ Horner came forward and sat down in the chair indicated. He looked five years older than when he had last been there. Conyngham glanced at his friend, who was staring into the fire. ‘Edith all right?’ he asked carelessly. ‘Yes.’ ‘And—the little chap?’ ‘Yes.’ Conyngham glanced at his companion again. Horner’s eyes had the hard look that comes from hopelessness; his lips were dry and white. He wore the air of one whose stake in the game of life was heavy, who played that game nervously. For this was an ambitious man with wife and child whom he loved. Conyngham’s attitude towards Fate was in strong contrast. He held his head up and faced the world without encumbrance, without a settled ambition, without any sense of responsibility at all. The sharp-eyed dog on the hearthrug looked from one to the other. A moment before, the atmosphere of the room had been one of ease and comfortable assurance—an atmosphere that some men, without any warrant or the justification of personal success or distinction, seem to carry with them through life. Since Horner had crossed the threshold the ceaseless hum of the streets seemed to be nearer, the sound of it louder in the room; the restlessness of that great strife stirred the air. The fox terrier laid himself on the hearthrug again, but instead of sleeping watched his two human companions. Conyngham filled his pipe. He turned to the table where the matchbox stood at his elbow, took it up, rattled it, and laid it down. He pressed the tobacco hard with his thumb, and, turning to Horner, said sharply: ‘What is it?’ ‘I don’t know yet; ruin, I think.’ ‘Nonsense, man!’ said Conyngham cheerily. ‘There is no such thing in this world. At least, the jolliest fellows I know are bankrupts, or no better. Look at me: never a brief; literary contributions returned with thanks; balance at the bank, seventeen pounds ten shillings; balance in hand, none; debts, the Lord only knows! Look at me! I’m happy enough.’ ‘Yes, you’re a lonely devil.’ Conyngham looked at his friend with inquiry in his gay eyes. ‘Ah! perhaps so. I live alone, if that is what you mean. But as for being lonely—no, hang it! I have plenty of friends, especially at dividend time.’ ‘You have nobody depending on you,’ said Horner with the irritability of sorrow. ‘Because nobody is such a fool. On the other hand, I have nobody to care a twopenny curse what becomes of me. Same thing, you see, in the end. Come, man, cheer up. Tell me what is wrong. Seventeen pounds ten shillings is not exactly wealth, but if you want it you know it is there, eh?’ ‘I do not want it, thanks,’ replied the other. ‘Seventeen hundred would be no good to me.’ He paused, biting his under lip and staring with hard eyes into the fire. ‘Read that,’ he said at length, and handed Conyngham a cutting from a daily newspaper. The younger man read, without apparent interest, an account of the Chester-le-Street meeting, and the subsequent attack on Sir John Pleydell’s house. ‘Yes,’ he commented, ‘the usual thing. Brave words followed by a cowardly deed. What in the name of fortune you were doing in that _galère_ you yourself know best. If these are politics, Horner, I say drop them. Politics are a stick, clean enough at the top, but you’ve got hold of the wrong end. Young Pleydell was hurt, I see—“seriously, it is feared. ”’ ‘Yes,’ said Horner significantly; and his companion, after a quick look of surprise, read the slip of paper carefully a second time. Then he looked up and met Horner’s eyes. ‘Gad!’ he exclaimed in a whisper. Horner said nothing. The dog moved restlessly, and for a moment the whole world—that sleepless world of the streets—seemed to hold its breath. ‘And if he dies,’ said Conyngham at length. ‘Exactly so,’ answered the other with a laugh—of scaffold mirth. Conyngham turned in his chair and sat with his elbows on his knees, his face resting on his closed fists, staring at the worn old hearthrug. Thus they remained for some minutes. ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Horner at length. ‘Nothing—got nothing to think with. You know that, Geoffrey. Wish I had—never wanted it as I do at this moment. I’m no good, you know that. You must go to some one with brains—some clever devil.’ As he spoke he turned and took up the paper again, reading the paragraph slowly and carefully. Horner looked at him with a breathless hunger in his eyes. At some moments it is a crime to think, for we never know but that thought may be transmitted without so much as a whisper. ‘“The miners were accompanied by a gentleman from London,”’ Conyngham read aloud, ‘“a barrister, it is supposed, whose speech was a feature of the Chester le-Street meeting. This gentleman’s name is quite unknown, nor has his whereabouts yet been discovered. His sudden disappearance lends likelihood to the report that this unknown agitator actually struck the blow which injured Mr. Alfred Pleydell. Every exertion is being put forth by the authorities to trace the man who is possibly a felon and certainly a coward. ”’ Conyngham laid aside the paper and again looked at Horner, who did not meet his glance nor ask now of what he was thinking. Horner, indeed, had his own thoughts, perhaps of the fireside—modest enough, but happy as love and health could make it—upon which his own ambition had brought down the ruins of a hundred castles in the air—thoughts he scarce could face, no doubt, and yet had no power to drive away, of the young wife whose world was that same fireside; of the child, perhaps, whose coming had opened for a time the door of Paradise. Conyngham broke in upon these meditations with a laugh. ‘I have it!’ he cried. ‘It’s as simple as the alphabet. This paper says it was a barrister—a man from London—a malcontent, a felon, a coward. Dammy, Geoff—that’s me!’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Get out of the way, Tim!’ he cried to the dog, pushing the animal aside and standing on the hearthrug. ‘Listen to this,’ he went on. ‘This thing, like the others, will blow over. It will be forgotten in a week. Another meeting will be held—say in South Wales, more windows will be broken, another young man’s head cracked, and Chester-le-Street (God-forsaken place, never heard of it!) will be forgotten.’ Horner sat looking with hollow eyes at the young Irishman, his lips twitching, his fingers interlocked—there is nothing makes so complete a coward of a man as a woman’s love. Conyngham laughed as the notion unfolded itself in his mind. He might, as he himself had said, be of no great brain power, but he was at all events a man and a brave one. He stood a full six foot, and looked down at his companion, who sat whitefaced and shrinking. ‘It is quite easy,’ he said, ‘for me to disappear in such a manner as to arouse suspicion. I have nothing to keep me here; my briefs—well, the Solicitor-General can have ’em! I have no ties—nothing to keep me in any part of the world. When young Pleydell is on his feet again, and a few more windows have been broken, and nine days have elapsed, the wonder will give place to another, and I can return to my—practice.’ ‘I couldn’t let you do it.’ ‘Oh yes, you could,’ said Conyngham with the quickness of his race to spy out his neighbour’s vulnerable point. ‘For the sake of Edith and the little devil.’ Horner sat silent, and after a moment Conyngham went on. ‘All we want to do is to divert suspicion from you now—to put them on a false scent, for they must have one of some sort. When they find that they cannot catch me they will forget all about it.’ Horner shuffled in his seat. This was nothing but detection of the thoughts that had passed through his own mind. ‘It is easily enough done,’ went on the Irishman. ‘A paragraph here and there in some of the newspapers; a few incriminating papers left in these rooms, which are certain to be searched. I have a bad name—an Irish dog goes about the world with a rope round his neck. If I am caught it will not be for some time, and then I can get out of it somehow—an alibi or something. I’ll get a brief at all events. By that time the scent will be lost, and it will be all right. Come, Geoff, cheer up! A man of your sort ought not to be thrown by a mischance like this.’ He stood with his legs apart, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, a gay laugh on his lips, and much discernment in his eyes. ‘Oh, d—n Edith!’ he added after a pause, seeing that his efforts met with no response. ‘D—n that child! You used to have some pluck, Horner.’ Horner shook his head and made no answer, but his very silence was a point gained. He no longer protested nor raised any objection to his companion’s hare-brained scheme. The thing was feasible, and he knew it. Conyngham went on to set forth his plans, which with characteristic rapidity of thought he evolved as he spoke. ‘Above all,’ he said, ‘we must be prompt. I must disappear to-night, the paragraphs must be in to-morrow’s papers. I think I’ll go to Spain. The Carlists seem to be making things lively there. You know, Horner, I was never meant for a wig and gown—there’s no doubt about that. I shall have a splendid time of it out there—’ He stopped, meeting a queer look in Horner’s eyes, who sat leaning forward and searching his face with jealous glance. ‘I was wondering,’ said the other, with a pale smile, ‘if you were ever in love with Edith.’ ‘No, my good soul, I was not,’ answered Conyngham, with perfect carelessness, ‘though I knew her long before you did.’ He paused, and a quick thought flashed through his mind that some men are seen at their worst in adversity. He was ready enough to find excuses for Horner, for men are strange in the gift of their friendship, often bestowing it where they know it is but ill deserved. He rattled on with unbroken gaiety, unfolding plans which in their perfection of detail suggested a previous experience in outrunning the constable. While they were still talking a mutual friend came in—a quick-spoken man already beginning to be known as a journalist of ability. They talked on indifferent topics for some time. Then the new-comer said jerkily: ‘Heard the news?’ ‘No,’ answered Conyngham. ‘Alfred Pleydell—young fellow who resisted the Chartist rioters at Durham—died yesterday morning.’ Frederick Conyngham had placed himself in front of Horner, who was still seated in the low chair by the fire. He found Horner’s toe with his heel. ‘Is that so?’ he said gravely. ‘Then I’m off.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked the journalist with a quick look—the man had the manner of a ferret. ‘Nothing, only I’m off, that’s all, old man. And I cannot ask you to stay this evening, you understand, because I have to pack.’ He turned slowly on Horner, who had recovered himself, but still had his hand over his face. ‘Got any money, Geoff?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I have twenty pounds if you want it,’ answered the other in a hoarse voice. ‘I do want it—badly.’ The journalist had taken up his hat and stick. He moved slowly towards the door, and, there pausing, saw Horner pass the bank-notes to Conyngham. ‘You had better go too,’ said the Irishman. ‘You two are going in the same direction, I know.’ Horner rose, and, half laughing, Conyngham pushed him towards the door. ‘See him home, Blake,’ he said. ‘Horner has the blues to-night.’	{ "id": "5987" }
3	LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA	‘No one can be more wise than destiny.’ ‘WHAT are we waiting for? why, two more passengers—grand ladies as they tell me—and the captain has gone ashore to fetch them,’ the first mate of the ‘Granville’ barque, of London, made answer to Frederick Conyngham, and he breathed on his fingers as he spoke, for the north-west wind was blowing across the plains of the Medoc, and the sun had just set behind the smoke of Bordeaux. The ‘Granville’ was lying at anchor in the middle of the Garonne river, having safely discharged her deck cargo of empty claret casks and landed a certain number of passengers. There are few colder spots on the Continent than the sunny town of Bordeaux when the west wind blows from Atlantic wastes in winter time. A fine powder of snow scudded across the flat land, which presented a bleak brown face, patched here and there with white. There were two more passengers on board the ‘Granville,’ crouching in the cabin—two French gentlemen who had taken passage from London to Algeciras in Spain, on their way to Algiers. Conyngham, with characteristic good-nature, had made himself so entirely at home on board the Mediterranean trader that his presence was equally welcomed in the forecastle and the captain’s cabin. Even the first mate, his present interlocutor, a grim man given to muttered abuse of his calling and a pious pessimism in respect to human nature, gradually thawed under the influence of so cheerful an acceptance of heavy weather and a clumsy deck cargo. ‘The ladies will be less trouble than the empty casks, at all events,’ said Conyngham, ‘because they will keep below.’ The sailor shook his head forebodingly and took an heroic pinch of snuff. ‘One’s as capable of carrying mischief as the other,’ he muttered in the bigoted voice of a married teetotaller. The ship was ready for sea, and this mariner’s spirit was ever uneasy and restless till the anchor was on deck and the hawser stowed. ‘There’s a boat leaving the quay now,’ he added. ‘Seems she’s lumbered up forr’ard wi’ women’s hamper.’ And indeed the black form of a skiff so laden could be seen approaching through the driving snow and gloom. The mate called to the steward to come on deck, and this bearded servitor of dames emerged from the galley with uprolled sleeves and a fine contempt for cold winds. A boy went forward with a coil of rope on his arm, for the tide was running hard and the Garonne is no ladies’ pleasure stream. It is not an easy matter to board a ship in mid-current when tide and wind are at variance, and the fingers so cold that a rope slips through them like a log-line. The ‘Granville,’ having still on board her cargo of coals for Algeciras, lay low in the water with both her anchors out and the tide singing round her old-fashioned hempen hawsers. ‘Now see ye throw a clear rope,’ shouted the mate to the boy who had gone forward. The proximity of the land and the approach of women—a _bête noire_ no less dreaded—seemed to flurry the brined spirit of the Granville’s’ mate. Perhaps the knowledge that the end of a rope, not judged clear, would inevitably be applied to his own person, shook the nerve of the boy on the forecastle—perhaps his hands were cold and his faculties benumbed. He cast a line which seemed to promise well at first. Two coils of it unfolded themselves gracefully against the grey sky, and then Confusion took the others for herself. A British oath from the deck of the ship went out to meet a fine French explosion of profanity from the boat, both forestalling the splash of the tangled rope into the water under the bows of the ship, and a full ten yards out of the reach of the man who stood, boathook in hand, ready to catch it. There were two ladies in the stern of the boat, muffled up to the eyes, and betokening by their attitude the hopeless despair and misery which seize the southern fair the moment they embark in so much as a ferry boat. The fore part of the heavy craft was piled up with trunks and other impedimenta of a feminine incongruity. A single boatman had rowed the boat from the shore, guiding it into mid-stream, and there describing a circle calculated to insure a gentle approach on the lee side. This man, having laid aside his oars, now stood, boathook in hand, awaiting the inevitable crash. The offending boy in the bows was making frantic efforts to haul in his misguided rope, but the possibility of making a second cast was unworthy of consideration. The mate muttered such a string of foreboding expletives as augured ill for the delinquent. The boatman was preparing to hold on and fend off at the same moment—a sudden gust of wind gave the boat a sharp buffet just as the man grappled the mizzen-chains—he overbalanced himself, fell, and recovered himself, but only to be jerked backwards into the water by the boathook, which struck him in the chest. ‘_À moi_!’ cried the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to the surface under the ship’s quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the attitude of a monkey. At the same instant a splash made the rescuers turn in time to see Conyngham, whose coat lay thrown on the deck behind them, rise to the surface ten yards astern of the ‘Granville’ and strike out towards the boat, now almost disappearing in the gloom of night. The water, which had flowed through the sunniest of the sunny plains of France, was surprisingly warm, and Conyngham, soon recovering from the shock of his dive, settled into a quick side-stroke. The boat was close in front of him, and in the semi-darkness he could see one of the women rise from her seat and make her way forward, while her companion crouched lower and gave voice to her dismay in a series of wails and groans. The more intrepid lady was engaged in lifting one of the heavy oars, when Conyngham called out in French: ‘Courage, mesdames! I will be with you in a moment.’ Both turned, and the pallor of their faces shone whitely through the gloom. Neither spoke, and in a few strokes Conyngham came alongside. He clutched the gunwale with his right hand, and drew himself breast high. ‘If these ladies,’ he said, ‘will kindly go to the opposite side of the boat, I shall be able to climb in without danger of upsetting.’ ‘If mama inclines that way I think it will be sufficient,’ answered the muffled form which had made its way forward. The voice was clear and low, remarkably self-possessed, and not without a suggestion that its possessor bore a grudge against some person present. ‘Perhaps mademoiselle is right,’ said Conyngham with becoming gravity, and the lady in the stern obeyed her daughter’s suggestion, with the result anticipated. Indeed, the boat heeled over with so much goodwill that Conyngham was lifted right out of the water. He clambered on board and immediately began shivering, for the wind cut like a knife. The younger lady made her way cautiously back to the seat which she had recently quitted, and began at once to speak very severely to her mother. This stout and emotional person was swaying backwards and forwards, and, in the intervals of wailing and groaning, called in Spanish upon several selected saints to assist her. At times, and apparently by way of a change, she appealed to yet higher powers to receive her soul. ‘My mother,’ said the young lady to Conyngham, who had already got the oars out, ‘has the heart of a rabbit, but—yes—of a very young rabbit.’ ‘Madame may rest assured that there is no danger,’ said Conyngham. ‘Monsieur is an Englishman—’ ‘Yes, and a very cold one at the moment. If madame could restrain her religious enthusiasm so much as to sit still, we should make better progress.’ He spoke rather curtly, as if refusing to admit the advisability of manning the boat with a crew of black-letter saints. The manner in which the craft leapt forward under each stroke of the oars testified to the strength of his arms, and madame presently subsided into whispers of thankfulness, having reason, it would seem, to be content with mere earthly aid in lieu of that heavenly intervention which ladies of her species summon at every turn of life. ‘I wish I could help you,’ said the younger woman presently, in a voice and manner suggestive of an energy unusual to her countrywomen. She spoke in French, but with an accent somewhat round and full, like an English accent, and Conyngham divined that she was Spanish. He thought also that under their outer wraps the ladies wore the mantilla, and had that graceful carriage of the head which is only seen in the Peninsula. ‘Thank you, mademoiselle, but I am making good progress now. Can you see the ship?’ She rose and stood peering into the darkness ahead—a graceful, swaying figure. A faint scent as of some flower was wafted on the keen wind to Conyngham, who had already decided with characteristic haste that this young person was as beautiful as she was intrepid. ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘it is quite close. They are also showing lights to guide us.’ She stood looking apparently over his head towards the ‘Granville,’ but when she spoke it would seem that her thoughts had not been fixed on that vessel. ‘Is monsieur a sailor?’ ‘No, but I fortunately have a little knowledge of such matters—fortunate, since I have been able to turn it to the use of these ladies.’ ‘But you are travelling in the “Granville. ”’ ‘Yes; I am travelling in the “Granville. ”’ Over his oars Conyngham looked hard at his interlocutrice, but could discern nothing of her features. Her voice interested him, however, and he wondered whether there were ever calms on the coast of Spain at this time of the year. ‘Our sailors,’ said the young lady, ‘in Spain are brave, but they are very cautious. I think none of them would have done such a thing as you have just done for us. We were in danger. I knew it. Was it not so?’ ‘The boat might have drifted against some ship at anchor and been upset. You might also have been driven out to sea. They had no boat on board the “Granville” ready to put out and follow you.’ ‘Yes; and you saved us. But you English are of a great courage. And my mother, instead of thanking you, is offering her gratitude to James and John the sons of Zebedee, as if they had done it.’ ‘I am no relation to Zebedee,’ said Conyngham with a gay laugh. ‘Madame may rest assured of that.’ ‘Julia,’ said the elder lady severely, and in a voice that seemed to emanate from a chest as deep and hollow as an octave cask, ‘I shall tell Father Concha, who will assuredly reprove you. The saints upon whom I called were fishermen, and therefore the more capable of understanding our great danger. As for monsieur, he knows that he shall always be in my prayers.’ ‘Thank you, madame,’ said Conyngham gravely. ‘And at a fitter time I hope to be able to tender him my thanks.’ At this moment a voice from the ‘Granville’ hailed the boat, asking whether all was well and Mr. Conyngham on board. Being reassured on this point, the mate apparently attended to another matter requiring his attention, the mingled cries and expostulations of the cabin boy sufficiently indicating its nature. The boat, under Conyngham’s strong and steady strokes, now came slowly and without mishap alongside the great black hull of the vessel, and it soon became manifest that, although all danger was past, there yet remained difficulty ahead; for when the boat was made fast and the ladder lowered, the elder of the two ladies firmly and emphatically denied her ability to make the ascent. The French boatman, shivering in a borrowed great coat, and with a vociferation which flavoured the air with cognac, added his entreaties to those of the mate and steward. In the small boat Conyngham, in French, and the lady’s daughter, in Spanish, represented that at least half of the heavenly host, having intervened to save her from so great a peril as that safely passed through, could surely accomplish this smaller feat with ease. But the lady still hesitated, and the mate, having clambered down into the boat, grabbed Conyngham’s arm with a large and not unkindly hand, and pushed him forcibly towards the ladder. ‘You hadn’t got no business, Mr. Conyngham,’ he said gruffly, ‘to leave the ship like that, and like as not you’ve got your death of cold. Just you get aboard and leave these women to me. You get to your bunk, mister, and stooard’ll bring you something hot.’ There was nought but obedience in the matter, and Conyngham was soon between the blankets, alternately shivering and burning in the first stages of a severe chill. The captain having come on board, the ‘Granville’ presently weighed anchor, and on the bosom of an ebbing tide turned her blunt prow towards the winter sea. The waves out there beat high, and before the lights of Pauillac, then a mere cluster of fishers’ huts, had passed away astern, the good ship was lifting her bow with a sense of anticipation, while her great wooden beams and knees began to strain and creak. During the following days, while the sense of spring and warmth slowly gave life to those who could breathe the air on deck, Conyngham lay in his little cabin and heeded nothing; for when the fever left him he was only conscious of a great lassitude, and scarce could raise himself to take such nourishment as the steward, with a rough but kindly skill, prepared for him. ‘Why the deuce I ever came—why the deuce I ever went overboard after a couple of señoras—I don’t know,’ he repeated to himself during the hours of that long watch below. Why, indeed? except that youth must needs go forth into the world and play the only stake it owns there. Nor is Frederick Conyngham the first who, having no knowledge of the game of life, throws all upon the board to wait upon the hazard of a die.	{ "id": "5987" }
4	LE PREMIER PAS	‘Be as one that knoweth and yet holdeth his tongue.’ THE little town of Algeciras lies, as many know, within sight of Gibraltar, and separated from that stronghold by a broad bay. It is on the mainland of Spain, and in direct communication by road with the great port of Cadiz. Another road, little better than a bridle-path, runs northward to Ximena and through the corkwood forests of that plain towards the mountain ranges that rise between Ronda and the sea. By this bridle-path, it is whispered, a vast smuggled commerce has ever found passage to the mainland, and scarce a boatman or passenger lands at Algeciras from Gibraltar but carries somewhere on his person as much tobacco as he may hope to conceal with safety. Algeciras, with its fair white houses, its prim church, and sleepy quay, where the blue waters lap and sparkle in innocent sunlight, is, it is to be feared, a town of small virtue and the habitation of scoundrels. For this is the stronghold of those contrabandistas whom song and legend have praised as the boldest, the merriest, and most romantic of law-breakers. Indeed, in this country the man who can boast of a smuggling ancestry holds high his head and looks down on honest folk. The ‘Granville’ having dropped anchor to the north of the rough stone pier, was soon disburdened of her passengers—the ladies going ashore with undisguised delight, and leaving behind them many gracious messages of thanks to the gentleman whose gallantry had resulted so disastrously; for Conyngham was still in bed, though now nearly recovered. Truth to tell, he did not hurry to make his appearance in the general cabin, and came on deck a few hours after the departure of the ladies, whose gratitude he desired to avoid. Two days of the peerless sunshine of these southern waters completely restored him to health, and he prepared to go ashore. It was afternoon when his boat touched the beach, and the idlers, without whom no Mediterranean seaboard is complete, having passed the heat of the day in a philosophic apathy amounting in many cases to a siesta, now roused themselves sufficiently to take a dignified and indifferent interest in the new arrival. A number of boys, an old soldier, several artillerymen from the pretty and absolutely useless fort, a priest and a female vendor of oranges put themselves out so much as to congregate in a little knot at the spot where Conyngham landed. ‘Body of Bacchus!’ said the priest, with a pinch of snuff poised before his long nose, ‘an Englishman—see his gold watch chain.’ This remark called forth several monosyllabic sounds, and the onlookers watched the safe discharge of Conyngham’s personal effects with a characteristic placidity of demeanour which was at once tolerant and gently surprised. That any one should have the energy to come ashore when he was comfortable on board, or leave the shore when amply provided there with sunshine, elbowroom, and other necessaries of life, presented itself to them as a fact worthy of note but not of emulation. The happiest man is he who has reduced the necessities of life to a minimum. No one offered to assist Conyngham. In Spain the onlooker keeps his hands in his pockets. ‘The English, see you, travel for pleasure,’ said the old soldier, nodding his head in the direction of Gibraltar, pink and shimmering across the bay. The priest brushed some stray grains of snuff from the front of his faded cassock—once black, but now of a greeny brown. He was a singularly tall man, gaunt and grey, with deep lines drawn downwards from eye to chin. His mouth was large and tender, with a humorous corner ever awaiting a jest. His eyes were sombre and deeply shaded by grey brows, but one of them had a twinkle lurking and waiting, as in the corner of his mouth. ‘Everyone stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet,’ he said, and, turning, he courteously raised his hat to Conyngham, who passed at that moment on his way to the hotel. The little knot of onlookers broke up, and the boys wandered towards the fort, before the gate of which a game at bowls was in progress. ‘The Padre has a hungry look,’ reflected Conyngham. ‘Think I’ll invite him to dinner.’ For Geoffrey Horner had succeeded in conveying more money to the man who had taken his sins upon himself, and while Conyngham possessed money he usually had the desire to spend it. Conyngham went to the Fonda de la Marina, which stands to-day—a house of small comfort and no great outward cleanliness; but, as in most Spanish inns, the performance was better than the promise, and the bedroom offered to the traveller was nothing worse than bare and ill furnished. With what Spanish he at this time possessed the Englishman made known his wants, and inquired of the means of prosecuting his journey to Ronda. ‘You know the Captain-General Vincente of Ronda?’ he asked. ‘But . . . yes—by reputation. Who does not in Andalusia?’ replied the host, a stout man, who had once cooked for a military mess at Gibraltar, and professed himself acquainted with the requirements of English gentlemen. ‘I have a letter to General Vincente, and must go to Ronda as soon as possible. These are stirring times in Spain.’ The man’s bland face suddenly assumed an air of cunning, and he glanced over his shoulder to see that none overheard. ‘Your Excellency is right,’ he answered. ‘But for such as myself one side is as good as another—is it not so? Carlist or Christino—the money is the same.’ ‘But here in the South there are no Carlists.’ ‘Who knows?’ said the innkeeper with outspread hands. ‘Anything that his Excellency requires shall be forthcoming,’ he added grandiosely. ‘This is the dining-room, and here at the side a little saloon where the ladies sit. But at present we have only gentlemen in the hotel—it being the winter time.’ ‘Then you have other guests?’ inquired Conyngham. ‘But . . . yes—always. In Algeciras there are always travellers. Noblemen—like his Excellency—for pleasure. Others—for commerce, the Government—the politics.’ ‘No flies enter a shut mouth, my friend,’ said a voice at the door, and both turned to see standing in the doorway the priest who had witnessed Conyngham’s arrival. ‘Pardon, señor,’ said the old man, coming forward with his shabby hat in his hand. ‘Pardon my interruption. I came at an opportune moment, for I heard the word politics.’ He turned and shook a lean finger at the innkeeper, who was backing towards the door with many bows. ‘Ah, bad Miguel,’ he said, ‘will you make it impossible for gentlemen to put up at your execrable inn? The man’s cooking is superior to his discretion, señor. I, too, am a traveller, and for the moment a guest here. I have the honour. My name is Concha—the Padre Concha—a priest, as you see.’ Conyngham nodded, and laughed frankly. ‘Glad to meet you,’ he said. ‘I saw you as I came along. My name is Conyngham, and I am an Englishman, as you hear. I know very little Spanish.’ ‘That will come—that will come,’ said the priest, moving towards the window. ‘Perhaps too soon, if you are going to stay any length of time in this country. Let me advise you—do not learn our language too quickly.’ He shook his head and moved towards the open window. ‘See to your girths before you mount, eh? Here is the verandah, where it is pleasant in the afternoon. Shall we be seated? That chair has but three legs—allow me! this one is better.’ He spoke with the grave courtesy of his countrymen. For every Spaniard, even the lowest muleteer, esteems himself a gentleman, and knows how to act as such. The Padre Concha had a pleasant voice, and a habit of gesticulating slowly with one large and not too clean hand, that suggested the pulpit. He had led the way to a spacious verandah, where there were small tables and chairs, and at the outer corners orange trees in square green boxes. ‘We will have a bottle of wine—is it not so? —yes,’ he said, and gravely clapped his hands together to summon the waiter—an Oriental custom still in use in the Peninsula. The wine was brought and duly uncorked, during which ceremony the priest waited and watched with the preoccupied air of a host careful for the entertainment of his guest. He tasted the wine critically. ‘It might be worse,’ he said. ‘I beg you to excuse it not being better.’ There was something simple in the old man’s manner that won Conyngham’s regard. ‘The wine is excellent,’ he said. ‘It is my welcome to Spain.’ ‘Ah! Then this is your first visit to this country,’ the priest said indifferently, his eyes wandering to the open sea, where a few feluccas lay becalmed. ‘Yes.’ Conyngham turned and looked towards the sea also. It was late in the afternoon, and a certain drowsiness of the atmosphere made conversation, even between comparative strangers, a slower, easier matter than with us in the brisk North. After a moment the Englishman turned with, perhaps, the intention of studying his companion’s face, only to find the deep grey eyes fixed on his own. ‘Spain,’ said the Padre, ‘is a wonderful country, rich, beautiful, with a climate like none in Europe; but God and the devil come to closer quarters here than elsewhere. Still for a traveller, for pleasure, I think this country is second to none.’ ‘I am not exactly a traveller for pleasure, my father.’ ‘Ah!’ and Concha drummed idly on the table with his fingers. ‘I left England in haste,’ added Conyngham lightly. ‘Ah!’ ‘And it will be inexpedient for me to return for some months to come. I thought of taking service in the army, and have a letter to General Vincente, who lives at Ronda, as I understand, sixty miles from here across the mountains.’ ‘Yes,’ said the priest thoughtfully, ‘Ronda is sixty miles from here—across the mountains.’ He was watching a boat which approached the shore from the direction of Gibraltar. The wind having dropped, the boatmen had lowered the sail and were now rowing, giving voice to a song which floated across the smooth sea sleepily. It was an ordinary Algeciras wherry built to carry a little cargo, and perhaps a dozen passengers, a fishing boat that smelt strongly of tobacco. The shore was soon reached, and the passengers, numbering half a dozen, stepped over the gunwale on to a small landing stage. One of them was better dressed than his companions, a smart man with a bright flower in the buttonhole of his jacket, carrying the flowing cloak brightly lined with coloured velvet without which no Spaniard goes abroad at sunset. He looked towards the hotel, and was evidently speaking of it with a boatman whose attitude was full of promise and assurance. The priest rose and emptied his glass. ‘I must ask you to excuse me. Vespers wait for no man, and I hear the bell,’ he said with a grave bow, and went indoors. Left to himself, Conyngham lapsed into the easy reflections of a man whose habit it is to live for the present, leaving the future and the past to take care of themselves. Perhaps he thought, as some do, that the past dies—which is a mistake. The past only sleeps, and we carry it with us through life, slumbering. Those are wise who bear it gently so that it may never be aroused. The sun had set, and Gibraltar, a huge couchant lion across the bay, was fading into the twilight of the East when a footstep in the dining-room made Conyngham turn his head, half expecting the return of Father Concha. But in the doorway, and with the evident intention of coming towards himself, Conyngham perceived a handsome dark-faced man of medium height, with a smart moustache brushed upward, clever eyes, and the carriage of a soldier. This stranger unfolded his cloak, for in Spain it is considered ill-mannered to address a stranger and remain cloaked. ‘Señor,’ he said, with a gesture of the hat, courteous and yet manly enough to savour more of the camp than the court, ‘señor, I understand you are journeying to Ronda.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I, too, intended to go across the mountains, and hoped to arrive here in time to accompany friends who I learn have already started on their journey. But I have received letters which necessitate my return to Malaga. You have already divined that I come to ask a favour.’ He brought forward a chair and sat down, drawing from his pocket a silver cigarette case, which he offered to the Englishman. There was a certain picturesqueness in the man’s attitude and manner. His face and movements possessed a suggestion of energy which seemed out of place here in the sleepy South, and stamped him as a native not of dreamy Andalusia, but of La Mancha perhaps, where the wit of Spain is concentrated, or of fiery Catalonia, where discontent and unrest are in the very atmosphere of the brown hills. This was a Spanish gentleman in the best sense of the word, as scrupulous in personal cleanliness as any Englishman, polished, accomplished, bright and fascinating, and yet carrying with him a subtle air of melancholy and romance which lingers still among the men and women of aristocratic Spain. ‘’Tis but to carry a letter,’ he explained, ‘and to deliver it into the hand of the person to whom it is addressed. Ah, I would give five years of life to touch that hand with my lips.’ He sighed, gave a little laugh which was full of meaning, and yet quite free from self-consciousness, and lighted a fresh cigarette. Then, after a little pause, he produced the letter from an inner pocket and laid it on the table in front of Conyngham. It was addressed, ‘To the Señorita J. B.,’ and had a subtle scent of mignonette. The envelope was of a delicate pink. ‘A love letter,’ said Conyngham bluntly. The Spaniard looked at him and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ah! you do not understand,’ he said, ‘in that cold country of the North. If you stay in Spain, perhaps some dark-eyed one will teach you. But,’ and his manner changed with theatrical rapidity, as he laid his slim hand on the letter, ‘if, when you see her you love her, I will kill you.’ Conyngham laughed and held out his hand for the letter. ‘It is insufficiently addressed,’ he said practically. ‘How shall I find the lady?’ ‘Her name is Barenna, the Señorita Barenna; that is sufficient in Ronda.’ Conyngham took up the letter and examined it. ‘It is of importance?’ he said. ‘Of the utmost.’ ‘And of value?’ ‘Of the greatest value in the world to me.’ The Spaniard rose and took up his cloak, which he had thrown over the back of the nearest chair, not forgetting to display a picturesque corner of its bright lining. ‘You swear you will deliver it, only with your own hand, only to the hand of the Señorita Barenna? And—you will observe the strictest secrecy?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ answered Conyngham carelessly, ‘if you like.’ The Spaniard turned, and, leaning one hand on the table, looked almost fiercely into his companion’s face. ‘You are an Englishman,’ he said, ‘and an Englishman’s word—is it not known all the world over? In the North, in my country, where Wellington fought, the peasants still say “word of an Englishman” instead of an oath.’ He threw his cloak over his shoulder, and stood looking down at his companion with a little smile as if he were proud of him. ‘There!’ he said. ‘Adios. My name is Larralde, but that is of no consequence. Adios!’ With a courteous bow he took his leave, and Conyngham presently saw him walking down to the landing stage. It seemed that this strange visitor was about to depart as abruptly as he had come. Conyngham rose and walked to the edge of the verandah, where he stood watching the departure of the boat in which his new friend had taken passage. While he was standing there, the old priest came quietly out of the open window of the dining room. He saw the letter lying on the table where Conyngham had left it. He approached, his shabby old shoes making no sound on the wooden flooring, and read the address written on the pink and scented envelope. When the Englishman at length turned, he was alone on the verandah, with the wine bottle, the empty glasses, and the letter.	{ "id": "5987" }
5	CONTRABAND	‘What rights are his that dares not strike for them?’ AN hour before sunrise two horses stood shuffling their feet and chewing their bits before the hotel of the Marina at Algeciras, while their owner, a short and thick-set man of an exaggeratedly villanous appearance, attended to such straps and buckles as he suspected of latent flaws. The horses were lean and loose of ear, with a melancholy thoughtfulness of demeanour that seemed to suggest the deepest misgivings as to the future. Their saddles and other accoutrements were frankly theatrical, and would have been at once the delight of an artist and the despair of a saddler. Fringes and tassels of bright-coloured worsted depended from points where fringes and tassels were distinctly out of place. Where the various straps should have been strong they looked weak, and scarce a buckle could boast an innocence of knotted string. The saddles were of wood, and calculated to inflict serious internal injuries to the rider in case of a fall. They stood at least a foot above the horse’s backbone, raised on a thick cushion upon the ribs of the animal, and leaving a space in the middle for the secretion of tobacco and other contraband merchandise. ‘I’ll take the smallest cut-throat of the crew,’ Conyngham had said on the occasion of an informal parade of guides the previous evening. And the host of the Fonda, in whose kitchen the function had taken place, explained to Concepçion Vara that the English Excellency had selected him on his—the host’s—assurance that Algeciras contained no other so honest. ‘Tell him,’ answered Concepçion with a cigarette between his lips and a pardonable pride in his eyes, ‘that my grandfather was a smuggler and my father was shot by the Guardia Civil near Algatocin.’ Concepçion, having repaired one girth and shaken his head dubiously over another, lighted a fresh cigarette and gave a little shiver, for the morning air was keen. He discreetly coughed. He had seen Conyngham breakfasting by the light of a dim oil lamp of a shape and make unaltered since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and, without appearing impatient, wished to convey to one gentleman the fact that another awaited him. Before long Conyngham appeared, having paid an iniquitous bill with the recklessness that is only thoroughly understood by the poor. He appeared as usual to be at peace with all men, and returned his guide’s grave salutation with an easy nod. ‘These the horses?’ he inquired. Concepçion Vara spread out his hands. ‘They have no equal in Andalusia,’ he said. ‘Then I am sorry for Andalusia,’ answered Conyngham with a pleasant laugh. They mounted and rode away in the dim cool light of the morning. The sea was of a deep blue, and rippled all over as in a picture. Gibraltar, five miles away, loomed up like a grey cloud against the pink of sunrise. The whole world wore a cleanly look as if the night had been passed over its face like a sponge, wiping away all that was unsightly or evil. The air was light and exhilarating, and scented by the breath of aromatic weeds growing at the roadside. Concepçion sang a song as he rode—a song almost as old as his trade—declaring that he was a smuggler bold. And he looked it, every inch. The road to Ronda lies through the cork woods of Ximena, leaving St. Roque on the right hand—such at least was the path selected by Conyngham’s guide; for there are many ways over the mountains, and none of them to be recommended. Beguiling the journey with cigarette and song, calling at every venta on the road, exchanging chaff with every woman and a quick word with all men, Concepçion faithfully fulfilled his contract, and, as the moon rose over the distant snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada, pointed forward to the lights of Gaucin, a mountain village with an evil reputation. The dawn of the next day saw the travellers in the saddle again, and the road was worse than ever. A sharp ascent led them up from Gaucin to regions where foliage grew scarcer at every step, and cultivation was unknown. At one spot they turned to look back, and saw Gibraltar like a tooth protruding from the sea. The straits had the appearance of a river, and the high land behind Ceuta formed the farther bank of it. ‘There is Africa,’ said Concepçion gravely, and after a moment turned his horse’s head uphill again. The people of these mountain regions were as wild in appearance as their country. Once or twice the travellers passed a shepherd herding sheep or goats on the mountain side, himself clad in goatskin, with a great brown cloak floating from his shoulders—a living picture of Ishmael or those sons of his who dwelt in the tents of Kedar. A few muleteers drew aside to let the horses pass, and exchanged some words in an undertone with Conyngham’s guide. Fine-looking brigands were these, with an armoury of knives peeping from their bright-coloured waistbands. The Andalusian peasant is for six days in the week calculated to inspire awe by his clothing and general appearance. Of a dark skin and hair, he usually submits his chin to the barber’s office but once a week, and the timid traveller would do well to take the road on Sundays only. Towards the end of the week, and notably on a Saturday, every passer-by is an unshorn brigand capable of the darkest deeds of villany, while twenty-four hours later the land will be found to be peopled by as clean and honest and smart, and withal as handsome, a race of men as any on earth. Before long all habitations were left behind, and the horses climbed from rock to rock like cats. There was no suggestion of pathway or landmark, and Concepçion paused once or twice to take his bearings. It was about two in the afternoon when, after descending the bed of a stream long since dried up, Concepçion called a halt, and proposed to rest the horses while he dined. As on the previous day, the guide’s manner was that of a gentleman, conferring a high honour with becoming modesty when he sat down beside Conyngham and untied his small sack of provisions. These consisted of dried figs and bread, which he offered to his companion before beginning to eat. Conyngham shared his own stock of food with his guide, and subsequently smoked a cigarette which that gentleman offered him. They were thus pleasantly engaged when a man appeared on the rocks above them in a manner and with a haste that spoke but ill of his honesty. The guide looked up knife in hand, and made answer to a gesture of the arm with his own hand upraised. ‘Who is this?’ said Conyngham. ‘Some friend of yours? Tell him to keep his distance, for I don’t care for his appearance.’ ‘He is no friend of mine, Excellency. But the man is, I dare say, honest enough. In these mountains it is only of the Guardia Civil that one must beware. They have ever the finger on the trigger and shoot without warning.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ said the Englishman, now thoroughly on the alert, ‘let him state his business at a respectable distance. Ah! he has a comrade and two mules.’ And indeed a second man of equally unprepossessing exterior now appeared from behind a great rock leading a couple of heavily laden mules. Concepçion and the first traveller, who was now within a dozen yards, were already exchanging words in a patois not unlike the Limousin dialect, of which Conyngham understood nothing. ‘Stop where you are,’ shouted the Englishman in Spanish, ‘or else I shoot you! If there is anything wrong, Señor Vara,’ he added to the guide, ‘I shoot you first, understand that.’ ‘He says,’ answered Concepçion with dignity, ‘that they are honest traders on the road to Ronda, and would be glad of our company. His Excellency is at liberty to shoot if he is so disposed.’ Conyngham laughed. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘I am not anxious to kill any man, but each must take care of himself in these times.’ ‘Not against an honest smuggler.’ ‘Are these smugglers?’ ‘They speak as such. I know them no more than does his Excellency.’ The second new-comer was now within hail, and began at once to speak in Spanish. The tale he told was similar in every way to that translated by Concepçion from the Limousin dialect. ‘Why should we not travel together to Ronda?’ he said, coming forward with an easy air of confidence, which was of better effect than any protestation of honesty. He had a quiet eye, and the demeanour of one educated to loftier things than smuggling tobacco across the Sierra, though indeed, he was no better clad than his companion. The two guides instinctively took the road together, Concepçion leading his horse, for the way was such that none could ride over it. Conyngham did the same, and his companion led the mule by a rope, as is the custom in Andalusia. The full glare of the day shone down on them, the bare rock giving back a puff of heat that dried the throat. Conyngham was tired and not too trustful of his companion, who, indeed, seemed to be fully occupied with his own thoughts. They had thus progressed a full half-hour when a shout from the rocks above caused them to halt suddenly. The white linen head coverings of the Guardia Civil and the glint of the sun on their accoutrements showed at a glance that this was not a summons to be disregarded. In an instant Concepçion’s companion was leaping from rock to rock with an agility only to be acquired in the hot fear of death. A report rang out and echoed among the hills. A bullet went ‘splat’ against a rock near at hand, making a frayed blue mark upon the grey stone. The man dodged from side to side in the panic-stricken irresponsibility of a rabbit seeking covert where none exists. There was not so much as to hide his head. Conyngham looked up towards the foe in time to see a puff of white smoke thrown up against the steely sky. A second report, and the fugitive seemed to trip over a stone. He recovered himself, stood upright for a moment, gave a queer spluttering cough, and sat slowly down against a boulder. ‘He is killed!’ said Concepçion, throwing down his cigarette. ‘Mother of God! these Guardias Civiles!’ The two guards came clambering down the face of the rock. Concepçion glanced at his late companion writhing in the sharpness of death. ‘Here or at Ronda, to-day, or to-morrow, what matters it?’ muttered the quiet-eyed man at Conyngham’s side. The Englishman turned and looked at him. ‘They will shoot me too, but not now.’ Concepçion sullenly awaited the arrival of the guards. These men ever hunt in couples of a widely different age, for the law has found that an old head and a young arm form the strongest combination. The elder of the two had the face of an old grey wolf. He muttered some order to his companion, and went towards the mule. He cut away the outer covering of the burden suspended from the saddle, and nodded his head wisely. These were boxes of cartridges to carry one thousand each. The grey old man turned and looked at him who lay on the ground. ‘A la longa,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘In the long run, Antonio.’ The man gave a sickly grin and opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw dropped instead, and he passed across that frontier which is watched by no earthly sentinel. ‘This gentleman,’ said the quiet-eyed man, whose guide had thus paid for his little mistake in refusing to halt at the word of command, ‘is a stranger to me—an Englishman, I think.’ ‘Yes,’ answered Conyngham. The old soldier looked from one to the other. ‘That may be,’ he said, ‘but he sleeps in Ronda prison to-night. To-morrow the Captain-General will see to it.’ ‘I have a letter to the Captain-General,’ said Conyngham, who drew from his pocket a packet of papers. Among these was the pink scented envelope given to him by the man called Larralde at Algeciras. He had forgotten its existence, and put it back in his pocket with a smile. Having found that for which he sought, he gave it to the soldier, who read the address in silence and returned the letter. ‘You I know,’ he said, turning to the man at Conyngham’s side, who merely shrugged his shoulders. ‘And Concepçion Vara, we all know him.’ Concepçion had lighted a cigarette, and was murmuring a popular air with the indifferent patience and the wandering eye of perfect innocence. The old soldier turned and spoke in an undertone to his comrade, who went towards the dead man and quietly covered his face with the folds of his own faja or waistcloth. This he weighted at the corners with stones, carrying out this simple office to the dead with a suggestive indifference. To this day the Guardias Civiles have plenary power to shoot whomsoever they think fit—flight and resistance being equally fatal. No more heeding the dead body of the man whom he had shot than he would have heeded the carcase of a rat, the elder of the two soldiers now gave the order to march, commanding Concepçion to lead the way. ‘It will not be worth your while to risk a bullet by running away,’ he said. ‘This time it is probably a matter of a few pounds of tobacco only.’ The evening had fallen ere the silent party caught sight of the town of Ronda, perched, as the Moorish strongholds usually are, on a height. Ronda, as history tells, was the last possession of the brave and gifted Moslems in Spain. The people are half Moorish still, and from the barred windows look out deep almond eyes and patient faces that have no European feature. The narrow streets were empty as the travellers entered the town, and the clatter of the mules slipping and stumbling on the cobble stones brought but few to the doors of the low-built houses. To enter Ronda from the south the traveller must traverse the Moorish town, which is divided from the Spanish quarter by a cleft in the great rock that renders the town impregnable to all attack. Having crossed the bridge spanning the great gorge into which the sun never penetrates even at midday, the party emerged into the broader streets of the more modern town, and, turning to the right through a high gateway, found themselves in a barrack yard of the Guardias Civiles.	{ "id": "5987" }
6	AT RONDA	‘Le plus grand art d’un habile homme est celui de savoir cacher son habileté.’ WHEN Conyngham awoke after a night conscientiously spent in that profound slumber which waits on an excellent digestion and a careless heart, he found the prison attendant at his bedside. A less easy-going mind would perhaps have leapt to some nervous conclusion at the sight of this fierce-visaged janitor, who, however, carried nothing more deadly in his hand than a card. ‘It is the Captain-General,’ said he, ‘who calls at this early hour. His Excellency’s letter has been delivered, and the Captain-General scarce waited to swallow his morning chocolate.’ ‘Very much to the Captain-General’s credit,’ returned Conyngham rising. ‘Cold water,’ he went on, ‘soap, a towel, and my luggage—and then the Captain-General.’ The attendant, with an odd smile, procured the necessary articles, and when the Englishman was ready led the way downstairs. He was a solemn man from Galicia, this, where they do not smile. In the patio of the great house, once a monastery, now converted into a barrack for the Guardias Civiles, a small man of fifty years or more stood smoking a cigarette. On perceiving Conyngham he came forward with outstretched hand and a smile which can only be described as angelic. It was a smile at once sympathetic and humorous, veiling his dark eyes between lashes almost closed, parting moustached lips to disclose a row of pearly teeth. ‘My dear sir,’ said General Vincente in very tolerable English, ‘I am at your feet. That such a mistake should have been made in respect to the bearer of a letter of introduction from my old friend General Watterson—we fought together in Wellington’s day—that such a mistake should have occurred overwhelms me with shame.’ He pressed Conyngham’s hand in both of his, which were small and white—looked up into his face, stepped back and broke into a soft laugh. Indeed his voice was admirably suited to a lady’s drawing-room, and suggested nought of the camp or battle field. From the handkerchief which he drew from his sleeve and passed across his white moustache a faint scent floated on the morning air. ‘Are you General Vincente?’ asked Conyngham. ‘Yes—why not?’ And in truth the tone of the Englishman’s voice had betrayed a scepticism which warranted the question. ‘It is very kind of you to come so early. I have been quite comfortable, and they gave me a good supper last night,’ said Conyngham. ‘Moreover, the Guardias Civiles are in no way to blame for my arrest. I was in bad company, it seems.’ ‘Yes; your companions were engaged in conveying ammunition to the Carlists; we have wanted to lay our hands upon them for some weeks. They have carried former journeys to a successful termination.’ He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘The guide, Antonio something-or-other, died, as I understand.’ ‘Well, yes; if you choose to put it that way,’ admitted Conyngham. The General raised his eyebrows in a gentle grimace expressive of deprecation, with, as it were, a small solution of sympathy, indicated by a moisture of the eye, for the family of Antonio something-or-other in their bereavement. ‘And the other man? Seemed a nice enough fellow . . .’ inquired Conyngham. The General raised one gloved hand as if to fend off some approaching calamity. ‘He died this morning—at six o’clock.’ Conyngham looked down at this gentle soldier with a dawning light of comprehension. This might after all be the General Vincente whom he had been led to look upon as the fiercest of the Spanish Queen’s adherents. ‘Of the same complaint?’ ‘Of the same complaint,’ answered the General softly. He slipped his hand within Conyngham’s arm, and thus affectionately led him across the patio towards the doorway where sentinels stood at attention. He acknowledged the attitude of his subordinates by a friendly nod; indeed, this rosy-faced warrior seemed to brim over with the milk of human kindness. ‘The English,’ he said, pressing his companion’s arm, ‘have been too useful to us for me to allow one of them to remain a moment longer in confinement. You say you were comfortable. I hope they gave you a clean towel and all that.’ ‘Yes, thanks,’ answered Conyngham, suppressing a desire to laugh. ‘That is well. Ronda is a pleasant place, as you will find. Most interesting—Moorish remains, you understand. I will send my servant for your baggage, and of course my poor house is at your disposal. You will stay with me until we can find some work for you to do. You wish to take service with us, of course?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Conynghamn. ‘Rather thought of it—if you will have me.’ The General glanced up at his stalwart companion with a measuring eye. ‘My house,’ he said, in a conversational way, as if only desirous of making matters as pleasant as possible in a life which nature had intended to be peaceful and sunny, and perhaps trifling, but which the wickedness of men had rendered otherwise, ‘my house is, as you would divine, only an official residence, but pleasant enough—pleasant enough. The garden is distinctly tolerable; there are orange trees now in bloom—so sweet of scent.’ The street into which they had now emerged was no less martial in appearance than the barrack yard, and while he spoke the General never ceased to dispense his kindly little nod on one side or the other in response to military salutations. ‘We have quite a number of soldiers in Ronda at present,’ he said, with an affectionate little pressure of Conyngham’s arm, as if to indicate his appreciation of such protection amid these rough men. ‘There is a great talk of some rising in the South—in Andalusia—to support Señor Cabrera, who continually threatens Madrid. A great soldier, they tell me, this Cabrera, but not—well, not perhaps quite, eh? —a caballero, a gentleman. A pity, is it not?’ ‘A great pity,’ answered Conyngham, taking the opportunity at last afforded him of getting a word in. ‘One must be prepared,’ went on the General with a good-natured little sigh, ‘for such measures. There are so many mistaken enthusiasts—is it not so? Such men as your countryman, Señor Flinter. There are so many who are stronger Carlists than Don Carlos himself, eh?’ The secret of conversational success is to defer to one’s listener. A clever man imparts information by asking questions, and obtains it without doing so. ‘This is my poor house,’ continued the soldier, and as he spoke he beamed on the sentries at the door. ‘I am a widower, but God has given me a daughter who is now of an age to rule my household. Estella will endeavour to make you comfortable, and an Englishman—a soldier—will surely overlook some small defects.’ He finished with a good-natured laugh. There was no resisting the sunny good-humour of this little officer, or the gladness of his face. His attitude towards the world was one of constant endeavour to make things pleasant, and acquit himself to his best in circumstances far beyond his merits or capabilities. He was one who had had good fortune all his days. Those who have greatness thrust upon them are never much impressed by their burden. And General Vincente had the air of constantly assuring his subordinates that they need not mind him. The house to which he conducted Conyngham stood on the broad main street, immediately opposite a cluster of shops where leather bottles were manufactured and sold. It was a large gloomy house with a patio devoid of fountain and even of the usual orange trees in green boxes. ‘Through there is the garden—most pleasant and shady,’ said the General, indicating a doorway with the riding-whip he carried. A troop of servants awaited them at the foot of the broad Moorish staircase open on one side to the patio and heavily carved in balustrade and cornice. These gentlemen bowed gravely—indeed, they were so numerous that the majority of them must have had nothing to do but cultivate this dignified salutation. ‘The señorita?’ inquired the General. ‘The señorita is in the garden, Excellency,’ answered one with the air of a courtier. ‘Then let us go there at once,’ said General Vincente, turning to Conyngham, and gripping his arm affectionately. They passed through a doorway whither two men had hurried to open the heavy doors, and the scent of violets and mignonette, of orange in bloom, and of a hundred opening buds swept across their faces. The brilliant sunlight almost dazzled eyes that had grown accustomed to the cool shade of the patio, for Ronda is one of the sunniest spots on earth, and here the warmth is rarely oppressive. The garden was Moorish, and running water in aqueducts of marble, yellow with stupendous age, murmured in the shade of tropical plants. A fountain plashed and chattered softly, like the whispering of children. The pathways were paved with a fine white gravel of broken marble. There was no weed amid the flowers. It seemed a paradise to Conyngham, fresh from the grey and mournful northern winter, and no part of this weary, busy world. For here were rest and silence, and that sense of eternity which is only conveyed by the continuous voice of running or falling water. It was hard to believe that this was real and earthly. Conyngham rubbed his eyes and instinctively turned to look at his companion, who was as unreal as his surroundings—a round-faced, chubby little man, with a tender mouth and moist dark eyes looking kindly out upon the world, who called himself General Vincente; and the name was synonymous in all Spain with bloodthirstiness and cruelty, with daring and an unsparing generalship. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘let us look for Estella.’ He led the way along a path winding among almond and peach trees in full bloom, in the shadow of the weird eucalyptus and the feathery pepper tree. Then with a little word of pleasure he hurried forward. Conyngham caught sight of a black dress and a black mantilla, of fair golden hair, and a fan upraised against the rays of the sun. ‘Estella, here is a guest: Mr. Conyngham, one of the brave Englishmen who remember Spain in her time of trouble.’ Conyngham bowed with a greater ceremony than we observe to-day, and stood upright to look upon that which was for him from that moment the fairest face in the world. As, to some men, success or failure seems to come early and in one bound, so, for some, Love lies long in ambush, to shoot at length a single and certain shaft. Conyngham looked at Estella Vincente, his gay blue eyes meeting her dark glance with a frankness which was characteristic, and knew from that instant that his world held no other woman. It came to him as a flash of lightning that left his former life grey and neutral, and yet he was conscious of no surprise, but rather of a feeling of having found something which he had long sought. The girl acknowledged his salutation with a little inclination of the head and a smile which was only of the lips, for her eyes remained grave and deep. She had all the dignity of carriage famous in Castilian women, though her figure was youthful still, and slight. Her face was a clean-cut oval, with lips that were still and proud, and a delicately aquiline nose. ‘My daughter speaks English better than I do,’ went on the General in the garrulous voice of an exceedingly domesticated man. ‘She has been at school in England—at the suggestion of my dear friend Watterson—with his daughters, in fact.’ ‘And must have found it dull and grey enough compared with Spain,’ said Conyngham. ‘Ah! Then you like Spain?’ said the General eagerly. ‘It is so with all the English. We have something in common, despite the Armada, eh? Something in manner and in appearance, too; is it not so?’ He left Conyngham, and walked slowly on with one hand at his daughter’s waist. ‘I was very happy in England,’ said Estella to Conyngham, who walked at her other side; ‘but happier still to get home to Spain.’ Her voice was rather low, and Conyngham had an odd sensation of having heard it before. ‘Why did you leave your home?’ she continued in a leisurely conversational way which seemed natural to the environments. The question rather startled the Englishman, for the only answer seemed to be that he had quitted England in order to come to Ronda and to her, following the path in life that fate had assigned to him. ‘We have troubles in England also—political troubles,’ he said, after a pause. ‘The Chartists,’ said the General cheerfully. ‘We know all about them, for we have the English newspapers. I procure them in order to have reliable news of Spain.’ He broke off with a little laugh, and looked towards his daughter. ‘In the evening Estella reads them to me. And it was on account of the Chartists that you left England?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Ah, you are a Chartist, Mr. Conyngham.’ ‘Yes,’ admitted the Englishman after a pause, and he glanced at Estella.	{ "id": "5987" }
7	IN A MOORISH GARDEN	‘When love is not a blasphemy, it is a religion.’ THERE is perhaps a subtle significance in the fact that the greatest, the cruellest, the most barbarous civil war of modern days, if not of all time, owed its outbreak and its long continuance to the influence of a woman. When Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, in 1833, after a reign broken and disturbed by the passage of that human cyclone, Napoleon the Great, he bequeathed his kingdom, in defiance of the Salic law, to his daughter Isabella. Ferdinand’s brother Charles, however, claimed the throne under the very just contention that the Salic law, by which women were excluded from the heritage of the crown, had never been legally abrogated. This was the spark that kindled in many minds ambition, cruelty, bloodthirstiness, self-seeking and jealousy—producing the _morale_, in a word, of the Spain of sixty years ago. Some sided with the Queen Regent Christina, and rallied round the child-queen because they saw that that way lay glory and promotion. Others flocked to the standard of Don Carlos because they were poor and of no influence at Court. The Church as a whole raised its whispering voice for the Pretender. For the rest, patriotism was nowhere, and ambition on every side. ‘For five years we have fought the Carlists, hunger, privation, and the politicians at Madrid! And the holy saints only know which has been the worst enemy,’ said General Vincente to Conyngham when explaining the above related details. And indeed the story of this war reads like a romance, for there came from neutral countries foreign legions as in the olden days. From England an army of ten thousand mercenaries landed in Spain, prepared to fight for the cause of Queen Christina, and very modestly estimating the worth of their services at the sum of thirteenpence per diem. After all, the value of a man’s life is but the price of his daily hire. ‘We did not pay them much,’ said General Vincente with a deprecating little smile, ‘but they did not fight much. Their pay was generally in arrear, and they were usually in the rear as well. What will you, my dear Conyngham? You are a commercial people—you keep good soldiers in the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him with second-class goods from behind the counter.’ He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a very legitimate commercial transaction. This is no time or place to go into the history of the English Legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war where prisoners received no quarter and the soldiers on either side were left without pay or rations. In a half-hearted manner England went to the assistance of the Queen Regent of Spain, and one error in statesmanship led to many. It is always a mistake to strike gently. ‘This country,’ said General Vincente in his suavest manner, ‘owes much to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for us both had we owed you a little more.’ During the five years prior to Conyngham’s arrival at Ronda the war had raged with unabated fury, swaying from the west to the east coast as fortune smiled or frowned on the Carlist cause. At one time it almost appeared certain that the Christino forces were unable to stem the rising tide which bade fair to spread over all Spain—so unfortunate were their generals, so futile the best endeavours of the bravest and most patient soldiers. General Vincente was not alone in his conviction that had the gallant Carlist leader Zumalacarreguy lived he might have carried all before him. But this great leader at the height of his fame—beloved of all his soldiers, worshipped by his subordinate officers—died suddenly, by poison, as it was whispered, the victim of jealousy and ambition. Almost at once there arose in the East of Spain one, obscure in birth and unknown to fame, who flashed suddenly to the zenith of military glory—the ruthless, the wonderful Cabrera. The name is to this day a household word in Catalonia, while the eyes of a few old men still living, who fought with or against him, flash in the light of other days at the mere mention of it. Among the many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half a dozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, who through those years of Spain’s great trial systematically bartered their honour for immediate gain, dreaded and respected him. During the days that followed his arrival at Ronda and release from the prison there, Frederick Conyngham learnt much from his host and little of the man himself, for General Vincente had that in him with which no great leader in any walk of life can well dispense—an unsoundable depth. Conyngham learnt also that the human heart is capable of rising at one bound above differences of race or custom, creed and spoken language. He walked with Estella in that quiet garden between high walls on the trim Moorish paths, and often the murmur of the running water which ever graced the Moslem palaces was the only sound that broke the silence. For this thing had come into the Englishman’s life suddenly, leaving him dazed and uncertain. Estella, on the other hand, had a quiet _savoir-faire_ that sat strangely on her young face. She was only nineteen, and yet had a certain air of authority, handed down to her from two great races of noble men and women. ‘Do all your countrymen take life thus gaily?’ she asked Conyngham one day; ‘surely it is a more serious affair than you think it.’ ‘I have never found it very serious, señorita,’ he answered. ‘There is usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look for it.’ ‘Have you always found it so?’ He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa tree that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway. ‘Yes, señorita, I think so,’ he answered at length, slowly. There was a sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden which acted as a brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and drag in an Oriental way that Europeans rarely understand. ‘And yet you say you remember your father’s death?’ ‘He made a joke to the doctor, señorita, and was not afraid.’ Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again. ‘And you have always been poor, you say, sometimes almost starving?’ ‘Yes—always poor, deadly poor, señorita,’ answered Conyngham with a gay laugh; ‘and since I have been on my own resources frequently—well, very hungry. The appetite has been large and the resources have been small. But when I get into the Spanish army they will no doubt make me a general, and all will be well.’ He laughed again, and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘your father’s recommendation to General Espartero in a confidential letter.’ But the envelope he produced was that pink one which the man called Larralde had given him at Algeciras. ‘No—it is not that,’ he said, searching in another pocket. ‘Ah! here it is—addressed to General Espartero, Duke of Vittoria.’ He showed her the superscription, which she read with a little inclination of the head, as if in salutation of the great name written there. The greatest names are those that men have made for themselves. Conyngham replaced the two letters in his pocket and almost immediately asked: ‘Do you know anyone called Barenna in Ronda, señorita?’ thereby proving that General Espartero would do ill to give him an appointment requiring even the earliest rudiments of diplomacy. ‘Julia Barenna is my cousin. Her mother was my mother’s sister. Do you know them, Señor Conyngham?’ ‘Oh no,’ answered Conyngham, truthfully enough. ‘I met a man who knows them. Do they live in Ronda?’ ‘No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from the Customs station.’ Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions. Some who knew the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so. For the Captain-General moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen Regent herself, and mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where, for the time being, he held a command. Conyngham required no further information, and in a few moments dismissed the letter from his mind. Events seemed for him to have moved rapidly within the last few days, and the world of roadside inns and casual acquaintance into which he had stepped on his arrival in Spain was quite another from that in which Estella moved at Ronda. ‘I must set out for Madrid in a few days at the latest,’ he said a few moments afterwards; ‘but I shall go against my will, because you tell me that you and your father will not be coming North until the spring.’ Estella shook her head with a little laugh. This man was different from the punctilious aides-de-camp and others who had hitherto begged most respectfully to notify their admiration. ‘And three days ago you did not know of our existence,’ she said. ‘In three days a man may be dead of an illness of which he ignored the existence, señorita. In three days a man’s life may be made miserable or happy—perhaps in three minutes.’ And she looked straight in front of her in order to avoid his eyes. ‘Yours will always be happy, I think,’ she said, ‘because you never seem to go below the surface, and on the surface life is happy enough.’ He made some light answer, and they walked on beneath the orange trees, talking of these and other matters—indulging in those dangerous generalities which sound so safe, and in reality narrow down to a little world of two. They were thus engaged when the servant came to announce that the horse which the General had placed at Conyngham’s disposal was at the door in accordance with the Englishman’s own order. He went away sorrowfully enough, only half consoled by the information that Estella was about to attend a service at the Church of Santa Maria, and could not have stayed longer in the garden. The hour of the siesta was scarce over, and as Conyngham rode through the cleanly streets of the ancient town more than one idler roused himself from the shadow of a doorway to see him pass. There are few older towns in Andalusia than Ronda, and scarce anywhere the habits of the Moors are so closely followed. The streets are clean, the houses whitewashed within and without. The trappings of the mules and much of the costume of the people are Oriental in texture and brilliancy. Conyngham asked a passer-by to indicate the way to the Cordova road, and the polite Spaniard turned and walked by his stirrup until a mistake was no longer possible. ‘It is not the most beautiful approach to Ronda,’ said this garrulous person, ‘but well enough in the summer, when the flowers are in bloom and the vineyards green. The road is straight and dusty until one arrives at the possession of the Señora Barenna—a narrow road to the right leading up into the mountain. One can perceive the house—oh, yes—upon the hillside, once beautiful, but now old and decayed. Mistake is now impossible. It is a straight way. I wish you a good journey.’ Conyngham rode on, vaguely turning over in his mind a half-matured plan of effecting a seemingly accidental entry to the house of Señora Barenna, in the hope of meeting that lady’s daughter in the garden or grounds. Once outside the walls of the town he found the country open and bare, consisting of brown hills, of which the lower slopes were dotted with evergreen oaks. The road soon traversed a village which seemed to be half deserted, for men and women alike were working in the fields. On the balcony of the best house a branch of palm bound against the ironwork balustrade indicated the dwelling of the priest, and the form of that village despot was dimly discernible in the darkened room behind. Beyond the village Conyngham turned his horse’s head towards the mountain, his mind preoccupied with a Macchiavellian scheme of losing his way in this neighbourhood. Through the evergreen oak and olive groves he could perceive the roof of an old grey house which had once been a mere hacienda or semi-fortified farm. Conyngham did not propose to go direct to Señora Barenna’s house, but described a semicircle, mounting from terrace to terrace on his sure-footed horse. When at length he came in sight of the high gateway where the ten-foot oaken gates still swung, he perceived someone approaching the exit. On closer inspection he saw that this was a priest, and on nearing him recognised the Padre Concha, whose acquaintance he had made at the Hotel of the Marina at Algeciras. The recognition was mutual, for the priest raised his shabby old hat with a tender care for the insecurity of its brim. ‘A lucky meeting, Señor Englishman,’ he said; ‘who would have expected to see you here?’ ‘I have lost my way.’ ‘Ah!’ And the grim face relaxed into a smile. ‘Lost your way?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then it is lucky that I have met you. It is so easy to lose one’s way—when one is young.’ He raised his hand to the horse’s bridle. ‘You are most certainly going in the wrong direction,’ he said; ‘I will lead you right.’ It was said and done so quietly that Conyngham had found no word to say before his horse was moving in the opposite direction. ‘This is surely one of General Vincente’s horses,’ said the priest; ‘we have few such barbs in Ronda. He always rides a good horse, that Miguel Vincente.’ ‘Yes, it is one of his horses. Then you know the General?’ ‘We were boys together,’ answered the Padre; ‘and there were some who said that he should have been the priest and I the soldier.’ The old man gave a little laugh. ‘He has prospered, however, if I have not. A great man, my dear Miguel, and they say that his pay is duly handed to him. My own—my princely twenty pounds a year—is overdue. I am happy enough, however, and have a good house. You noticed it, perhaps, as you passed through the village, a branch of palm against the rail of the balcony—my sign, you understand. The innkeeper next door displays a branch of pine, which, I notice, is more attractive. Every man his day. One does not catch rabbits with a dead ferret. That is the church—will you see it? No? Well, some other day. I will guide you through the village. The walk will give me appetite, which I sometimes require, for my cook is one whose husband has left her.’	{ "id": "5987" }
8	THE LOVE LETTER	‘I must mix myself with action lest I wither by despair.’ ‘NO one,’ Conyngham heard a voice exclaiming as he went into the garden on returning from his fruitless ride, ‘no one knows what I have suffered.’ He paused in the dark doorway, not wishing to intrude upon Estella and her visitors; for he perceived the forms of three ladies seated within a miniature jungle of bamboo, which grew in feathery luxuriance around a fountain. It was not difficult to identify the voice as that of the eldest lady, who was stout, and spoke in deep, almost manly tones. So far as he was able to judge, the suffering mentioned had left but small record on its victim’s outward appearance. ‘Old lady seems to have stood it well,’ commented the Englishman in his mind. ‘Never again, my dear Estella, do I leave Ronda, except indeed for Toledo, where, of course, we shall go in the summer if this terrible Don Carlos is really driven from the country. Ah! but what suffering! My mind is never at ease. I expect to wake up at night and hear that Julia is being murdered in her bed. For me it does not matter; my life is not so gay that it will cost me much to part from it. No one would molest an old woman, you think? Well, that may be so; but I know all the anxiety, for I was once beautiful—ah! more beautiful than you or Julia; and my hands and feet—have you ever noticed my foot, Estella? —even now—!’ And a sonorous sigh completed the sentence. Conyngham stepped out of the doorway, the clank of his spurred heel on the marble pavement causing the sigh to break off in a little scream. He had caught the name of Julia, and hastily concluded that these ladies must be no other than Madame Barenna and her daughter. In the little bamboo grove he found the elder lady lying back in her chair, which creaked ominously, and asking in a faint voice whether he were Don Carlos. ‘No,’ answered Estella, with a momentary twinkle in her grave, dark eyes; ‘this is Mr. Conyngham—my aunt, Señora Barenna, and my cousin Julia.’ The ladies bowed. ‘You must excuse me,’ said Madame Barenna volubly, ‘but your approach was so sudden. I am a great sufferer—my nerves, you know. But young people do not understand.’ And she sighed heavily, with a side glance at her daughter, who did not even appear to be trying to do so. Julia Barenna was darker than her cousin, quicker in manner, with an air of worldly capability which Estella lacked. Her eyes were quick and restless, her face less beautiful, but expressive of a great intelligence, which, if brought to bear upon men in the form of coquetry, was likely to be infinitely dangerous. ‘It is always best to approach my mother with caution,’ she said with a restless movement of her hands. This was not a woman at her ease in the world or at peace with it. She laughed as she spoke, but her eyes were grave, even while her lips smiled, and watched the Englishman’s face with an air almost of anxiety. There are some faces that seem to be watching and waiting. Julia Barenna’s had such a look. ‘Conyngham,’ said Madame Barenna reflectively. ‘Surely I have heard that name before. You are not the Englishman with whom Father Concha is so angry—who sells forbidden books—the Bible, it is said?’ ‘No, señora,’ answered Conyngham with perfect gravity; ‘I have nothing to sell.’ He laughed suddenly, and looked at the elder lady with that air of good humour which won for him more friends than he ever wanted; for this Irishman had a ray of sunshine in his heart which shone upon his path through life, and made that uneven way easier for his feet. He glanced at Julia, and saw in her eyes the look of expectancy which was, in reality, always there. The thought flashed through his mind that by some means, or perhaps feminine intuition beyond his comprehension, she knew that he possessed the letter addressed to her, and was eagerly awaiting it. This letter seemed to have been gaining in importance the longer he carried it, and this opportunity of giving it to her came at the right moment. He remembered Larralde’s words concerning the person to whom the missive was addressed, and the high-flown sentiments of that somewhat theatrical gentleman became in some degree justified. Julia Barenna was a woman who might well awaken a passionate love. Conyngham realised this, as from a distance, while Julia’s mother spoke of some trivial matter of the moment to unheeding ears. That distance seemed now to exist between him and all women. It had come suddenly, and one glance of Estella’s eyes had called it into existence. ‘Yes,’ Señora Barenna was saying, ‘Father Concha is very angry with the English. What a terrible man! You do not know him, Señor Conyngham?’ ‘I think I have met him, señora.’ ‘Ah, but you have never seen him angry. You have never confessed to him! A little, little sin—no larger than the eye of a fly—a little bite of a calf’s sweetbread on Friday in mere forgetfulness, and Sancta Maria! what a penance is required! What suffering! It is a purgatory to have such a confessor.’ ‘Surely madame can have no sins,’ said Conyngham pleasantly. ‘Not now,’ said Señora Barenna with a deep sigh. ‘When I was young it was different.’ And the memory of her sinful days almost moved her to tears. She glanced at Conyngham with a tragic air of mutual understanding, as if drawing a veil over that blissful past in the presence of Julia and Estella. ‘Ask me another time,’ that glance seemed to say. ‘Yes,’ the lady continued, ‘Father Concha is very angry with the English. Firstly, because of these bibles. Blessed Heaven! what does it matter? No one can read them except the priests, and they do not want to do so. Secondly, because the English have helped to overthrow Don Carlos—’ ‘You will have a penance,’ interrupted Miss Julia Barenna quietly, ‘from Father Concha for talking politics.’ ‘But how will he know?’ asked Señora Barenna sharply; and the two young ladies laughed. Señora Barenna looked from one to the other, and shrugged her shoulders. Like many women she was a strange mixture of foolishness and worldly wisdom. She adjusted her mantilla and mutely appealed to Heaven with a glance of her upturned eyes. Conyngham, who was no diplomatist, nor possessed any skill in concealing his thoughts, looked with some interest at Julia Barenna, and Estella watched him. ‘Julia is right,’ Señora Barenna was saying, though nobody heeded her; ‘one must not talk nor even think politics in this country. You are no politician, I trust, Señor Conyngham—Señor Conyngham, I ask you, you are no politician?’ ‘No, señora,’ replied Conyngham hastily; ‘no; and if I were, I should never understand Spanish politics.’ ‘Father Concha says that Spanish politics are the same as those of any other country—each man for himself,’ said Julia with a bitter laugh. ‘And he is, no doubt, right.’ ‘Do you really think so?’ asked Julia Barenna, with more earnestness than the question would seem to require; ‘are there not true patriots who sacrifice all—not only their friends, but themselves—to the cause of their country?’ ‘Without the hope of reward?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘There may be, señorita—a few,’ answered Conyngham with a laugh, ‘but not in my country. They must all be in Spain.’ She smiled and shook her head in doubt. But it was a worn smile. The Englishman turned away and looked through the trees. He was wondering how he could get speech with Julia alone for a moment. ‘You are admiring the garden,’ said that young lady; and this time he knew that there had in reality been that meaning in her eyes which he had imagined to be there. ‘Yes, señorita, I think it must be the most beautiful garden in the world.’ He turned as he spoke, and looked at Estella, who met his glance quietly. Her repose of manner struck him afresh. Here was a woman having that air of decision which exacts respect alike from men and women. Seen thus, with the more vivacious Julia at her side, Estella gained suddenly in moral strength and depth—suggesting a steady fire in contrast with a flickering will-o’-the-wisp blown hither and thither on every zephyr. Yet Julia Barenna would pass anywhere as a woman of will and purpose. Julia had risen, and was moving towards the exit of the little grove in which they found themselves. Conyngham had never been seated. ‘Are the violets in bloom, Estella? I must see them,’ said the visitor. ‘We have none at home, where all is dry and parched.’ ‘So bad for the nerves—what suffering! —such a dry soil that one cannot sleep at night,’ murmured Madame Barenna, preparing to rise from her seat. Julia and Conyngham naturally led the way. The paths winding in and out among the palms and pepper trees were of a width that allowed two to walk abreast. ‘Señorita, I have a letter for you.’ ‘Not yet—wait!’ Señora Barenna was chattering in her deep husky tones immediately behind them. Julia turned and looked up at the windows of the house, which commanded a full view of the garden. The dwelling rooms were as usual upon the first floor, and the windows were lightly barred with curiously wrought iron. Each window was curtained within with lace and muslin. The paths wound in and out among the trees, but none of these were large enough to afford a secure screen from the eye of any watcher within the house. There was neither olive nor ilex in the garden to afford shelter with their heavy leaves. Julia and Conyngham walked on, out-distancing the elder lady and Estella. From these many a turn in the path hid them from time to time, but Julia was distrustful of the windows and hesitated, in an agony of nervousness. Conyngham saw that her face was quite colourless, and her teeth closed convulsively over her lower lip. He continued to talk of indifferent topics, but the answers she made were incoherent and broken. The course of true love did not seem to run smooth here. ‘Shall I give you the letter? No one can see us, señorita. Besides, I was informed that it was of no importance except to yourself. You have doubtless had many such before, unless the Spanish gentlemen are blind.’ He laughed and felt in his pocket. ‘Yes!’ she whispered. ‘Quickly—now.’ He gave her the letter in its romantic pink, scented envelope with a half-suppressed smile at her eagerness. Would anybody—would Estella—ever be thus agitated at the receipt of a letter from himself? They were at the lower end of the inclosure, which was divided almost in two by a broader pathway leading from the house to the centre of the garden, where a fountain of Moorish marble formed a sort of carrefour, from which the narrower pathways diverged in all directions. Descending the steps into the garden from the house were two men, one talking violently, the other seeking to calm him. ‘My uncle and the Alcalde—they have seen us from the windows,’ said Julia quickly. All her nervousness of manner seemed to have vanished, leaving her concentrated and alert. Some men are thus in warfare—nervous until the rifle opens fire, and then cool and ready. ‘Quick!’ whispered Julia. ‘Let us turn back.’ She wheeled round, and Conyngham did the same. ‘Julia!’ they heard General Vincente call in his gentle voice. Julia, who was tearing the pink envelope, took no heed. Within the first covering a second envelope appeared, bearing a longer address. ‘Give that to the man whose address it bears, and save me from ruin,’ said the girl, thrusting the letter into Conyngham’s hand. She kept the pink envelope. When, a minute later, they came face to face with General Vincente and his companion, a white-faced, fluttering man of sixty years, Julia Barenna received them with a smile. There are some men who, conscious of their own quickness of resource, are careless of danger, and run into it from mere heedlessness, trusting to good fortune to aid them should peril arise. Frederick Conyngham was one of these. He now suspected that this was no love letter which the man called Larralde had given him in Algeciras. ‘Julia,’ said the General, ‘the Alcalde desires to speak with you.’ Julia bowed with that touch of hauteur which in Spain the nobles ever observe in their manner towards the municipal authorities. ‘Mr. Conyngham,’ continued the General, ‘this is our brave Mayor, in whose hands rests the well-being of the people of Ronda.’ ‘Honoured to meet you,’ said Conyngham, holding out his hand with that frankness of manner which he accorded to great and small alike. The Alcalde, a man of immense importance in his own estimation, hesitated before accepting it. ‘General,’ he said, turning and bowing very low to Señora Barenna and Estella, who now joined them, ‘General, I leave you to explain to your niece the painful duties of my office.’ The General smiled and raised a deprecating shoulder. ‘Well, my dear,’ he said kindly to Julia, ‘it appears that our good Alcalde has news of a letter which is at present passing from hand to hand in Andalusia. It is a letter of some importance. Our good Mayor, who was at the window a minute ago, saw Mr. Conyngham hand you a letter. Between persons who only met in this garden five minutes ago such a transaction had a strange air. Our good friend, who is all zeal for Spain and the people of Ronda, merely asks you if his eyes deceived him. It is a matter at which we shall all laugh presently over a lemonade—is it not so? A trifle, eh?’ He passed his handkerchief across his moustache, and looked affectionately at his niece. ‘A letter!’ exclaimed Julia. ‘Surely the Alcalde presumes. He takes too much upon himself.’ The official stepped forward. ‘Señorita,’ he said, ‘I must be allowed to take that risk. Did this gentleman give you a letter three minutes ago?’ Julia laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Yes.’ ‘May I ask the nature of the letter?’ ‘It was a love letter.’ Conyngham bit his lip and looked at Estella. The Alcalde looked doubtful, with the cunning lips of a cheap country lawyer. ‘A love letter from a gentleman you have never seen before?’ he said with a forced laugh. ‘Pardon me, Señor Alcalde, this gentleman travelled in the same ship with my mother and myself from Bordeaux to Algeciras, and he saved my life.’ She cast a momentary glance at Conyngham; which would have sealed his fate had the fiery Mr. Larralde been there to see it. The Prefect paused, somewhat taken aback. There was a momentary silence, and every moment gave Julia and Conyngham time to think. Then the Alcalde turned to Conyngham. ‘It will give me the greatest pleasure,’ he said, ‘to learn that I have been mistaken. I have only to ask this gentleman’s confirmation of what the señorita has said. It is true, señor, that you surreptitiously handed to the Señorita Barenna a letter expressing your love?’ ‘Since the señorita has done me the honour of confessing it, I must ask you to believe it,’ answered Conyngham steadily and coldly.	{ "id": "5987" }
9	A WAR OF WIT	‘La discrétion est l’art du mensonge.’ THE Alcalde blew out his cheeks and looked at General Vincente. Señora Barenna would with small encouragement have thrown herself into Conyngham’s arms; but she received none whatever, and instead frowned at Julia. Estella was looking haughtily at her father, and would not meet Conyngham’s glance. ‘I feel sure,’ said General Vincente in his most conciliating manner, ‘that my dear Julia will see the necessity of satisfying the good Alcalde by showing him the letter—with, of course, the consent of my friend Conyngham.’ He laughed, and slipped his hand within Conyngham’s arm. ‘You see, my dear friend,’ he said in English, ‘these local magnates are a trifle inflated; local magnitude is a little inclined to inflate, eh? Ha! ha! And it is so easy to conciliate them. I always try to do so myself. Peace at any price—that is my motto.’ And he turned aside to arrange his sword, which dragged on the ground. ‘Tell her, my dear Conyngham, to let the old gentleman read the letter.’ ‘But it is nothing to do with me, General.’ ‘I know that, my friend, as well as you do,’ said Vincente with a sudden change of manner, which gave the Englishman an uncomfortable desire to know what he meant. But General Vincente, in pursuit of that peace which had earned him such a terrible reputation in war, turned to Señora Barenna with his most reassuring smile. ‘It is nothing, my dear Iñez,’ he said. ‘In these times of trouble the officials are so suspicious, and our dear Alcalde knows too much. He remembers dear Julia’s little affair with Esteban Larralde, now long since lived down and forgotten. Larralde is, it appears, a malcontent, and on the wrong side of the wall. You need have no uneasiness. Ah! your nerves—yes, I know! A great sufferer—yes, I remember. Patience, dear Iñez, patience!’ And he patted her stout white hand affectionately. The Alcalde was taking snuff with a stubborn air of disbelief, glancing the while suspiciously at Conyngham, who had eyes for none but Estella. ‘Alcalde,’ said General Vincente, ‘the incident is past, as we say in the diplomatic service; a lemonade now?’ ‘No, General, the incident is not past, and I will not have a lemonade.’ ‘Oh!’ exclaimed General Vincente in gentle horror. ‘Yes, this young lady must give me the letter, or I call in my men.’ ‘But your men could not touch a lady, my dear Alcalde.’ ‘You may be the Alcalde of Ronda,’ said Conyngham cheerfully, in continuation of the General’s argument; ‘but if you offer such an insult to Señorita Barenna, I throw you into the fountain, in the deepest part, where it is wettest, just there by the marble dolphin.’ And Conyngham indicated the exact spot with his riding-whip. ‘Who is this gentleman?’ asked the Alcalde. The question was in the first place addressed to space and the gods—after a moment the speaker turned to General Vincente. ‘A prospective aide-de-camp of General Espartero.’ At the mention of the great name the Mayor of Ronda became beautifully less and half bowed to Conyngham. ‘I must do my duty,’ he said with the stubbornness of a small mind. ‘And what do you conceive that to be, my dear Alcalde?’ inquired the General. ‘To place the Señorita Barenna under arrest unless she will hand to me the letter she has in her possession.’ Julia looked at him with a smile. She was a brave woman, playing a dangerous game with consummate courage, and never glanced at Conyngham, who with an effort kept his hand away from the pocket where the letter lay concealed. The manner in which she trusted him unreservedly and entirely was in itself cunning enough, for it appealed to that sense of chivalry which is not yet dead in men. ‘Place me under arrest, Señor Alcalde,’ she said indifferently, ‘and when you have satisfied me that you have a right to inspect a lady’s private correspondence I will submit to be searched—but not before.’ She made a little signal to Conyngham not to interfere. Señora Barenna took this opportunity of asserting herself and her nerves. She sat heavily down on a stone seat and wept. She could hardly have done better, for she was a countess in her own right, and the sight of high-born tears distinctly unnerved the Alcalde. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the señorita has made her own choice. In these times’ (he glanced nervously at the weeping lady) ‘one must do one’s duty.’ ‘My dear Julia,’ protested the General, ‘you who are so sensible—’ Julia shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She not only trusted Conyngham but relied upon his intelligence. It is as a rule safer to confide in the honesty of one’s neighbour than in his wit; better still, trust in neither. Conyngham, who was quick enough when the moment required it, knew that she was fostering the belief that the letter at that moment in his pocket was in her possession. He suspected also that he and Julia Barenna were playing with life and death. Further, he recognised her and her voice. This was the woman who had showed discrimination and calmness in face of a great danger on the Garonne. Had this Englishman, owning as he did to a strain of Irish blood, turned his back on her and danger at such a moment he would assuredly have proved himself untrue to the annals of that race which has made a mark upon the world that will never be wiped out. He looked at the Alcalde and smiled, whereupon that official turned and made a signal with his hand to a man who, dressed in a quiet uniform, had appeared in the doorway of the house. ‘What the deuce we are all trying to do I don’t know,’ reflected Conyngham, who indeed was sufficiently at sea to awake the most dormant suspicions. The Alcalde, now thoroughly aroused, protested his inability to neglect a particle of his duty at this troubled period of Spain’s history, and announced his intention of placing Julia Barenna under surveillance until she handed him the letter she had received from Conyngham. ‘I am quite prepared,’ he added, ‘to give this caballero the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he has been in this matter the tool of unscrupulous persons. Seeing that he is a friend of General Vincente’s, and has an introduction to his Excellency the Duke of Vittoria, he is without the pale of my jurisdiction.’ The Alcalde made Conyngham a profound bow and proceeded to conduct Julia and her indignant mother to their carriage. ‘There goes,’ said General Vincente with his most optimistic little chuckle, ‘a young woman whose head will always be endangered by her heart.’ And he nodded towards Julia’s retreating form. Estella turned and walked away by herself. ‘Come,’ said the General to Conyngham, ‘let us sit down. I have news for you. But what a susceptible heart—my dear young friend—what a susceptible heart! Julia is, I admit, a very pretty girl—_la beauté du diable_, eh! But on so short an acquaintance—rather rapid, rather rapid!’ As he spoke he was searching among some letters which he had produced from his pocket, and at length found an official envelope that had already been opened. ‘I have here,’ he said, ‘a letter from Madrid. You have only to proceed to the capital, and there I hope a post awaits you. Your duties will at present be of a semi-military character, but later I hope we can show you some fighting. This pestilential Cabrera is not yet quelled, and Morella still holds out. Yes, there will be fighting.’ He closed the letter and looked at Conyngham. ‘If that is what you want,’ he added. ‘Yes, that is what I want.’ The General nodded and rose, pausing to brush a few grains of dust from his dapper riding-breeches. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I have seen a horse which will suit you at the cavalry quarters in the Calle de Bobadilla. Shall we go and look at him?’ Conyngham expressed his readiness to do as the General proposed. ‘When shall I start for Madrid?’ he asked. ‘Oh, to-morrow morning will be time enough,’ was the reply, uttered in an easy-going, indolent tone, ‘if you are early astir. You see, it is now nearly five o’clock, and you could scarcely be in saddle before sunset.’ ‘No,’ laughed Conyngham, ‘scarcely, considering that I have not yet bought the saddle or the horse.’ The General led the way into the house, and Conyngham thought of the letter in his pocket. He had not yet read the address. Julia relied upon him to deliver it, and her conduct towards the Alcalde had the evident object of gaining time for him to do so. She had unhesitatingly thrust herself into a position of danger to screen him and further her own indomitable purpose. He thought of her—still as from a distance at which Estella had placed him—and knew that she not only had a disquieting beauty, but cleverness and courage, which are qualities that outlast beauty and make a woman powerful for ever. When he and his companion emerged from the great doorway of the house into the sunlight of the Calle Mayor, a man came forward from the shade of a neighbouring porch. It was Concepçion Vara, leisurely and dignified, twirling a cigarette between his brown fingers. He saluted the General with one finger to the brim of his shabby felt hat as one great man might salute another. He nodded to Conyngham. ‘When does his Excellency take the road again?’ he said. ‘I am ready. The Guardia Civil was mistaken this time—the judge said there was no stain on my name.’ He shrugged his shoulders and waved away the slight with the magnanimity of one who can forgive and forget. ‘I take the road to-morrow; but our contract ceased at Ronda. I had no intention of taking you on.’ ‘You are not satisfied with me?’ inquired Concepçion, offering his interlocutor the cigarette he had just made. ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Buen! We take the road together.’ ‘Then there is nothing more to be said?’ inquired Conyngham with a good-natured laugh. ‘Nothing, except the hour at which your Excellency starts.’ ‘Six o’clock,’ put in General Vincente quietly. ‘Let me see, your name is Concepçion Vara.’ ‘Yes, Excellency—of Algeciras.’ ‘It is well. Then serve this gentleman well, or else—’ The General paused, and laughed in his most deprecating manner. Concepçion seemed to understand, for he took off his hat and turned gravely away. The General and Conyngham walked rapidly through the streets of Ronda, than which there are none cleaner in the whole world, and duly bought a great black horse at a price which seemed moderate enough to the Englishman, though the vendor explained that the long war had made horseflesh rise in value. Conyngham, at no time a keen bargainer, hurried the matter to an end, and scarce examined the saddle. He was anxious to get back to the garden of the great house in the Calle Mayor before the cool of evening came to drive Estella indoors. ‘You will doubtless wish to pack your portmanteau,’ said the General rather breathlessly, as he hurried along with small steps beside Conyngham. ‘Yes,’ answered the Englishman ingenuously, ‘yes, of course.’ ‘Then I will not detain you,’ said General Vincente. ‘I have affairs at headquarters. We meet at dinner, of course.’ He waved a little salutation with his whip and took a side turning. The sun had not set when Conyngham with a beating heart made his way through the house into the garden. He had never been so serious about anything in his life. Indeed, his life seemed only to have begun in that garden. Estella was there. He saw her black dress and mantilla through the trees, and the gleam of her golden hair made his eyes almost fierce for the moment. ‘I am going to-morrow morning,’ he said bluntly when he reached her where she sat in the shade of a mimosa. She raised her eyes for a moment—deep velvet eyes with something in them that made his heart leap within his breast. ‘And I love you, Estella,’ he added. ‘You may be offended—you may despise me—you may distrust me. But nothing can alter me. I love you—now and ever.’ She drew a deep breath and sat motionless. ‘How many women does an Englishman love at once?’ she asked coldly at length. ‘Only one, señorita.’ He stood looking at her for a moment. Then she rose and walked past him into the house.	{ "id": "5987" }
10	THE CITY OF DISCONTENT	‘En paroles ou en actions, être discret, c’est s’abstenir.’ ‘THERE is,’ observed Frederick Conyngham to himself as he climbed into the saddle in the grey dawn of the following morning, ‘there is a certain picturesqueness about these proceedings which pleases me.’ Concepçion Vara indeed supplied a portion of this romantic atmosphere, for he was dressed in the height of contrabandista fashion, with a bright-coloured handkerchief folded round his head underneath his black hat, a scarlet waistcloth, a spotless shirt, and a flower in the ribbon of his hat. He was dignified and leisurely, but so far forgot himself as to sing as he threw his leg across his horse. A dark-eyed maiden had come to the corner of the Calle Vieja, and stood there watching him with mournful eyes. He waved her a salutation as he passed. ‘It is the waiting-maid at the venta where I stay in Ronda—what will you?’ he explained to Conyngham with a modest air as he cocked his hat farther on one side. The sun rose as they emerged from the narrow streets into the open country that borders the road to Bobadilla. A pastoral country this, where the land needs little care to make it give more than man requires for his daily food. The evergreen oak studded over the whole plain supplies food for countless pigs and shade where the herdsmen may dream away the sunny days. The rich soil would yield two or even three crops in the year, were the necessary seed and labour forthcoming. Underground, the mineral wealth outvies the richness of the surface, but national indolence leaves it unexplored. ‘Before General Vincente one could not explain oneself,’ said Concepçion, urging his horse to keep pace with the trot of Conyngham’s huge mount. ‘Ah!’ ‘No,’ pursued Concepçion. ‘And yet it is simple. In Algeciras I have a wife. It is well that a man should travel at times. So,’ he paused and bowed towards his companion with a gesture of infinite condescension, ‘so—we take the road together.’ ‘As long as you are pleased, Señor Vara,’ said Conyngham, ‘I am sure I can but feel honoured. You know I have no money.’ The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders. ‘What matter?’ he said. ‘What matter? We can keep an account—a mere piece of paper—so: “Concepçion Vara, of Algeciras, in account current with F. Conyngham; Englishman. One month’s wages at one hundred pesetas.” It is simple.’ ‘Very,’ acquiesced Conyngham. ‘It is only when pay-day comes that things will get complicated.’ Concepçion laughed. ‘You are a caballero after my own heart,’ he said. ‘We shall enjoy ourselves in Madrid. I see that.’ Conyngham did not answer. He had remembered the letter and Julia Barenna’s danger. He rose in his stirrups and looked behind him. Ronda was already hidden by intervening hills, and the bare line of the roadway was unbroken by the form of any other traveller. ‘We are not going to Madrid yet,’ said Conyngham. ‘We are going to Xeres, where I have business. Do you know the road to Xeres?’ ‘As well that as any other, Excellency.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I know no roads north of Ronda. I am of Andalusia, I,’ replied Concepçion easily, and he looked round about him with an air of interest which was more to the credit of his intelligence as a traveller than his reliability as a guide. ‘But you engaged to guide me to Madrid.’ ‘Yes, Excellency—by asking the way,’ replied Concepçion with a light laugh, and he struck a sulphur match on the neck of his horse to light a fresh cigarette. Thus with an easy heart Frederick Conyngham set out on his journey, having for companion one as irresponsible as himself. He had determined to go to Xeres, though that town of ill repute lay far to the westward of his road towards the capital. It would have been simple enough to destroy the letter entrusted to him by Julia Barenna, a stranger whom he was likely never to see again—simple enough and infinitely safer as he suspected, for the billet-doux of Mr. Larralde smelt of grimmer things than love. But Julia Barenna wittingly, or in all innocence, appealed to that sense of chivalry which is essentially the quality of lonely men who have never had sisters, and Conyngham was ready to help Julia where he would have refused his assistance to a man, however hard pressed. ‘Cannot leave the girl in a hole,’ he said to himself, and proceeded to act upon this resolution with a steadiness of purpose for which some may blame him. It was evening when the two travellers reached Xeres after some weary hours of monotonous progress through the vine-clad plains of this country. ‘It is no wonder,’ said Concepçion, ‘that the men of Xeres are malcontents, when they live in a country as flat as the palm of my hand.’ It happened to be a fête day, which in Spain, as in other countries farther North, is synonymous with mischief. The men of Xeres had taken advantage of this holiday to demonstrate their desire for more. They had marched through the streets with banner and song, arrayed in their best clothes, fostering their worst thoughts. They had consumed marvellous quantities of that small Amontillado which is as it were a thin fire to the blood, heating and degenerating at once. They had talked much nonsense and listened to more. Carlist or Christino—it was all the same to them, so long as they had a change of some sort. In the meantime they had a desire to break something, if only to assert their liberty. A few minutes before Conyngham and his guide rode into the market-place, which in Xeres is as long as a street, some of the free sons of Spain had thought fit to shout insulting remarks to a passer-by. With a fire too bright for his years this old gentleman, with fierce white moustache and imperial, had turned on them, calling them good-for-nothings and sons of pigs. Conyngham rode up just in time to see the ruffians rise as one man and rush at the victim of their humour. The old man with his back to the wall repelled his assailants with a sort of fierce joy in his attitude which betokened the soldier. ‘Come on, Concepçion!’ cried Conyngham, with a dig of the spurs that made his tired horse leap into the air. He charged down upon the gathering crowd, which scattered right and left before the wild onslaught. But he saw the flash of steel, and knew that it was too late. The old man, with an oath and a gasp of pain, sank against the wall with the blood trickling through the fingers clasped against his breast. Conyngham would have reined in, but Concepçion on his heels gave the charger a cut with his heavy whip that made him bound forward and would have unseated a short-stirruped rider. ‘Go on,’ cried the Spaniard; ‘it is no business of ours. The police are behind.’ And Conyngham, remembering the letter in his pocket, rode on without looking back. In the day of which the present narrative treats, the streets of Xeres were but ill paved, and the dust lay on them to the depth of many inches, serving to deaden the sound of footsteps and facilitate the commission of such deeds of violence as were at this time of daily occurrence in Spain. Riding on at random, Conyngham and his companion soon lost their way in the narrow streets, and were able to satisfy themselves that none had followed them. Here in a quiet alley Conyngham read again the address of the letter of which he earnestly desired to rid himself without more ado. It was addressed to Colonel Monreal at No. 84 Plaza de Cadiz. ‘Let his Excellency stay here and drink a glass of wine at this venta,’ said Concepçion. ‘Alone, I shall be able to get information without attracting attention. And then, in the name of the saints, let us shake the dust of Xeres off our feet. The first thing we see is steel, and I do not like it. I have a wife in Algeciras to whom I am much attached, and I am afraid—yes, afraid. A gentleman need never hesitate to say so.’ He shook his head forebodingly as he loosened his girths and called for water for the horses. ‘I could eat a cocida,’ he went on, sniffing the odours of a neighbouring kitchen, ‘with plenty of onions and the mutton as becomes the springtime—young and tender. Dios! this quick travelling and an empty stomach, it kills one.’ ‘When I have delivered my letter,’ replied Conyngham, ‘we shall eat with a lighter heart.’ Concepçion went away in a pessimistic humour. He was one of those men who are brave enough on good wine and victuals, but lack the stamina to fight when hungry. He returned presently with the required information. The Plaza de Cadiz was, it appeared, quite close. Indeed, the town of Xeres is not large, though the intricacies of its narrow streets may well puzzle a new-comer. No. 84 was the house of the barber, and on his first floor lived Colonel Monreal, a retired veteran who had fought with the English against Napoleon’s armies. During his servant’s absence, Conyngham had written a short note in French, conveying, in terms which she would understand, the news that Julia Barenna doubtless awaited with impatience; namely, that her letter had been delivered to him whose address it bore. ‘I have ordered your cocida and some good wine,’ he said to Concepçion. ‘Your horse is feeding. Make good use of your time, for when I return I shall want you to take the road again at once. You must make ten miles before you sleep to-night, and then an early start in the morning.’ ‘For where, señor?’ ‘For Ronda.’ Concepçion shrugged his shoulders. His life had been spent upon the road, his wardrobe since childhood had been contained in a saddle-bag, and Spaniards, above all people, have the curse of Ishmael. They are a homeless race, and lay them down to sleep, when fatigue overtakes them, under a tree or in the shade of a stone wall. It often happens that a worker in the fields will content himself with the lee side of a haystack for his resting-place when his home is only a few hundred yards up the mountain side. ‘And his Excellency?’ inquired Concepçion. ‘I shall sleep here to-night and proceed to Madrid to-morrow, by way of Cordova, where I will wait for you. I have a letter here which you must deliver to the Señorita Barenna at Ronda without the knowledge of anyone. It will be well that neither General Vincente nor any other who knows you should catch sight of you in the streets of Ronda.’ Concepçion nodded his head with much philosophy. ‘Ah! these women,’ he said, turning to the steaming dish of mutton and vegetables which is almost universal in the South, ‘these women, what shoe leather they cost us!’ Leaving his servant thus profitably employed, Conyngham set out to find the barber’s shop in the Plaza de Cadiz. This he did without difficulty, but on presenting himself at the door of Colonel Monreal’s apartment learnt that that gentleman was out. ‘But,’ added the servant, ‘the Colonel is a man of regular habits. He will return within the next fifteen minutes, for he dines at five.’ Conyngham paused. He had no desire to make Colonel Monreal’s acquaintance, indeed preferred to remain without it, for he rightly judged that Señor Larralde was engaged in affairs best left alone. ‘I have a letter for the Colonel,’ he said to the servant, a man of stupid countenance. ‘I will place it here upon his table, and can no doubt trust you to see that he gets it.’ ‘That you can, Excellency,’ replied the man, with a palm already half extended to receive a gratuity. ‘If the Colonel fails to receive the letter I shall certainly know of it,’ said Conyngham, stumbling down the dark staircase, and well pleased to have accomplished his mission. He returned with all speed to the inn in the quiet alley where he had elected to pass the night, and found Concepçion still at table. ‘In half an hour I take the road,’ said the Spaniard. ‘The time for a cup of coffee, and I am ready to ride all night.’ Having eaten, Concepçion was in a better frame of mind, and now cheerfully undertook to carry out his master’s instructions. In little more than half an hour he was in the saddle again, and waved an airy adieu to Conyngham as he passed under the swinging oil lamp that hung at the corner of the street. It was yet early in the evening, and Conyngham, having dined, set out to explore the streets of Xeres, which were quiet enough now, as the cafes were gayer and safer than the gloomy thoroughfares where a foe might lurk in every doorway. In the market-place, between rows of booths and tents, a dense crowd walked backwards and forwards with that steady sense of promenading which the Spaniard understands above all other men. The dealers in coloured handkerchiefs from Barcelona or mantillas from Seville were driving a great trade, and the majority of them had long since shouted themselves hoarse. A few quack dentists were operating upon their victims under the friendly covert of a big drum and a bassoon. Dealers in wonderful drugs and herbs were haranguing the crowd, easily gaining the attention of the simple peasants by handling a live snake or a crocodile which they allowed to crawl upon their shoulders. Conyngham lingered in the crowd, which was orderly enough, and amused himself by noting the credulity of the country folk, until his attention was attracted by a solemn procession passing up the market-place behind the tents. He inquired of a bystander what this might be. ‘It is the police carrying to his apartment the body of Colonel Monreal, who was murdered this afternoon in the Plaza Mayor,’ was the answer. Conyngham made his way between two tents to the deserted side of the market-place, and, running past the procession, reached the barber’s shop before it. In answer to his summons a girl came to the door of the Colonel’s apartment. She was weeping and moaning in great mental distress. Without explanation Conyngham pushed past her into the room where he had deposited the letter. The room was in disorder, and no letter lay upon the table. ‘It is,’ sobbed the girl, ‘my husband, who, having heard that the good Colonel had been murdered, stole all his valuables and papers and has run away from me.’	{ "id": "5987" }
11	A TANGLED WEB	‘Wherein I am false, I am honest—not true to be true.’ ‘AND—would you believe it? —there are soldiers in the house, at the very door of Julia’s apartments.’ Señora Barenna, who made this remark, heaved a sigh and sat back in her canework chair with that jerkiness of action which in elderly ladies usually betokens impatience with the ways of young people. ‘Policemen—policemen, not soldiers,’ corrected Father Concha patiently, as if it did not matter much. They were sitting in the broad vine-clad verandah of the Casa Barenna, that grim old house on the Bobadilla road, two miles from Ronda. The priest had walked thither, as the dust on his square-toed shoes and black stockings would testify. He had laid aside his mournful old hat, long since brown and discoloured, and was wiping his forehead with a cheap pocket-handkerchief of colour and pattern rather loud for his station in life. ‘Well, they have swords,’ persisted the lady. ‘Policemen,’ said Father Concha, in a stern and final voice, which caused Señora Barenna to cast her eyes upwards with an air of resigned martyrdom. ‘Ah, that Alcalde!’ she whispered between her teeth. ‘A little dog, when it is afraid, growls,’ said Concha philosophically. ‘The Alcalde is a very small dog, and he is at his wit’s end. Such a thing has not occurred in Ronda before, and the Alcalde’s world is Ronda. He does not know whether his office permits him to inspect young ladies’ love letters or not.’ ‘Love letters!’ ejaculated Señora Barenna. She evidently had a keen sense of the romantic, and hoped for something more tragic than a mere flirtation begotten of idleness at sea. ‘Yes,’ said Concha, crossing his legs and looking at his companion with a queer cynicism. ‘Young people mostly pass that way.’ He had had a tragedy, this old man. One of those grim tragedies of the cassock which English people rarely understand. And his tragedy sat beside him on the cane chair, stout and eminently worldly, while he had journeyed on the road of life with all his illusions, all his half-fledged aspirations, untouched by the cold finger of reality. He despised the woman now, the contempt lurked in his cynical smile, but he clung with a half-mocking, open-eyed sarcasm to his memories. ‘But,’ he said reassuringly, ‘Julia is a match for the Alcalde, you may rest assured of that.’ Señora Barenna turned with a gesture of her plump hand indicative of bewilderment. ‘I do not understand her. She laughs at the soldiers—the policemen, I mean. She laughs at me. She laughs at everything.’ ‘Yes, it is the hollow hearts that make most noise in the world,’ said Concha, folding his handkerchief upon his knee. He was deadly poor, and had a theory that a folded handkerchief remains longer clean. His whole existence was an effort to do without those things that make life worth living. ‘Why did you send for me?’ he asked. ‘But to advise me—to help me. I have been, all my life, cast upon the world alone. No one to help me—no one to understand. No one knows what I have suffered—my husband—’ ‘Was one of the best and most patient of mortals, and is assuredly in heaven, where I hope there are a few mansions reserved for men only.’ Señora Barenna fetched one of her deepest sighs. She had a few lurking in the depth of her capacious being, reserved for such occasions as this. It was, it seemed, no more than her life had led her to expect. ‘You have had,’ went on her spiritual adviser, ‘a life of ease and luxury, a husband who denied you nothing. You have never lost a child by death, which I understand is—one of the greatest sorrows that God sends to women. You are an ungrateful female.’ Señora Barenna, whose face would have graced one of the very earliest of the martyrs, sat with folded hands waiting until the storm should pass. ‘Do you wish me to see Julia?’ asked Concha abruptly. ‘Yes—yes! And persuade her to conciliate the Alcalde—to tell him some story or another. It does not surely matter if it be not the strict truth. Anything to get these men out of the house. My maid Maria is so flighty. Ah—these young people! What a trial—my dear Padre, what a trial!’ ‘Of course,’ said Father Concha. ‘But what a dull world it would be if our neighbour knew how to manage his own affairs! Shall we go to Julia?’ The perturbed lady preferred that the priest should see her daughter alone. A military-looking individual in white trousers and a dark green tunic stood guard over the door of Julia’s apartment, seeking by his attitude and the curl of his moustache to magnify his office in the eyes of a maid who happened to have an unusual amount of cleaning to do in that particular corridor. ‘Ah!’ said Father Concha, by no means abashed by the sentinel’s sword. ‘Ah, it is you, Manuel. Your wife tells me you have objections to the christening of that last boy of yours, number five, I think. Bring number five on Sunday, after vespers—eh? You understand—and a little something for the poor. It is pay day on Saturday. And no more nonsense about religion, Manuel, eh?’ He shook his lean finger in the official’s face and walked on unchallenged. ‘May I come in?’ he said, tapping at the door; and Julia’s voice bade him enter. He closed the door behind him and laid aside his hat. Then he stood upright, and slowly rubbing his hands together looked at Julia with the humorous twinkle lurking in his eye and its companion dimple twitching in his lean cheek. Then he began to feel his pockets, passing his hands down his worn cassock. ‘Let me see, I had a love letter—was it from Don Carlos? At all events, I have lost it!’ He laughed, made a perfunctory sign of the cross and gave her his blessing. Then, his face having become suddenly grave as if by machinery at the sound of the solemn Latin benediction, he sat down. Julia looked worn and eager. Her eyes seemed to search his face for news. ‘Yes, my dear child,’ he said. ‘Politics are all very well as a career. But without a distinct profit they are worth the attention of few men, and never worth the thought of a woman.’ He looked at her keenly, and she turned to the window, which was open to admit the breath of violets and other flowers of the spring. She shrugged her shoulders and gave a sharp sigh. ‘See here, my child,’ said Padre Concha abruptly. ‘For reasons which concern no one, I take a great interest in your happiness. You resemble some one whose welfare was once more important to me than my own. That was long ago, and I now consider myself first, as all wise men should. I am your friend, Julia, and much too old to be over-scrupulous. I peep and pry into my neighbours’ affairs, and I am uneasy about you, my child.’ He shook his head and drummed upon the table with his dirty fingers. ‘Thank you,’ answered the girl with her defiant little laugh, ‘but I can manage my own affairs.’ The priest nodded reflectively. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is natural that you should say that. One of the chief blessings of youth is self confidence. Heaven forbid that I should shake yours. But, you see, there are several people who happen to be anxious that this little affair should blow over and be forgotten. The Alcalde is a mule, we know that, and anything that serves to magnify himself and his office is likely to be prolonged. Do not play into his hand. As I tell you, there are some who wish to forget this incident, and one of them is coming to see you this afternoon.’ ‘Ah!’ said the girl indifferently. ‘General Vincente.’ Julia changed colour and her eyelids flickered for a moment as she looked out of the open window. ‘A good friend,’ continued Concha, ‘but—’ He finished the phrase with an eloquent little gesture of the hand. At this moment they both heard the sound of an approaching carriage. ‘He is coming now,’ said Concha. ‘He is driving, so Estella is with him.’ ‘Estella is of course jealous.’ The priest looked at her with a slow wise smile and said nothing. ‘She—’ began Julia, and then closed her lips—true to that _esprit de sexe_ which has ruled through all the ages. Then Julia Barenna gave a sharp sigh as her mind reverted from Estella’s affairs to her own. Sitting thus in silence, the two occupants of the quiet room heard the approach of steps and the clink of spurs in the corridor. ‘It is the reverendo who visits the señorita,’ they heard the voice of the sentinel explain deprecatingly. The priest rose and went to the door, which he opened. ‘Only as a friend,’ he said. ‘Come in, General.’ General Vincente entered the room followed by Estella. He nodded to Concha and kissed his niece affectionately. ‘Still obdurate?’ he said, with a semi-playful tap on her shoulder. ‘Still obdurate? My dear Julia, in peace and war the greatest quality in the strong is mercy. You have proved yourself strong—you have worsted that unfortunate Alcalde—be merciful to him now, and let this incident finish.’ He drew forward a chair, the others being seated, and laid aside his gloves. The sword which he held upright between his knees, with his two hands resting on the hilt, looked incongruously large and reached the level of his eyes. He gave a little chuckling laugh. ‘I saw him last night at the Café Real—the poor man had the air of a funeral, and took his wine as if it were sour. Ah! these civilians, they amuse one—they take life so seriously.’ He laughed and looked round at those assembled as if inviting them to join him in a gayer and easier view of existence. The Padre’s furrowed face answered the summons in a sudden smile, but it was with grave eyes that he looked searchingly at the most powerful man in Andalusia; for General Vincente’s word was law south of the Tagus. The two men sat side by side in strong contrast. Fate indeed seems to shake men together in a bag, and cast them out upon the world heedless where they may fall; for here was a soldier in the priest’s habit, and one carrying a sword who had the keen heart and sure sympathy for joy or sorrow that should ever be found within a black coat if the Master’s work is to be well done. General Vincente smiled at Estella with _sang-froid_ and an unruffled good nature, while the Padre Concha, whose place it surely was to take the lead in such woman’s work as this, slowly rubbed his bony hands together, at a loss and incompetent to meet the urgency of the moment. ‘Our guest left us yesterday morning,’ said the General, ‘and of course the Alcalde placed no hindrance on his departure.’ He did not look at Julia, who drew a deep breath and glanced at Estella. ‘I do not know if Señor Conyngham left any message for you with Estella—to me he said nothing,’ continued Estella’s father; and that young lady shook her head. ‘No,’ she put in composedly. ‘Then it remains for us to close this foolish incident, my dear Julia; and for me to remind you, seeing that you are fatherless, that there are in Spain many adventurers who come here seeking the sport of love or war, who will ride away when they have had their fill of either.’ He ceased speaking with a tolerant laugh, as one who, being a soldier himself, would beg indulgence for the failings of his comrades, examined the hilt of his sword, and then looked blandly round on three faces which resolutely refused to class the absent Englishman in this category. ‘It remains, my dear niece, to satisfy the Alcalde—a mere glance at the letter—sufficient to satisfy him as to the nature of its contents.’ ‘I have no letter,’ said Julia quietly, with her level red lips set hard. ‘Not in your possession, but perhaps concealed in some place near at hand—unless it is destroyed.’ ‘I have destroyed no letter, I have concealed no letter, and I have no letter,’ said the girl quietly. Estella moved uneasily in the chair. Her face was colourless and her eyes shone. She watched her cousin’s face intently, and beneath his shaggy brows the old priest’s eyes went from one fair countenance to the other. ‘Then,’ cried the General, rising to his feet with an air of relief, ‘you have but to assure the Alcalde of this, and the whole incident is terminated. Blown over, my dear Concha—blown over!’ He tapped the priest on the shoulder with great good nature. Indeed, the world seemed sunny enough and free from cares when General Vincente had to deal with it. ‘Yes—yes,’ said the Padre, snuff-box in hand. ‘Blown over—of course.’ ‘Then I may send the Alcalde to you, Julia—and you will tell him what you have told us? He cannot but take the word of a lady.’ ‘Yes—if you like,’ answered Julia. The General’s joy knew no bounds. ‘That is well,’ he cried, ‘I knew we could safely rely upon your good sense. Kiss me, Julia—that is well! Come, Estella—we must not keep the horses waiting.’ With a laugh and a nod he went towards the door. ‘Blown over, my dear Concha,’ he said over his shoulder. A few minutes later the priest walked down the avenue of walnut trees alone. The bell was ringing for vespers, but the Padre was an autocratic shepherd and did not hurry towards his flock. The sun had set, and in the hollows of the distant mountains the shades of night already lay like a blue veil. The priest walked on and presently reached the high road. A single figure was upon it—the figure of a man sitting in the shadow of an ilex tree half a mile up the road towards Bobadilla. The man crouched low against a heap of stones and had the air of a wanderer. His face was concealed in the folds of his cloak. ‘Blown over,’ muttered the Padre as he turned his back upon Bobadilla and went on towards his church. ‘Blown over, of course; but what is Concepçion Vara doing in the neighbourhood of Ronda to-night?’	{ "id": "5987" }
12	ON THE TOLEDO ROAD	‘Une bonne intention est une échelle trop courte.’ CONYNGHAM made his way without difficulty or incident from Xeres to Cordova, riding for the most part in front of the clumsy diligencia wherein he had bestowed his luggage. The road was wearisome enough, and the last stages, through the fertile plains bordering the Guadalquivir, dusty and monotonous. At Cordova the traveller found comfortable quarters in an old inn overlooking the river. The ancient city was then, as it is now, a great military centre, and the headquarters of the picturesque corps of horse-tamers, the ‘Remonta,’ who are responsible for the mounting of the cavalry and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the suggestion of General Vincente, made such small changes in his costume as would serve to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of the stable and kitchen which may follow a traveller to his hurt from one side of a continent to the other. ‘Wherever you may go learn your way in and out of every town, and you will thus store up knowledge most useful to a soldier,’ the General had said in his easy way. ‘See you,’ Concepçion had observed, wagging his head over a cigarette; ‘to go about the world with the eyes open is to conquer the world.’ From his guide, moreover, whose methods were those that Nature teaches to men who live their daily lives in her company, Conyngham learnt much of that road craft which had raised Concepçion Vara to such a proud eminence among the rascals of Andalusia. Cordova was a good object upon which to practise, for Roman and Goth, Moor and Christian, have combined to make its tortuous streets well-nigh incomprehensible to the traveller’s mind. Here Conyngham wandered, or else he sat somnolently on a seat in the Paseo del Gran Capitan in the shade of the orange trees, awaiting the arrival of Concepçion Vara. He made a few acquaintances, as every traveller who is not a bear must needs do in a country where politeness and hospitality and a grave good fellowship are the natural habit of high and low alike. A bullfighter or two, who beguiled the long winter months, when the rings are closed, by a little innocent horse dealing, joined him quietly in the streets and offered him a horse—as between gentlemen of undoubted honour—at a price much below the current value. Or it was perhaps a beggar who came to him on the old yellow marble seat under the orange trees, and chatted affably about his business as being bad in these times of war. Once, indeed, it was a white-haired gentleman, who spoke in English, and asked some very natural questions as to the affairs that brought an Englishman to the town of Cordova. This sweet-spoken old man explained that strangers would do well to avoid all questions of politics and religion, which he classed together in one dangerous whole. Nevertheless, Conyngham thought that he perceived his ancient friend the same evening hurrying up the steps of the Jesuit College of La Campania. Two days elapsed and Concepçion Vara made neither appearance nor sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his journey through the sparsely populated valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Madrid. ‘You will ride,’ the innkeeper told him, ‘from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana, and if there is rain you may be a month upon the road.’ Conyngham set out in the early morning, and as he threw his leg across the saddle the sun rose over the far misty hills of Ronda, and Concepçion Vara awoke from his night’s rest under the wall of an olive terrace above the Bobadilla road, to begin another day of patient waiting and watching to get speech with the maid or the mistress; for he had already inaugurated what he lightly called ‘an affair’ with Julia’s flighty attendant. The sun rose also over the plains of Xeres, and lighted up the picturesque form of Esteban Larralde, in the saddle this hour and more, having learnt that Colonel Monreal’s death took place an hour before Conyngham’s arrival in the town of Xeres de la Frontera. The letter, therefore, had not been delivered to Colonel Monreal, and was still in Conyngham’s possession. Larralde bestrode a shocking steed, and had but an indifferent seat in the saddle. Nevertheless, the dust rose beneath his horse’s feet, and his spurs flashed in the sunlight as this man of many parts hurried on towards Utrera and Cordova. In the old Moorish palace in Ronda, General Vincente, summoned to a great council of war at Madrid, was making curt military preparations for his journey and the conveyance of his household to the capital. Señora Barenna was for the moment forgetful of her nerves in the excitement of despatching servants in advance to Toledo, where she owned a summer residence. Julia was nervously anxious to be on the road again, and showed by every word and action that restlessness of spirit which is the inheritance of hungry hearts. Estella, quiet and self-contained, attended to the details of moving a vast and formal household with a certain eagerness which in no way resembled Julia’s feverish haste. Estella seemed to be one of those happy people who know what they want. Thus Frederick Conyngham, riding northward alone, seemed to be a pilot to all these persons into whose lives he had suddenly stepped as from a side issue, for they were one and all making ready to follow him to the colder plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians contend together for the mastery of a moment. As he rode on, Conyngham left a message from time to time for his self-appointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepçion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this was not Concepçion Vara. It was late one evening when Conyngham, who had quitted Toledo in the morning, began to hunger for the sight of the towers and steeples of Madrid. He had ridden all day through the bare country of Cervantes, where to this day Spain rears her wittiest men and plainest women. The sun had just set behind the distant hills of Old Castile, and from the east, over Aranjuez, where the great river cuts Spain in two parts from its centre to the sea, a grey cloud—a very shade of night—was slowly rising. The aspect of the brown plains was dismal enough, and on the horizon the rolling unbroken land seemed to melt away into eternity and infinite space. Conyngham reined in and looked around him. So far as eye could reach, no house arose to testify to the presence of man. No labourer toiled home to his lonely hut. For, in this country of many wars and interminable strife, it has, since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, been the custom of the people to congregate in villages and small townships, where a common danger secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road rose and fell in a straight line across the table-land without tree or hedge, and Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or castle height. Conyngham turned in his saddle to look back, and there, not a mile away, the form of a hurrying horseman broke the bare line of the dusty road. There was something weird and disturbing in this figure, a suggestion of pursuit in every line. For this was not Concepçion Vara. Conyngham would have known him at once. This was one wearing a better coat; indeed Concepçion preferred to face life and the chances of the world in shirt sleeves. Conyngham sat in his saddle awaiting the new-comer. To meet on such a road in Spain without pausing to exchange a salutation would be a gratuitous insult, to ride in solitude within hail of another traveller were to excite or betray the deepest distrust. It was characteristic of Conyngham that he already waved his hand in salutation, and was prepared to hail the new-comer as the jolliest companion in the world. Esteban Larralde, seeing the salutation, gave a short laugh, and jerked the reins of his tired horse. He himself wore a weary look, as if the fight he had in hand were an uphill one. He had long recognised Conyngham; indeed the chase had been one of little excitement, but rather an exercise of patience and dogged perseverance. He raised his hat to indicate that the Englishman’s gay salutations were perceived, and pulled the wide brim well forward again. ‘He will change his attitude when it becomes apparent who I am,’ he muttered. But Conyngham’s first word would appear to suggest that Esteban Larralde was a much less impressive person than he considered himself. ‘Why, it’s the devout lover!’ he cried. ‘Señor Larralde, you remember me, Algeciras, and your pink love letter—deuced fishy love letter, that; nearly got me into a devil of a row, I can tell you. How are you, eh?’ And the Englishman rode forward with a jolly laugh and his hand held out. Larralde took it without enthusiasm. It was rather difficult to pick a picturesque quarrel with such a person as this. Moreover, the true conspirator never believes in another man’s honesty. ‘Who would have expected to meet you here?’ went on Conyngham jovially. ‘It is not so surprising as you think.’ ‘Oh!’ There was no mistaking Larralde’s manner, and the Englishman’s gay blue eyes hardened suddenly and rather surprisingly. ‘No, I have followed you. I want that letter.’ ‘Well, as it happens, Señor Larralde, I have not got your letter, and if I had I am not quite sure that I would give it to you. Your conduct in the matter has not been over-nice, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t think much of a man who gets strangers and women to do his dirty work for him.’ Larralde stroked his moustache with a half-furtive air of contempt. ‘I should have given the confounded letter to the Alcalde of Ronda if it had not been that a lady would have suffered for it, and let you take your chance, Señor Larralde.’ Larralde shrugged his shoulders. ‘You would not have given it to the Alcalde of Ronda,’ he said in a sneering voice, ‘because you want it yourself. You require it in order to make your peace with Estella Vincente.’ ‘We are not going to talk of Señorita Vincente,’ said Conyngham quietly. ‘You say you followed me because you wanted that letter. It is not in my possession. I left it in the house of Colonel Monreal at Xeres. If you are going on to Madrid, I think I will sit down here and have a cigarette. If, on the other hand, you propose resting here, I shall proceed, as it is getting late.’ Conyngham looked at his companion with a nod and a smile which was not in the least friendly and at the same time quite cheerful. He seemed to recognise the necessity of quarrelling, but proposed to do so as light-heartedly as possible. They were both on horseback in the middle of the road, Larralde a few paces in the direction of Madrid. Conyngham indicated the road with an inviting wave of the hand. ‘Will you go on?’ he asked. Larralde sat looking at him with glittering eyes, and said nothing. ‘Then I will continue my journey,’ said the Englishman, touching his horse lightly with the spur. The horse moved on and passed within a yard of the other. At this moment Larralde rose in his stirrups and flung himself on one side. Conyngham gave a sharp cry of pain and threw back his head. Larralde had stabbed him in the back. The Englishman swayed in the saddle as if trying to balance himself, his legs bent back from the knee in the sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then, slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling to the road with a thud. Larralde watched him with a white face and staring eyes. Then he looked quickly round over the darkening landscape. There was no one in sight. This was one of the waste places of the world. Larralde seemed to remember the Eye that seeth even there, and crossed himself as he slipped from the saddle to the ground. He was shaking all over. His face was ashen, for it is a terrible thing to kill a man and be left alone with him. Conyngham’s eyes were closed. There was blood on his lips. With hands that shook like leaves Esteban Larralde searched the Englishman, found nothing, and cursed his ill fortune. Then he stood upright, and in the dim light his face shone as if he had dipped it in water. He crept into the saddle and rode on towards Madrid. It was quite dark when Conyngham recovered consciousness. In turning him over to search his pockets Larralde had perhaps, unwittingly, saved his life by placing him in a position that checked the internal hæmorrhage. What served to bring back the Englishman’s wandering senses was the rumbling of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip as a cart laden with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of Toledo. The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men. With great care and a multitude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and proceeded with him to Madrid.	{ "id": "5987" }
13	A WISE IGNORAMUS	‘God help me! I know nothing—can but pray.’ IT was Father Concha’s custom to attend, at his church between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, to such wants spiritual or temporal as individual members of his flock chose to bring to him. Thus it usually happened that the faithful found the old priest at nine o’clock sunning himself at the front door of the sacred edifice, smoking a reflective cigarette and exchanging the time of day with passers-by or such as had leisure to pause a moment. ‘Whether it is body or soul that is in trouble—come to me,’ he would say. ‘For the body I can do a little—a very little. I have twenty pounds a year, and it is not always paid to me, but I sometimes have a trifle for charity. For the soul I can do a little more.’ After a storm of wind and rain, such as come in the winter-time, it was no uncommon sight to see the priest sweeping the leaves and dust from the church steps and using the strongest language at the bootmaker over the way whose business this was supposed to be. ‘See!’ he would cry to some passer-by. ‘See! —it is thus that our sacristan does his work. It is for this that the Holy Church pays him fifteen—or is it twenty? —pesetas each year.’ And the bootmaker would growl and shake his head over his last; for, like most who have to do with leather, he was a man of small humour. Here, too, mothers would bring their children—little girls cowering under their bright handkerchiefs, the mantilla of the poor, and speak with the Padre of the Confirmation and first Communion which had lately begun to hang like a cloud over the child’s life. Father Concha would take the child upon his knee as he sat on the low wall at the side of the steps, and when the mother had left them, would talk quietly with the lines of his face wonderfully softened, so that before long the little girl would run home quite happy in mind and no longer afraid of the great unknown. Here, in the spring time, came the young men with thoughts appropriate to the season, and sheepish exceedingly; for they knew that Father Concha knew all about them, and would take an unfair advantage of his opportunities, refusing probably to perform the ceremony until he was satisfied as to the ways and means and prudence of the contracting parties—which of course he had no right to do. Here came the halt, the lame, the blind, the poor, and also the rich. Here came the unhappy. They came naturally and often. Here, so the bootmaker tells, came one morning a ruined man, who after speaking a few words to the Padre, produced a revolver and tried to shoot himself. And the Padre fell on him like a wild beast. And they fought, and fell, and rolled down the steps together into the road, where they still fought till they were white like millers with dust. Then at last the Padre got the strong man under him and took the revolver away and threw it into the ditch. Then he fell to belabouring the would-be suicide with his fists, until the big man cried for mercy and received it not. ‘You saved his life,’ the people said. ‘It was his soul that I was caring for,’ replied the Padre with his grim smile. Concha was not a clever man, but he was wise. Of learning he had but little. It is easy, however, to be wise without being learned. It is easier still to be learned without being wise. The world is full of such persons to-day when education is too cheap. Concha steered his flock as best he could through the stormy paths of insurrection and civil war. He ruled with a rod of iron whom he could, and such as were beyond his reach he influenced by ridicule and a patient tolerance. True to his cloth, he was the enemy of all progress and distrusted every innovation. ‘The Padre,’ said the barber, who was a talker and a radical, ‘would have the world stand still.’ ‘The Padre,’ replied Concha, tenderly drying his chin with a towel, ‘would have all barbers attend to their razors. Many are so busy shouting “Advance!” that they have no breath to ask whither they are going.’ On the whole, perhaps, his autocratic rule was a beneficent one, and contributed to the happiness of the little northern suburb of Ronda over which it extended. At all events, he was a watchful guardian of his flock, and knew every face in his parish. It thus happened one morning that a strange woman, who had come quietly into church to pray, attracted his attention as he passed out after matins. She was a mere peasant and ill clad. The child seated on a chair by her side and staring with wondering eyes at the simple altar and stained-glass window had a hungry look. Concha sat down on the low wall without the doors and awaited the exit of this devotee who was not of his flock. For though, as he often said, the good God had intended him for a soldier, his own strong will and simple faith had in time produced a very passable priest who, with a grim face, went about doing good. The woman presently lifted the heavy leathern curtain and let out into the sunlight a breath of cool, incense-laden air. She curtsied and paused as if expecting recognition. Concha threw away his cigarette and raised his hand to his hat. He had not lifted it except to ladies of the highest quality for some years, out of regard to symptoms of senile decay which had manifested themselves at the junction of the brim and the crown. ‘Have I not seen your face before, my child?’ he said. ‘Yes, reverendo. I am of Ronda but have been living in Xeres.’ ‘Ah! then your husband is no doubt a malcontent?’ The woman burst into tears, burying her face in her hands and leaning against the wall in an attitude that was still girlish. She had probably been married at fifteen. ‘No, reverendo! He is a thief.’ Concha merely nodded his head. He never had been a man to betray much pious horror when he heard of ill-doing. ‘The two are almost identical,’ he said quietly. ‘One does what the other fears to do. And is your husband in prison? Is that why you have come back? Ah! you women—in foolishness you almost equal the men!’ ‘No, reverendo. I am come back because he has left me. Sebastian has run away, and has stolen all his master’s property. It was the Colonel Monreal of Xeres—a good man, reverendo, but a politician.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘Yes, and he was murdered, as your reverence has no doubt seen in the newspapers. A week ago it was—the day that the Englishman came with a letter.’ ‘What Englishman was that?’ inquired Father Concha, brushing some grains of snuff from his sleeve. ‘What Englishman was that, my child?’ ‘Oh, I do not know! His name is unknown to me, but I could tell he was English from his manner of speaking. The Colonel had an English friend who spoke so—one engaged in the sherry in Xeres.’ ‘Ah yes! And this Englishman, what was he like?’ ‘He was very tall and straight, like a soldier, and had a moustache quite light in colour, like straw.’ ‘Ah yes. The English are so. And he left a letter?’ ‘Yes, reverendo.’ ‘A rose-coloured letter—?’ ‘Yes,’ said the woman, looking at him with surprise. ‘And tell me what happened afterwards. I may perhaps be able to help you, my child, if you tell me all you know.’ ‘And then, reverendo, the police brought back the Colonel who had been murdered in the streets—and I who had his Excellency’s dinner on the table waiting for him!’ ‘And—’ ‘And Sebastian ate the dinner, reverendo.’ ‘Your husband appears to be a man of action,’ said Concha with a queer smile. ‘And then—’ ‘Sebastian sent me on a message to the town, and when I came back he was gone and all his Excellency’s possessions were gone—his papers and valuables.’ ‘Including the letter which the Englishman had left for the Colonel?’ ‘Yes, reverendo. Sebastian knew that in these times the papers of a politician may perhaps be sold for money.’ Concha nodded his head reflectively and took a pinch of snuff with infinite deliberation and enjoyment. ‘Yes—assuredly, Sebastian is one of those men who get on in the world—up to a certain point—and at that point they get hanged. There is in the universe a particular spot for each man—where we all think we should like to go if we had the money. For me it is Rome. Doubtless Sebastian had some such spot, of which he spoke when he was intoxicated. Where is Sebastian’s earthly paradise, think you, my child?’ ‘He always spoke of Madrid, reverendo.’ ‘Yes—yes, I can imagine he would.’ ‘And I have no money to follow him,’ sobbed the woman, breaking into tears again. ‘So I came to Ronda, where I am known, to seek it.’ ‘Ah, foolish woman!’ exclaimed the priest severely, and shaking his finger at her. ‘Foolish woman to think of following such a person. More foolish still is it to weep for a worthless husband, especially in public, thus, on the church steps, where all may see. All the other women will be so pleased. It is their greatest happiness to think that their neighbour’s husband is worse than their own. Failure is the royal road to popularity. Dry your tears, foolish one, before you make too many friends.’ The woman obeyed him mechanically with a sort of dumb hopelessness. At this moment a horseman clattered past, coming from Ronda and hastening in the direction of Bobadilla or perhaps to the Casa Barenna. He wore his flat-brimmed hat well forward over the eyes, and kept his gaze fixed upon the road in front. There was a faint suggestion of assumed absorption in his attitude, as if he knew that the priest was usually at the church door at this hour, and had no desire to meet his eye. It was Larralde. A few minutes later Julia Barenna, who was sitting at her window watching and waiting—her attitude in life—suddenly rose with eyes that gleamed and trembling hands. She stood and gazed down into the valley below, her attention fixed on the form of a horseman slowly making his way through the olive groves. Then breathlessly she turned to her mirror. ‘At last!’ she whispered, her fingers busy with her hair and mantilla, a thousand thoughts flying through her brain, her heart throbbing in her breast. In a moment the aspect of the whole world had changed—in a moment Julia herself was another woman. Ten years seemed to have rolled away from her heart, leaving her young and girlish and hopeful again. She gave one last look at herself and hurried to the door. It was yet early in the day, and the air beneath the gnarled and ancient olive trees was cool and fresh as Julia passed under them to meet her lover. He threw himself out of the saddle when he saw her, and, leaving his horse loose, ran to meet her. He took her hands and raised her fingers to his lips with a certain fervour which was sincere enough. For Larralde loved Julia according to his lights, though he had another mistress, Ambition, who was with him always and filled his thoughts, sleeping or waking. Julia, her face all flushed, her eyes aglow, received his gallant greeting with a sort of breathless eagerness. She knew she had not Larralde’s whole heart, and, woman-like, was not content with half. ‘I have not seen you for nearly a fortnight,’ she said. ‘Ah!’ answered Larralde, who had apparently not kept so strict an account of the days. ‘Ah! yes—I know. But, dearest, I have been burning the high-roads. I have been almost to Madrid. Ah! Julia, why did you make such a mistake?’ ‘What mistake?’ she asked with a sudden light of coquetry in her eyes. She thought he was about to ask her why she loved him. In former days he had had a pretty turn for such questions. ‘In giving the letter to that scoundrel Conyngham—he has betrayed us, and Spain is no longer safe for me.’ ‘Are you sure of this?’ asked Julia, alert. Had she possessed Larralde’s whole heart she would have been happy enough to take part in his pursuits. Larralde gave a short laugh and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Heaven only knows where the letter is now,’ he answered. Julia unfolded a note and handed it to him. She had received it three weeks earlier from Concepçion Vara, and it was from Conyngham, saying that he had left her note at the house of the Colonel. ‘The Colonel was dead before Conyngham arrived at Xeres,’ said Larralde shortly. ‘And I do not believe he ever left the letter. I suspected that he had kept it as a little recommendation to the Christinos under whom he takes service. It would have been the most natural thing to do. But I have satisfied myself that the letter is not in his possession.’ ‘How?’ asked Julia with a sudden fear that blanched her face. Larralde smiled in rather a sickly way and made no answer. He turned and looked down the avenue. ‘I see Father Concha approaching,’ he said; ‘let us go towards the house.’	{ "id": "5987" }
14	A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE	‘The woman who loves you is at once your detective and accomplice.’ THE old priest was walking leisurely up the avenue towards the Casa Barenna when the branches of a dwarf ilex were pushed aside, and there came to him from their leafy concealment, not indeed a wood-nymph, but Señora Barenna, with her finger at her lips. ‘Hush!’ she said; ‘he is here.’ And from the anxious and excited expression of her face it became apparent that madame’s nerves were astir. ‘Who is here?’ ‘Why, Esteban Larralde, of course.’ ‘Ah!’ said Concha patiently. ‘But need we for that hide behind the bushes and walk on the flower borders? Life would be much simpler, señora, if people would only keep to the footpath. Less picturesque, I allow you, but simpler. Shall I climb up a tree?’ The lady cast her eyes up to heaven and heaved an exaggerated sigh. ‘Ah—what a tragedy life is!’ she whispered, apparently to the angels, but loud enough for her companion to hear. ‘Or a farce,’ said Concha, ‘according to our reading of the part. Where is Señor Larralde?’ ‘Oh, he has gone to the fruit garden with Julia—there is a high wall all round, and one cannot see. She may be murdered by this time. I knew he was coming from the manner in which she ran downstairs. She walks at other times.’ Concha smiled rather grimly. ‘She is not the first to do that,’ he said, ‘and many have stumbled on the stairs in their haste.’ ‘Ah! You are a hard man—a terrible man with no heart. And I have no one to sympathise with me. No one knows what I suffer. I never sleep at night—not a wink—but lie and think of my troubles. Julia will not obey me. I have warned her not to rouse me to anger—and she laughs at me. She persists in seeing this terrible Esteban Larralde—a Carlist, if you please.’ ‘We are all as God made us,’ said Concha—’with embellishments added by the Evil One,’ he added, in a lower tone. ‘And now I am going to see General Vincente. I shall tell him to send soldiers. This man’s presence is intolerable—I am not obeyed in my own house,’ cried the lady. ‘I have ordered the carriage to meet me at the lower gate. I dare not drive away from my own door. Ah! what a tragedy!’ ‘I will go with you, since you are determined to go,’ said Concha. ‘What! And leave Julia here with that terrible man?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the priest. ‘Happiness is a dangerous thing to meddle with. There is so little of it in the world, and it lasts so short a time.’ Señora Barenna indicated by a sigh and her attitude that she had had no experience in the matter. As a simple fact, she had been enabled all through her life to satisfy her own desires—the subtlest form of misfortune. ‘Then you would have Julia marry this terrible man,’ said the lady, shielding her face from the sun with the black fan which she always carried. ‘I am too old and too stupid to take any active part in my neighbours’ affairs. It is only the young and inexperienced who are competent to do that,’ answered the priest. ‘But you say you are fond of Julia.’ ‘Yes,’ said the priest quietly. ‘I wonder why.’ ‘So do I,’ he said in a tone that Señora Barenna never understood. ‘You are always kinder to her than you are to me,’ went on the lady in her most martyred manner. ‘Her penances are always lighter than mine. You are patient with her and not with me. And I am sure I have never done you any injury—’ The old Padre smiled. Perhaps he was thinking of those illusions which she had during the years pulled down one by one—for the greater peace of his soul. ‘There is the carriage,’ he said. ‘Let us hasten to General Vincente—if you wish to see him.’ In a few minutes they were rattling along the road, while Esteban Larralde and Julia sat side by side in the shade of the great wall that surrounded the fruit garden. And one at least of them was gathering that quick harvest of love which is like the grass of the field, inasmuch as to-day it is, and to-morrow is not. General Vincente was at home. He was one of those men who are happy in finding themselves where they are wanted. So many have, on the contrary, the misfortune to be always absent when they are required, and the world soon learns to progress without them. ‘That man—that Larralde is in Ronda,’ said Señora Barenna, bursting in on the General’s solitude. Vincente smiled, and nevertheless exchanged a quick glance with Concha, who confirmed the news by a movement of his shaggy eyebrows. ‘Ah, these young people!’ exclaimed the General with a gay little sigh. ‘What it is to be young and in love! But be seated, Iñez—be seated. Padre—a chair.’ ‘What do you propose to do?’ asked Señora Barenna breathlessly, for she was stout and agitated and had hurried up the steps. ‘When, my dear Iñez—when?’ ‘But now—with this man in Ronda. You know quite well he is dangerous. He is a Carlist. It was only the other day that you received an anonymous letter saying that your life was in danger. Of course it was from the Carlists, and Larralde has something to do with it; or that Englishman—that Señor Conyngham with the blue eyes. A man with blue eyes—bah! Of course he is not to be trusted.’ The receiver of the anonymous warning seemed to be amused. ‘A little sweeping, your statements, my dear Iñez. Is it not so? Now, a lemonade! the afternoon is warm.’ He rose and rang the bell. ‘My nerves,’ whispered the Señora to Concha. ‘My nerves—they are so easily upset.’ ‘The liqueurs,’ said the General to the servant with perfect gravity. ‘You must take steps at once,’ urged Señora Barenna when they were alone again. She was endowed with a magnificent imagination without much wisdom to hold it in check, and at times persuaded herself that she was in the midst, and perhaps the leader, of a dangerous whirl of political events. ‘I will, my dear Iñez; I will. And we will take a little maraschino, to collect ourselves, eh?’ And his manner quite indicated that it was he and not Madame Barenna who was upset. The lady consented, and proceeded to what she took to be a consultation, which in reality was a monologue. During this she imparted a vast deal of information, and received none in return, which is the habit of voluble people, and renders them exceedingly dangerous to themselves and useful to others. Presently the two men conducted her to her carriage, with many reassurances. ‘Never fear, Iñez; never fear. He will be gone before you return,’ said the General, with a wave of the hand. He had consented to invite Julia to accompany Estella and himself to Madrid, where she would be out of harm’s way. The two men then returned to the General’s study, and sat down in that silence which only grows to perfection on the deep soil of a long-standing friendship. Vincente was the first to speak. ‘I have had a letter from Madrid,’ he said, looking gravely at his companion. ‘My correspondent tells me that Conyngham has not yet presented his letter of introduction, and, so far as is ascertainable, has not arrived in the capital. He should have been there six weeks ago.’ The Padre took a pinch of snuff, and held the box out towards his companion, who waved it aside. The General was too dainty a man to indulge in such a habit. ‘He possessed no money, so he cannot have fallen a victim to thieves,’ said Concha. ‘He was accompanied by a good guide, and an honest enough scoundrel, so he cannot have lost his way,’ observed the General, with a queer expression of optimistic distress on his face. ‘His movements were not always above suspicion—’ the priest closed his snuff-box and laboriously replaced it in the pocket of his cassock. ‘That letter—it was a queer business!’ and the General laughed. ‘Most suspicious.’ There was a silence, during which Concha sneezed twice with enjoyment and more noise than is usually considered necessary. ‘And your letter,’ he said, carefully folding his handkerchief into squares; ‘that anonymous letter of warning that your life is threatened—is that true? It is the talk of Ronda.’ ‘Ah, that!’ laughed Vincente. ‘Yes, it is true enough. It is not the first time—a mere incident, that is all.’ ‘That which the Señora Barenna said just now,’ observed the priest slowly, ‘about our English friend—may be true. Sometimes thoughtless people arrive at a conclusion which eludes more careful minds.’ ‘Yes—my dear Padre—yes.’ The two grey-headed men looked at each other for a moment in silence. ‘And yet you trust him,’ said Concha. ‘Despite myself, despite my better judgment, my dear friend.’ The priest rose and went to the window which overlooked the garden. ‘Estella is in the garden?’ he asked, and received no answer. ‘I know what you are thinking,’ said the General. ‘You are thinking that we should do well to tell Estella of these distressing suspicions.’ ‘For you it does not matter,’ replied the priest. ‘It is a mere incident, as you say. Your life has been attempted before, and you killed both the men with your own hand, if I recollect aright.’ Vincente shrugged his shoulders and looked rather embarrassed. ‘But a woman,’ went on Concha, ‘cannot afford to trust a man against her better judgment.’ By way of reply the General rose and rang the bell, requesting the servant when he answered the summons to ask the señorita to spare a few moments of her time. They exchanged no further words until Estella came hurrying into the room with a sudden flush on her cheeks and something in her dark eyes that made her father say at once— ‘It is not bad news that we have, my child.’ Estella glanced at Concha and said nothing. His wise old eyes rested for a moment on her face with a little frown of anxiety. ‘We have had a visit from the Señora Barenna,’ went on the General, ‘and she is anxious that we should invite Julia to go to Madrid with us. It appears that Esteban Larralde is still attempting to force his attentions on Julia, and is at present in Ronda. You will not object to her coming with us?’ ‘Oh no,’ said Estella without much interest. ‘We have also heard rather disquieting news about our pleasant friend, Mr. Conyngham,’ said the General, examining the tassel of his sword. ‘And I think it is only right to tell you that I fear we have been deceived in him.’ There was silence for a few moments, and then Vincente spoke again. ‘In these times, one is almost compelled to suspect one’s nearest friends. Much harm may be done by being over-trustful, and appearances are so consistently against Mr. Conyngham that it would be folly to ignore them.’ The General waited for Estella to make some comment, and after a pause continued: ‘He arrived in Ronda under singularly unfortunate circumstances, and I was compelled to have his travelling companion shot. Then occurred that affair of the letter, which he gave to Julia—an affair which has never been explained. Conyngham would have to show me that letter before I should be quite satisfied. I obtained for him an introduction to General Espartero in Madrid. That was six or seven weeks ago. The introduction has not been presented, nor has Conyngham been seen in Madrid. In England, on his own confession, he was rather a scamp; why not the same in Spain?’ The General spread out his hands in his favourite gesture of deprecation. He had not made the world, and while deeply deploring that such things could be, he tacitly admitted that the human race had not been, creatively speaking, a complete success. Father Concha was brushing invisible grains of snuff from his cassock sleeve and watching Estella with anxious eyes. ‘I only tell you, my dear,’ continued the General, ‘so that we may know how to treat Mr. Conyngham should we meet him in Madrid. I liked him. I like a roving man—and many Englishmen are thus wanderers—but appearances are very much against him.’ ‘Yes,’ admitted Estella quietly. ‘Yes.’ She moved towards the door, and there turning looked at Concha. ‘Does the Padre stay to dinner?’ she asked. ‘No, my child, thank you. No; I have affairs at home.’ Estella went out of the room, leaving a queer silence behind her. Presently Concha rose. ‘I, too, am going to Madrid,’ he said. ‘It is an opportunity to press my claim for the payment of my princely stipend, now two years overdue.’ He walked home on the shady side of the street, exchanging many salutations, pausing now and then to speak to a friend. Indeed, nearly every passer-by counted himself as such. In his bare room, where the merest necessities of life scarce had place, he sat down thoughtfully. The furniture, the few books, his own apparel, bespoke the direst poverty. This was one who in his simplicity read his Master’s words quite literally, and went about his work with neither purse nor scrip. The priest presently rose and took from a shelf an old wooden box quaintly carved and studded with iron nails. A search in the drawer of the table resulted in the finding of a key and the final discovery of a small parcel at the bottom of the box which contained letters and other papers. ‘The rainy day—it comes at last,’ said the Padre Concha, counting out his little stock of silver with the care that only comes from the knowledge that each coin represents a self-denial.	{ "id": "5987" }
15	AN ULTIMATUM	‘I do believe yourself against yourself.’ NEITHER Estella nor her father had a great liking for the city of Madrid, which indeed is at no time desirable. In the winter it is cold, in the summer exceedingly hot, and during the changes of the seasons of a treacherous weather difficult to surpass. The social atmosphere was no more genial at the period with which we deal. For it blew hot and cold, and treachery marked every change. Although the Queen Regent seemed to be nearing at last a successful issue to her long and eventful struggle against Don Carlos, she had enemies nearer home whose movements were equally dangerous to the throne of the child queen. ‘I cannot afford to have an honest soldier so far removed from the capital,’ said Christina, who never laid aside the woman while playing the Queen, as Vincente kissed her hand on presenting himself at Court. The General smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘What did she say? What did she say?’ the intriguers whispered eagerly as the great soldier made his way towards the door, with the haste of one who was no courtier. But they received no answer. The General had taken a suite of rooms in one of the hotels on the Puerta del Sol, and hurried thither, well pleased do have escaped so easily from a palace where self-seeking—the grim spirit that haunts the abodes of royalty—had long reigned supreme. There was, the servants told him, a visitor in the salon—one who had asked for the General, and on learning of his absence had insisted on being received by the señorita. ‘That sounds like Conyngham,’ muttered the General, unbuckling his sword—for he had but one weapon, and wore it in the presence of the Queen and her enemies alike. It was indeed Conyngham, whose gay laugh Vincente heard before he crossed the threshold of Estella’s drawing-room. The Englishman was in uniform, and stood with his back turned towards the door by which the General entered. ‘It is Señor Conyngham,’ said Estella at once, in a quiet voice, ‘who has been wounded and six weeks in the hospital.’ ‘Yes,’ said Conyngham. ‘But I am well again now! And I got my appointment while I was still in the Sisters’ care.’ He laughed, though his face was pale and thin, and approached the General with extended hand. The General had come to Madrid with the intention of refusing to take that hand, and those who knew him said that this soldier never swerved from his purpose. He looked for a moment into Conyngham’s eyes, and then shook hands with him. He did not disguise the hesitation, which was apparent to both Estella and the Englishman. ‘How were you wounded?’ he asked. ‘I was stabbed in the back on the Toledo road, ten miles from here.’ ‘Not by a robber—not for your money?’ ‘No one ever hated me or cared for me on that account,’ laughed Conyngham. ‘Then who did it?’ asked General Vincente, unbuttoning his gloves. Conyngham hesitated. ‘A man with whom I quarrelled on the road,’ he made reply; but it was no answer at all, as hearers and speaker alike recognised in a flash of thought. ‘He left me for dead on the road, but a carter picked me up and brought me to Madrid, to the hospital of the Hermanas, where I have been ever since.’ There were flowers on the table, and the General stooped over them with a delicate appreciation of their scent. He was a great lover of flowers, and indeed had a sense of the beautiful quite out of keeping with the colour of his coat. ‘You must beware,’ he said, ‘now that you wear the Queen’s uniform. There is treachery abroad, I fear. Even I have had an anonymous letter of warning.’ ‘I should like to know who wrote it,’ exclaimed Conyngham, with a sudden flash of anger in his eyes. The General laughed pleasantly. ‘So should I,’ he said. ‘Merely as a matter of curiosity.’ And he turned towards the door, which was opened at this moment by a servant. ‘A gentleman wishing to see me—an Englishman, as it would appear,’ he continued, looking at the card. ‘By the way,’ said Conyngham, as the General moved away, ‘I am instructed to inform you that I am attached to your staff as extra aide-de-camp during your stay in Madrid.’ The General nodded and left Estella and Conyngham alone in the drawing-room. Conyngham turned on Estella. ‘So that I have a right to be near you,’ he said, ‘which is all that I want.’ He spoke lightly enough, as was his habit; but Estella, who was wise in those matters that women know, preferred not to meet his eyes, which were grave and deep. ‘Such things are quickly said,’ Estella retorted. ‘Yes—and it takes a long time to prove them.’ The General had left his gloves on the table. Estella took them up and appeared to be interested in them. ‘Perhaps a lifetime,’ she suggested. ‘I ask no less, señorita.’ ‘Then you ask much.’ ‘And I give all—though that is little enough.’ They spoke slowly—not bandying words but exchanging thoughts. Estella was grave. Conyngham’s attitude was that which he ever displayed to the world—namely, one of cheerful optimism, as behoved a strong man who had not yet known fear. ‘Is it too little, señorita?’ he asked. She was sitting at the table and would not look up—neither would she answer his question. He was standing quite close to her—upright in his bright uniform, his hand on his sword—and all her attention was fixed on the flowers which had called forth the General’s unspoken admiration. She touched them with fingers hardly lighter than his. ‘Now that I think of it,’ said Conyngham after a pause, ‘what I give is nothing.’ Estella’s face wore a queer little smile, as of a deeper knowledge. ‘Nothing at all,’ continued the Englishman. ‘For I have nothing to give, and you know nothing of me.’ ‘Three months ago,’ answered Estella, ‘we had never heard of you—and you had never seen me,’ she added, with a little laugh. ‘I have seen nothing else since,’ Conyngham replied deliberately; ‘for I have gone about the world a blind man.’ ‘In three months one cannot decide matters that affect a whole lifetime,’ said the girl. ‘This matter decided itself in three minutes, so far as I am concerned, señorita, in the old palace at Ronda. It is a matter that time is powerless to affect one way or the other.’ ‘With some people; but you are hasty and impetuous. My father said it of you—and he is never mistaken.’ ‘Then you do not trust me, señorita?’ Estella had turned away her face so that he could only see her mantilla and the folds of her golden hair gleaming through the black lace. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is not due to yourself, nor to all who know you in Spain, if I do,’ she said. ‘All who know me?’ ‘Yes,’ she continued; ‘Father Concha, Señora Barenna, my father, and others at Ronda.’ ‘Ah! And what leads them to mistrust me?’ ‘Your own actions,’ replied Estella. And Conyngham was too simple-minded, too inexperienced in such matters, to understand the ring of anxiety in her voice. ‘I do not much mind what the rest of the world thinks of me,’ he said; ‘I have never owed anything to the world nor asked anything from it. They are welcome to think what they like. But with you it is different. Is it possible, señorita, to make you trust me?’ Estella did not answer at once. After a pause she gave an indifferent jerk of the head. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘If it is possible, I will do it.’ ‘It is quite easy,’ she answered, raising her head and looking out of the window with an air that seemed to indicate that her interests lay without and not in this room at all. ‘How can I do it?’ She gave a short, hard laugh, which to experienced ears would have betrayed her instantly. ‘By showing me the letter you wrote to Julia Barenna,’ she said. ‘I cannot do that.’ ‘No,’ she said significantly. A woman fighting for her own happiness is no sparing adversary. ‘Will nothing else than the sight of that letter satisfy you, señorita?’ Her profile was turned towards him—delicate and proud, with the perfect chiselling of outline that only comes with a long descent, and bespeaks the blood of gentle ancestors. For Estella Vincente had in her veins blood that was counted noble in Spain—the land of a bygone glory. ‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘Though the question of my being satisfied is hardly of importance. You asked me to trust you, and you make it difficult by your actions. In return I ask a proof, that is all.’ ‘Do you want to trust me?’ He had come a little closer to her, and was grave enough now. ‘Why do you ask that?’ she inquired in a low voice. ‘Do you want to trust me?’ he asked, and it is to be supposed that he was able to detect an infinitesimal acquiescent movement of her head. ‘Then, if that letter is in existence, you shall have it,’ he said. ‘You say that my actions have borne evidence against me. I shall trust to action and not to words to refute that evidence. But you must give me time—will you do that?’ ‘You always ask something.’ ‘Yes, señorita, from you; but from no one else in the world.’ He gave a sudden laugh and walked to the window, where he stood looking at her. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I shall be asking all my life from you. Perhaps that is why we were created, señorita—I to ask, you to give. Perhaps that is happiness, Estella.’ She raised her eyes but did not meet his, looking past him through the open window. The hotel was situated at the lower end of the Puerta del Sol—the quiet end, and farthest removed from the hum of the market and the busy sounds of traffic. These only came in the form of a distant hum, like the continuous roar of surf upon an unseen shore. Below the windows a passing waterseller plied his trade, and his monotonous cry of ‘Agua-a-a! Agua-a-a!’ rose like a wail—like the voice of one crying in that human wilderness where solitude reigns as surely as in the desert. For a moment Estella glanced at Conyngham gravely, and his eyes were no less serious. They were not the first, but only two out of many millions, to wonder what happiness is and where it hides in this busy world. They had not spoken or moved when the door was again opened by a servant, who bowed towards Conyngham and then stood aside to allow ingress to one who followed on his heels. This was a tall man, white-haired, and white of face. Indeed, his cheeks had the dead pallor of paper, and seemed to be drawn over the cheekbones at such tension as gave to the skin a polish like that of fine marble. One sees many such faces in London streets, and they usually indicate suffering, either mental or physical. The stranger came forward with a perfect lack of embarrassment, which proved him to be a man of the world. His bow to Estella clearly indicated that his business lay with Conyngham. He was the incarnation of the Continental ideal of the polished cold Englishman, and had the air of a diplomate such as this country sends to foreign Courts to praise or blame, to declare friendship or war with the same calm suavity and imperturbable politeness. ‘I come from General Vincente,’ he said to Conyngham, ‘who will follow in a moment, when he has despatched some business which detains him. I have a letter to the General, and am, in fact, in need of his assistance.’ He broke off, turning to Estella, who was moving towards the door. ‘I was especially instructed,’ he said quickly to her, ‘to ask you not to leave us. You were, I believe, at school with my nieces in England, and when my business, which is of the briefest, is concluded, I have messages to deliver to you from Mary and Amy Mainwaring.’ Estella smiled a little and resumed her seat. Then the stranger turned to Conyngham. ‘The General told me,’ he went on in his cold voice, without a gleam of geniality or even of life in his eyes, ‘that if I followed the servant to the drawing-room I should find here an English aide-de-camp who is fully in his confidence, and upon whose good-nature and assistance I could rely.’ ‘I am for the time General Vincente’s aide-de-camp, and I am an Englishman,’ answered Conyngham. The stranger bowed. ‘I did not explain my business to General Vincente,’ said he, ‘who asked me to wait until he came, and then tell the story to you both at one time. In the meantime I was to introduce myself to you.’ Conyngham waited in silence. ‘My name is Sir John Pleydell,’ said the stranger quietly.	{ "id": "5987" }
16	IN HONOUR	‘He makes no friend who never made a foe.’ CONYNGHAM remembered the name of Pleydell well enough, and glanced sharply at Estella, recollecting that the General received the ‘Times’ from London. Before he had time to make an answer, and indeed he had none ready, the General came into the room. ‘Ah!’ said Vincente in his sociable manner, ‘I see you know each other already—so an introduction is superfluous. And now we will have Sir John’s story. Be seated, my dear sir. But first—a little refreshment. It is a dusty day—a lemonade?’ Sir John declined, his manner strikingly cold and reserved beside the genial _empressement_ of General Vincente. In truth the two men seemed to belong to opposite poles—the one of cold and the other of heat. Sir John had the chill air of one who had mixed among his fellow men only to see their evil side; for the world is a cold place to those that look on it with a chilling glance. General Vincente, on the other hand, whose life had been passed in strife and warfare, seemed ready to welcome all comers as friends and to hold out the hand of good-fellowship to rich and poor alike. Conyngham shrugged his shoulders with a queer smile. Here was a quandary requiring a quicker brain than his. He did not even attempt to seek a solution to his difficulties, and the only thought in his mind was a characteristic determination to face them courageously. He drew forward a chair for Sir John Pleydell, his heart stirred with that sense of exhilaration which comes to some in moments of peril. ‘I will not detain you long,’ began the new-comer, with an air slightly suggestive of the law court, ‘but there are certain details which I am afraid I must inflict upon you, in order that you may fully understand my actions.’ The remark was addressed to General Vincente, although the speaker appeared to be demanding Conyngham’s attention in the first instance. The learned gentlemen of the Bar thus often address the jury through the ears of the judge. General Vincente had seated himself at the table and was drawing his scented pocket-handkerchief across his moustache reflectively. He was not, it was obvious, keenly interested, although desirous of showing every politeness to the stranger. In truth, such Englishmen as brought their affairs to Spain at this time were not as a rule highly desirable persons or a credit to their country. Estella was sitting near the window, rather behind her father, and Conyngham stood by the fireplace, facing them all. ‘You perhaps know something of our English politics,’ continued Sir John Pleydell, and the General making a little gesture indicative of a limited but sufficient knowledge, went on to say—‘of the Chartists more particularly?’ The General bowed. Estella glanced at Conyngham, who was smiling. ‘One cannot call them a party, as I have heard them designated in Spain,’ said Sir John parenthetically. ‘They are quite unworthy of so distinguished a name. These Chartists consist of the most ignorant people in the land—the rabble, in fact, headed by a few scheming malcontents: professional agitators who are not above picking the pockets of the poor. Many capitalists and landowners have suffered wrong and loss at the hands of these disturbers of the peace, none—’ He paused and gave a sharp sigh which seemed to catch him unawares, and almost suggested that the man had, after all, or had at one time possessed, a heart. ‘None more severely than myself,’ he concluded. The General’s face instantly expressed the utmost concern. ‘My dear sir,’ he murmured. ‘For many years,’ continued Sir John hurriedly, as if resenting anything like sympathy, as all good Britons do, ‘the authorities acted in an irresolute and foolish manner, not daring to put down the disturbances with a firm hand. At length, however, a riot of a more serious character at a town in Wales necessitated the interference of the military. The ringleaders were arrested, and for some time the authorities were in considerable doubt as to what to do to them. I interested myself strongly in the matter—having practised the law in my younger days—and was finally enabled to see my object carried out. These men were arraigned, not as mere brawlers and rioters, but under a charge of high treason—a much more serious affair for them.’ He broke off with a harsh laugh, which was only a matter of the voice, for his marble face remained unchanged, and probably had not at any time the power of expressing mirth. ‘The ringleaders of the Newport riots were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, which served my purpose excellently.’ Sir John Pleydell spoke with that cynical frankness which seems often to follow upon a few years devoted to practice at the Common Law Bar, where men in truth spend their days in dissecting the mental diseases of their fellow creatures, and learn to conclude that a pure and healthy mind is possessed by none. He moved slightly in his chair, and seemed to indicate that he had made his first point. ‘I hope,’ he said, addressing Conyngham directly, ‘that I am not fatiguing you?’ ‘Not at all,’ returned the younger Englishman coolly; ‘I am much interested.’ The General was studying the texture of his pocket-handkerchief. Estella’s face had grown cold and set. Her eyes from time to time turned towards Conyngham. Sir John Pleydell was not creating a good impression. ‘I will now come to the more personal part of my story,’ went on that gifted speaker, ‘and proceed to explain my reason for inflicting it upon you.’ He still spoke directly to Conyngham, who bowed his head in silence, with the queer smile still hovering on his lips. Estella saw it and drew a sharp breath. In the course of her short life, which had almost been spent in the midst of warfare, she had seen men in danger more than once, and perhaps recognised that smile. ‘I particularly beg your attention,’ explained Sir John to Conyngham, ‘because I understand from General Vincente that you are in reality attached to the staff of General Espartero, and it is to him that I look for help.’ Sir John paused again. He had established another point. One almost expected to see him raise his hand to his shoulder to throw back the silken gown. ‘Some months ago,’ he went on, ‘these Chartists attacked my house in the North of England, and killed my son.’ There was a short silence, and the General muttered a curt and polite Spanish oath under his breath. But somehow the speaker had failed to make that point, and he hurried on. ‘It was not, technically speaking, a murder; my boy, who had a fine spirit, attacked the rioters, and a clever counsel might have got a verdict for the scoundrel who actually struck the blow. I knew this, and awaited events. I did not even take steps against the man who killed my son—an only son and child. It was not, from a legal point of view, worth while.’ He laughed his unpleasant laugh again and presently went on. ‘Fortune, however, favoured me. The trouble grew worse, and the Newport riots at last aroused the Government. The sentence upon the ringleaders gave me my opportunity. It was worth while to hunt down the murderer of my son when I could ensure him sixteen or twenty years’ penal servitude.’ ‘Quite,’ said the General; ‘quite.’ And he smiled. He seemed to fail to realise that Sir John Pleydell was in deadly earnest, and really harboured the implacable spirit of revenge with which he cynically credited himself. ‘I traced my man to Gibraltar, and thence he appears to have come north,’ continued Sir John Pleydell. ‘He has probably taken service under Espartero—many of our English outlaws wear the Spanish Queen’s uniform. He is, of course, bearing an assumed name; but surely it would be possible to trace him?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ answered Conyngham, ‘I think you will be able to find him.’ Sir John’s eyes had for a moment a gleam of life in them. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I am glad to hear you say that. For that is my object in coming to this country; and although I have during the course of my life had many objects of ambition or desire, none of them has so entirely absorbed my attention as this one. Half a dozen men have gone to penal servitude in order that I might succeed in my purpose.’ There was a cold deliberation in this statement which was more cruel than cynicism, for it was sincere. Conyngham looked at Estella. Her face had lost all colour, her eyes were burning—not with the dull light of fear, for the blood that ran in her veins had no taint of that in it—but with anger. She knew who it was that Sir John Pleydell sought. She looked at Conyngham, and his smile of cool intrepidity made her heart leap within her breast. This lover of hers was at all events a brave man—and that which through all the ages reaches the human heart most surely is courage. The coward has no friends. Sir John Pleydell had paused, and was seeking something in his pocket. General Vincente preserved his attitude of slightly bored attention. ‘I have here,’ went on the baronet, ‘a list of the English officers serving in the army of General Espartero at the time of my quitting England. Perhaps you will, at your leisure, be kind enough to cast your eye over it, and make a note of such men as are personally unknown to you, and may therefore be bearing assumed names.’ Conyngham took the paper, and, holding it in his hand, spoke without moving from the mantelpiece against which he leant. ‘You have not yet made quite clear your object in coming to Spain,’ he said. ‘There exists between Spain and England no extradition treaty; and even if such were to come in force I believe that persons guilty of political offences would be exempt from its action. You propose to arraign this man for high treason—a political offence according to the law of many countries.’ ‘You speak like a lawyer,’ said Sir John, with a laugh. ‘You have just informed us,’ retorted Conyngham, ‘that all the English in the Spanish service are miscreants. None know the law so intimately as those who have broken it.’ ‘Ah!’ laughed Sir John again, with a face of stone. ‘There are exceptions to all rules—and you, young sir, are an exception to that which I laid down as regards our countrymen in Spain, unless my experience of faces and knowledge of men play me very false. But your contention is a just one. I am not in a position to seek the aid of the Spanish authorities in this matter. I am fully aware of the fact. You surely did not expect me to come to Spain with such a weak case as that?’ ‘No,’ answered Conyngham slowly, ‘I did not.’ Sir John Pleydell raised his eyes and looked at his fellow countryman with a dawning interest. The General also looked up, from one face to the other. The atmosphere of the room seemed to have undergone a sudden change, and to be dominated by the personality of these two Englishmen. The one will, strong on the surface, accustomed to assert itself and dominate, seemed suddenly to have found itself faced by another as strong and yet hidden behind an easy smile and indolent manner. ‘You are quite right,’ he went on in his cold voice. ‘I have a better case than that, and one eminently suited to a country such as Spain, where a long war has reduced law and order to a somewhat low ebb. I at first thought of coming here to await my chance of shooting this man—his name, by the way, is Frederick Conyngham; but circumstances placed a better vengeance within my grasp—one that will last longer.’ He paused for a moment to reflect upon this long-drawn-out expiation. ‘I propose to get my man home to England, and let him there stand his trial. The idea is not my own; it has, in fact, been carried out successfully before now. Once in England I shall make it my business to see that he gets twenty years’ penal servitude.’ ‘And how do you propose to get him to England?’ asked Conyngham. ‘Oh! that is simple enough. Only a matter of paying a couple of such scoundrels as I understand abound in Spain at this moment—a little bribing of officials, a heavy fee to some English ship-captain. I propose, in short, to kidnap Frederick Conyngham. But I do not ask you to help me in that. I only ask you to put me on his track—to help me to find him, in fact. Will you do it?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Conyngham, coming forward with a card in his hand. ‘You could not have come to a better man.’ Sir John Pleydell read the card, and had himself in such control that his face hardly changed. His teeth closed over his lower lip for a second; then he rose. The perspiration stood out on his face—the grey of his eyes seemed to have faded to the colour of ashes. He looked hard at Conyngham, and then, taking up his hat, went to the door with curious, uneven steps. On the threshold he turned. ‘Your insolence,’ he said breathlessly, ‘is only exceeded by your—daring.’ As the door closed behind him there came, from that part of the room where General Vincente sat, a muffled click of steel, as if a sword half out of its scabbard had been sent softly home again.	{ "id": "5987" }
17	IN MADRID	‘Some keepeth silence knowing his time.’ ‘WHO travels slowly may arrive too late,’ said the Padre Concha, with a pessimistic shake of the head, as the carrier’s cart in which he had come from Toledo drew up in the Plazuela de la Cebada at Madrid. The careful penury of many years had not, indeed, enabled the old priest to travel by the quick diligences, which had often passed him on the road with a cloud of dust and the rattle of six horses. The great journey had been accomplished in the humbler vehicles plying from town to town, that ran as often as not by night in order to save the horses. The priest, like his fellow-travellers, was white with dust. Dust covered his cloak so that its original hue of rusty black was quite lost. Dust coated his face and nestled in the deep wrinkles of it. His eyebrows were lost to sight, and his lashes were like those of a miller. As he stood in the street the dust arose in whirling columns and enveloped all who were abroad; for a gale was howling across the tableland, which the Moors of old had named ‘Majerit’—a draught of wind. The conductor, who, like a good and jovial conductor, had never refused an offer of refreshment on the road, was now muddled with drink and the heat of the sun. He was, in fact, engaged in a warm controversy with a passenger. So the Padre found his own humble portmanteau, a thing of cardboard and canvas, and trudged up the Calle de Toledo, bearing the bag in one hand and his cloak in the other—a lean figure in the sunlight. Father Concha had been in Madrid before, though he rarely boasted of it, or indeed of any of his travels. ‘The wise man does not hang his knowledge on a hook,’ he was in the habit of saying. That this knowledge was of that useful description which is usually designated as knowing one’s way about, soon became apparent; for the dusty traveller passed with unerring steps through the narrower streets that lie between the Calle de Toledo and the street of Segovia. Here dwell the humbler citizens of Madrid, persons engaged in the small commerce of the market-place, for in the Plazuela de la Cebada a hundred yards away is held the corn market, which, indeed, renders the dust in this quarter particularly trying to the eyes. Once or twice the priest was forced to stop at the corner of two streets and there do battle with the wind. ‘But it is a hurricane,’ he muttered; ‘a hurricane.’ With one hand he held his hat, with the other clung to his cloak and portmanteau. ‘But it will blow the dust from my poor old capa,’ he added, giving the cloak an additional shake. He presently found himself in a street which, if narrower than its neighbours, smelt less pestiferous. The open drain that ran down the middle of it pursued its varied course with a quite respectable speed. In the middle of the street Father Concha paused and looked up, nodding as if to an old friend at the sight of a dingy piece of palm bound to the ironwork of a balcony on the second floor. ‘The time to wash off the dust,’ he muttered as he climbed the narrow stairs, ‘and then to work.’ An hour later he was afoot again in a quarter of the city which was less known to him—namely, in the Calle Preciados, where he sought a venta more or less suspected by the police. The wind had risen, and was now blowing with the force of a hurricane. It came from the north-west with a chill whistle which bespoke its birthplace among the peaks of the Gaudarramas. The streets were deserted; the oil lamps swung on their chains at the street corners, casting weird shadows that swept over the face of the houses with uncanny irregularity. It was an evening for evil deeds, except that when Nature is in an ill-humour human nature is mostly cowed, and those who have bad consciences cannot rid their minds of thoughts of the hereafter. The priest found the house he sought, despite the darkness of the street and the absence of any from whom to elicit information. The venta was on the ground-floor, and above it towered storey after storey, built with the quaint fantasy of the middle ages, and surmounted by a deep, overhanging gabled roof. The house seemed to have two staircases of stone and two doors—one on each side of the venta. There is a Spanish proverb which says that the rat which has only one hole is soon caught. Perhaps the architect remembered this, and had built his house to suit his tenants. It was on the fifth floor of this tenement that Father Concha, instructed by Heaven knows what priestly source of information, looked to meet with Sebastian, the whilom bodyservant of the late Colonel Monreal of Xeres. It was known among a certain section of the Royalists that this man had papers and perchance some information of value to dispose of, and more than one respectable, black-clad elbow had brushed the greasy walls of this staircase. Sebastian, it was said, passed his time in drinking and smoking. The boasted gaieties of Madrid had, it would appear, diminished to this sordid level of dissipation. The man was, indeed, thus occupied when the old priest opened the door of his room. ‘Yes,’ he answered in a thick voice, ‘I am Sebastian of Xeres, and no other; the man who knows more of the Carlist plots than any other in Madrid.’ ‘Can you read?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then you know nothing,’ said the Padre. ‘You have, however, a letter in a pink envelope which a friend of mine desires to possess. It is a letter of no importance, of no political value—a love letter, in fact.’ ‘Ah, yes! Ah, yes! That may be, reverendo. But there are others who want it—your love letter.’ ‘I offer you, on the part of my friend, a hundred pesetas for this letter.’ The priest’s wrinkled face wore a grim smile. It was so little—a hundred pesetas, the price of a dinner for two persons at one of the great restaurants on the Puerta del Sol. But to Father Concha the sum represented five hundred cups of black coffee denied to himself in the evening at the café—five hundred packets of cigarettes, so-called of Havana, unsmoked—two new cassocks in the course of twenty years—a hundred little gastronomic delights sternly resisted season after season. ‘Not enough, your hundred pesetas, reverendo, not enough,’ laughed the man. And Concha, who could drive as keen a bargain as any market-woman of Ronda, knew by the manner of saying it that Sebastian only spoke the truth when he said that he had other offers. ‘See, reverendo,’ the man went on, leaning across the table and banging a dirty fist upon it, ‘come to-night at ten o’clock. There are others coming at the same hour to buy my letter in the pink envelope. We will have an auction, a little auction, and the letter goes to the highest bidder. But what does your reverence want with a love letter, eh?’ ‘I will come,’ said the Padre, and, turning, he went home to count his money once more. There are many living still who remember the great gale of wind which was now raging, and through which Father Concha struggled back to the Calle Preciados as the city clocks struck ten. Old men and women still tell how the theatres were deserted that night and the great cafés wrapt in darkness. For none dare venture abroad amid such whirl and confusion. Concha, however, with that lean strength that comes from a life of abstemiousness and low-living, crept along in the shadow of the houses and reached his destination unhurt. The tall house in the alley leading from the Calle Preciados to the Plazuela Santa Maria was dark, as indeed were most of the streets of Madrid this night. A small moon struggled, however, through the riven clouds at times, and cast streaks of light down the narrow streets. Concha caught sight of the form of a man in the alley before him. The priest carried no weapon, but he did not pause. At this moment a gleam of light aided him. ‘Señor Conyngham!’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’ And the Englishman turned sharply on his heel. ‘Is that you—Father Concha, of Ronda?’ he asked. ‘No other, my son.’ Standing in the doorway Conyngham held out his hand with that air of good-fellowship which he had not yet lost amid the more formal Spaniards. ‘Hardly the night for respectable elderly gentlemen of your cloth to be in the streets,’ he said; whereat Concha, who had a keen appreciation of such small pleasantries, laughed grimly. ‘And I have not even the excuse of my cloth. I am abroad on worldly business, and not even my own. I will be honest with you, Señor Conyngham. I am here to buy that malediction of a letter in a pink envelope. You remember—in the garden at Ronda, eh?’ ‘Yes, I remember; and why do you want that letter?’ ‘For the sake of Julia Barenna.’ ‘Ah! I want it for the sake of Estella Vincente.’ Concha laughed shortly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is only up to the age of twenty-five that men imagine themselves to be the rulers of the world. But we need not bid against each other, my son. Perhaps a sight of the letter before I destroy it would satisfy the señorita.’ ‘No, we need not bid against each other,’ began Conyngham; but the priest dragged him back into the doorway with a quick whisper of ‘Silence!’ Someone was coming down the other stairway of the tall house, with slow and cautious steps. Conyngham and his companion drew back to the foot of the stairs and waited. It became evident that he who descended the steps did so without a light. At the door he seemed to stop, probably making sure that the narrow alley was deserted. A moment later he hurried past the door where the two men stood. The moon was almost clear, and by its light both the watchers recognised Larralde in a flash of thought. The next instant Esteban Larralde was running for his life with Frederick Conyngham on his heels. The lamp at the corner of the Calle Preciados had been shattered against the wall by a gust of wind, and both men clattered through a slough of broken glass. Down the whole length of the Preciados but one lamp was left alight, and the narrow street was littered with tiles and fallen bricks, for many chimneys had been blown down, and more than one shutter lay in the roadway, torn from its hinges by the hurricane. It was at the risk of life that any ventured abroad at this hour and amid the whirl of falling masonry. Larralde and Conyngham had the Calle Preciados to themselves—and Larralde cursed his spurs, which rang out at each footfall, and betrayed his whereabouts. A dozen times the Spaniard fell, but before his pursuer could reach him, the same obstacle threw Conyngham to the ground. A dozen times some falling object crashed to earth on the Spaniard’s heels, and the Englishman leapt aside to escape the rebound. Larralde was fleet of foot despite his meagre limbs, and leapt over such obstacles as he could perceive, with the agility of a monkey. He darted into the lighted doorway—the entrance to the palatial mansion of an upstart politician. The large doors were thrown open, and the hall-porter stood in full livery awaiting the master’s carriage. Larralde was already in the patio, and Conyngham ran through the marble-paved entrance hall, before the porter realised what was taking place. There was no second exit as the fugitive had hoped—so it was round the patio and out again into the dark street, leaving the hall-porter dumfoundered. Larralde turned sharply to the right as soon as he gained the Calle Preciados. It was a mere alley running the whole way round a church—and here again was solitude, but not silence, for the wind roared among the chimneys overhead as it roars through a ship’s rigging at sea. The Calle Preciados again! and a momentary confusion among the tables of a café that stood upon the pavement, amid upturned chairs and a fallen, flapping awning. The pace was less killing now, but Larralde still held his own—one hand clutched over the precious letter regained at last—and Conyngham was conscious of a sharp pain where the Spaniard’s knife had touched his lung. Larralde ran mechanically with open mouth and staring eyes. He never doubted that death was at his heels, should he fail to distance the pursuer. For he had recognised Conyngham in the patio of the great house, and as he ran the vague wonder filled his mind whether the Englishman carried a knife. What manner of death would it be if that long arm reached him? Esteban Larralde was afraid. His own life—Julia’s life—the lives of a whole Carlist section were at stake. The history of Spain, perhaps of Europe, depended on the swiftness of his foot. The little crescent moon was shining clearly now between the long-drawn rifts of the rushing clouds. Larralde turned to the right again, up a narrow street which seemed to promise a friendly darkness. The ascent was steep, and the Spaniard gasped for breath as he ran—his legs were becoming numb. He had never been in this street before, and knew not whither it led. But it was at all events dark and deserted. Suddenly he fell upon a heap of bricks and rubbish, a whole stack of chimneys. He could smell the soot. Conyngham was upon him, touched him, but failed to get a grip. Larralde was afoot in an instant, and fell heavily down the far side of the barricade. He gained a few yards again, and, before Conyngham’s eyes, was suddenly swallowed up in a black mass of falling masonry. It was more than a chimney this time; nothing less than a whole house carried bodily to the ground by the fall of the steeple of the church of Santa Maria del Monte. Conyngham stopped dead, and threw his arms over his head. The crash was terrific, deafening—and for a few moments the Englishman was stunned. He opened his eyes and closed them again, for the dust and powdered mortar whirled round him like smoke. Almost blinded, he crept back by the way he had come, and the street was already full of people. In the Calle Preciados he sat down on a door-step, and there waited until he had gained mastery over his limbs, which shook still. Presently he made his way back to the house where he had left Concha. The man Sebastian had, a week earlier, seen and recognised Conyngham as the bearer of the letter addressed to Colonel Monreal, and left at that officer’s lodging in Xeres at the moment of his death in the streets. Sebastian approached Conyngham, and informed him that he had in his possession sundry papers belonging to the late Colonel Monreal, which might be of value to a Royalist. This was, therefore, not the first time that Conyngham had climbed the narrow stairs of the tall house with two doors. He found Concha busying himself by the bedside, where Sebastian lay in the unconsciousness of deep drink. ‘He has probably been drugged,’ said the priest. ‘Or, he may be dying. What is more important to us is, that the letter is not here. I have searched. Larralde escaped you?’ ‘Yes; and of course has the letter.’ ‘Of course, amigo.’ The priest looked at the prostrate man with a face of profound contempt, and, shrugging his shoulders, went towards the door. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I must return to Toledo and Julia. It is thither that this Larralde always returns, and she, poor woman, believes in him. Ah, my friend’—he paused and shook his long finger at Conyngham. ‘When a woman believes in a man she makes him or mars him; there is no medium.’	{ "id": "5987" }
18	IN TOLEDO	‘Meddle not with many matters; for if thou meddle much thou shalt not be innocent.’ THE Café of the Ambassadeurs in the Calle de la Montera was at this time the fashionable resort of visitors to the city of Madrid. Its tone was neither political nor urban, but savoured rather of the cosmopolitan. The waiters at the first-class hotels recommended the Café of the Ambassadeurs, and stepped round to the manager’s office at the time of the New Year to mention the fact. Sir John Pleydell had been rather nonplussed by his encounter with Conyngham, and, being a man of the world as well as a lawyer, sat down, as it were, to think. He had come to Spain in the first heat of a great revenge, and such men as he take, like the greater volcanoes, a long time to cool down. He had been prepossessed in the favour of the man who subsequently owned to being Frederick Conyngham. And the very manner in which this admission was made redounded in some degree to the honour of the young Englishman. Here, at least, was one who had no fear, and fearlessness appeals to the heart of every Briton from the peer to the navvy. Sir John took a certain cold interest in his surroundings, and in due course was recommended to spend an evening at the Café des Ambassadeurs, as it styled itself, for the habit of preferring French to Spanish designations for places of refreshment had come in since the great revolution. Sir John went, therefore, to the café, and with characteristic scorn of elemental disturbance chose to resort thither on the evening of the great gale. The few other occupants of the gorgeous room eyed his half-bottle of claret with a grave and decorous wonder, but made no attempt to converse with this chill-looking Englishman. At length, about ten o’clock or a few minutes later, entered one who bowed to Sir John with an air full of affable promise. This was Larralde, who called a waiter and bade him fetch a coat-brush. ‘Would you believe it, sir?’ he said, addressing Sir John in broken English, ‘but I have just escaped a terrible death.’ He shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands, and laughed good-humouredly, after the manner of one who has no foes. ‘The fall of a chimney—so—within a metre of my shoulder.’ He threw back his cloak with a graceful swing of the arm and handed it to the waiter. Then he drew forward a chair to the table occupied by Sir John, who sipped his claret and bowed coldly. ‘You must not think that Madrid is always like this,’ said Larralde. ‘But perhaps you know the city—’ ‘No—this is my first visit.’ Larralde turned aside to give his order to the waiter. His movements were always picturesque, and in the presence of Englishmen he had a habit of accentuating those characteristics of speech and manner which are held by our countrymen to be native to the Peninsula. There is nothing so disarming as conventionality—and nothing less suspicious. Larralde seemed ever to be a typical Spaniard—indolently polite, gravely indifferent—a cigarette-smoking nonentity. They talked of topics of the day, and chiefly of that great event, the hurricane, which was still raging. Larralde, whose habit it was to turn his neighbour to account—a seed of greatness this! —had almost concluded that the Englishman was useless when the conversation turned, as it was almost bound to turn between these two, upon Conyngham. ‘There are but few of your countrymen in Madrid at the moment,’ Larralde had said. ‘I know but one,’ was the guarded reply. ‘And I also,’ said Larralde, flicking the ash from his cigarette. ‘A young fellow who has made himself somewhat notorious in the Royalist cause—a cause in which I admit I have no sympathy. His name is Conyngham.’ Then a silence fell upon the two men, and over raised glasses they glanced surreptitiously at each other. ‘I know him,’ said Sir John at length, and the tone of his voice made Larralde glance up with a sudden gleam in his eyes. There thus sprang into existence between them the closest of all bonds—a common foe. ‘The man has done me more than one ill-turn,’ said Larralde after a pause, and he drummed on the table with his cigarette-stained fingers. Sir John, looking at him, coldly gauged the Spaniard with the deadly skill of his calling. He noted that Larralde was poor and ambitious—qualities that often raise the devil in a human heart when fate brings them there together. He was not deceived by the picturesque manner of Julia’s lover, but knew exactly how much was assumed of that air of simple vanity to which Larralde usually treated strangers. He probably gauged at one glance the depth of the man’s power for good or ill, his sincerity, his possible usefulness. In the hands of Sir John Pleydell, Larralde was the merest tool. They sat until long after midnight, and before they parted Sir John Pleydell handed to his companion a roll of notes, which he counted carefully and Larralde accepted with a grand air of condescension and indifference. ‘You know my address,’ said Sir John, with a slight suggestion of masterfulness which had not been noticeable before the money changed hands. ‘I shall remain at the same hotel.’ Larralde nodded his head. ‘I shall remember it,’ he said. ‘And now I go to take a few hours’ rest. I have had a hard day, and am as tired as a shepherd’s dog.’ And indeed the day had been busy enough. Señor Larralde hummed an air between his teeth as he struggled against the fierce wind. Before dawn the gale subsided, and daylight broke with a clear, calm freshness over the city, where sleep had been almost unknown during the night. The sun had not yet risen when Larralde took the road on his poor, thin black horse. He rode through the streets, still littered with the _débris_ of fallen chimneys, slates, and shutters, with his head up and his mind so full of the great schemes which gave him no rest, that he never saw Concepçion Vara going to market with a basket on his arm and a cigarette, unlighted, between his lips. Concepçion turned and watched the horseman, shrugged his shoulders, and quietly followed until the streets were left behind and there could no longer be any doubt that Larralde was bound for Toledo. Thither, indeed, he journeyed throughout the day with a leisureliness begotten of the desire to enter the ancient city after nightfall only. Toledo was at this time the smouldering hotbed of those political intrigues which some years later burst into flame, and resulted finally in the expulsion of the Bourbons from the throne of Spain. Larralde was sufficiently dangerous to require watching, and, like many of his kind, considered himself of a greater importance than his enemies were pleased to attach to him. The city of Toledo is, as many know, almost surrounded by the rapid Tagus, and entrance to its narrow confine is only to be gained by two gates. To pass either of these barriers in open day would be to court a publicity singularly undesirable at this time, for Esteban Larralde was slipping down the social slope, which gradual progress is the hardest to arrest. If one is mounting there are plenty to help him—those from above seeking to make unto themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; those from below hoping to tread in the footsteps he may leave. Each step, however, of the upward progress has to be gained at the expense of another. But on the descent there are none to stay and many to push behind, while those in front make room readily enough. Larralde had for the first time accepted a direct monetary reward for his services. That this had been offered and accepted in a polite Spanish manner as an advance of expenses to be incurred was, of course, only natural under the circumstances, but the fact remained that Esteban Larralde was no longer a picturesque conspirator, serving a failing cause with that devotion which can only be repaid later by high honours, and a post carrying with it emoluments of proportionate value. He had, in fact, been paid in advance; which is the surest sign of distrust upon one side or the other. The Barennas had been established at their house in Toledo some weeks, and, for Julia, life had been dull enough. She had hastened northward, knowing well that her lover’s intrigues must necessarily bring him to the neighbourhood of the capital—perhaps to Toledo itself. Larralde had, however, hitherto failed to come near her, and the news of the day reported an increasing depression in the ranks of the Carlists. Indeed, that cause seemed now at such a low ebb that the franker mercenaries were daily drifting away to more promising scenes of warfare, while some cynically accepted commissions in the army of Espartero. ‘I always said that Don Carlos would fail if he employed such men—as—well, as he does,’ Madame Barenna took more than one opportunity of observing at this time, and her emphatic fan rapped the personal application home. She had just made this remark for perhaps the sixth time one evening when the door of the patio where she and Julia sat was thrown open, and Larralde—the person indirectly referred to—came towards the ladies. He was not afraid of Madame Barenna, and his tired face lightened visibly at the sight of Julia. Concha was right. According to his lights Larralde loved Julia. She, who knew every expression, noted the look in his face, and her heart leapt within her breast. She had long secretly rejoiced over the failure of the Carlist cause. Such, messieurs, is the ambition of a woman for the man she really loves. Señora Barenna rose and held out her hand with a beaming smile. She was rather bored that evening, and it was pleasant to imagine herself in the midst of great political intrigues. ‘We were wondering if you would come,’ she said. ‘I am here—there—everywhere—but I always come back to the Casa Barenna,’ he said gallantly. ‘You look tired,’ said Julia quietly. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘At the moment I am from Madrid. The city has been wrecked by a tornado—I myself almost perished.’ He paused, shrugged his shoulders. ‘What will you?’ he added carelessly. ‘What is life—a single life—in Spain to-day?’ Julia winced. It is marvellous how an intelligent woman may blind herself into absolute belief in one man. Señora Barenna shuddered. ‘Blessed Heaven!’ she whispered. ‘Why does not someone do something?’ ‘One does one’s best,’ answered Larralde, with his hand at his moustache. ‘But yes!’ said Madame eagerly. She had a shrewd common sense, as many apparently foolish women have, and probably put the right value on Señor Larralde’s endeavours. Father Concha and the General were, however, far away, and all women are time-servers. Larralde spoke of general news, and when he at length proposed to Julia that they should take a ‘paseo’ in the garden the elder lady made no objection. For some moments Julia was quite happy. She had schooled herself into a sort of contentment in the hope that her turn would come when ambition failed. Perhaps this moment had arrived. At all events, Larralde acquitted himself well, and seemed sincere enough in his joy at seeing her again. ‘Do you love me?’ he asked suddenly. Julia gave a little laugh. Heaven has been opened by such a laugh ere now, and men have seen for a moment the brightness of it. ‘Enough to leave Spain for ever and live in another country?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Enough to risk something now for my sake?’ ‘Enough to risk everything,’ she answered. ‘I have tried to gain a great position for you,’ went on Larralde, ‘and fortune has been against me. I have failed. The Carlist cause is dead, Julia. Our chief has failed us—that is the truth of it. We set him up as a king, but unless we hold him upright he falls. He is a man of straw. We are making one last effort, as you know, but it is a dangerous one, and we have had misfortunes. This pestilential Englishman! No one may say how much he knows. He has had the letter too long in his possession for our safety. But I have outwitted him this time.’ Larralde paused, and drew from his pocket the letter in the pink envelope—somewhat soiled by its passage through the hands of Colonel Monreal’s servant. ‘It requires two more signatures and will then be complete,’ said the upholder of Don Carlos. ‘We shall then make our “coup,” but we cannot move while Conyngham remains in Spain. It would never do for me to—well, to get shot at this moment.’ Julia breathed hard. ‘And that is what Mr. Conyngham is endeavouring to bring about. In the first place he wants this letter to show to Estella Vincente—some foolish romance. In the second place he hates me, and seeks promotion in the Royalist ranks. These Englishmen are unscrupulous. He tried to take my life—only last night. I bear him no ill-feeling. _A la guerre comme à la guerre_. My only intention is to get him quietly out of Spain. It can be managed easily enough. Will you help me—to save my own life?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Julia. ‘I want you to write a letter to Conyngham saying that you are tired of political intrigue.’ ‘Heaven knows that would be true enough,’ put in Julia. ‘And that you will give him the letter he desires on the condition that he promises to show it to no one but Estella Vincente and return it to you. That you will also swear that it is the identical letter that he handed to you in the General’s garden at Ronda. If Conyngham agrees, he must meet you at the back of the Church of Santo Tome in the Calle Pedro Martir here, in Toledo, next Monday evening at seven o’clock. Will you write this letter, Julia?’ ‘And Estella Vincente?’ inquired Julia. ‘She will forget him in a week,’ laughed Larralde.	{ "id": "5987" }
19	CONCEPÇION TAKES THE ROAD	‘Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.’ AFTER the great storm came a calm almost as startling. It seemed indeed as if Nature stood abashed and silent before the results of her sudden rage. Day after day the sun glared down from a cloudless sky, and all Castile was burnt brown as a desert. In the streets of Madrid there arose a hot dust and the subtle odour of warm earth that rarely meets the nostrils in England. It savoured of India and other sun-steeped lands where water is too precious to throw upon the roads. Those who could, remained indoors or in their shady patios until the heat of the day was past; and such as worked in the open lay unchallenged in the shade from midday till three o’clock. During those days military operations were almost suspended, although the heads of departments were busy enough in their offices. The confusion of war, it seemed, was past, and the sore-needed peace was immediately turned to good account. The army of the Queen Regent was indeed in an almost wrecked condition, and among the field officers jealousy and backbiting, which had smouldered through the war-time, broke out openly. General Vincente was rarely at home, and Estella passed this time in quiet seclusion. Coming as she did from Andalusia, she was accustomed to an even greater heat, and knew how to avoid the discomfort of it. She was sitting one afternoon, with open windows and closed jalousies, during the time of the siesta, when the servant announced Father Concha. The old priest came into the room wiping his brow with simple ill manners. ‘You have been hurrying and have no regard for the sun,’ said Estella. ‘You need not find shelter for an old ox,’ replied Concha, seating himself. ‘It is the young ones that expose themselves unnecessarily.’ Estella glanced at him sharply but said nothing. He sat, handkerchief in hand, and stared at a shaft of sunlight that lay across the floor from a gap in the jalousies. From the street under the windows came the distant sounds of traffic and the cries of the vendors of water, fruit, and newspapers. Father Concha looked puzzled, and seemed to be seeking his way out of a difficulty. Estella sat back in her chair, half hidden by her slow-waving, black fan. There is no pride so difficult as that which is unconscious of its own existence, no heart so hard to touch as that which has thrown its stake and asks neither sympathy nor admiration from the outside world. Concha glanced at Estella and wondered if he had been mistaken. There was in the old man’s heart, as indeed there is in nearly all human hearts, a thwarted instinct. How many are there with maternal instincts who have no children; how many a poet has been lost by the crying need of hungry mouths! It was a thwarted instinct that made the old priest busy himself with the affairs of other people, and always of young people. ‘I came hoping to see your father,’ he said at length, blandly untruthful. ‘I have just seen Conyngham, in whom we are all interested, I think. His lack of caution is singular. I have been trying to persuade him not to do something most rash and imprudent. You remember the incident in your garden at Ronda—a letter which he gave to Julia?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Estella quietly, ‘I remember.’ ‘For some reason which he did not explain I understand that he is desirous of regaining possession of that letter, and now Julia, writing from Toledo, tells him that she will give it to him if he will go there and fetch it. The Toledo road, as you will remember, is hardly to be recommended to Mr. Conyngham.’ ‘But Julia wishes him no harm,’ said Estella. ‘My child, rarely trust a political man and never a political woman. If Julia wished him to have the letter she could have sent it to him by post. But Conyngham, who is all eagerness, must needs refuse to listen to any argument, and starts this afternoon for Toledo—alone. He has not even his servant Concepçion Vara, who has suddenly disappeared, and a woman who claims to be the scoundrel’s wife from Algeciras has been making inquiries at Conyngham’s lodging. A hen’s eyes are where her eggs lie. I offered to go to Toledo with Conyngham, but he laughed at me for a useless old priest, and said that the saddle would gall me.’ He paused, looking at her beneath his shaggy brows, knowing, as he had always known, that this was a woman beyond his reach—cleverer, braver, of a higher mind than her sisters—one to whom he might perchance tender some small assistance, but nothing better. For women are wiser in their generation than men, and usually know better what is for their own happiness. Estella returned his glance with steady eyes. ‘He has gone,’ said Concha. ‘I have not been sent to tell you that he is going.’ ‘I did not think that you had,’ she answered. ‘Conyngham has enemies in this country,’ continued the priest, ‘and despises them—a mistake to which his countrymen are singularly liable. He has gone off on this foolish quest without preparation or precaution. Toledo is, as you know, a hotbed of intrigue and dissatisfaction. All the malcontents in Spain congregate there, and Conyngham would do well to avoid their company. Who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.’ He paused, tapping his snuffbox, and at that moment the door opened to admit General Vincente. ‘Oh! the Padre!’ cried the cheerful soldier. ‘But what a sun, eh? It is cool here, however, and Estella’s room is always a quiet one.’ He touched her cheek affectionately, and drew forward a low chair wherein he sat, carefully disposing of the sword that always seemed too large for him. ‘And what news has the Padre?’ he asked, daintily touching his brow with his pocket-handkerchief. ‘Bad,’ growled Concha, and then told his tale over again in a briefer, blunter manner. ‘It all arises,’ he concluded, ‘from my pestilential habit of interfering in the affairs of other people.’ ‘No,’ said General Vincente; ‘it arises from Conyngham’s pestilential habit of acquiring friends wherever he goes.’ The door was opened again, and a servant entered. ‘Excellency,’ he said, ‘a man called Concepçion Vara, who desires a moment.’ ‘What did I tell you?’ said the General to Concha. ‘Another of Conyngham’s friends. Spain is full of them. Let Concepçion Vara come to this room.’ The servant looked slightly surprised, and retired. If, however, this manner of reception was unusual, Concepçion was too finished a man of the world to betray either surprise or embarrassment. By good fortune he happened to be wearing a coat. His flowing unstarched shirt was as usual spotless, he wore a flower in the ribbon of the hat carried jauntily in his hand, and about his person in the form of handkerchief and faja were those touches of bright colour by means of which he so irresistibly attracted the eye of the fair. ‘Excellency,’ he murmured, bowing on the threshold; ‘Reverendo,’ with one step forward and a respectful semi-religious inclination of the head towards Concha; ‘Señorita!’ The ceremony here concluded with a profound obeisance to Estella full of gallantry and grave admiration. Then he stood upright, and indicated by a pleasant smile that no one need feel embarrassed, that in fact this meeting was most opportune. ‘A matter of urgency, Excellency,’ he said confidentially to Vincente. ‘I have reason to suspect that one of my friends—in fact, the Señor Conyngham, with whom I am at the moment in service—happens to be in danger.’ ‘Ah! what makes you suspect that, my friend?’ Concepçion waved his hand lightly, as if indicating that the news had been brought to him by the birds of the air. ‘When one goes into the café,’ he said, ‘one is not always so particular—one associates with those who happen to be there—muleteers, diligencia-drivers, bull-fighters, all and sundry, even contrabandistas.’ He made this last admission with a face full of pious toleration, and Father Concha laughed grimly. ‘That is true, my friend,’ said the General, hastening to cover the priest’s little lapse of good manners, ‘and from these gentlemen—honest enough in their way, no doubt—you have learnt—?’ ‘That the Señor Conyngham has enemies in Spain.’ ‘So I understand; but he has also friends?’ ‘He has one,’ said Vara, taking up a fine, picturesque attitude, with his right hand at his waist where the deadly knife was concealed in the rolls of his faja. ‘Then he is fortunate,’ said the General, with his most winning smile; ‘why do you come to me, my friend.’ ‘I require two men,’ answered Concepçion airily, ‘that is all.’ ‘Ah! What sort of men. Guardias Civiles?’ ‘The Holy Saints forbid! Honest soldiers, if it please your Excellency. The Guardia Civil! See you, Excellency.’ He paused, shaking his outspread hand from side to side, palm downwards, fingers apart, as if describing a low level of humanity. ‘A brutal set of men,’ he continued; ‘with the finger ever on the trigger and the rifle ever loaded. Pam! and a life is taken—many of my friends—at least, many persons I have met—in the café!’ ‘It is better to give him his two men,’ put in Father Concha, in his atrocious English, speaking to the General. ‘The man is honest in his love of Conyngham, if in nothing else.’ ‘And if I accord you these two men, my friend,’ said the General, from whose face Estella’s eyes had never moved, ‘will you undertake that Mr. Conyngham comes to no harm?’ ‘I will arrange it,’ replied Concepçion, with an easy shrug of the shoulders. ‘I will arrange it, never fear.’ ‘You shall have two men,’ said General Vincente, drawing a writing-case towards himself and proceeding to write the necessary order. ‘Men who are known to me personally. You can rely upon them at all times.’ ‘Since they are friends of his Excellency’s,’ interrupted Concepçion with much condescension, ‘that suffices.’ ‘He will require money,’ said Estella in English—her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed. For she came of a fighting race, and her repose of manner, the dignity which sat rather strangely on her slim young shoulders, were only signs of that self-control which had been handed down to her through the ages. The General nodded as he wrote. ‘Take that to headquarters,’ he said, handing the papers to Concepçion, ‘and in less than half an hour your men will be ready. Mr. Conyngham is a friend of mine, as you know, and any expenses incurred on his behalf will be defrayed by myself—’ Concepçion held up his hand. ‘It is unnecessary, Excellency,’ he said. ‘At present Mr. Conyngham has funds. Only yesterday he gave me money. He liquidated my little account. It has always been a jest between us—that little account.’ He laughed pleasantly, and moved towards the door. ‘Vara,’ said Father Concha. ‘Yes, reverendo.’ ‘If I meet your wife in Madrid, what shall I say to her?’ Concepçion turned and looked into the smiling face of the old priest. ‘In Madrid, reverendo? How can you think of such a thing? My wife lives in Algeciras, and at times, see you—’ he stopped, casting his eyes up to the ceiling and fetching an exaggerated sigh, ‘at times my heart aches. But now I must get to the saddle. What a thing is Duty, reverendo! Duty! God be with your Excellencies.’ And he hurried out of the room. ‘If you would make a thief honest, trust him,’ said Concha, when the door was closed. In less than an hour Concepçion was on the road accompanied by two troopers, who were ready enough to travel in company with a man of his reputation. For in Spain, if one cannot be a bull-fighter it is good to be a smuggler. At sunset the great heat culminated in a thunderstorm, which drew a veil of heavy cloud across the sky, and night fell before its time. The horsemen had covered two-thirds of their journey when he whom they followed came in sight of the lights of Toledo, set upon a rock like the jewels in a lady’s ring, and almost surrounded by the swift Tagus. Conyngham’s horse was tired, and stumbled more than once on the hill by which the traveller descends to the great bridge and the gate that Wamba built thirteen hundred years ago. Through this gate he passed into the city, which was a city of the dead, with its hundred ruined churches, its empty palaces and silent streets. Ichabod is written large over all these tokens of a bygone glory; where the Jews flying from Jerusalem first set foot; where the Moor reigned unmolested for nearly four hundred years; where the Goth and the Roman and the great Spaniard of the middle ages have trod on each other’s heels. Truly these worn stones have seen the greatness of the greatest nations of the world. A single lamp hung slowly swinging in the arch of Wamba’s Gate, and the streets were but ill lighted with an oil lantern at an occasional corner. Conyngham had been in Toledo before, and knew his way to the inn under the shadow of the great Alcazar, now burnt and ruined. Here he left his horse; for the streets of Toledo are so narrow and tortuous, so ill-paved and steep, that wheel traffic is almost unknown, while a horse can with difficulty keep his feet on the rounded cobble stones. In this city men go about their business on foot, which makes the streets as silent as the deserted houses. Julia had selected a spot which was easy enough to find, and Conyngham, having supped, made his way thither without asking for directions. ‘It is at all events worth trying,’ he said to himself, ‘and she can scarcely have forgotten that I saved her life on the Garonne as well as at Ronda.’ But there is often in a woman’s life one man who can make her forget all. The streets were deserted, for it was a cold night, and the cafés were carefully closed against the damp air. No one stirred in the Calle Pedro Martir, and Conyngham peered into the shadow of the high wall of the Church of San Tome in vain. Then he heard the soft tread of muffled feet, and turning on his heel realised Julia’s treachery in a flash of thought. He charged to meet the charge of his assailants. Two of them went down like felled trees, but there were others—four others—who fell on him silently like hounds upon a fox, and in a few moments all was quiet again in the Calle Pedro Martir.	{ "id": "5987" }
20	ON THE TALAVERA ROAD	‘Les barrières servent à indiquer où il faut passer.’ AN hour’s ride to the west of Toledo, on the road to Torrijos and Talavera, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the village of Galvez, two men sat in the shadow of a great rock, and played cards. They played quietly and without vociferation, illustrating the advantages of a minute coinage. They had gambled with varying fortune since the hour of the siesta, and a sprinkling of cigarette ends on the bare rocks around them testified to the indulgence in a kindred vice. The elder of the two men glanced from time to time over his shoulder, and down towards the dusty high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a sort of undress, tempered by the vicissitudes of a long war and the laxity of discipline engendered by political trouble at home. They had left their horses in the stable of a venta, hidden among ilex trees by the roadside, and had clambered to this point of vantage above the highway, to pass the afternoon after the manner of their race. For the Spaniard will be found playing cards amid the wreck of the world and in the intervals between the stupendous events of the last day. ‘He comes,’ said the elder man at length, as he leisurely shuffled the greasy cards. ‘I hear his horse’s hoofs.’ And, indeed, the great silence which seems to brood over the uplands of Spain—the silence, as it were, of an historic past and a dead present—was broken by the distant regular beat of hoofs. The trooper who had spoken was a bullet-headed Castilian, with square jaw and close-set eyes. His companion, a younger man, merely nodded his head, and studied the cards which had just been dealt to him. The game progressed, and Concepçion Vara, on the Toledo road, approached at a steady trot. This man showed to greater advantage on horseback and beneath God’s open sky than in the streets of a city. Here, in the open and among the mountains, he held his head erect and faced the world, ready to hold his own against it. In the streets he wore a furtive air, and glanced from left to right fearing recognition. He now took his tired horse to the stable of the little venta, where, with his usual gallantry, he assisted a hideous old hag to find a place in the stalls. While uttering a gay compliment, he deftly secured for his mount a feed of corn which was much in excess of that usually provided for the money. ‘Ah!’ he said, as he tipped the measure; ‘I can always tell when a woman has been pretty; but with you, señora, no such knowledge is required. You will have your beauty for many years yet.’ Thus Vara and his horse fared ever well upon the road. He lingered at the stable door, knowing perhaps that corn poured into the manger may yet find its way back to the bin, and then turned his steps towards the mountain. The cards were still falling with a whispering sound upon the rock selected as a table, and, with the spirit of a true sportsman, Concepçion waited until the hand was played out before imparting his news. ‘It is well,’ he said at length. ‘A carriage has been ordered from a friend of mine in Toledo to take the road to-night to Talavera—and Talavera is on the way to Lisbon. What did I tell you?’ The two soldiers nodded. One was counting his gains, which amounted to almost threepence. The loser wore a brave air of indifference, as behoved a reckless soldier taking loss or gain in a Spartan spirit. ‘There will be six men,’ continued Concepçion. ‘Two on horseback, two on the box, two inside the carriage with their prisoner—my friend.’ ‘Ah!’ said the younger soldier thoughtfully. Concepçion looked at him. ‘What have you in your mind?’ he asked. ‘I was wondering how three men could best kill six.’ ‘Out of six,’ said the older man, ‘there is always one who runs away. I have found it so in my experience.’ ‘And of five there is always one who cannot use his knife,’ added Concepçion. Still the younger soldier, who had medals all across his chest, shook his head. ‘I am afraid,’ he said. ‘I am always afraid before I fight.’ Concepçion looked at the man whom General Vincente had selected from a brigade of tried soldiers, and gave a little upward jerk of the head. ‘With me,’ he said, ‘it is afterwards—when all is over. Then my hand shakes, and the wet trickles down my face.’ He laughed, and spread out his hands. ‘And yet,’ he said gaily, ‘it is the best game of all—is it not so?’ The troopers shrugged their shoulders. One may have too much of even the best game. ‘The carriage is ordered for eight o’clock,’ continued the practical Concepçion, rolling a cigarette, which he placed behind his ear where a clerk would carry his pen. ‘Those who take the road when the night-birds come abroad have something to hide. We will see what they have in their carriage, eh? The horses are hired for the journey to Galvez, where a relay is doubtless ordered. It will be a fine night for a journey. There is a half moon, which is better than the full for those who use the knife; but the Galvez horses will not be required, I think.’ The younger soldier, upon whose shoulder gleamed the stars of a rapid promotion, looked up to the sky, where a few fleecy clouds were beginning to gather above the setting sun like sheep about a gate. ‘A half moon for the knife and a full moon for firearms,’ he said. ‘Yes; and they will shoot quick enough if we give them the chance,’ said Concepçion. ‘They are Carlists! There is a river between this and Galvez—a little stream such as we have in Andalusia—so small that there is only a ford and no bridge. The bed of the river is soft; the horses will stop, or, at all events, must go at the walking pace. Across the stream are a few trees’ (he paused, illustrating his description with rapid gestures and an imaginary diagram drawn upon the rock with the forefinger), ‘ilex, and here, to the left, some pines. The stream runs thus from north-east to south-west. This bank is high, and over here are low-lying meadows where pigs feed.’ He looked up, and the two soldiers nodded. The position lay before them like a bird’s-eye view; and Concepçion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once as he rode past it. ‘This matter is best settled on foot; is it not so? We cross the stream, and tie our horses to the pine trees. I will recross the water, and come back to meet the carriage at the top of the hill—here. The horsemen will be in advance. We will allow them to cross the stream. The horses will come out of the water slowly, or I know nothing of horses. As they step up the incline, you take their riders, and remember to give them the chance of running away. In midstream I will attack the two on the box, pulling him who is not driving into the water by his legs, and giving him the blade in the right shoulder above the lung. He will think himself dead, but should recover. Then you must join me. We shall be three to three, unless the Englishman’s hands are loose; then we shall be four to three, and need do no man any injury. The Englishman is as strong as two, and quick with it, as big men rarely are.’ ‘Do you take a hand?’ asked the Castilian, fingering the cards. ‘No; I have affairs. Continue your game.’ So the sun went down, and the two soldiers continued their game, while Concepçion sat beside them and slowly, lovingly sharpened his knife on a piece of slate which he carried in his pocket for the purpose. After sunset there usually arises a cold breeze which blows across the table-lands of Castile quite gently and unobtrusively. A local proverb says of this wind that it will extinguish a man but not a candle. When this arose, the three men descended the mountain-side and sat down to a simple if highly-flavoured meal provided by the ancient mistress of the venta. At half-past eight, when there remained nothing of the day but a faint greenish light in the western sky, the little party mounted their horses and rode away towards Galvez. ‘’Tis better,’ said Concepçion, with a meaning and gallant bow to the hostess. ‘’Tis for my peace of mind. I am but a man.’ Then he haggled over the price of the supper. They rode forward to the ford described by Concepçion, and there made their preparations—carefully and coolly—as men recognising the odds against them. The half moon was just rising as the soldiers splashed through the water leading Concepçion’s horse, he remaining on the Toledo side of the river. ‘The saints protect us!’ said the nervous soldier, and his hand shook on the bridle. His companion smiled at the recollection of former fights passed through together. It is well, in love and war, to beware of him who says he is afraid. Shortly after nine o’clock the silence of that deserted plain was broken by a distant murmur, which presently shaped itself into the beat of horses’ feet. To this was added soon the rumble of wheels. The elder soldier put a whole cigarette into his mouth and chewed it. The younger man made no movement now. They crouched low at their posts one on each side of the ford. Concepçion was across the river, but they could not see him. In Andalusia they say that a contrabandist can conceal himself behind half a brick. The two riders were well in front of the carriage, and, as had been foreseen, the horses lingered on the rise of the bank as if reluctant to leave the water without having tasted it. In a moment the younger soldier had his man out of the saddle, raising his own knee sharply as the man fell, so that the falling head and the lifted knee came into deadly contact. It was a trick well known to the trooper, who let the insensible form roll to the ground, and immediately darted down the bank to the stream. The other soldier was chasing his opponent up the hill, shelling him, as he rode away, with oaths and stones. In mid-stream the clumsy travelling carriage had come to a standstill. The driver on the box, having cast down his reins, was engaged in imploring the assistance of a black-letter saint, upon which assistance he did not hesitate to put a price, in candles. There was a scurrying in the water, which was about two feet deep, where Concepçion was settling accounts with the man who had been seated by the driver’s side. A half-choked scream of pain appeared to indicate that Concepçion had found the spot he sought, above the right lung, and that amiable smuggler now rose dripping from the flood and hurried to the carriage. ‘Conyngham!’ he shouted, laying aside that ceremony upon which he never set great store. ‘Yes,’ answered a voice from within. ‘Is that you, Concepçion?’ ‘Of course; throw them out.’ ‘But the door is locked,’ answered Conyngham in a muffled voice. And the carriage began to rock and crack upon its springs, as if an earthquake were taking place inside it. ‘The window is good enough for such rubbish,’ said Concepçion. As he spoke a man, violently propelled from within, came head foremost, and most blasphemously vociferous, into Concepçion’s arms, who immediately, and with the rapidity of a terrier, had him by the throat and forced him under water. ‘You have hold of my leg—you, on the other side,’ shouted Conyngham from the turmoil within. ‘A thousand pardons, señor!’ said the soldier, and took a new grip of another limb. Concepçion, holding his man under water, heard the sharp crack of another head upon the soldier’s kneecap, and knew that all was well. ‘That is all?’ he inquired. ‘That is all,’ replied the soldier, who did not seem at all nervous now. ‘And we have killed no one.’ ‘Put a knife into that son of a mule who prays upon the box there,’ said Concepçion judicially. ‘This is no time for prayer. Just where the neck joins the shoulder—that is a good place.’ And a sudden silence reigned upon the box. ‘Pull the carriage to the bank,’ commanded Concepçion. ‘There is no need for the English Excellency to wet his feet. He might catch a cold.’ They all made their way to the bank, where, in the dim moonlight, one man sat nursing his shoulder while another lay, at length, quite still, upon the pebbles. The young soldier laid a second victim to the same deadly trick beside him, while Concepçion patted his foe kindly on the back. ‘It is well,’ he said, ‘you have swallowed water. You will be sick, and then you will be well. But if you move from that spot I will let the water out another way.’ And, laughing pleasantly at this delicate display of humour, he turned to help Conyngham, who was clambering out of the carriage window. ‘Whom have you with you?’ asked Conyngham. ‘Two honest soldiers of General Vincente’s division. You see, señor, you have good friends.’ ‘Yes, I see that.’ ‘One of them,’ said Concepçion meaningly, ‘is at Toledo at the moment, journeying after you. ‘Ah!’ ‘The Señor Pleydell.’ ‘Then we will go back to meet him.’ ‘I thought so,’ said Concepçion.	{ "id": "5987" }
21	A CROSS-EXAMINATION	‘Wherein I am false I am honest—not true to be true.’ ‘I WILL sing you a contrabandista song,’ said Concepçion, as the party rode towards Toledo in the moonlight. ‘The song we—they sing when the venture has been successful. You may hear it any dark night in the streets of Gaucin.’ ‘Sing,’ said the older soldier, ‘if it is in your lungs. For us—we prefer to travel silent.’ Conyngham, mounted on the horse from which the Carlist rider had been dragged unceremoniously enough, rode a few paces in front. The carriage had been left behind at the venta, where no questions were asked, and the injured men revived readily enough. ‘It is well,’ answered Concepçion, in no way abashed. ‘I will sing. In Andalusia we can all sing. The pigs sing better there than the men of Castile.’ It was after midnight when the party rode past the Church of the Cristo de la Vega, and faced the long hill that leads to the gate Del Cambron. Above them towered the city of Toledo—silent and dreamlike. Concepçion had ceased singing now, and the hard breathing of the horses alone broke the silence. The Tagus, emerging here from rocky fastness, flowed noiselessly away to the west—a gleaming ribbon laid across the breast of the night. In the summer it is no uncommon thing for travellers to take the road by night in Spain, and although many doubtless heard the clatter of horses’ feet on the polished cobble stones of the city, none rose from bed to watch the horsemen pass. At that time Toledo possessed, and indeed to the present day can boast of, but one good inn—a picturesque old house in the Plaza de Zocodover, overhung by the mighty Alcazar. Here Cervantes must have eaten and Lazarillo de Tormes no doubt caroused. Here those melancholy men and mighty humorists must have delighted the idler by their talk. Concepçion soon aroused the sleeping porter, and the great doors being thrown open, the party passed into the courtyard without quitting the saddle. ‘It is,’ said Concepçion, ‘an English Excellency and his suite.’ ‘We have another such in the house,’ answered the sleepy doorkeeper, ‘though he travels with but one servant.’ ‘We know that, my friend, which is the reason why we patronise your dog-hole of an inn. See that the two Excellencies breakfast together at a table apart in the morning.’ ‘You will have matters to speak about with the Señor Pleydell in the morning,’ said Concepçion, as he unpacked Conyngham’s luggage a few minutes later. ‘Yes, I should like to speak to Señor Pleydell.’ ‘And I,’ said Concepçion, turning round with a brush in his hand, ‘should like a moment’s conversation with Señor Larralde.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘Yes, Excellency, he is in this matter too. But the Señor Larralde is so modest—so modest! He always remains in the background.’ In the tents of Kedar men sleep as sound as those who lie on soft pillows, and Conyngham was late astir the next morning. Sir John Pleydell was, it transpired, already at his breakfast, and had ordered his carriage for an early hour to take the road to Talavera. It was thus evident that Sir John knew nothing of the arrival of his fellow-countryman at midnight. The cold face of the great lawyer wore a look of satisfaction as he sat at a small table in the patio of the hotel and drank his coffee. Conyngham watched him for a moment from the balcony of the courtyard, himself unseen, while Concepçion stood within his master’s bedroom, and rubbed his brown hands together in anticipation of a dramatic moment. Conyngham passed down the stone steps and crossed the patio with a gay smile. Sir John recognised him as he emerged from the darkness of the stairway, but his face betrayed neither surprise nor fear. There was a look in the grey eyes, however, that seemed to betoken doubt. Such a look a man might wear who had long travelled with assurance upon a road which he took to be the right one, and then at a turning found himself in a strange country with no landmark to guide him. Sir John Pleydell had always outwitted his fellows. He had, in fact, been what is called a successful man—a little cleverer, a little more cunning than those around him. He looked up now at Conyngham, who was drawing forward a chair to the neighbouring table, and the cold eye, which had been the dread of many a criminal, wavered. ‘The waiter has set my breakfast near to yours,’ said Conyngham, unconcernedly seating himself. And Concepçion in the balcony above cursed the English for a cold-blooded race. This was not the sort of meeting he had anticipated. He could throw a knife very prettily, and gave a short sigh of regret as he turned to his peaceful duties. Conyngham examined the simple fare provided for him, and then looked towards his companion with that cheerfulness which is too rare in this world; for it is born of a great courage, and outward circumstances cannot affect it. Sir John Pleydell had lost all interest in his meal, and was looking keenly at Conyngham—dissecting, as it were, his face, probing his mind, searching through the outward manner of the man, and running helplessly against a motive which he failed to understand. ‘I have in my long experience found that all men may be divided into two classes,’ he said acidly. ‘Fools and knaves?’ suggested Conyngham. ‘You have practised at the Bar,’ parenthetically. Conyngham shrugged his shoulders. ‘Unsuccessfully—anybody can do that.’ ‘Which are you—a fool or a knave?’ asked Sir John. And suddenly Conyngham pitied him. For no man is proof against the quick sense of pathos aroused by the sight of man, or dumb animal, baffled. At the end of his life Sir John had engaged upon the greatest quest of it—an unworthy quest, no doubt, but his heart was in it—and he was an old man, though be bore his years well enough. ‘Perhaps that is the mistake you have always made,’ said Conyngham gravely. ‘Perhaps men are not to be divided into two classes. There may be some who only make mistakes, Sir John.’ Unconsciously he had lapsed into the advocate, as those who have once played the part are apt to do. This was not his own cause, but Geoffrey Horner’s. And he served his friend so thoroughly that for the moment he really was the man whose part he had elected to play. Sir John Pleydell was no mean foe. Geoffrey Horner had succeeded in turning aside the public suspicion, and in the eternal march of events, of which the sound is louder as the world grows older and hollower, the murder of Alfred Pleydell had been forgotten by all save his father. Conyngham saw the danger, and never thought to avoid it. What had been undertaken half in jest would be carried out in deadly earnest. ‘Mistakes,’ said Sir John sceptically. In dealing with the seamy side of life men come to believe that it is all stitches. ‘Which they may pass the rest of their lives in regretting.’ Sir John looked sharply at his companion, with suspicion dawning in his eyes again. It was Conyngham’s tendency to overplay his part. Later, when he became a soldier, and found that path in life for which he was best fitted, his superior officers and the cooler tacticians complained that he was over-eager, and in battle outpaced the men he led. ‘Then you see now that it was a mistake?’ suggested Sir John. In cross-examinations the suggestions of Sir John Pleydell are remembered in certain courts of justice to this day. ‘Of course.’ ‘To have mixed yourself in such an affair at all?’ ‘Yes.’ Sir John seemed to be softening, and Conyngham began to see a way out of this difficulty which had never suggested itself to him before. ‘Such mistakes have to be paid for—and the law assesses the price.’ Conyngham shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is easy enough to say you are sorry—the law can make no allowance for regret.’ Conyngham turned his attention to his breakfast, deeming it useless to continue the topic. ‘It was a mistake to attend the meeting at Durham—you admit that?’ continued Sir John. ‘Yes—I admit that, if it is any satisfaction to you.’ ‘Then it was worse than a mistake to actually lead the men out to my house for the purpose of breaking the windows. It was almost a crime. I would suggest to you, as a soldier for the moment, to lead a charge up a steep hill against a body of farm labourers and others entrenched behind a railing.’ ‘That is a mere matter of opinion.’ ‘And yet you did that,’ said Sir John. ‘If you are going to break the law you should insure success before embarking on your undertaking.’ Conyngham made no answer. ‘It was also a stupid error, if I may say so, to make your way back to Durham by Ravensworth, where you were seen and recognised. You see I have a good case against you, Mr. Conyngham.’ ‘Yes, I admit you have a good case against me, but you have not caught me yet.’ Sir John Pleydell looked at him coldly. ‘You do not even take the trouble to deny the facts I have named.’ ‘Why should I, when they are true?’ asked Conyngham carelessly. Sir John Pleydell leant back in his chair. ‘I have classified you,’ he said with a queer laugh. ‘Ah!’ answered Conyngham, suddenly uneasy. ‘Yes—as a fool.’ He leant forward with a deprecating gesture of his thin white hand. ‘Do not be offended,’ he said, ‘and do not reproach yourself for having given your case away. You never had a case, Mr. Conyngham. Chartists are not made of your material at all. As soon as you gave me your card in Madrid, I had a slight suspicion. I thought you were travelling under a false name. It was plain to the merest onlooker that you were not the man I sought. You are too easy-going, too much of a gentleman to be a Chartist. You are screening somebody else. You have played the part well, and with an admirable courage and fidelity. I wish my boy Alfred had had a few such friends as you. But you are a fool, Mr. Conyngham. No man on earth is worth the sacrifice that you have made.’ Conyngham slowly stirred his coffee. He was meditating. ‘You have pieced together a very pretty tale,’ he said at length. ‘Some new scheme to get me within the reach of the English law, no doubt.’ ‘It is a pretty tale—too pretty for practical life. And if you want proofs I will mention the fact that the Chartist meeting was at Chester-le-Street, not Durham; that my house stands in a hollow and not on a hill; that you could not possibly go to Durham _viâ_ Ravensworth, for they lie in opposite directions. No, Mr. Conyngham, you are not the man I seek. And, strange to say, I took a liking to you when I first saw you. I am no believer in instinct, or mutual sympathy, or any such sentimental nonsense. I do not believe in much, Mr. Conyngham, and not in human nature at all. I know too much about it for that. But there must have been something in that liking for you at first sight. I wish you no harm, Mr. Conyngham. I am like Balaam—I came to curse, and now stay to bless. Or, perhaps, I am more like Balaam’s companion and adviser—I bray too much.’ He sat back again with a queer smile. ‘You may go home to England to-morrow if you care to,’ he added, after a pause, ‘and if that affair is ever raked up against you I will be your counsel, if you will have me.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘You do not want to go home to England?’ suggested Sir John, whose ear was as quick as his eye. ‘No, I have affairs in Spain.’ ‘Or—perhaps a castle here. Beware of such—I once had one.’ And the cold grey face softened for an instant. It seemed at times as if there were after all a man behind that marble casing. ‘A man who can secure such a friendship as yours has proved itself to be,’ said Sir John after a short silence, ‘can scarcely be wholly bad. He may, as you say, have made a mistake. I promise nothing; but perhaps I will make no further attempts to find him.’ Conyngham was silent. To speak would have been to admit. ‘So far as I am concerned,’ said Sir John, rising, ‘you are safe in this or any country. But I warn you—you have a dangerous enemy in Spain.’ ‘I know,’ answered Conyngham, with a laugh, ‘Mr. Esteban Larralde. I once undertook to deliver a letter for him. It was not what he represented it to be, and after I had delivered it he began to suspect me of having read it. He is kind enough to consider me of some importance in the politics of this country owing to the information I am supposed to possess. I know nothing of the contents of the letter, but I want to regain it—if only for a few moments. That is the whole story, and that is how matters stand between Larralde and myself.’	{ "id": "5987" }
22	REPARATION	‘Il s’en faut bien que l’innocence trouve autant de protection que le crime.’ FOR those minded to leave Spain at this time, there was but one route, namely, the south, for the northern exits were closed by the Carlists, still in power there, though thinning fast. Indeed, Don Carlos was now illustrating the fact, which any may learn by the study of the world’s history, that it is not the great causes, but the great men, who have made and destroyed nations. Nearly half of Spain was for Don Carlos. The Church sided with him, and the best soldiers were those who, unpaid, unfed, and half clad, fought on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees for a man who dared not lead them. Sir John Pleydell had intended crossing the frontier into Portugal, following the carriage conveying his prisoner to the seaport of Lisbon, where he anticipated no difficulty in finding a ship captain who would be willing to carry Conyngham to England. All this, however, had been frustrated by so unimportant a person as Concepçion Vara, and the carriage ordered for nine o’clock to proceed to Talavera now stood in the courtyard of the hotel, while the Baronet in his lonely apartment sat and wondered what he should do next. He had dealt with justice all his life, and had ensued it not from love, but as a matter of convenience and a means of livelihood. From the mere habit, he now desired to do justice to Conyngham. ‘See if you can find out for me the whereabouts of General Vincente at the moment, and let the carriage wait,’ he said to his servant, a valet-courier of taciturn habit. The man was absent about half an hour, and returned with a face that promised little. ‘There is a man in the hotel, sir,’ he said, ‘the servant of Mr. Conyngham, who knows, but will not tell me. I am told, however, that a lady living in Toledo, a Contessa Barenna, will undoubtedly have the information. General Vincente was lately in Madrid, but his movements are so rapid and uncertain, that he has become a by-word in Spain.’ ‘So I understand. I will call on this Contessa this afternoon, unless you can get the information elsewhere during the morning. I shall not want the carriage.’ Sir John walked slowly to the window, deep in thought. He was interested in Conyngham, despite himself. It is possible that he had not hitherto met a man capable of so far forgetting his own interests as to undertake a foolish and dangerous escapade without anything in the nature of gain or advantage to recommend it. The windows of the hotel of the Comercio in Toledo look out upon the market-place, and Sir John, who was an indoor man, and mentally active enough to be intensely bored at times, frequently used this opportunity of studying Spanish life. He was looking idly through the vile panes, when an old priest passed by, and glanced up beneath shaggy brows. ‘Seen that man before,’ said Sir John. ‘Ah!’ muttered Father Concha, as he hurried on towards the Palazzo Barenna. ‘So far, so good. Where the fox is, will be found the stolen fowl.’ Concepçion Vara, who was saddling his horse in the stable yard of the inn, saw the Padre pass. ‘Ah, clever one!’ he muttered, ‘with your jokes about my wife. Now you may make a false journey for all the help you receive from me.’ And a few minutes later Concepçion rode across the Bridge of Alcantara, some paces behind Conyngham, who deemed it wise to return to his duties at Madrid without delay. Despite the great heat on the plains, which, indeed, made it almost dangerous to travel at midday, the streets of Toledo were cool and shady enough, as Sir John Pleydell traversed them in search of the Palazzo Barenna. The Contessa was in, and the Englishman was ushered into a vast room, which even the taste of the day could not entirely deprive of its mediæval grandeur. Sir John explained to the servant in halting Spanish that his name was unknown to the Señora Barenna, but that—a stranger in some slight difficulty—he had been recommended to seek her assistance. Sir John was an imposing-looking man, with that grand air which enables some men not only to look, but to get over a wall while an insignificant wight may not so much as approach the gate. The señora’s curiosity did the rest. In a few minutes the rustle of silk made Sir John turn from the contemplation of a suit of armour. ‘Madame speaks French?’ ‘But yes, señor.’ Madame Barenna glanced towards a chair, which Sir John hastened to bring forward. He despised her already, and she admired his manner vastly. ‘I have taken the immense liberty of intruding myself upon your notice, Madame.’ ‘Not to sell me a Bible?’ exclaimed Señora Barenna, with her fan upheld in warning. ‘A Bible! I believe I have one at home, in England, Madame, but—’ ‘It is well,’ said Madame sinking back and fanning herself rather faintly. ‘Excuse my fears. But there is an Englishman—what is his name? I forget.’ ‘Borrow.’ ‘Yes; that is it, Borrow. And he sells Bibles; and Father Concha, my confessor, a bear, but a holy man—a holy bear, as one might say—has forbidden me to buy one. I am so afraid of disobeying him, by heedlessness or forgetfulness. There are, it appears, some things in the Bible which one ought not to read, and one naturally—’ She finished the sentence with a shrug, and an expressive gesture of the fan. ‘One naturally desires to read them,’ suggested Sir John. ‘The privilege of all Eve’s daughters, Madame.’ Señora Barenna treated the flatterer to what the French call a _fin sourire_, and wondered how long Julia would stay away. This man would pay her a compliment in another moment. ‘I merely called on the excuse of a common friendship, to ask if you can tell me the whereabouts of General Vincente,’ said Sir John, stating his business in haste and when the opportunity presented itself. ‘Is it politics?’ asked the lady, with a hasty glance round the room. ‘No, it is scarcely politics; but why do you ask? You are surely too wise, Madame, to take part in such. It is a woman’s mission to please—and when it is so easy!’ He waved his thin white hand in completion of a suggestion which made his hearer bridle her stout person. ‘No, no,’ she whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the door. ‘No; it is my daughter. Ah! señor, you can scarce imagine what it is to live upon a volcano!’ And she pointed to the oaken floor with her fan. Sir John deemed it wise to confine his display of sympathy to a glance of the deepest concern. ‘No,’ he said; ‘it is merely a personal matter. I have a communication to make to my friend General Vincente or to his daughter.’ ‘To Estella?’ ‘To the Señorita Estella.’ ‘Do you think her beautiful? Some do, you know. Eyes—I admit—yes, lovely.’ ‘I admire the señorita exceedingly.’ ‘Ah yes, yes. You have not seen my daughter, have you, señor? Julia—she rather resembles Estella.’ Señora Barenna paused and examined her fan with a careless air. ‘Some say,’ she went on, apparently with reluctance, ‘that Julia is—well—has some advantages over Estella. But _I_ do not, of course. I admire Estella, excessively—oh yes, yes.’ And the señora’s dark eyes searched Sir John’s face. They might have found more in sculptured marble. ‘Do you know where she is?’ asked Sir John, almost bluntly. Like a workman who has mistaken his material, he was laying aside his finer conversational tools. ‘Well, I believe they arrive in Toledo this evening. I cannot think why. But with General Vincente one never knows. He is so pleasant, so playful—such a smile—but you know him. Well, they say in Spain that he is always where he is wanted. Ah!’ Madame paused and cast her eyes up to the ceiling, ‘what it is to be wanted somewhere, señor.’ And she gave him the benefit of one of her deepest sighs. Sir John mentally followed the direction of her glance, and wondered what the late Count thought about it. ‘Yes, I am deeply interested in Estella—as indeed is natural, for she is my niece. She has no mother, and the General has such absurd ideas. He thinks that a girl is capable of choosing a husband for herself. But to you—an Englishman—such an idea is naturally not astonishing. I am told that in your country it is the girls who actually propose marriage.’ ‘Not in words, Madame—not more in England than elsewhere.’ ‘Ah,’ said Madame, looking at him doubtfully, and thinking, despite herself, of Father Concha. Sir John rose from the chair he had taken at the señora’s silent invitation. ‘Then I may expect the General to arrive at my hotel this evening,’ he said. ‘I am staying at the Comercio, the only hotel, as I understand, in Toledo.’ ‘Yes, he will doubtless descend there. Do you know Frederick Conyngham, señor?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But everyone knows him!’ exclaimed the lady vivaciously. ‘Tell me how it is. A most pleasant young man, I allow you—but without introductions and quite unconnected. Yet he has friends everywhere.’ She paused and, closing her fan, leant forward in an attitude of intense confidence and secrecy. ‘And how about his little affair?’ she whispered. ‘His little affair, Madame?’ ‘De cœur,’ explained the lady, tapping her own breast with an eloquent fan. ‘Estella,’ she whispered after a pause. ‘Ah!’ said Sir John, as if he knew too much about it to give an opinion. And he took his leave. ‘That is the sort of woman to break one’s heart in the witness box,’ he said as he passed out into the deserted street, and Señora Barenna, in the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English lord had been visibly impressed. General Vincente and Estella arrived at the hotel in the evening, but did not of course appear in the public rooms. The dusty old travelling carriage was placed in a quiet corner of the courtyard of the hotel, and the General appeared on this, as on all occasions, to court retirement and oblivion. Unlike many of his brothers-in-arms, he had no desire to catch the public eye. ‘There is doubtless something astir,’ said the waiter, who, in the intervals of a casual attendance on Sir John, spoke of these things, cigarette in mouth. ‘There is doubtless something astir, since General Vincente is on the road. They call him the Stormy Petrel, for when he appears abroad there usually follows a disturbance.’ Sir John sent his servant to the General’s apartment about eight o’clock in the evening asking permission to present himself. In reply, the General himself came to Sir John’s room. ‘My dear sir,’ he cried, taking both the Englishman’s hands in an affectionate grasp, ‘to think that you were in the hotel and that we did not dine together. Come, yes, come to our poor apartment, where Estella awaits the pleasure of renewing your acquaintance.’ ‘Then the señorita,’ said Sir John, following his companion along the dimly-lighted passage, ‘has her father’s pleasant faculty of forgetting any little _contretemps_ of the past?’ ‘Ask her,’ exclaimed the General in his cheery way. ‘Ask her.’ And he threw open the door of the dingy salon they occupied. Estella was standing with her back to the window, and her attitude suggested that she had not sat down since she had heard of Sir John’s presence in the hotel. ‘Señorita,’ said the Englishman, with that perfect knowledge of the world which usually has its firmest basis upon indifference to criticism, ‘señorita, I have come to avow a mistake and to make my excuses.’ ‘It is surely unnecessary,’ said Estella, rather coldly. ‘Say rather,’ broke in the General in his smoothest way, ‘that you have come to take a cup of coffee with us and to tell us your news.’ Sir John took the chair which the General brought forward. ‘At all events,’ he said, still addressing Estella, ‘it is probably a matter of indifference to you, as it is merely an opinion expressed by myself which I wish to retract. When I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I took it upon myself to speak of a guest in your father’s house, fortunately in the presence of that guest himself, and I now wish to tell you that what I said does not apply to Frederick Conyngham himself, but to another whom Conyngham is screening. He has not confessed so much to me, but I have satisfied myself that he is not the man I seek. You, General, who know more of the world than the señorita, and have been in it almost as long as I have, can bear me out in the statement that the motives of men are not so easy to discern as younger folks imagine. I do not know what induced Conyngham to undertake this thing; probably he entered into it in a spirit of impetuous and reckless generosity, which would only be in keeping with his character. I only know that he has carried it out with a thoroughness and daring worthy of all praise. If such a tie were possible between an old man and a young, I should like to be able to claim Mr. Conyngham as a friend. There, señorita—thank you, I will take coffee. I made the accusation in your presence. I retract it before you. It is, as you see, a small matter.’ ‘But it is of small matters that life is made up,’ put in the General in his deferential way. ‘Our friend,’ he went on after a pause, ‘is unfortunate in misrepresenting himself. We also have a little grudge against him—a little matter of a letter which has not been explained. I admit that I should like to see that letter.’ ‘And where is it?’ asked Sir John. ‘Ah!’ replied Vincente, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gay little laugh, ‘who can tell? Perhaps in Toledo, my dear sir—perhaps in Toledo.’	{ "id": "5987" }
23	LARRALDE’S PRICE	‘It is as difficult to be entirely bad as it is to be entirely good.’ TO those who say that there is no Faith, Spain is in itself a palpable answer. No country in the world can show such cathedrals as those of Granada, Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Burgos. In any other land any one of these great structures would suffice. But in Spain these huge monuments to that Faith which has held serenely through war and fashion, through thought and thoughtlessness, are to be found in all the great cities. And the queen of them all is Toledo. Father Concha, that sour-visaged philosopher, had a queer pride in his profession and in the history of that Church which is to-day seen in its purest form in the Peninsula, while it is so entangled with the national story of Spain that the two are but one tale told from a different point of view. As a private soldier may take pleasure in standing on a great battlefield noting each spot of interest—here a valley of death, there the scene of a cavalry charge of which the thunder will echo down through all the ages—so Concha, a mere country priest, liked to pace the aisles of a great cathedral, indulging the while in a half-cynical pride. He was no great general, no leader, of no importance in the ranks. But he was of the army, and partook in a minute degree in those victories that belonged to the past. It was his habit thus to pay a visit to Toledo Cathedral whensoever his journeys led him to Castile. It was, moreover, his simple custom to attend the early mass which is here historical; and, indeed, to walk through the church, grey and cool, with the hush that seems to belong only to buildings of stupendous age, is in itself a religious service. Concha was passing across the nave, hat in hand, a gaunt, ill-clad, and somewhat pathetic figure, when he caught sight of Sir John Pleydell. The Englishman paused involuntarily and looked at the Spaniard. Concha bowed. ‘We met,’ he said, ‘for a moment in the garden of General Vincente’s house at Ronda.’ ‘True,’ answered Sir John. ‘Are you leaving the Cathedral? We might walk a little way together. One cannot talk idly—here.’ He paused and looked up at the great oak screen—at the towering masonry. ‘No,’ answered Concha gravely. ‘One cannot talk idly here.’ Concha held back the great leathern _portière_, and the Englishman passed out. ‘This is a queer country, and you are a queer people,’ he said presently. ‘When I was at Ronda I met a certain number of persons—I can count them on my fingers. General Vincente, his daughter, Señora Barenna, Señorita Barenna, the Englishman Conyngham, yourself, Señor Concha. I arrived in Toledo yesterday morning; in twenty-four hours I have caught sight of all the persons mentioned, here in Toledo.’ ‘And here, in Toledo, is another of whom you have not caught sight,’ said Concha. ‘Ah?’ ‘Yes; Señor Larralde.’ ‘Is he here?’ ‘Yes,’ said Concha. They walked on in silence for some minutes. ‘What are we all doing here, Padre?’ inquired Sir John, with his cold laugh. ‘What are you doing here, señor?’ Sir John did not answer at once. They were walking leisurely. The streets were deserted, as indeed the streets of Toledo usually are. ‘I am putting two and two together,’ the great lawyer answered at length. ‘I began doing so in idleness, and now I have become interested.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘Yes. I have become interested. They say, Padre, that a pebble set in motion at the summit of a mountain may gather other pebbles and increase in bulk and speed until, in the form of an avalanche, it overwhelms a city in the valley.’ ‘Yes, señor.’ ‘And I have conceived the strange fancy that Frederick Conyngham, when he first came to this country, set such a pebble in motion at the summit of a very high mountain. It has been falling and falling silently ever since, and it is gaining in bulk. And you, and General Vincente, and Estella Vincente, and Señorita Barenna, and Frederick Conyngham, and in a minor degree myself, are on the slope in the track of the avalanche, and are sliding down behind it. And the General and Estella, and yourself and Conyngham, are trying to overtake it and stop it. And, reverendo, in the valley below is the monarchy of Spain—the Bourbon cause.’ Father Concha, remembering his favourite maxim that no flies enter a shut mouth, was silent. ‘The pebble was a letter,’ said Sir John. ‘And Larralde has it,’ he added after a pause. ‘And that is why you are all in Toledo—why the air is thick with apprehension, and why all Spain seems to pause and wait breathlessly. Will the avalanche be stopped, or will it not? Will the Bourbons—than whom history has known no more interesting and more unsatisfactory race, except our own Stuarts—will the Bourbons fall, Señor Padre?’ ‘Ah!’ said Concha, whose furrowed face and pessimistic glance betrayed nothing. ‘Ah!’ ‘You will not tell me, of course. You know much that you will not tell me, and I merely ask you from curiosity. You perhaps know one thing, and that I wish to learn from you—not out of curiosity, but because I, too, would fain overtake the avalanche and stop it. I am no politician, señor, though of course I have my views. When a man has reached my age, he knows assuredly that politics merely mean self-aggrandisement, and nothing else. No—the Bourbons may fall; Spain may follow the lead of France and make an exhibition of herself before the world as a Republic. I am indifferent to these events. But I wish to do Frederick Conyngham a good turn, and I ask you to tell me where I shall find Larralde—you who know everything, Señor Padre.’ Concha reflected while they walked along on the shady side of the narrow street. It happened to be the street where the saddlers live, and the sharp sound of their little hammers on leather and wood came from almost every darkened doorway. The Padre had a wholesome fear of Esteban Larralde, and an exaggerated estimation of that schemer’s ability. He was a humble-minded old man, and ever hesitated to pit his own brain against that of another. He knew that Sir John was a cleverer man than Larralde, deeper versed in that side of human nature where the seams are and the knots and the unsightly stitches; older, more experienced, and probably no more scrupulous. ‘Yes,’ said the priest, ‘I can tell you that. Larralde lodges in the house of a malcontent, one Lamberto, a scribbling journalist, who is hurt because the world takes him at its own valuation and not at his. The house is next to the little synagogue in the Calle de Madrid, a small stationer’s shop, where one may buy the curse of this generation—pens and paper.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Sir John, civilly and simply. This man has no doubt been ill-painted, but some may have seen that with different companions he wore a different manner. He was, as all successful men are, an unconscious actor, and in entering into the personality of the companion of the moment he completely sank his own. He never sought to be all things to all men, and yet he came near to the accomplishment of that hard task. Sir John was not a sympathetic man; he merely mistook life for a court of justice, and arraigned all human nature in the witness-box, with the inward conviction that this should by rights be exchanged for the felon’s dock. With Concha he was as simple, as direct, and as unsophisticated as the old priest himself, and now took his leave without attempting to disguise the fact that he had accomplished a foreset purpose. Without difficulty he found the small stationer’s shop next to the synagogue in the Calle de Madrid, and bade the stationer—a spectacled individual with upright hair and the air of seeking something in the world which is not usually behind a counter—take his card to Señor Larralde. At first the stationer pretended ignorance of the name, but on discovering that Sir John had not sufficient Spanish to conduct a conversation of intrigue, disappeared into a back room, whence emanated a villanous smell of cooking. While Sir John waited in the little shop, Father Concha walked to the Plazuela de l’Iglesia Vieja, which small square, overhanging the Tagus and within reach of its murmuring voice, is deserted except at midday, when the boys play at bull-fighting and a few workmen engage in a grave game of bowls. Concha sat, book in hand, opened honestly at the office of the day and hour, and read no word. Instead, he stared across the gorge at the brown bank of land which commands the city and renders it useless as a fortress in the days of modern artillery. He sat and stared grimly, and thought perhaps of those secret springs within the human heart that make one man successful and unhappy, while another, possessing brains and ability and energy, fails in life, yet is perhaps the happier of the two. For it had happened to Father Concha, as it may happen to writer and reader at any moment, to meet one who in individuality bears a resemblance to that self which we never know and yet are ever conscious of. Sir John Pleydell, a few hundred yards away, obeyed the shopman’s invitation to step upstairs with something approaching alacrity. Larralde was seated at a table strewn with newspapers and soiled by cigarette ash. He had the unkempt and pallid look of one who has not seen the sun or breathed fresh air for days. For, as Concepçion had said, this was a conspirator who preferred to lurk in friendly shelter while others played the bolder game at the front. Larralde had, in fact, not stirred abroad for nearly a week. ‘Well, señor,’ he said, with a false air of bravado. ‘How fares it with your little undertaking?’ ‘That,’ replied Sir John, ‘is past—and paid for. And I have another matter for your consideration. Conyngham is not, after all, the man I seek.’ Sir John’s manner had changed. He spoke as one having authority. And Larralde shrugged his shoulders, remembering a past payment. ‘Ah!’ he said, rolling a cigarette with a fine air of indifference. ‘On the one hand,’ continued Sir John judicially, ‘I come to make you an offer which can only be beneficial to you; on the other hand, Señor Larralde, I know enough to make things particularly unpleasant for you.’ Larralde raised his eyebrows and sought the matchbox. His thoughts seemed to amuse him. ‘I have reason to assume that a certain letter is now in your possession again. I do not know the contents of this letter, and I cannot say that I am at all interested in it. But a friend of mine is particularly anxious to have possession of it for a short space of time. I have, unasked, taken upon myself the office of intermediary.’ Larralde’s eyes flashed through the smoke. ‘You are about to offer me money; be careful, señor,’ he said hotly, and Sir John smiled. ‘Be careful, that it is enough,’ he suggested. ‘Keep your grand airs for your fellows, Señor Larralde. Yes, I am about to offer you two hundred pounds—say three thousand pesetas—for the loan of that letter for a few hours only. I will guarantee that it is read by one person only, and that a lady. This lady will probably glance at the first lines, merely to satisfy herself as to the nature of its contents. Three thousand pesetas will enable you to escape to Cuba if your schemes fail. If you succeed, three thousand pesetas will always be of use, even to a member of a Republican Government.’ Larralde reflected. He had lately realised the fact that the Carlist cause was doomed. There is a time in the schemes of men, and it usually comes just before the crisis, when the stoutest heart hesitates and the most reckless conspirator thinks of his retreat. Esteban Larralde had begun to think of Cuba during the last few days, and the mention of that haven for Spanish failures almost unnerved him. ‘In a week,’ suggested Sir John again, ‘it may be—well—settled one way or the other.’ Larralde glanced at him sharply. This Englishman was either well-informed or very cunning. He seemed to have read the thought in Larralde’s mind. ‘No doubt,’ went on the Englishman, ‘you have divined for whom I want the letter and who will read it. We have both mistaken our man. We both owe Conyngham a good turn—I, in reparation, you, in gratitude; for he undoubtedly saved the Señorita Barenna from imprisonment for life.’ Larralde shrugged his shoulders. ‘Each man,’ he said, ‘must fight for himself.’ ‘And the majority of us for a woman as well,’ amended Sir John. ‘At least, in Spain, chivalry is not dead.’ Larralde laughed. He was vain, and Sir John knew it. He had a keen sight for the breach in his opponent’s armour. ‘You have put your case well,’ said the Spaniard patronisingly, ‘and I do not see why, at the end of a week, I should not agree to your proposal. It is, as you say, for the sake of a woman.’ ‘Precisely.’ Larralde leant back in his chair, remembering the legendary gallantry of his race, and wearing an appropriate expression. ‘For a woman,’ he repeated with an eloquent gesture. ‘Precisely.’ ‘Then I will do it, señor. I will do it.’ ‘For two hundred pounds?’ inquired Sir John coldly. ‘As you will,’ answered the Spaniard, with a noble indifference to such sordid matters.	{ "id": "5987" }
24	PRIESTCRAFT	‘No man I fear can effect great benefits for his country without some sacrifice of the minor virtues.’ THE Señora Barenna was a leading social light in Toledo, insomuch as she never refused an invitation. ‘One has one’s duties towards society,’ she would say with a sigh. ‘Though the saints know that I take no pleasure in these affairs.’ Then she put on her best Seville mantilla and bustled off to some function or another, where she talked volubly and without discretion. Julia had of late withdrawn more and more from that life of continued and mild festivity of which it is to be feared the existence of many women is composed. This afternoon she sat alone in the great gloomy house in Toledo, waiting for Larralde. For she, like thousands of her sisters, loved an unworthy object—_faute de mieux_—with open eyes and a queer philosophy that bade her love Larralde rather than love none. She had lately spent a large part of her existence in waiting for Larralde, who, indeed, was busy enough at this time, and rarely stirred abroad while the sun was up. ‘Julia,’ said Señora Barenna to Concha, ‘is no longer a companion to me. She does not even attempt to understand my sensitive organisation. She is a mere statue, and thinks of nothing but politics.’ ‘For her, Madame, as for all women, there would be no politics if there were no politicians,’ the priest replied. This afternoon Julia was more restless than ever. Larralde had not been to see her for many days, and had only written a hurried note from time to time in answer to her urgent request, telling her that he was well and in no danger. She now no longer knew whether he was in Toledo or not, but had sufficient knowledge of the schemes in which he was engaged to be aware of the fact that these were coming to a crisis. Esteban Larralde had indeed told her more than was either necessary or discreet, and it was his vanity that led him into this imprudence. We are all ready enough to impart information which will show our neighbours that we are more important than we appear. After a broiling day the sun was now beginning to lose a little of his terrific power, and, in the shade of the patio upon which the windows of Julia’s room opened, the air was quite cool and pleasant. A fountain plashed continuously in a little basin that had been white six centuries ago, when the Moors had brought the marble across the Gulf of Lyons to build it. The very sound of the water was a relief to overstrained nerves, and seemed to diminish the tension of the shimmering atmosphere. Julia was alone, and barely made pretence to read the book she held in her hand. From her seat she could see the bell suspended on the opposite wall of the courtyard, of which the deep voice at any time of day or night had the power of stirring her heart to a sudden joy. At last the desired sound broke the silence of the great house, and Julia stood breathless at the window while the servant leisurely crossed the patio and threw open the great door, large enough to admit a carriage and pair. It was not Larralde, but Father Concha, brought hither by a note he had received from Sir John Pleydell earlier in the afternoon. ‘I shall have the letter in a week from now,’ the Englishman had written. ‘Which will be too late,’ commented Concha pessimistically. The señora was out, they told him, but the señorita had remained at home. ‘It is the señorita I desire to see.’ And Julia, at the window above, heard the remark with a sinking heart. The air seemed to be weighted with the suggestion of calamity. Concha had the manner of one bringing bad news. She forgot that this was his usual mien. ‘Ah, my child,’ he said, coming into the room a minute later and sitting down rather wearily. ‘What?’ she asked, her two hands at her breast. He glanced at her beneath his brows. The wind was in the north-east, dry and tingling. The sun had worn a coppery hue all day. Such matters affect women and those who are in mental distress. After such a day as had at last worn to evening, the mind is at a great tension, the nerves are strained. It is at such times that men fly into sudden anger and whip out the knife. At such times women are reckless, and the stories of human lives take sudden turns. Concha knew that he had this woman at a disadvantage. ‘What?’ he echoed. ‘I wish I knew. I wish at times I was no priest.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I could help you better. Sometimes it is the man and not the priest who is the truest friend.’ ‘Why do you speak like this?’ she cried. ‘Is there danger? What has happened?’ ‘You know best, my child, if there is danger; you know what is likely to happen.’ Julia stood looking at him with hard eyes—the eyes of one in mortal fear. ‘You have always been my friend,’ she said slowly, ‘my best friend.’ ‘Yes. A woman’s lover is never her best friend.’ ‘Has anything happened to Esteban?’ The priest did not answer at once, but paused, reflecting, and dusting his sleeve, where there was always some snuff requiring attention at such moments. ‘I know so little,’ he said. ‘I am no politician. What can I say? What can I advise you when I am in the dark? And the time is slipping by—slipping by.’ ‘I cannot tell you,’ she answered, turning away and looking out of the window. ‘You cannot tell the priest—tell the man.’ Then, suddenly, she reached the end of her endurance. Standing with her back towards him, she told her story, and Concha listened with a still, breathless avidity as one who, having long sought knowledge, finds it at last when it seemed out of reach. The little fountain plashed in the courtyard below; a frog in the basin among the water-lilies croaked sociably while the priest and the beautiful woman in the room above made history. For it is not only in kings’ palaces nor yet in Parliaments that the story of the world is shaped. Concha spoke no word, and Julia, having begun, left nothing unsaid, but told him every detail in a slow mechanical voice, as if bidden thereto by a stronger will than her own. ‘He is all the world to me,’ she said simply, in conclusion. ‘Yes; and the happiest women are those who live in a small world.’ A silence fell upon them. The old priest surreptitiously looked at his watch. He was essentially a man of action. ‘My child,’ he said, rising, ‘when you are an old woman with children to harass you and make your life worth living, you will probably look back with thankfulness to this moment. For you have done that which was your only chance of happiness.’ ‘Why do you always help me?’ she asked, as she had asked a hundred times. ‘Because happiness is so rare that I hate to see it wasted,’ he answered, going towards the door with a grim laugh. He passed out of the room and crossed the patio slowly. Then, when the great door had closed behind him, he gathered up the skirts of his cassock and hurried down the narrow street. In such thoroughfares as were deserted he ran with the speed and endurance of a spare, hard-living man. Woman-like, Julia had, after all, done things by half. She had timed her confession too late. At the hotel they told the Padre that General Vincente was at dinner and could not be disturbed. ‘He sees no one,’ the servant said. ‘You do not know who I am,’ said Concha, in an irony which, under the circumstances, he alone could enjoy. Then he passed up the stairs and bade the waiter begone. ‘But I carry the General’s dessert,’ protested the man. ‘No,’ said Concha half to himself, ‘I have that.’ Vincente was indeed at table with Estella. He looked up as the priest entered, fingering a cigarette delicately. ‘How soon can you take the road?’ asked Concha abruptly. ‘Ten minutes—the time for a cup of coffee,’ was the answer, given with a pleasant laugh. ‘Then order your carriage.’ Vincente looked at his old friend, and the smile never left his lips, though his eyes were grave enough. It was hard to say whether aught on earth could disturb this man’s equanimity. Then the General rose and went to the window which opened upon the courtyard. In the quiet corner near the rain-tank, where a vine grows upon trellis-work, the dusty travelling-carriage stood, and upon the step of it, eating a simple meal of bread and dried figs, sat the man who had the reputation of being the fastest driver in Spain. ‘In ten minutes, my good Manuel,’ said the General. ‘Bueno,’ grumbled the driver, with his mouth full—a man of few words. ‘Is it to go far?’ asked the General, turning on his heel and addressing Concha. ‘A long journey.’ ‘To take the road, Manuel,’ cried Vincente, leaning out. He closed the window before resuming his seat. ‘And now, have you any more orders?’ he asked with a gay carelessness. ‘I counted on sleeping in a bed to-night.’ ‘You will not do that,’ replied Concha, ‘when you hear my news.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘But first you must promise me not to make use of the information I give you against any suspected persons—to take, in fact, only preventive measures.’ ‘You have only to name it, my friend. Proceed.’ The old priest paused and passed his hand across his brow. He was breathless still, and looked worn. ‘It is,’ he said, ‘a very grave matter. I have not had much experience in such things, for my path has always lain in small parochial affairs—dealings with children and women.’ Estella was already pouring some wine into a glass. With a woman’s instinct she saw that the old man was overwrought and faint. It was a Friday, and in his simple way there was no more austere abstinent than Father Concha, who had probably touched little food throughout the long hot day. ‘Take your time, my friend; take your time,’ said the General, who never hurried and was never too late. ‘A pinch of snuff now—it stimulates the nerves.’ ‘It is,’ said Concha at length—breaking a biscuit in his long bony fingers and speaking unembarrassedly with his mouth full—’it is that I have by the merest accident lighted upon a matter of political importance.’ The General nodded, and held his wine up to the light. ‘There are matters of much political importance,’ he said, ‘in the air just now.’ ‘A plot,’ continued Concha, ‘spreading over all Spain; the devil is surely in it, and I know the Carlists are. A plot, believe me, to assassinate and rob and kidnap.’ ‘Yes,’ said the General with his tolerant little smile. ‘Yes, my dear Padre. Some men are so bloodthirsty; is it not so?’ ‘This plot is directed against the little Queen; against the Queen Regent; against many who are notable Royalists occupying high posts in the Government or the army.’ He glanced at Estella, and then looked meaningly at the General, who could scarcely fail to comprehend. ‘Let us deal with the Queen and the Queen Regent,’ said Vincente; ‘the others are probably able to take care of themselves.’ ‘None can guard himself against assassination.’ The General seemed for a moment inclined to dispute this statement, but shrugged his shoulders and finally passed it by. ‘The Queen,’ he said. ‘What of her?’ In response, Concha took a newspaper from his pocket and spread it out on the table. After a brief search up and down the ill-printed columns, he found the desired paragraph, and read aloud: ‘The Queen is in Madrid. The Queen Regent journeys from Seville to rejoin her daughter in the capital, prosecuting her journey by easy stages and accompanied by a small guard. Her Majesty sleeps at Ciudad Real to-night, and at Toledo to-morrow night.’ ‘This,’ said Concha, folding the newspaper, ‘is a Carlist and revolutionary rag whose readers are scarcely likely to be interested for a good motive in the movements of the Queen Regent.’ ‘True, my dear Padre—true,’ admitted Vincente, half reluctantly. ‘Many kiss hands they would fain see chopped off. In the streets and on the Plaza I have seen many reading this newspaper and talking over it with unusual interest. Like a bad lawyer, I am giving the confirmation of the argument before the argument itself.’ ‘No matter—no matter.’ ‘Ah! but we have no time to do things ill or carelessly,’ said the priest. ‘My story is a long one, but I will tell it as quickly as I can.’ ‘Take your time,’ urged the General soothingly. ‘This great plot, you say, which is to spread over all Spain—’ ‘Is for to-morrow night, my friend.’	{ "id": "5987" }
25	SWORDCRAFT	‘Rien n’est plus courageux qu’un cœur patient, rien n’est plus sûr de soi qu’un ésprit doux.’ THE General set down his glass, and a queer light came into his eyes, usually so smiling and pleasant. ‘Ah! Then you are right, my friend. Tell us your story as quickly as possible.’ ‘It appears,’ said Concha, ‘that there has been in progress for many months a plot to assassinate the Queen Regent and to seize the person of the little Queen, expelling her from Spain, and bringing in, not Don Carlos, who is a spent firework, but a Republic—a more dangerous firework, that usually bursts in the hands of those that light it. This plot has been finally put into shape by a letter—’ He paused, tapped on the table with his bony fingers, and glanced at Estella. ‘A letter which has been going the round of all the malcontents in the Peninsula. Each faction-leader, to show that he has read it and agrees to obey its commands, initials the letter. It has then been returned to an intermediary, who sends it to the next—never by post, because the post is watched—always by hand, and usually by the hand of a person innocent of its contents.’ ‘Yes,’ murmured the General absently, and there was a queer little smile on Estella’s lips. ‘To think,’ cried Concha, with a sudden fire less surprising in Spain than in England, ‘to think that we have all seen it—have touched it! Name of a saint! I had it under my hand in the hotel at Algeciras, and I left it on the table. And now it has been the round, and all the initials are placed upon it, and it is for to-morrow night.’ ‘Where have you learnt this?’ asked the General in a voice that made Estella look at him. She had never seen him as his enemies had seen him, and even they confessed that he was always visible enough in action. Perhaps there was another man behind the personality of this deprecating, pleasant-spoken little sybarite—a man who only appeared (oh _rara avis_!) when he was wanted. ‘No matter,’ replied Concha, in a voice as hard and sharp. ‘No; after all, it is of no matter, so long as your information is reliable.’ ‘You may stake your life on that,’ said Concha, and remembered the words ever after. ‘It has been decided to make this journey from Seville to Madrid the opportunity of assassinating the Queen Regent.’ ‘It will not be the first time they have tried,’ put in the General. ‘No. But this time they will succeed, and it is to be here—to-morrow night—in Toledo. After the Queen Regent’s death, and in the confusion that will supervene, the little Queen will disappear, and then upon the rubbish-heap will spring up the mushrooms as they did in France; and this rubbish-heap, like the other, will foul the whole air of Europe.’ He shook his head pessimistically till the long, wispy grey hair waved from side to side, and his left hand, resting on the wrist-bone on the table, made an indescribable gesture that showed a fœtid air tainted by darksome growths. There was a silence in the room broken by no outside sound but the chink of champed bits as the horses stood in their traces below. Indeed, the city of Toledo seemed strangely still this evening, and the very air had a sense of waiting in it. The priest sat and looked at his lifelong friend, his furrowed face the incarnation of cynical hopelessness. ‘What is, is worst,’ he seemed to say. His yellow, wise old eyes watched the quick face with the air of one who, having posed an insoluble problem, awaits with a sarcastic humour the admission of failure. General Vincente, who had just finished his wine, wiped his moustache delicately with his table-napkin. He was thinking—quickly, systematically, as men learn to think under fire. Perhaps, indeed, he had the thoughts half matured in his mind—as the greatest general the world has seen confessed that he ever had—that he was never taken quite by surprise. Vincente smiled as he thought: a habit he had acquired on the field, where a staff, and perhaps a whole army, took its cue from his face and read the turn of fortune there. Then he looked up straight at Estella, who was watching him. ‘Can you start on a journey, now—in five minutes?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she answered, rising and going towards the door. ‘Have you a white mantilla among your travelling things?’ he asked again. Estella turned at the doorway and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Then take it with you, and a cloak, but no heavy luggage.’ Estella closed the door. ‘You can come with us?’ said the General to Concha, half command, half interrogation. ‘If you wish it.’ ‘You may be wanted. I have a plan—a little plan,’ and he gave a short laugh. ‘It may succeed.’ He went to a side table, where some cold meats still stood, and, taking up a small chicken daintily with a fork, he folded it in a napkin. ‘It will be Saturday,’ he said simply, ‘before we have reached our journey’s end, and you will be hungry. Have you a pocket?’ ‘Has a priest a pocket?’ asked Concha, with a grim humour, and he slipped the provisions into the folds of his cassock. He was still eating a biscuit hurriedly. ‘I believe you have no money?’ said the General suddenly. ‘I have only enough,’ admitted the old man, ‘to take me back to Ronda; whither, by the way, my duty calls me.’ ‘I think not. Your Master can spare you for a while; my mistress cannot do without you.’ At this moment Estella came back into the room ready for her journey. The girl had changed of late. Her face had lost a little roundness and had gained exceedingly in expression. Her eyes, too, were different. That change had come to them which comes to all women between the ages of twenty and thirty, quite irrespective of their state. A certain restlessness, or a quiet content, are what one usually sees in a woman’s face. Estella’s eyes wore that latter look, which seems to indicate a knowledge of the meaning of life and a contentment that it should be no different. Vincente was writing at the table. ‘We shall want help,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I am sending for a good man.’ And he smiled as he shook the small sand-castor over the paper. ‘May one ask,’ said Concha, ‘where we are going?’ ‘We are going to Ciudad Real, my dear friend, since you are so curious. But we shall come back—we shall come back.’ He was writing another despatch as he spoke, and at a sign from him Estella went to the door and clapped her hands, the only method of summoning a servant in general use at that time in Spain. The call was answered by an orderly, who stood at attention in the doorway for a full five minutes while the General wrote further orders in his neat, small calligraphy. There were half a dozen letters in all—curt military despatches without preamble and without mercy. For this soldier conducted military matters in a singularly domestic way, planning his campaigns by the fireside and bringing about the downfall of an enemy while sitting in his daughter’s drawing-room. Indeed, Estella’s blotting-book bore the impress of more than one death warrant or an order as good as such, written casually on her stationery and with her pen. ‘Will you have the goodness to despatch these at once?’ was the message taken by the orderly to the General’s aide-de-camp, and the gallopers, who were always in readiness, smiled as they heard the modest request. ‘It will be pleasant to travel in the cool of the evening, provided that one guards against a chill,’ said the General, making his final preparations. ‘I require but a moment to speak to my faithful aide-de-camp, and then we embark.’ The moon was rising as the carriage rattled across the Bridge of Alcantara, and Larralde, taking the air between Wamba’s Gate and the little fort that guards the entrance to the city, recognised the equipage as it passed him. He saw also the outline of Concha’s figure in the darkest corner of the carriage, with his back to the horses, his head bowed in meditation. Estella he saw and recognised, while two mounted attendants clattering in the rear of the carriage testified by their presence to the fact that the General had taken the road again. ‘It is well,’ said Larralde to himself. ‘They are all going back to Ronda, and Julia will be rid of their influence. Ronda will serve as well as Toledo so far as Vincente is concerned. But I will wait to make sure that they are not losing sight of him.’ So Señor Larralde, cloaked to the eyebrows, leant gracefully against the wall, and, like many another upon the bridge after that breathless day, drank in the cool air that rose from the river. Presently—indeed, before the sound of the distant wheels was quite lost—two horsemen, cloaked and provided with such light luggage as the saddle can accommodate, rode leisurely through the gateway and up the incline that makes a short cut to the great road running southward to Ciudad Real. Larralde gave a little nod of self-confidence and satisfaction, as one who, having conceived and built up a great scheme, is pleased to see each component part of it act independently, and slip into its place. The General’s first thought was for Estella’s comfort, and he utilised the long hill which they had to ascend on leaving the town to make such arrangements as space would allow for their common ease. ‘You must sleep, my child,’ he said. ‘We cannot hope to reach Ciudad Real before midday to-morrow, and it is as likely as not that we shall have but a few hours’ rest there.’ And Estella, who had travelled vast distances over vile roads so long as her memory went back, who had never known what it is to live in a country that is at peace, leant back in her corner and closed her eyes. Had she really been disposed to sleep, however, she could scarcely have done it, for the General’s solicitude manifested itself by a hundred little devices for her greater repose. For her comfort he made Concha move. ‘An old traveller like you must shift for yourself,’ he said gaily. ‘No need to seek shelter for an old ox,’ replied Concha, moving into the other corner, where he carefully unfolded his pocket-handkerchief and laid it over his face, where his long nose, protruding, caused it to fall into fantastic folds. He clasped his hands upon his hat, which lay on his knee, and, leaning back, presently began to snore gently and regularly—a peaceful, sleep-inducing sound, and an excellent example. The General, whose sword seemed to take up half the carriage, still watched Estella, and if the air made her mantilla flutter, drew up the window with the solicitude of a lover and a maternal noiselessness. Then, with one hand on hers, and the other grasping his sword, he leant back, but did not close his eyes. Thus they travelled on through the luminous night. The roads were neither worse nor better than they are to-day in Spain—than they were in England in the Middle Ages—and their way lay over the hill ranges that lie between the watersheds of the Tagus and the Guadiana. At times they passed through well-tended valleys, where corn and olives and vines seemed to grow on the same soil, but for the greater part of the night they ascended and descended the upper slopes, where herds of goats, half awakened as they slept in a ring about their guardian, looked at them with startled eyes. The shepherds and goatherds, who, like those of old, lay cloaked upon the ground, and tended their flocks by night, did not trouble to raise their heads. Concha alone slept, for the General had a thousand thoughts that kept him awake and bright-eyed, while Estella knew from her father’s manner and restlessness that these were no small events that now stirred Spain, and seemed to close men’s mouths, so that near friends distrusted one another, and brother was divided against brother. Indeed, others were on the road that night, and horsemen passed the heavy carriage from time to time. In the early morning a change of horses was effected at a large inn near the summit of a pass above Malagon, and here an orderly, who seemed to recognise the General, was climbing into the saddle as the Vincentes quitted their carriage and passed into the common room of the venta for a hasty cup of coffee. ‘It is the Queen’s courier,’ said the innkeeper grandly, ‘who takes the road before her Majesty in order to secure horses.’ ‘Ah,’ said the General, breaking his bread and dropping it into his cup. ‘Is that so? The Queen Regent, you mean?’ ‘Queen or Queen Regent, she requires four horses this evening, Excellency—that is all my concern.’ ‘True, my friend; true. That is well said. And the horses will be forthcoming, no doubt.’ ‘They will be forthcoming,’ said the man. ‘And the Excellency’s carriage is ready.’ In the early morning light they drove on, now descending towards the great valley of the Guadiana, and at midday, as Vincente had foreseen, gained a sight of the ancient city of Ciudad Real lying amid trees below them. Ciudad Real is less interesting than its name, and there is little that is royal about its dirty streets and ill-kept houses. No one gave great heed to the travelling-carriage, for this is a great centre where travellers journeying east or west, north or south, must needs pause for a change of horses. At the inn there were vacant rooms, and that hasty welcome accorded to the traveller at wayside houses where none stay longer than they can help. ‘No,’ said the landlord, in answer to the General’s query. ‘We are not busy, though we expect a lady who will pass the hour of the siesta here and then proceed northward.’	{ "id": "5987" }
26	WOMANCRAFT	‘Il est rare que la tête des rois soit faite à la mesure de leur couronne.’ IN the best room of the inn where Vincente and his tired companions sought a few hours’ rest there sat alone, and in thought, a woman of middle age. Somewhat stout, she yet had that air which arouses the attention without being worthy of the name of beauty. This lady had doubtless swayed men’s hearts by a word or a glance, for she still carried herself with assurance, and a hundred little details of her dress would have told another woman that she still desired to please. She wore a white mantilla. The hour of the siesta was over, and after the great heat of the day a cool air was swinging down on the bosom of the river to the parched lowlands. It stirred the leaves of a climbing heliotrope which encircled the open windows, and wafted into the ill-furnished room a scent of stable-yard and dust. The lady, sitting with her chin resting in the palm of her small white hand, seemed to have lately roused herself from sleep, and now had the expectant air of one who awaits a carriage and is about to set out on a long journey. Her eyes were dark and tired-looking, and their expression was not that of a good woman. A sensual man is usually weak, but women are different; and this face, with its faded complexion and tired eyes, this woman of the majestic presence and beautiful hands, was both strong and sensual. This, in a word, was a Queen who never forgot that she was a woman. As it was said of the Princess Christina, so it has been spoken of the Queen, that many had killed themselves for hopeless love of her. For this was the most dangerous of the world’s creatures—a royal coquette. Such would our own Queen Bess have been had not God, for the good of England, given her a plain face and an ungainly form. For surely the devil is in it when a woman can command both love and men. Queen Christina, since the death of a husband who was years older than herself (and, as some say, before that historic event), had played a woman’s game with that skill which men only half recognise, and had played it with the additional incentive that behind her insatiable vanity lay the heavier stake of a crown. She was not the first to turn the strong current of man’s passion to her own deliberate gain—nay, ninety-nine out of a hundred women do it. But the majority only play for a suburban villa and a few hundred pounds a year; Queen Christina of Spain handled her cards for a throne and the continuance of an ill-starred dynasty. As she sat in the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such a look in this country; every second beautiful face in London has it. And these women—heaven help them—find the morning hours dull, because every afternoon has not its great event and every evening the excitement of a social function. The Queen was travelling incognita, and that fact alone robbed her progress of a sense of excitement. She had to do without the shout of the multitude—the passing admiration of the man in the street. She knew that she was yet many hours removed from Madrid, where she had admirers, and the next best possession—enemies. Ciudad Real was intolerably dull and provincial. A servant knocked at the door. ‘General Vincente, your Majesty, craves the favour of a moment.’ ‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Queen, the light returning to her eyes, a faint colour flushing her cheek. ‘In five minutes I will receive him.’ And there is no need to say how the Queen spent those minutes. ‘Your Majesty,’ said the General, bending over her hand, which he touched with his lips, ‘I have news of the greatest importance.’ The suggestion of a scornful smile flickered for a moment in the royal eyes. It was surely news enough for any man that she was a woman—beautiful still—possessing still that intangible and fatal gift of pleasing. The woman slowly faded from her eyes as they rested on the great soldier’s face, and the Queen it was who, with a gracious gesture, bade him be seated. But the General remained standing. He alone perhaps of all the men who had to deal with her—of all those military puppets with whom she played her royal game—had never crossed that vague boundary which many had overstepped to their own inevitable undoing. ‘It concerns your Majesty’s life,’ said Vincente bluntly, and calm in the certainty of his own theory that good blood, whether it flow in the veins of man or woman, assuredly carries a high courage. ‘Ah!’ said the Queen Regent, whose humour still inclined towards those affairs which interested her before the affairs of State. ‘But with men such as you about me, my dear General, what need I fear?’ ‘Treachery, Madame,’ he answered, with his sudden smile and a bow. ‘Treachery.’ She frowned. When a Queen stoops to dalliance a subject must not be too practical. ‘Ah! What is it that concerns my life? Another plot?’ she inquired shortly. ‘Another plot, but one of greater importance than those that exist in the republican cafés of every town in your Majesty’s kingdom. This is a widespread conspiracy, and I fear that many powerful persons are concerned in it; but that, your Majesty, is not my department nor concern.’ ‘What is your concern, General?’ she asked, looking at him over her fan. ‘To save your Majesty’s life to-night.’ ‘To-night!’ she echoed, her coquetry gone. ‘To-night.’ ‘But how and where?’ ‘Assassination, Madame, in Toledo. You are three hours late in your journey. But all Toledo will be astir awaiting you, though it be till dawn.’ The Queen Regent closed her fan slowly. She was, as the rapid events of her reign and regency have proved, one of those women who rise to the occasion. ‘Then one must act at once,’ she said. The General bowed. ‘What have you done?’ she asked. ‘I have sent to Madrid for a regiment that I know; they are as my own children. I have killed so many of them that the remainder love me. I have travelled from Toledo to meet your Majesty on the road, or here.’ ‘And what means have you of preventing this thing?’ ‘I have brought the means with me, Madame.’ ‘Troops?’ asked the Queen doubtfully, knowing where the canker-worm lay hidden. ‘A woman and a priest, Madame.’ ‘And—’ ‘And I propose that your Majesty journey to Madrid in my carriage, attended only by my orderlies, by way of Aranjuez. You will be safe in Madrid, where the Queen will require her mother’s care.’ ‘Yes. And the remainder of your plan?’ ‘I will travel back to Toledo in your Majesty’s carriage with the woman and the priest and your bodyguard—just as your Majesty is in the habit of travelling. Toledo wants a fight; nothing else will satisfy them. They shall have it—before dawn. The very best I have to offer them.’ And General Vincente gave a queer, cheery little laugh, as if he were arranging a practical joke. ‘But the fight will be round my carriage—’ ‘Possibly. I would rather that it took place in the Calle de la Ciudad, or around the Casa del Ayuntamiento, where your Majesty is expected to sleep to-night.’ ‘And these persons—this woman who risks her life to save mine—who is she?’ ‘My daughter,’ answered the General gravely. ‘She is here—in the hotel now?’ The General bowed. ‘I have heard that she is beautiful,’ said the Queen, with a quick glance towards her companion. ‘How is it that you have never brought her to Court, you who come so seldom yourself?’ Vincente made no reply. ‘However, bring her to me now.’ ‘She has travelled far, Madame, and is not prepared for presentation to her Queen.’ ‘This is no time for formalities. She is about to run a great risk for my sake, a greater risk than I could ever ask her to run. Present her as one woman to another, General.’ But General Vincente bowed gravely and made no reply. The colour slowly rose to the Queen Regent’s face—a dull red. She opened her fan, closed it again, and sat with furtive downcast eyes. Suddenly she looked up and met his gaze. ‘You refuse,’ she said, with an insolent air of indifference. ‘You think that I am unworthy to—meet your daughter.’ ‘I think only of the exigency of the moment,’ was his reply. ‘Every minute we lose is a gain to our enemies. If our trick is discovered Aranjuez will be no safer for your Majesty than is Toledo. You must be safely in Madrid before it is discovered in Toledo that you have taken the other route, and that the person they have mistaken for you is in reality my daughter.’ ‘But she may be killed,’ exclaimed the Queen. ‘We may all be killed, Madame,’ he replied lightly. ‘I beg that you will start at once in my carriage with your chaplain and the holy lady who is doubtless travelling with you.’ The Queen glanced sharply at him. It was known that although her own life was anything but exemplary, she loved to associate with women who, under the cloak of religion and an austere virtue, intrigued with all parties and condoned the Queen’s offences. ‘I cannot understand you,’ she said, with that sudden lapse into familiarity which had led to the undoing of more than one ambitious courtier. ‘You seem to worship the crown and despise the head it rests on.’ ‘So long as I serve your Majesty faithfully—’ ‘But you have no right to despise me,’ she interrupted passionately. ‘If I despised you, should I be here now—should I be doing you this service?’ ‘I do not know. I tell you I do not understand you.’ And the Queen looked hard at the man who, for this very reason, interested one who had all her life dealt and intrigued with men of obvious motive and unblushing ambition. So strong is a ruling passion that even in sight of death (for the Queen Regent knew that Spain was full of her enemies and rendered callous to bloodshed by a long war) vanity was alert in this woman’s breast. Even while General Vincente, that unrivalled strategist, detailed his plans, she kept harking back to the question that puzzled her, and but half listened to his instructions. Those desirous of travelling without attracting attention in Spain are wise to time their arrival and departure for the afternoon. At this time, while the sun is yet hot, all shutters are closed, and the business of life, the haggling in the market-place, the bustle of the barrack yard, the leisurely labour of the fields, are suspended. It was about four o’clock—indeed, the city clocks were striking that hour—when the two carriages in the inn yard at Ciudad Real were made ready for the road. Father Concha, who never took an active part in passing incidents while his old friend and comrade was near, sat in a shady corner of the patio and smoked a cigarette. An affable ostler had in vain endeavoured to engage him in conversation. Two small children had begged of him, and now he was left in meditative solitude. ‘In a short three minutes,’ said the ostler, ‘and the Excellencies can then depart. In which direction, reverendo, if one may ask?’ ‘One may always ask, my friend,’ replied the priest. ‘Indeed, the holy books are of opinion that it cannot be overdone. That chin strap is too tight.’ ‘Ah, I see the reverendo knows a horse.’ ‘And an ass,’ added Concha. At this moment the General emerged from the shadow of the staircase, which was open and of stone. He was followed by Estella, as it would appear, and they hurried across the sunlighted patio, the girl carrying her fan to screen her face. ‘Are you rested, my child?’ asked Concha at the carriage door. The lady lowered the fan for a moment and met his eyes. A quick look of surprise flashed across Concha’s face and he half bowed. Then he repeated his question in a louder voice: ‘Are you rested, my child, after our long journey?’ ‘Thank you, my father, yes.’ And the ostler watched with open-mouthed interest. The other carriage had been drawn up to that side of the courtyard where the open stairway was, and here also the bustle of departure and a hurrying female form, anxious to gain the shade of the vehicle, were discernible. It was all done so quickly, with such a military completeness of detail, that the carriages had passed through the great doorway and the troopers—merely a general’s escort—had clattered after them before the few onlookers had fully realised that these were surely travellers of some note. The ostler hurried to the street to watch them go. ‘They are going to the north,’ he said to himself, as he saw the carriages turn in the direction of the river and the ancient Puerta de Toledo. ‘They go to the north—and assuredly the General has come to conduct her to Toledo.’ Strange to say, although it was the hour of rest, many shutters in the narrow street were open, and more than one peeping face was turned towards the departing carriages.	{ "id": "5987" }
27	A NIGHT JOURNEY	‘Let me but bear your love, I’ll bear your cares.’ AT the cross-roads on the northern side of the river the two carriages parted company, the dusty equipage of General Vincente taking the road to Aranjuez that leads to the right and mounts steadily through olive groves. The other carriage—which, despite its plain and sombre colours, still had an air of grandeur and almost of royalty, with its great wheels and curved springs—turned to the left and headed for Toledo. Behind it clattered a dozen troopers, picked men, with huge swinging swords and travel-stained clothes. The dust rose in a cloud under the horses’ feet and hovered in the sullen air. There was no breath of wind, and the sun shone through a faint haze which seemed only to add to the heat. Concha lowered the window and thrust forward his long inquiring nose. ‘What is it?’ asked the General. ‘Thunder—I smell it. We shall have a storm to-night.’ He looked out mopping his brow. ‘Name of a saint! how thick the air is.’ ‘It will be clear before the morning,’ said Vincente the optimist. And the carriage rattled on towards the city of strife, where Jew, Goth and Roman, Moor and Inquisitor, have all had their day. Estella was silent, drooping with fatigue. The General alone seemed unmoved and heedless of the heat—a man of steel, as bright and ready as his own sword. There is no civilised country in the world so bare as Spain, and no part of the Peninsula so sparsely populated as the Castiles. The road ran for the most part over brown and barren uplands, with here and there a valley where wheat and olives and vineyards graced the lower slopes. The crying need of all nature was for shade; for the ilex is a small-leaved tree giving a thin shadow with no cool depths amid the branches. All was brown and barren and parched. The earth seemed to lie fainting and awaiting the rain. The horses trotted with extended necks and open mouths, their coats wet with sweat. The driver—an Andalusian, with a face like a Moorish pirate—kept encouraging them with word and rein, jerking and whipping only when they seemed likely to fall from sheer fatigue and sun-weariness. At last the sun began to set in a glow like that of a great furnace, and the reflection lay over the land in ruddy splendour. ‘Ah!’ said Concha, looking out, ‘it will be a great storm—and it will soon come.’ Vast columns of cloud were climbing up from the sunset into a sullen sky, thrown up in spreading mares’ tails by a hundred contrary gusts of wind, as if there were explosive matter in the great furnace of the west. ‘Nature is always on my side,’ said Vincente, with his chuckling laugh. He sat, watch in hand, noting the passage of the kilometres. At last the sun went down behind a distant line of hill—the watershed of the Tagus—and immediately the air was cool. Without stopping, the driver wrapped his cloak round him, and the troopers followed his example. A few minutes later a cold breeze sprung up suddenly, coming from the north and swirling the dust high in the air. ‘It is well,’ said Vincente, who assuredly saw good in everything; ‘the wind comes first, and therefore the storm will be short.’ As he spoke the thunder rolled among the hills. ‘It is almost like guns,’ he added, with a queer look in his eyes suggestive of some memory. Then, preceded by a rushing wind, the rain came, turning to hail, and stopping suddenly in a breathless pause, only to recommence with a renewed and splashing vigour. Concha drew up the windows, and the water streamed down them in a continuous ripple. Estella, who had been sleeping, roused herself. She looked fresh, and her eyes were bright with excitement. She had brought home with her from her English school that air of freshness and a dainty vigour which makes Englishwomen different from all other women in the world, and an English schoolgirl one of the brightest, purest, and sweetest of God’s creatures. Concha looked at her with his grim smile—amused at a youthfulness which could enable her to fall asleep at such a time and wake up so manifestly refreshed. A halt was made at a roadside venta, where the travellers partook of a hurried meal. Darkness came on before the horses were sufficiently rested, and by the light of an ill-smelling lamp the General had his inevitable cup of coffee. The rain had now ceased, but the sky remained overcast and the night was a dark one. The travellers took their places in the carriage, and again the monotony of the road, the steady trot of the horses, the sing-song words of encouragement of their driver, monopolised the thoughts of sleepy minds. It seemed to Estella that life was all journeys, and that she had been on the road for years. The swing of the carriage, the little varieties of the road, but served to add to her somnolence. She only half woke up when, about ten o’clock, a halt was made to change horses, and the General quitted the carriage for a few minutes to talk earnestly with two horsemen, who were apparently awaiting their arrival. No time was lost here, and the carriage went forward with an increased escort. The two new-comers rode by the carriage, one on either side. When Estella woke up, the moon had risen and the carriage was making slow progress up a long hill. She noticed that a horseman was on either side, close by the carriage window. ‘Who is that?’ she asked. ‘Conyngham,’ replied the General. ‘You sent for him?’ inquired Estella, in a hard voice. ‘Yes.’ Estella was wakeful enough now, and sat upright, looking straight in front of her. At times she glanced towards the window, which was now open, where the head of Conyngham’s charger appeared. The horse trotted steadily, with a queer jerk of the head and that willingness to do his best which gains for horses a place in the hearts of all who have to do with them. ‘Will there be fighting?’ asked Estella suddenly. The General shrugged his shoulders. ‘One cannot call it fighting. There may be a disturbance in the streets,’ he answered. Concha, quiet in his corner, with his back to the horses, watched the girl, and saw that her eyes were wide with anxiety now—quite suddenly. She, who had never thought of fear till this moment. She moved uneasily in her seat, fidgeting as the young ever do when troubled. It is only with years that we learn to bear a burden quietly. ‘Who is that?’ she asked shortly, pointing to the other window, which was closed. ‘Concepçion Vara—Conyngham’s servant,’ replied the General, who for some reason was inclined to curtness in his speech. They were approaching Toledo, and passed through a village from time to time, where the cafés were still lighted up, and people seemed to be astir in the shadow of the houses. At last, in the main thoroughfare of a larger village within a stage of Toledo, a final halt was made to change horses. The street, dimly lighted by a couple of oil lamps swinging from gibbets at the corners of a crossroad, seemed to be peopled by shadows surreptitiously lurking in doorways. There was a false air of quiet in the houses, and peeping eyes looked out from behind the bars that covered every window, for even modern Spanish houses are barred as if for a siege, and in the ancient villages every man’s house is indeed his castle. The driver had left the box, and seemed to be having some trouble with the ostlers and stable-helps; for his voice could be heard raised in anger and urging them to greater haste. Conyngham, motionless in the saddle, touched his horse with his heel, advancing a few paces so as to screen the window. Concepçion, on the other side, did the same, so that the travellers in the interior of the vehicle saw but the dark shape of the horses and the long cloaks of their riders. They could perceive Conyngham quickly throw back his cape in order to have a free hand. Then there came the sound of scuffling feet and an indefinable sense of strife in the very air. ‘But we will see—we will see who is in the carriage!’ cried a shrill voice, and a hoarse shout from many bibulous throats confirmed the desire. ‘Quick!’ said Conyngham’s voice. ‘Quick—take your reins—never mind the lamps.’ And the carriage swayed as the man leapt to his place. Estella made a movement to look out of the window, but Concha had stood up against it, opposing his broad back alike to curious glances or a knife or a bullet. At the other window the General, better versed in such matters, held the leather cushion upon which he had been sitting across the sash. With his left hand he restrained Estella. ‘Keep still,’ he said. ‘Sit back. Conyngham can take care of himself.’ The carriage swayed forward, and a volley of stones rattled on it like hail. It rose jerkily on one side, and bumped over some obstacle. ‘One who has his quietus,’ said Concha; ‘these royal carriages are heavy.’ The horses were galloping now. Concha sat down rubbing his back. Conyngham was galloping by the window, and they could see his spur flashing in the moonlight as he used it. The reins hung loose, and both his hands were employed elsewhere, for he had a man half across the saddle in front of him, who held to him with one arm thrown round his neck, while the other was raised and a gleam of steel was at the end of it. Concepçion, from the other side, threw a knife over the roof of the carriage—he could hit a cork at twenty paces but he missed this time. The General, from within, leant across Estella, sword in hand, with gleaming eyes. But Conyngham seemed to have got the hold he desired, for his assailant came suddenly swinging over the horse’s neck, and one of his flying heels crashed through the window by Concha’s head, making that ecclesiastic swear like any layman. The carriage was lifted on one side again, and bumped heavily. ‘Another,’ said Concha, looking for broken glass in the folds of his cassock. ‘That is a pretty trick of Conyngham’s.’ ‘And the man is a horseman,’ added the General, sheathing his sword—‘a horseman. It warms the heart to see it.’ Then he leant out of the window and asked if any were hurt. ‘I am afraid, Excellency, that I hurt one,’ answered Vara. ‘Where the neck joins the shoulder. It is a pretty spot for the knife—nothing to turn a point.’ He rubbed a sulphur match on the leg of his trouser, and lighted a cigarette as he rode along. ‘On our side no accidents,’ continued Vara, with a careless grandeur, ‘unless the reverendo received a kick in the face.’ ‘The reverendo received a stone in the small of the back,’ growled Concha pessimistically, ‘where there was already a corner of lumbago.’ Conyngham, standing in his stirrups, was looking back. A man lay motionless on the road, and beyond, at the cross-roads, another was riding up a hill to the right at a hand gallop. ‘It is the road to Madrid,’ said Concepçion, noting the direction of the Englishman’s glance. The General, leaning out of the carriage window, was also looking back anxiously. ‘They have sent a messenger to Madrid, Excellency, with the news that the Queen is on the road to Toledo,’ said Concepçion. ‘It is well,’ answered Vincente, with a laugh. As they journeyed, although it was nearly midnight, there appeared from time to time, and for the most part in the neighbourhood of a village, one who seemed to have been awaiting their passage, and immediately set out on foot or horseback by one of the shorter bridle-paths that abound in Spain. No one of these spies escaped the notice of Concepçion, whose training amid the mountains of Andalusia had sharpened his eyesight and added keenness to every sense. ‘It is like a cat walking down an alley full of dogs,’ he muttered. At last the lights of Toledo hove in sight, and across the river came the sound of the city clocks tolling the hour. ‘Midnight,’ said Concha. ‘And all respectable folk are in their beds. At night all cats are grey.’ No one heeded him. Estella was sitting upright, bright-eyed and wakeful. The General looked out of the window at every moment. Across the river they could see lights moving, and many houses that had been illuminated were suddenly dark. ‘See,’ said the General, leaning out of the window and speaking to Conyngham, ‘they have heard the sound of our wheels.’ At the farther end of the Bridge of Alcantara, on the road which now leads to the railway station, two horsemen were stationed, hidden in the shadow of the trees that border the pathway. ‘Those should be Guardias Civiles,’ said Concepçion, who had studied the ways of those gentry all his life. ‘But they are not. They have horses that have never been taught to stand still.’ As he spoke the men vanished, moving noiselessly in the thick dust which lay on the Madrid road. The General saw them go—and smiled. These men carried word to their fellows in Madrid for the seizure of the little Queen. But before they could reach the capital the Queen Regent herself would be there—a woman in a thousand, of inflexible nerve, of infinite resource. The carriage rattled over the narrow bridge which rings hollow to the sound of wheels. It passed under the gate that Wamba built and up the tree-girt incline to the city. The streets were deserted, and no window showed a light. A watchman in his shelter, at the corner by the synagogue, peered at them over the folds of his cloak, and noting the clank of scabbard against spur, paid no further heed to a traveller who took the road with such outward signs of authority. ‘It is still enough—and quiet,’ said Concha, looking out. ‘As quiet as a watching cat,’ replied Vincente.	{ "id": "5987" }
28	THE CITY OF STRIFE	‘What lot is mine Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow To feel it!’ THROUGH these quiet streets the party clattered noisily enough, for the rain had left the rounded stones slippery, and the horses were too tired for a sure step. There were no lights at the street corners, for all had been extinguished at midnight, and the only glimmer of a lamp that relieved the darkness was shining through the stained-glass windows of the Cathedral, where the sacred oil burnt night and day. The Queen was evidently expected at the Casa del Ayuntamiento, for at the approach of the carriage the great doors were thrown open and a number of servants appeared in the patio, which was but dimly lighted. By the General’s orders the small body-guard passed through the doors, which were then closed, instead of continuing their way to the barracks in the Alcazar. This Casa del Ayuntamiento stands, as many travellers know, in the Plaza of the same name, and faces the Cathedral, which is without doubt the oldest, as it assuredly is the most beautiful, church in the world. The mansion-house of Toledo, in addition to some palatial halls which are of historic renown, has several suites of rooms used from time to time by great personages passing through or visiting the city. The house itself is old, as we esteem age in England, while in comparison to the buildings around it it is modern. Built, however, at a period when beauty of architecture was secondary to power of resistance, the palace is strong enough, and General Vincente smiled happily as the great doors were closed. He was the last to look out into the streets and across the little Plaza del Ayuntamiento, which was deserted and looked peaceful enough in the light of a waning moon. The carriage door was opened by a lacquey, and Conyngham gave Estella his hand. All the servants bowed as she passed up the stairs, her face screened by the folds of her white mantilla. There was a queer hush in this great house, and in the manner of the servants. The cathedral clock rang out the half-hour. The General led the way to the room on the first floor that overlooks the Plaza del Ayuntamiento. It is a vast apartment, hung with tapestries and pictures such as men travel many miles to see. The windows, which are large in proportion to the height of the room, open upon a stone balcony, which runs the length of the house and looks down upon the Plaza and across this to the great façade of the Cathedral. Candles, hurriedly lighted, made the room into a very desert of shadows. At the far end, a table was spread with cold meats and lighted by high silver candelabra. ‘Ah!’ said Concha, going towards the supper-table. Estella turned, and for the first time met Conyngham’s eyes. His face startled her. It was so grave. ‘Were you hurt?’ she asked sharply. ‘Not this time, señorita.’ Then she turned with a sudden laugh towards her father. ‘Did I play my part well?’ she asked. ‘Yes, my child.’ And even he was grave. ‘Unless I am mistaken,’ he continued, glancing at the shuttered windows, ‘we have only begun our task.’ He was reading, as he spoke, some despatches which a servant had handed to him. ‘There is one advantage in a soldier’s life,’ he said, smiling at Conyngham, ‘which is not, I think, sufficiently recognised—namely, that one’s duty is so often clearly defined. At the present moment it is a question of keeping up the deception we have practised upon these good people of Toledo sufficiently long to enable the Queen Regent to reach Madrid. In order to make certain of this we must lead the people to understand that the Queen is in this house until, at least, daylight. Given so much advantage, I think that her Majesty can reach the capital an hour before any messenger from Toledo. Two horsemen quitted the Bridge of Alcantara as we crossed it, riding towards Madrid; but they will not reach the capital—I have seen to that.’ He paused and walked to one of the long windows, which he opened. The outer shutters remained closed, and he did not unbar them, but stood listening. ‘All is still as yet,’ he said, returning to the table, where Father Concha was philosophically cutting up a cold chicken. ‘That is a good idea of yours,’ he said. ‘We may all require our full forces of mind and body before the dawn.’ He drew forward a chair, and Estella, obeying his gesture, sat down and so far controlled her feelings as to eat a little. ‘Do queens always feed on old birds such as this?’ asked Concha discontentedly; and Vincente, spreading out his napkin, laughed with gay good humour. ‘Before the dawn,’ he said to Conyngham, ‘we may all be great men, and the good Concha here on the high road to a bishopric.’ ‘He would rather be in bed,’ muttered the priest, with his mouth full. It was a queer scene, such as we only act in real life. The vast room, with its gorgeous hangings, the flickering candles, the table spread with delicacies, and the strange party seated at it—Concha eating steadily, the General looking round with his domesticated little smile, Estella with a new light in her eyes and a new happiness on her face, Conyngham, a giant among these southerners, in his dust-laden uniform—all made up a picture that none forgot. ‘They will probably attack this place,’ said the General, pouring out a glass of wine; ‘but the house is a strong one. I cannot rely on the regiments stationed at Toledo, and have sent to Madrid for cavalry. There is nothing like cavalry—in the streets. We can stand a siege—till the dawn.’ He turned, looking over his shoulder towards the door; for he had heard a footstep unnoticed by the others. It was Concepçion Vara who came into the room, coatless, his face grey with dust, adding a startling and picturesque incongruity to the scene. ‘Pardon, Excellency,’ he said, with that easy grasp of the situation which always made an utterly unabashed smuggler of him, ‘but there is one in the house whom I think his Excellency should speak with.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘The Señorita Barenna.’ The General rose from the table. ‘How did she get in here?’ he asked sharply. ‘By the side door in the Calle de la Ciudad. The keeper of that door, Excellency, is a mule. The señorita forced him to admit her. The sex can do so much,’ he added, with a tolerant shrug of the shoulders. ‘And the other—this Larralde?’ Concepçion raised his hand with outspread fingers, and shook it slowly from side to side from the wrist, with the palm turned towards his interlocutor—a gesture which seemed to indicate that the subject was an unpleasant, almost an indelicate, one. ‘Larralde, Excellency,’ he said, ‘is one of those who are never found at the front. He will not be in Toledo to-night—that Larralde.’ ‘Where is the Señorita Barenna?’ asked the General. ‘She is downstairs—commanding his Excellency’s soldiers to let her pass.’ ‘You go down, my friend, and bring her here. Then take that door yourself.’ Concepçion bowed ceremoniously and withdrew. He might have been an ambassador, and his salutation was worthy of an Imperial Court. A moment later Julia Barenna came into the room, her dark eyes wide with terror, her face pale and drawn. ‘Where is the Queen Regent?’ she asked, looking from one face to the other, and seeing all her foes assembled as if by magic before her. ‘Her Majesty is on the road between Aranjuez and Madrid—in safety, my dear Julia,’ replied the General soothingly. ‘But they think she is here. The people are in the streets. Look out of the window. They are in the Plaza.’ ‘I know it, my dear,’ said the General. ‘They are armed—they are going to attack this house.’ ‘I am aware of it.’ ‘Their plan is to murder the Queen.’ ‘So we understand,’ said the General gently. He had a horror of anything approaching sensation or a scene, a feeling which Spaniards share with Englishmen. ‘That is the Queen for the time being,’ added Vincente, pointing to Estella. Julia stood looking from one to the other—a self-contained woman made strong by love. For there is nothing in life or human experience that raises and strengthens man or woman so much as a great and abiding love. But Julia Barenna was driven and almost panic-stricken. She held herself in control by an effort that was drawing lines in her face never to be wiped out. ‘But you will tell them? I will do it. Let me go to them. I am not afraid.’ ‘No one must leave this house now,’ said the General. ‘You have come to us, my dear, you must now throw in your lot with ours.’ ‘But Estella must not take this risk,’ exclaimed Julia. ‘Let me do it.’ And some woman’s instinct sent her to Estella’s side—two women alone in that great house amid this man’s work, this strife of reckless politicians. ‘And you, and Señor Conyngham,’ she cried, ‘you must not run this great risk.’ ‘It is what we are paid for, my dear Julia,’ answered the General, holding out his arm and indicating the gold stripes upon it. He walked to the window and opened the massive shutters, which swung back heavily. Then he stepped out on to the balcony without fear or hesitation. ‘See,’ he said, ‘the square is full of them.’ He came back into the room, and Conyngham, standing beside him, looked down into the moonlit Plaza. The square was, indeed, thronged with dark and silent shadows, while others, stealing from the doorways and narrow alleys with which Toledo abounds, joined the groups with stealthy steps. No one spoke, though the sound of their whispering arose in the still night air like the murmur of a breeze through reeds. A hundred faces peered upwards through the darkness at the two intrepid figures on the balcony. ‘And these are Spaniards, my dear Conyngham,’ whispered the General. ‘A hundred of them against one woman. Name of God! I blush for them.’ The throng increased every moment, and withal the silence never lifted, but brooded breathlessly over the ancient town. Instead of living men, these might well have been the shades of the countless and forgotten dead who had come to a violent end in the streets of a city where Peace has never found a home since the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Vincente came back into the room, leaving shutter and window open. ‘They cannot see in,’ he said, ‘the building is too high. And across the Plaza there is nothing but the Cathedral, which has no windows accessible without ladders.’ He paused, looking at his watch. ‘They are in doubt,’ he said, speaking to Conyngham. ‘They are not sure that the Queen is here. We will keep them in doubt for a short time. Every minute lost by them is an inestimable gain to us. That open window will whet their curiosity, and give them something to whisper about. It is so easy to deceive a crowd.’ He sat down and began to peel a peach. Julia looked at him, wondering wherein this man’s greatness lay, and yet perceiving dimly that, against such as he, men like Esteban Larralde could do nothing. Concha, having supped satisfactorily, was now sitting back in his chair seeking for something in the pockets of his cassock. ‘It is to be presumed,’ he said, ‘that one may smoke—even in a palace.’ And under their gaze he quietly lighted a cigarette with the deliberation of one in whom a long and solitary life had bred habits only to be broken at last by death. Presently the General rose and went to the window again. ‘They are still doubtful,’ he said, returning, ‘and I think their numbers have decreased. We cannot allow them to disperse.’ He paused, thinking deeply. ‘My child,’ he said suddenly to Estella, ‘you must show yourself on the balcony.’ Estella rose at once; but Julia held her back. ‘No,’ she said; ‘let me do it. Give me the white mantilla.’ There was a momentary silence while Estella freed herself from her cousin’s grasp. Conyngham looked at the woman he loved while she stood, little more than a child, with something youthful and inimitably graceful in the lines of her throat and averted face. Would she accept Julia’s offer? Conyngham bit his lip and awaited her decision. Then, as if divining his thought, she turned and looked at him gravely. ‘No,’ she said; ‘I will do it.’ She went towards the window. Her father and Conyngham had taken their places, one on each side, as if she were the Queen indeed. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and then passed out into the moonlight, alone. Immediately there arose the most terrifying of all earthly sounds—the dull, antagonistic roar of a thousand angry throats. Estella walked to the front of the balcony and stood, with an intrepidity which was worthy of the royal woman whose part she played, looking down on the upturned faces. A red flash streaked the darkness of a far corner of the square, and a bullet whistled through the open window into the woodwork of a mirror. ‘Come back,’ whispered General Vincente. ‘Slowly, my child—slowly.’ Estella stood for a moment looking down with a royal insolence, then turned, and with measured steps approached the window. As she passed in she met Conyngham’s eyes, and that one moment assuredly made two lives worth living.	{ "id": "5987" }
29	MIDNIGHT AND DAWN	‘I have set my life upon a cast And I will stand the hazard of the die.’ ‘EXCELLENCY,’ reported a man who entered the room at this moment, ‘they are bringing carts of fuel through the Calle de la Ciudad to set against the door and burn it.’ ‘To set against which door, my honest friend?’ ‘The great door on the Plaza, Excellency; the other is an old door of iron.’ ‘And they cannot burn it or break it open?’ ‘No, Excellency. And, besides, there are loopholes in the thickness of the wall at the side.’ The General smiled on this man as being after his own heart. ‘One may not shoot to-night, my friend. I have already given the order.’ ‘But one may prick them with the sword, Excellency?’ suggested the trooper, with a sort of suppressed enthusiasm. The General shrugged his shoulders, wisely tolerant. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered, ‘I suppose one may prick them with the sword.’ Conyngham, who had been standing half in and half out of the open window, listening to this conversation, now came forward. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I can clear the Plaza from time to time if you give me twenty men. We can thus gain time.’ ‘Street-fighting,’ answered the General gravely. ‘Do you know anything of it? It is nasty work.’ ‘I know something of it. One has to shout very loud. I studied it—at Dublin University.’ ‘To be sure—I forgot.’ Julia and Estella watched and listened. Their lot had been cast in the paths of war, and since childhood they had remembered naught else. But neither had yet been so near to the work, nor had they seen and heard men talk and plan with a certain grim humour—a curt and deliberate scorn of haste or excitement—as these men spoke and planned now. Conyngham and Concepçion Vara were altered by these circumstances—there was a light in their eyes which women rarely see, but the General was the same little man of peace and of a high domestic virtue, who seemed embarrassed by a sword which was obviously too big for him. Yet in all their voices there rang alike a queer note of exultation. For man is a fighting animal, and from St. Paul down to the humblest little five-foot-one recruit, would find life a dull affair were there no strife in it. ‘Yes,’ said the General, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that is a good idea, and will gain time. But let them first bring their fuel and set it up. Every moment is a gain.’ At this instant some humorist in the crowd threw a stone in at the open window. The old priest picked up the missile and examined it curiously. ‘It is fortunate,’ he said, ‘that the stones are fixed in Toledo. In Xeres they are loose, and are always in the air. I wonder if I can hit a citizen.’ And he threw the stone back. ‘Close the shutters,’ said the General. ‘Let us avoid arousing ill-feeling.’ The priest drew the jalousies together, but did not quite shut them. Vincente stood and looked out through the aperture at the moonlit square and the dark shadows moving there. ‘I wish they would shout,’ he said. ‘It is unnatural. They are like children. When there is noise there is little mischief.’ Then he remained silent for some minutes, watching intently. All in the room noted his every movement. At length he turned on his heel. ‘Go, my friend,’ he said to Conyngham. ‘Form your men in the Calle de la Ciudad, and charge round in line. Do not place yourself too much in advance of your men, or you will be killed, and remember—the point! Resist the temptation to cut—the point is best.’ He patted Conyngham on the arm affectionately, as if he were sending him to bed with a good wish, and accompanied him to the door. ‘I knew,’ he said, returning to the window and rubbing his hands together, ‘that that was a good man the first moment I saw him.’ He glanced at Estella, and then, turning, opened another window, setting the shutters ajar so as to make a second point of observation. ‘My poor child,’ he whispered, as she went to the window and looked out, ‘it is an ill-fortune to have to do with men whose trade this is.’ Estella smiled—a little whitely—and said nothing. The moon was now shining from an almost cloudless sky. The few fleecy remains of the storm sailing towards the east only added brightness to the night. It was almost possible to see the faces of the men moving in the square below, and to read their expressions. The majority stood in a group in the centre of the Plaza, while a daring few, reckoning on the Spanish aversion to firearms, ran forward from time to time and set a bundle of wood or straw against the door beneath the balcony. Some, who appeared to be the leaders, looked up constantly and curiously at the windows, wondering if any resistance would be made. Had they known that General Vincente was in that silent house they would probably have gone home to bed, and the crowd would have dispersed like smoke. Suddenly there arose a roar to the right hand of the square where the Calle de la Ciudad was situated, and Conyngham appeared for a moment alone, running towards the group, with the moonlight flashing on his sword. At his heels an instant later a single line of men swung round the corner and charged across the square. ‘Dear, dear,’ muttered the General; ‘too quick, my friend, too quick!’ For Conyngham was already among the crowd, which broke and surged back towards the Cathedral. He paused for a moment to draw his sword out of a dark form that lay upon the ground, as a cricketer draws a stump. He had, at all events, remembered the point. The troopers swept across the square like a broom, sending the people as dust before them, and leaving the clean, moonlit square behind. They also left behind one or two shadows, lying stark upon the around. One of these got upon its knees and crawled painfully away, all one-sided, like a beetle that has been trodden underfoot. Those watching from the windows saw with a gasp of horror that part of him—part of an arm—had been left behind, and a sigh of relief went up when he stopped crawling and lay quite still. The troopers were now retreating slowly towards the Calle de la Ciudad. ‘Be careful, Conyngham,’ shouted the General from the balcony. ‘They will return.’ And as he spoke a rattling fire was opened upon them from the far corner of the square, where the crowd had taken refuge in the opening of the Calle del Arco. Immediately, the people, having noted that the troopers were few in number, charged down upon them. The men fought in line, retreating step by step, their swords gleaming in the moonlight. Estella, hearing footsteps in the room behind her, turned in time to see her father disappearing through the doorway. Concepçion Vara, coatless, as he loved to work, his white shirtsleeves fluttering as his arm swung, had now joined the troopers, and was fighting by Conyngham’s side. Estella and Julia were out on the balcony now, leaning over and forgetting all but the breathless interest of battle. Concha stood beside them, muttering and cursing like any soldier. They saw Vincente appear at the corner of the Calle de la Ciudad and throw away his scabbard as he ran. ‘Now, my children!’ he cried in a voice that Estella had never heard before, which rang out across the square, and was answered by a yell that was nothing but a cry of sheer delight. The crowd swayed back as if before a gust of wind, and the General, following it, seemed to clear a space for himself as a reaper clears away the standing corn before him. It was, however, only for a moment. The crowd surged back, those in front against their will, and on to the glittering steel—those behind shouting encouragement. ‘Name of God!’ shouted Concha, and was gone. They saw him a minute later appear in the square, having thrown aside his cassock. He made a strange lean figure of a man with his knee-breeches and dingy purple stockings, his grey flannel shirt, and the moonlight shining on his tonsured head. He fought without skill, and heedless of danger, swinging a great sword that he had picked up from the hand of a fallen trooper, and each blow that he got home killed its victim. The metal of the man had suddenly shown itself after years of suppression. This, as Vincente had laughingly said, was no priest, but a soldier. Concepçion, in the thick of it, using the knife now with a deadly skill, looked over his shoulder and laughed. Suddenly the crowd swayed. The faint sound of a distant bugle came to the ears of all. ‘It is nothing,’ shouted Concha, in English. ‘It is nothing. It is I who sent the bugler round.’ And his great sword whistled into a man’s brain. In another moment the square was empty, for the politicians who came to murder a woman had had enough steel. The sound of the bugle, intimating, as they supposed, the arrival of troops, completed the work of demoralisation which the recognition of General Vincente had begun. The little party—the few defenders of the Casa del Ayuntamiento—were left in some confusion in the Plaza, and Estella saw with a sudden cold fear that Conyngham and Concha were on their knees in the midst of a little group of hesitating men. It was Concha who rose first and held up his hand to the watchers on the balcony, bidding them stay where they were. Then Conyngham rose to his feet slowly, as one bearing a burden. Estella looked down in a sort of dream, and saw her lover carrying her father towards the house, her mind only half comprehending, in that semi-dreamlike reception of sudden calamity which is one of Heaven’s deepest mercies. It was Concepçion who came into the room first, his white shirt dyed with blood in great patches like the colour on a piebald horse. A cut in his cheek was slowly dripping. He went straight to a sofa covered in gorgeous yellow satin, and set the cushions in order. ‘Señorita,’ he said, and spread out his hands. The tears were in his eyes, ‘Half of Spain,’ he added, ‘would rather that it had been the Queen—and the world is poorer.’ A moment later Concha came into the room dragging on his cassock. ‘My child, we are in God’s hand,’ he said, with a break in his gruff voice. And then came the heavy step of one carrying sorrow. Conyngham laid his burden on the sofa. General Vincente was holding his handkerchief to his side, and his eyes, which had a thoughtful look, saw only Estella’s face. ‘I have sent for a doctor,’ said Conyngham. ‘Your father is wounded.’ ‘Yes,’ said Vincente immediately; ‘but I am in no pain, my dear child. There is no reason, surely, for us to distress ourselves.’ He looked round and smiled. ‘And this good Conyngham,’ he added, ‘carried me like a child.’ Julia was on her knees at the foot of the sofa, her face hidden in her hands. ‘My dear Julia,’ he said, ‘why this distress?’ ‘Because all of this is my doing,’ she answered, lifting her drawn and terror-stricken face. ‘No, no!’ said Vincente, with a characteristic pleasantry. ‘You take too much upon yourself. All these things are written down for us beforehand. We only add the punctuation—delaying a little or hurrying a little.’ They looked at him silently, and assuredly none could mistake the shadows that were gathering on his face. Estella, who was holding his hand, knelt on the floor by his side, quiet and strong, offering silently that sympathy which is woman’s greatest gift. Concepçion, who perhaps knew more of this matter than any present, looked at Concha and shook his head. The priest was buttoning his cassock, and began to seek something in his pocket. ‘Your breviary?’ whispered Concepçion; ‘I saw it lying out there—among the dead.’ ‘It is a comfort to have one’s duty clearly defined,’ said the General suddenly, in a clear voice. He was evidently addressing Conyngham. ‘One of the advantages of a military life. We have done our best, and this time we have succeeded. But—it is only deferred. It will come at length, and Spain will be a republic. It is a failing cause—because, at the head of it, is a bad woman.’ Conyngham nodded, but no one spoke. No one seemed capable of following his thoughts. Already he seemed to look at them as from a distance, as if he had started on a journey and was looking back. During this silence there came a great clatter in the streets, and a sharp voice cried ‘Halt!’ The General turned his eyes towards the window. ‘The cavalry,’ said Conyngham, ‘from Madrid.’ ‘I did not expect—them,’ said Vincente slowly, ‘before the dawn.’ The sound of the horses’ feet and the clatter of arms died away as the troop passed on towards the Calle de la Ciudad, and the quiet of night was again unbroken. Then Concha, getting down on to his knees, began reciting from memory the office—which, alas! he knew too well. When it was finished, and the gruff voice died away, Vincente opened his eyes. ‘Every man to his trade,’ he said, with a little laugh. Then suddenly he made a grimace. ‘A twinge of pain,’ he said deprecatingly, as if apologising for giving them the sorrow of seeing it. ‘It will pass—before the dawn.’ Presently he opened his eyes again and smiled at Estella, before he moved with a tired sigh and turned his face towards that Dawn which knows no eventide.	{ "id": "5987" }
30	THE DAWN OF PEACE	‘Quien no ama, no vive.’ THE fall of Morella had proved to be, as many anticipated, the knell of the Carlist cause. Cabrera, that great general and consummate leader, followed Don Carlos, who had months earlier fled to France. General Espartero—a man made and strengthened by circumstances—was now at the height of his fame, and for the moment peace seemed to be assured to Spain. It was now a struggle between Espartero and Queen Christina. But with these matters the people of Spain had little to do. Such warfare of the council-chamber and the boudoir is carried on quietly, and the sound of it rarely reaches the ear, and never the heart, of the masses. Politics, indeed, had been the daily fare of the Spaniards for so long that their palates were now prepared to accept any sop so long as it was flavoured with peace. Aragon was devastated, and the northern provinces had neither seed nor labourers for the coming autumn. The peasants who, having lost faith in Don Carlos, rallied round Cabrera, now saw themselves abandoned by their worshipped leader, and turned hopelessly enough homewards. Thus gradually the country relapsed into quiet, and empty garners compelled many to lay aside the bayonet and take up the spade who, having tasted the thrill of battle, had no longer any taste for the ways of peace. Frederick Conyngham was brought into sudden prominence by the part he played in the disturbance at Toledo—which disturbance proved, as history tells, to be a forerunner of the great revolution a year later in Madrid. Promotion was at this time rapid, and the Englishman made many strides in a few months. Jealousy was so rife among the Spanish leaders, Christinos distrusted so thoroughly the reformed Carlists, that one who was outside these petty considerations received from both sides many honours on the sole recommendation of his neutrality. ‘And besides,’ said Father Concha, sitting in the sunlight on his church steps at Ronda, reading to the barber, and the shoemaker, and other of his parishioners, the latest newspaper, ‘and besides—he is clever.’ He paused, slowly taking a pinch of snuff. ‘Where the river is deepest it makes least noise,’ he added. The barber wagged his head after the manner of one who will never admit that he does not understand an allusion. And before any could speak the clatter of horses in the narrow street diverted attention. Concha rose to his feet. ‘Ah!’ he said, and went forward to meet Conyngham, who was riding with Concepçion at his side. ‘So you have come, my son,’ he said, shaking hands. He looked up into the Englishman’s face, which was burnt brown by service under a merciless sun. Conyngham looked lean and strong, but his eyes had no rest in them. This was not a man who had all he wanted. ‘Are you come to Ronda, or are you passing through?’ asked the priest. ‘To Ronda. As I passed the Casa Barenna I made inquiries. The ladies are in the town, it appears.’ ‘Yes; they are with Estella in the house you know—unless you have forgotten it.’ ‘No,’ answered Conyngham getting out of the saddle. ‘No; I have forgotten nothing.’ Concepçion came forward and led the horse away. ‘I will walk to the Casa Vincente. Have you the time to accompany me?’ said Conyngham. ‘I have always time—for my neighbour’s business,’ replied Concha. And they set off together. ‘You walk stiffly,’ said Concha. ‘Have you ridden far?’ ‘From Osuna—forty miles since daybreak.’ ‘You are in a hurry.’ ‘Yes, I am in a hurry.’ Without further comment he extracted from inside his smart tunic a letter—the famous letter in a pink envelope—which he handed to Concha. ‘Yes,’ said the priest, turning it over. ‘You and I first saw this in the Hotel de la Marina at Algeciras, when we were fools not to throw it into the nearest brazier. We should have saved a good man’s life, my friend.’ He handed the letter back, and thoughtfully dusted his cassock where it was worn and shiny with constant dusting, so that the snuff had nought to cling to. ‘And you have got it—at last. Holy saints—these Englishmen! Do you always get what you want, my son?’ ‘Not always,’ replied Conyngham, with an uneasy laugh. ‘But I should be a fool not to try.’ ‘Assuredly,’ said Concha, ‘assuredly. And you have come to Ronda—to try?’ ‘Yes.’ They walked on in silence, on the shady side of the street, and presently passed and saluted a priest—one of Concha’s colleagues in this city of the South. ‘There walks a tragedy,’ said Concha, in his curt way. ‘Inside every cassock there walks a tragedy—or a villain.’ After a pause it was Concha who again broke the silence. Conyngham seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts. ‘And Larralde—?’ said the priest. ‘I come from him—from Barcelona,’ answered Conyngham, ‘where he is in safety. Catalonia is full of such as he. Sir John Pleydell, before leaving Spain, bought this letter for two hundred pounds—a few months ago—when I was a poor man and could not offer a price for it. But Larralde disappeared when the plot failed, and I have only found him lately in Barcelona.’ ‘In Barcelona?’ echoed Concha. ‘Yes; where he can take a passage to Cuba, and where he awaits Julia Barenna.’ ‘Ah!’ said Concha, ‘so he also is faithful—because life is not long, my son. That is the only reason. How wise was the great God when He made a human life short! ‘ ‘I have a letter,’ continued Conyngham, ‘from Larralde to the Señorita Barenna.’ ‘So you parted friends in Barcelona—after all—when his knife has been between your shoulders?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘God bless you, my son!’ said the priest, in Latin, with his careless, hurried gesture of the Cross. After they had walked a few paces he spoke again. ‘I shall go to Barcelona with her,’ he said, ‘and marry her to this man. When one has no affairs of one’s own there always remain—for old women and priests—the affairs of one’s neighbour. Tell me—’ he paused and looked fiercely at him under shaggy brows—‘tell me why you came to Spain.’ ‘You want to know who and what I am—before we reach the Calle Mayor?’ said Conyngham. ‘I know what you are, _amigo mio_, better than yourself, perhaps.’ As they walked through the narrow streets Conyngham told his simple history, dwelling more particularly on the circumstances preceding his departure from England, and Concha listened with no further sign of interest than a grimace or a dry smile here and there. ‘The mill gains by going, and not by standing still,’ he said, and added, after a pause, ‘But it is always a mistake to grind another’s wheat for nothing.’ They were now approaching the old house in the Calle Mayor, and Conyngham lapsed into a silence which his companion respected. They passed under the great doorway into the patio, which was quiet and shady at this afternoon hour. The servants, of whom there are a multitude in all great Spanish houses, had apparently retired to the seclusion of their own quarters. One person alone was discernible amid the orange trees and in the neighbourhood of the murmuring fountain. She was asleep in a rocking-chair, with a newspaper on her lap. She preferred the patio to the garden, which was too quiet for one of her temperament. In the patio she found herself better placed to exchange a word with those engaged in the business of the house, to learn, in fact, from the servants the latest gossip, to ask futile questions of them, and to sit in that idleness which will not allow others to be employed. In a word, this was the Señora Barenna, and Concha, seeing her, stood for a moment in hesitation. Then, with a signal to Conyngham, he crept noiselessly across the tessellated pavement to the shadow of the staircase. They passed up the broad steps without sound and without awaking the sleeping lady. In the gallery above, the priest paused and looked down into the courtyard, his grim face twisted in a queer smile. Then, at the woman sitting there—at life and all its illusions, perhaps—he shrugged his shoulders and passed on. In the drawing-room they found Julia, who leapt to her feet and hurried across the floor when she saw Conyngham. She stood looking at him breathlessly, her whole history written in her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, as if he had called her. ‘Yes—what is it? Have you come to tell me—something?’ ‘I have come to give you a letter, señorita,’ he answered, handing her Larralde’s missive. She held out her hand, and never took her eyes from his face. Concha walked to the window—the window whence the Alcalde of Ronda had seen Conyngham hand Julia Barenna another letter. The old priest stood looking down into the garden, where, amid the feathery foliage of the pepper trees and the bamboos, he could perceive the shadow of a black dress. Conyngham also turned away, and thus the two men who held this woman’s happiness in the hollow of their hands stood listening to the crisp rattle of the paper as she tore the envelope and unfolded her lover’s letter. A great happiness and a great sorrow are alike impossible of realisation. We only perceive their extent when their importance has begun to wane. Julia Barenna read the letter through to the end, and it is possible (for women are blind in such matters) failed to perceive the selfishness in every line of it. Then, with the message of happiness in her hand, she returned to the chair she had just quitted, with a vague wonder in her mind, and the very human doubt that accompanies all possession, as to whether the price paid has not been too high. Concha was the first to move. He turned and crossed the room towards Conyngham. ‘I see,’ he said, ‘Estella in the garden.’ And they passed out of the room together, leaving Julia Barenna alone with her thoughts. On the broad stone balcony Concha paused. ‘I will stay here,’ he said. He looked over the balustrade. Señora Barenna was still asleep. ‘Do not awake her,’ he whispered. ‘Let all sleeping things sleep.’ Conyngham passed down the stairs noiselessly, and through the doorway into the garden. ‘And at the end—the Gloria is chanted,’ said Concha, watching him go. The scent of the violets greeted Conyngham as he went forward beneath the trees planted there in the Moslems’ day. The running water murmured sleepily as it hurried in its narrow channel towards the outlet through the grey wall, whence it leapt four hundred feet into the Tajo below. Estella was seated in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, where tables and chairs indicated the Spanish habit of an out-of-door existence. She rose as he came towards her, and met his eyes gravely. A gleam of sun glancing through the leaves fell on her golden hair, half hidden by the mantilla, and showed that she was pale with some fear or desire. ‘Señorita,’ he said, ‘I have brought you the letter.’ He held it out, and she took it, turning over the worn envelope absent-mindedly. ‘I have not read it myself, and am permitted to give it to you on one condition—namely, that you destroy it as soon as you have read it.’ She looked at it again. ‘It contains the lives of many men—their lives and the happiness of those connected with them,’ said Conyngham. ‘That is what you hold in your hand, señorita—as well as my life and happiness.’ She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, and their tenderness was not of earth or of this world at all. Then she tore the envelope and its contents slowly into a hundred pieces, and dropped the fluttering papers into the stream pacing in its marble bed towards the Tajo and the oblivion of the sea. ‘There—I have destroyed the letter,’ she said, with a thoughtful little smile. Then, looking up, she met his eyes. ‘I did not want it. I am glad you gave it to me. It will make a difference to our lives. Though—I never wanted it.’ Then she came slowly towards him. * * * * * Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London	{ "id": "5987" }
1	THE TRUST.	"I brought them here as to a sanctuary." SOUTHEY. Most of us have heard of the sad times in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Englishmen were at war with one another and quiet villages became battlefields. We hear a great deal about King and Parliament, great lords and able generals, Cavaliers and Roundheads, but this story is to help us to think how it must have gone in those times with quiet folk in cottages and farmhouses. There had been peace in England for a great many years, ever since the end of the wars of the Roses. So the towns did not want fortifications to keep out the enemy, and their houses spread out beyond the old walls; and the country houses had windows and doors large and wide open, with no thought of keeping out foes, and farms and cottages were freely spread about everywhere, with their fields round them. The farms were very small, mostly held by men who did all the work themselves with the help of their families. Such a farm belonged to John Kenton of Elmwood. It lay at the head of a long green lane, where the bushes overhead almost touched one another in the summer, and the mud and mire were very deep in winter; but that mattered the less as nothing on wheels went up or down it but the hay or harvest carts, creaking under their load, and drawn by the old mare, with a cow to help her. Beyond lay a few small fields, and then a bit of open ground scattered with gorse and thorn bushes, and much broken by ups and downs. There, one afternoon on a big stone was seated Steadfast Kenton, a boy of fourteen, sturdy, perhaps loutish, with an honest ruddy face under his leathern cap, a coarse smock frock and stout gaiters. He was watching the fifteen sheep and lambs, the old goose and gander and their nine children, the three cows, eight pigs, and the old donkey which got their living there. From the top of the hill, beyond the cleft of the river Avon, he could see the smoke and the church towers of the town of Bristol, and beyond it, the slime of the water of the Bristol Channel; and nearer, on one side, the spire of Elmwood Church looked up, and, on the other, the woods round Elmwood House, and these ran out as it were, lengthening and narrowing into a wooded cleft or gulley, Hermit's Gulley, which broke the side of the hill just below where Steadfast stood, and had a little clear stream running along the bottom. Steadfast's little herd knew the time of day as well as if they all had watches in their pockets, and they never failed to go down and have a drink at the brook before going back to the farmyard. They did not need to be driven, but gathered into the rude steep path that they and their kind had worn in the side of the ravine. Steadfast followed, looking about him to judge how soon the nuts would be ripe, while his little rough stiff-haired dog Toby poked about in search of rabbits or hedgehogs, or the like sport. Steadfast liked that pathway home beside the stream, as boys do love running water. Good stones could be got there, water rats might be chased, there were strawberries on the banks which he gathered and threaded on stalks of grass for his sisters, Patience and Jerusha. They used to come with him and have pleasant games, but it was a long time since Patience had been able to come out, for in the winter, a grievous trouble had come on the family. The good mother had died, leaving a little baby of six weeks old, and Patience, who was only thirteen, had to attend to everything at home, and take care of poor little sickly Benoni with no one to help her but her little seven years old sister. The children's lives had been much less bright since that sad day; and Steadfast seldom had much time for play. He knew he must get home as fast as he could to help Patience in milking the cows, feeding the pigs and poultry, and getting the supper, or some of the other things that his elder brother Jephthah called wench-work and would not do. He could not, however, help looking up at the hole in the side of the steep cliff, where one might climb up to such a delightful cave, in which he and Patience had so often played on hot days. It had been their secret, and a kind of palace to them. They had sat there as king and queen, had paved it with stones from the brook, and had had many plans for the sports they would have there this summer, little thinking that Patience would have been turned into a grave, busy little housewife, instead of a merry, playful child. Toby looked up too, and began to bark. There was a rustling in the bushes below the cave, and Steadfast, at first in dismay to see his secret delight invaded, beheld between the mountain ash boughs and ivy, to his great surprise, a square cap and black cassock tucked up, and then a bit of brown leathern coat, which he knew full well. It was the Vicar, Master Holworth, and his father John Kenton was Churchwarden, so it was no wonder to see him and the Parson together, but what could bring them here--into Steadfast's cave? and with a dark lantern too! They seemed as surprised, perhaps as vexed as he was, at the sight of him, but his father said, "'Tis my lad, Steadfast, I'll answer for him." "And so will I," returned the clergyman. "Is anyone with you, my boy?" "No, your reverence, no one save the beasts." "Then come up here," said his father. "Someone has been playing here, I see." "Patience and I, father, last summer." "No one else?" "No, no one. We put those stones and those sticks when we made a fire there last year, and no one has meddled with them since." "Thou and Patience," said Mr. Holworth thoughtfully. "Not Jephthah nor the little maid?" "No, sir," replied Steadfast, "we would not let them know, because we wanted a place to ourselves." For in truth the quiet ways and little arrangements of these two had often been much disturbed by the rough elder brother who teased and laughed at them, and by the troublesome little sister, who put her fingers into everything. The Vicar and the Churchwarden looked at one another, and John Kenton muttered, "True as steel." "Your father answers for you, my boy," said the Vicar. "So we will e'en let you know what we are about. I was told this morn by a sure hand that the Parliament men, who now hold Bristol Castle, are coming to deal with the village churches even as they have dealt with the minster and with St. Mary's, Redcliffe." "A murrain on them!" muttered Kenton. "I wot that in their ignorance they do it," gently quoted the Vicar. "But we would fain save from their hands the holy Chalice and paten which came down to our Church from the ancient times--and which bearing on them, as they do, the figure of the Crucifixion of our blessed Lord, would assuredly provoke the zeal of the destroyers. Therefore have we placed them in this casket, and your father devised hiding them within this cave, which he thought was unknown to any save himself--" "Yea," said John, "my poor brother Will and I were wont to play there when we herded the cattle on the hill. It was climbing yon ash tree that stands out above that he got the fall that was the death of him at last. I've never gone nigh the place with mine own good will since that day--nor knew the children had done so--but methought 'twas a lonesome place and on mine own land, where we might safest store the holy things till better times come round." "And so I hope they will," said Mr. Holworth. "I hear good news of the King's cause in the north." Then they began to consult where to place the precious casket. They had brought tinder and matches, and Steadfast, who knew the secrets of the cave even better than his father, showed them a little hollow, far back, which would just hold the chest, and being closed in front with a big stone, fast wedged in, was never likely to be discovered readily. [Illustration: The Hiding Of The Casket] "This has been a hiding place already." "Methinks this has once been a chapel," said the clergyman presently, pointing to some rude carvings--one something like a cross, and a large stone that might have served as an altar. "Belike," said Kenton, "there's an old stone pile, a mere hovel, down below, where my grandfather said he remembered an old monk, a hermit, or some such gear--a Papist--as lived in hiding. He did no hurt, and was a man from these parts, so none meddled with him, or gave notice to the Queen's officers, and our folk at the farm sold his baskets at the town, and brought him a barley loaf twice a week till he died, all alone in his hut. Very like he said his mass here." John wondered to find that the minister thought this made the place more suitable. The whole cavern was so low that the two men could hardly stand upright in it, though it ran about twelve yards back. There were white limestone drops like icicles hanging above from the roof; and bats, disturbed by the light, came flying about the heads of their visitors, while streamers of ivy and old man's beard hung over the mouth, and were displaced by the heads of the men. "None is like to find the spot," said John Kenton, as he tried to replace the tangled branches that had been pushed aside. "God grant us happier days for bringing it forth," said the clergyman. All three bared their heads, and Mr. Holworth uttered a few words of prayer and blessing; then let John help him down the steep scramble and descent, and looked up to see whether any sign of the cave could be detected from the edge of the brook. Kenton shook his head reassuringly. "Ah!" said Mr. Holworth, "it minds me that none ever found again the holy Ark of the Covenant that King Josiah and the Prophet Jeremiah hid in a cavern within Mount Pisgah! and our sins be many that have provoked this judgment! Mayhap the boy will be the only one of us who will see these blessed vessels restored to their Altar once more! He may have been sent hither to that very end. Now, look you, Steadfast Kenton--Steadfast thou hast ever been, so far as I have known thee, in nature as well as in name. Give me thy word that thou wilt never give up the secret of yonder cavern to any save a lawfully ordained minister of the church." "No doubt poor old Clerk North will be in distress about the loss," said Kenton. "True, but he had best not be told. His mind is fast going, and he cannot safely be trusted with such a mighty secret." "Patience knows the cavern," murmured Steadfast to his father. "Best have no womenfolk, nor young maids in such a matter," said the Vicar. "My wench takes after her good mother," said John, "and I ever found my secrets were safer in her breast than in mine own. Not that I would have her told without need. But she might take little Rusha there, or make the place known to others an she be not warned." "Steadfast must do as he sees occasion, with your counsel, Master Kenton," said the Vicar. "It is a great trust we place in you, my son, to be as it were in charge of the vessels of the sanctuary, and I would have thy hand and word." "And," said his father, "though he be slower in speech than some, your reverence may trust him." Steadfast gave his brown red hand, and with head bare said, "I promise, after the minister and before God, never to give up that which lies within the cave to any man, save a lawfully ordained minister of the Church."	{ "id": "6006" }
2	THE STRAGGLERS.	"Trust me, I am exceedingly weary." SHAKESPEARE. John Kenton, though a Churchwarden, was, as has been said, a very small farmer, and the homestead was no more than a substantial cottage, built of the greystone of the country, with the upper story projecting a little, and reached by an outside stair of stone. The farm yard, with the cowsheds, barn, and hay stack were close in front, with only a narrow strip of garden between, for there was not much heed paid to flowers, and few kitchen vegetables were grown in those days, only a few potherbs round the door, and a sweet-brier bush by the window. The cows had made their way home of their own accord, and Patience was milking one of them already, while little Rusha held the baby, which was swaddled up as tightly as a mummy, with only his arms free. He stretched them out with a cry of gladness as he saw his father, and Kenton took the little creature tenderly in his arms and held him up, while Steadfast hurried off to fetch the milking stool and begin upon the other cow. "Is Jeph come home?" asked the father, and Rusha answered "No, daddy, though he went ever so long ago, and said he would bring me a cake." Upon this Master Kenton handed little Benoni back to Rusha, not without some sounds of fretfulness from the baby, but the pigs had to be shut up and fed, and the other evening work of the farmyard done; and it was not till all this was over, and Patience had disposed of the milk in the cool cellars, that the father could take him again. Meantime Steadfast had brought up a bucket of water from the spring, and after washing his own hands and face, set out the table with a very clean, though coarse cloth, five brown bowls, three horn spoons and two wooden ones, one drinking horn, a couple of red earthen cups and two small hooped ones of wood, a brown pitcher of small ale, a big barley loaf, and a red crock, lined with yellow glazing, into which Patience presently proceeded to pour from a cauldron, where it had been simmering over the fire, a mess of broth thickened with meal. This does not sound like good living, but the Kentons were fairly well-to-do smock-frock farmers, and though in some houses there might be greater plenty, there was not much more comfort beneath the ranks of the gentry in the country. As for seats, the father's big wooden chair stood by the fire, and there was a long settle, but only stools were used at the table, two being the same that had served the milkers. Just as Rusha, at her father's sign, had uttered a short Grace, there stood in the doorway a tall, stout, well-made lad of seventeen, with a high-crowned wide-brimmed felt hat, a dark jerkin with sleeves, that, like his breeches and gaiters, were of leather, and a belt across his shoulder with a knife stuck in it. "Ha! Jeph," said Kenton, "always in time for meat, whatever else you miss." "I could not help it, father," said Jephthah, "the red coats were at their exercise!" "And thou couldst not get away from the gape-seed, eh! Come, sit down, boy, and have at thy supper." "I wish I was one of them," said Jeph as he sat down. "And thou'dst soon wish thyself back again!" returned his father. "How much did you get for the fowls and eggs?" demanded Patience. Jephthah replied by producing a leathern bag, while Rusha cried out for her cake, and from another pocket came, wrapped in his handkerchief, two or three saffron buns which were greeted with such joy that his father had not the heart to say much about wasting pence, though it appeared that the baker woman had given them as part of her bargain for a couple of dozen of eggs, which Patience declared ought to have brought two pence instead of only three halfpence. Jephthah, however, had far too much news to tell to heed her disappointment as she counted the money. He declared that the price of eggs and butter would go up gallantly, for more soldiers were daily expected to defend Bristol, and he had further to tell of one of the captains preaching in the Minster, and the market people flocking in to hear him. Jeph had been outside, for there was no room within, but he had scrambled upon an old tombstone with a couple of other lads, and through the broken window had seen the gentleman holding forth in his hat and feather, buff coat and crimson scarf, and heard him call on all around to be strong and hew down all their enemies, even dragging the false and treacherous woman and her idols out to the horse gate and there smiting them even to the death. "Who was the false woman?" asked Steadfast. "I wot not! There was something about Aholah, or some such name, but just then a mischievous little jackanapes pulled me down by the leg, and I had to thrash him for it, and by the time I had done, Dick, the butcher's lad, had got my place and I heard no more." Whether the Captain meant Aholah or Athaliah, or alluded to Queen Henrietta Maria, or to the English Church, Jeph's auditors never knew. The baby began to cry, and Patience to feed him with the milk and water that had been warmed at the fire; his father and the boys went out to finish the work for the night, little Rusha running after them. Presently, she gave a cry and darted up to her father "The soldiers! the soldiers!" and in fact three men with steel caps, buff coats, and musquets slung by broad belts were coming into the yard. Kenton took up his little girl in his arms and went forward to meet them, but he soon saw they did not look dangerous, they were dragging along as if very tired and footsore and as if their weapons were a heavy weight. "It's the goodman," said the foremost, a red-faced, good-natured looking fellow more like a hostler than a soldier, "have you seen Captain Lundy's men pass this way?" "Not I!" said Kenton, "we lie out of the high road, you see." "But I saw them, a couple of hours agone, marching into Bristol," said Jephthah coming forward. "There now," said the man, "we did but stop at the sign of the 'Crab' the drinking of a pottle, and to bathe Jack's foot near there, and we have never been able to catch them up again! How far off be Bristol?" "A matter of four mile across the ferry. You may see it from the hill above." He looked stout enough though he gave a heavy sigh of weariness, and the other two, who were mere youths, not much older than Jeph, seemed quite spent, and heard of the additional four miles with dismay. "Heart alive, lads," said their comrade, "ye'll soon be in good quarters, and mayhap the goodman here will give you a drink to carry ye on a bit further for the Cause." "You are welcome to a draught for civility's sake," said Kenton, making a sign to his sons, who ran off to the house, "but I'm a plain man, and know nought about the Cause." "Well, Master," said the straggler, as he leant his back against the barn, and his two companions sat down on the ground in the shelter, "I have heard a lot about the Cause, but all I know is that my Lord of Essex sent to call out five-and-twenty men from our parish, and the squire, he was in a proper rage with being rated to pay ship money, so--as I had fallen out with my master, mine host of the 'Griffin,' more fool I--I went with the young gentleman, and a proper ass I was to do so." "Father said 'twas rank popery railing in the Communion table, when it was so handy to sit on or to put one's hat on," added one of the youths looking up. "So he was willing for me to go, and I thought I'd like to see the world, but I'd fain be at home again." "So would not I," muttered the other lad. "No," said the ex-tapster humorously, "for thou knowst the stocks be gaping for thee, Dick." By this time Jeph and Stead had returned with a jug of small beer, a horn cup, and three hunches of the barley loaf. The men ate and drank, and then the tapster returning hearty thanks, called the others on, observing that if they did not make the best speed, they might miss their billet, and have to sleep in the streets, if not become acquainted with the lash. On then unwillingly they dragged, as if one foot would hardly come after the other. "Poor lads!" said Kenton, as he looked after them, "methinks that's enough to take the taste for soldiering out of thy mouth, son Jeph." "A set of poor-spirited rogues," returned Jeph contemptuously, as he nevertheless sauntered on so as to watch them down the lane. "Be they on the right side or the wrong, father?" asked Steadfast, as he picked up the pitcher and the horn. "They be dead against our parson, lad," returned Kenton, "and he says they be against the Church and the King, though they do take the King's name, it don't look like the right side to be knocking out church windows, eh?" "Nay!" said Steadfast, "but there's them as says the windows be popish idols." "Never you mind 'em, lad, ye don't bow down to the glass, nor worship it. Thy blessed mother would have put it to you better than I can, and she knew the Bible from end to end, but says she 'God would have His worship for glory and for beauty in the old times, why not now?'" John Kenton had an immense reverence for his late wife. She had been far more educated than he, having been born and bred up in the household of one of those gentlemen who held it as their duty to provide for the religious instruction of their servants. She had been serving-woman to the lady, who in widowhood went to reside at Bristol, and there during her marketings, honest John Kenton had won her by his sterling qualities. Puritanism did not mean nonconformity in her days, and in fact everyone who was earnest and scrupulous was apt to be termed a Puritan. Goodwife Kenton was one of those pious and simple souls who drink in whatever is good in their surroundings; and though the chaplain who had taught her in her youth would have differed in controversy with Mr. Holworth, she never discovered their diversity, nor saw more than that Elmwood Church had more decoration than the Castle Chapel. Whatever was done by authority she thought was right, and she found good reason for it in the Bible and Prayer-book her good lady had given her. She had named her children after the prevailing custom of Puritans because she had heard the chaplain object to what he considered unhallowed heathenish names, but she had been heartily glad that they should be taught and catechised by the good vicar. Happily for her, in her country home, she did not live to see the strife brought into her own life. She had taught her children as much as she could. Her husband was willing, but his old mother disapproved of learning in that station of life, and aided and abetted her eldest grandson in his resistance, so that though she had died when he was only eleven or twelve years old, Jephthah could do no more than just make out the meaning of a printed sentence, whereas Steadfast and Patience could both read easily, and did read whatever came in their way, though that was only a broadside ballad now and then besides their mother's Bible and Prayer-book, and one or two little black books. The three eldest had been confirmed, when the Bishop of Bath and Wells had been in the neighbourhood. That was only a fortnight after their mother died, and even Jeph was sad and subdued. Since that sad day when the good mother had blessed them for the last time, there had been little time for anything. Patience had to be the busy little housewife, and what she would have done without Steadfast she could not tell. Jeph would never put a hand to what he called maids' work, but Stead would sweep, or beat the butter, or draw the water, or chop wood, or hold the baby, and was always ready to help her, even though it hindered him from ever going out to fish, or play at base ball, or any of the other sports the village boys loved. His quiet, thoughtful ways had earned his father's trust, though he was much slower of speech and less ready than his elder brother, and looked heavy both in countenance and figure beside Jeph, who was tall, slim, and full of activity and animation. He had often made his mother uneasy by wild talk about going to sea, and by consorting with the sailors at Bristol, which was their nearest town, though on the other side of the Avon, and in a different county. It was there that the Elmwood people did their marketing, often leaving their donkeys hobbled on their own side of the river, being ferried over and carrying the goods themselves the latter part of the way.	{ "id": "6006" }
3	KIRK RAPINE.	"When impious men held sway and wasted Church and shrine." LORD SELBORNE. Patience, in her tight little white cap, sat spinning by the door, rocking the cradle with her foot, while Rusha sometimes built what she called houses with stones, sometimes trotted to look down the lane to see whether father and the lads were coming home from market. Presently she brought word, "Stead is coming. He is leading Whitefoot, but I don't see father and Jeph." Patience jumped up to put her wheel out of the way, and soon she saw that it was only Steadfast leading the old mare with the large crooks or panniers on either side. She ran to meet him, and saw he looked rather pale and dazed. "What is it, Stead? Where's daddy?" "Gone up to Elmwood! They told us in town that some of the soldiers and the folk of that sort were gone out to rabble cur church and our parson, and father is Churchwarden, you know. So he said he must go to see what was doing. And he bade me take Whitefoot home and give you the money," said Steadfast, producing a bag which Patience took to keep for her father. She watched very anxiously, and so did Stead, while relieving Whitefoot of her panniers and giving her a rub down before turning her out to get her supper. It was not long however before Kenton and Jeph both appeared, the one looking sad, the other sulky. "Too late," Jeph muttered, "and father won't let me go to see the sport." "Sport, d'ye call it?" said Kenton. "Aye, Stead, you may well gape at what we have seen--our good parson with his feet tied to his stirrups on a sorry nag, being hauled off to town like a common thief!" "Oh!" broke from the children, and Patience ventured to ask, "But what for, father?" "They best know who did it," said the Churchwarden. "Something they said of a scandalous minister, as though his had not ever been a godly life and preaching. These be strange times, children, and for the life of me, I know not what it all means. How now, Jeph, what art idling there for? There's the waggon to be loaded for to-morrow with the faggots I promised Mistress Lightfoot." Jeph moved away, murmuring something about fetching up the cows, to which his father replied, "That was Steadfast's work, and it was not time yet." In fact Jeph was very curious to know what was going on in the village. If there was any kind of uproar, why should not he have his part in it? It was just like father to hinder him, and he had a great mind to neglect the faggots and go off to the village. He was rather surprised, and a good deal vexed to see his father walking along on the way to the pasture with Steadfast. It was for the sake of saying "Aye, boy, best not go near the sorry sight! They would not let good Master Holworth speak with me; but I saw he meant to warn me to keep aloof lest Tim Green or the like should remember as how I'm Churchwarden." "Did they ask after those things?" inquired Steadfast in a lowered voice. "I can't say. But on your life, lad, not a word of them!" After work was done for the evening, Jeph and Stead were too eager to know what had happened to stay at home. They ran across the bit of moorland to the village street and the grey church, whose odd-shaped steeple stood up among the trees. Already they could see that the great west window was broken, all the glass which bore the picture of the Last Judgment, and the Archangel Michael weighing souls in the balance was gone! "Yes," said Tom Oates, leaping over two or three tombstones to get to them. " 'Twas rare sport, Jeph Kenton. Why were you not there too?" "At Bristol with father," replied Jeph. "Worse luck for you. The red coat shot the big angel right in the eye, and shivered him through, and we did the rest with stones. I sent one that knocked the wing of him right off. You should have seen me, Stead! And old Clerk North was running about crying all the time like a baby. He'll never whack us over the head again!" "What was the good?" said Steadfast. "You never saw better sport," said the boys. And indeed, since, when once begun, destruction and mischief are apt to be only too delightful to boys, they had thoroughly and thoughtlessly delighted in knocking down the things they had been taught to respect. A figure of a knight in a ruff kneeling on a tomb had had its head knocked off, and one of the lads heaved the bits up to throw at the last fragment of glass in the window. "What do you do that for?" asked Stead. " 'Tis worshipping of idols," said a somewhat graver lad. " 'Break down their idols,' the man in the black gown said, 'and burn their graven images in the fire.'" "But we never worshipped them," said Stead. "Pious preacher said so," returned the youth, "and mighty angered was he with the rails." (Jeph and Will were sparring with two fragments of them.) " 'Down with them,' he cried out, so as it would have done your heart good to hear him." "And the parson is gone! There will be no hearing the catechism on Sundays!" cried Ralph Wilkes, making a leap over the broken font. "Good luck for you, Ralph," cried the others. "You, that never could tell how many commandments there be." "Put on your hat, Stead," called out another lad. "We've done with all that now, and the parson is gone to prison for it." "No, no," shouted Tom Oates, "'twas for making away with the Communion things." "I heard the red coat say they had a warrant against scandalous ministers," declared Ralph Wilkes. "I heard the man with the pen and ink-horn ask for the popish vessels, as he called them, and not a word would the parson say," said Oates. "I'd take my oath he has hid them somewheres," replied Jack Beard, an ill-looking lad. "What a windfall they would be for him as found them!" observed Wilkes. "I'd like to look over the parsonage house," said Jeph. "No use. Old dame housekeeper has locked herself in, as savage as a bear with a sore head." "Besides, they did turn over all the parson's things and made a bonfire of all his popish books. The little ones be dancing their rounds about it still!" Stead had heard quite enough to make him very uneasy, and wish to get home with his tidings to his father. There was a girl standing by with a baby in her arms, and she asked: "What will they do to our minister?" "Put him in Little Ease for a scandalous minister," was the ready answer. "But he _is_ a good man. He gave us all broth when father had the fever!" "And who will give granny and me our Sunday dinner?" said a little boy. "But there'll be no more catechising. Hurrah!" cried Oates, "hurrah!" " 'Tis rank superstition, said the red coat, Hurrah!" and up went their caps. "Halloa, Stead Kenton, not a word to say?" "He likes being catechised, standing as he does like a stuck pig, and answering never a word," cried Jack. "I do," said Steadfast, "and why not?" "Parson's darling! Parson's darling!" shouted the boys. "A malignant! Off with him." They had begun to hustle him, when Jeph threw himself between and cried: "Hit Steadfast, and you must hit me first." "A match, a match!" they cried, "Jeph and Jack." Stead had no fears about Jeph conquering, but while the others stood round to watch the boxing, he slipped away, with his heart perplexed and sad. He had loved his minister, and he never guessed how much he cared for his church till he saw it lying desolate, and these rude lads rejoicing in the havoc; while the words rang in his ears, "And now they break down all the carved work thereof with axes and with hammers."	{ "id": "6006" }
4	THE GOOD CAUSE.	"And their Psalter mourneth with them O'er the carvings and the grace, Which axe and hammer ruin In the fair and holy place." Bp. CLEVELAND COXE. When next John Kenton went into Bristol to market he tried to discover what had become of Mr. Holworth, but could only make out something about his being sent up to London with others of his sort to answer for being Baal worshippers! Which, as he observed, he could not understand. There seemed likely to be no service at the church on Sunday, but John thought himself bound to walk thither with his sons to see what was going on, and they heard such a noise that they looked at each other in amazement. It was not preaching, but shouting, laughing, screaming, stamping, and running. The rude village children were playing at hide-and-seek, and Jenny Oates was hidden in the pulpit. But at Master Kenton's loud "How now, youngsters" they all were frightened, some ran out headlong, some sneaked out at the little north door, and the place was quiet, but in sad confusion and desolation, the altar-table overthrown, the glass of the windows lying in fragments on the pavement, the benches kicked over. Kenton, with his boys' help, put what he could straight again, and then somewhat to their surprise knelt down with bowed head, and said a prayer, for they saw his lips moving. Then he locked up the church doors, for the keys had been left in them, and slowly and sadly went away. "Thy mother would be sad to see this work," he said to Steadfast, as he stopped by her grave. "They say 'tis done for religion's sake, but I know not what to make of it." The old Parish Clerk, North, had had a stroke the night after the plunder of the church, and lay a-dying and insensible. His wife gave his keys to Master Kenton, and on the following Sunday there was a hue-and-cry for them, and Oates the father, the cobbler, a meddling fellow, came down with a whole rabble of boys after him to the farm to demand them. "A preacher had come out from Bristol," he said, "a captain in the army, and he was calling for the keys to get into the church and give them a godly discourse. It would be the worse for Master Kenton if he did not give them up." John had just sat down in the porch in his clean Sunday smock with the baby on his knee, and Rusha clinging about him waiting till Stead had cleaned himself up, and was ready to read to them from the mother's books. When he understood Gates' message he slowly said, "I be in charge of the keys for this here parish." "Come, come, Master Kenton, this wont do, give 'un up or you'll be made to. Times are changed, and we don't want no parsons nor churchwardens now, nor no such popery!" "I'm accountable to the vestry for the church," gravely said Kenton. "I will come and see what is doing, and open the church if so be as the parish require it." "Don't you see! The parish does--" "I don't call you the parish, Master Gates, nor them boys neither," said Kenton, getting up however, and placing the little one in the cradle, as he called out to Patience to keep back the dinner till his return. The two boys and Rusha followed him to see what would happen. Long before they reached the churchyard they heard the sound of a powerful voice, and presently they could see all the men and women of the parish as it seemed, gathered about the lych gate, where, on the large stone on which coffins were wont to be rested, stood a tall thin man, in a heavy broad-brimmed hat, large bands, crimson scarf, and buff coat, who was in fiery and eager words calling on all those around to awaken from the sleep of sloth and sin, break their bonds and fight for freedom and truth. He waved his long sword as he spoke and dared the armies of Satan to come on, and it was hard to tell which he really meant, the forces of sin, or the armies of men whom he believed to be fighting on the wrong side. Someone told him that the keys of the church were brought, but he heeded not the interruption, except to thunder forth "What care I for your steeple house! The Church of God is in the souls of the faithful. Is it not written 'The kingdom of heaven is within you?' What, can ye not worship save between four walls?" And then he went on with the utmost fervour and vehemence, calling on all around to set themselves free from the chains that held them and to strive even to the death. He meant all he said. He really believed he was teaching the only way of righteousness, and so his words had a force that went home to people's hearts as earnestness always does, and Jephthah, with tears in his eyes, began begging and praying his father to let him go and fight for the good Cause. "Aye, aye," said Kenton, "against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and welcome, my son." "Then I'll go and enlist under Captain Venn," cried Jeph. "Not so fast, my lad. What I gave you leave for was to fight with the devil." "You said the good Cause!" "And can you tell me which be the good Cause?" "Why, this here, of course. Did not you hear the Captain's good words, and see his long sword, and didn't they give five marks for Croppie's bull calf?" "Fine words butter no parsnips," slowly responded Kenton. "But," put in Steadfast, "butter is risen twopence the pound." "Very like," said Kenton, "but how can that be the good Cause that strips the Churches and claps godly ministers into jail?" Jephthah thought he had an answer, but fathers in those times did not permit themselves to be argued with. Prices began going up still higher, for the Cavaliers were reported to be on their way to besiege Bristol, and the garrison wanted all the provisions they could lay in, and paid well for them. When Kenton and his boys went down to market, they found the old walls being strengthened with earth and stones, and sentries watching at the gates, but as they brought in provisions, and were by this time well known, no difficulty was made about admitting them. One day, however, as they were returning, they saw a cloud of dust in the distance, and heard the sounds of drums and fifes playing a joyous tune. Kenton drew the old mare behind the bank of a high hedge, and the boys watched eagerly through the hawthorns. Presently they saw the Royal Standard of England, though indeed that did not prove much, for both sides used it alike, but there were many lesser banners and pennons of lords and knights, waving on the breeze, and as the Kentons peeped down into the lane below they saw plumed hats, and shining corslets, and silken scarves, and handsome horses, whose jingling accoutrements chimed in with the tramp of their hoofs, and the notes of the music in front, while cheerful voices and laughter could be heard all around. "Oh, father! these be gallant fellows," exclaimed Jephthah. "Will you let me go with these?" Kenton laughed a little to himself. "Which is the good Cause, eh, son Jeph?" He was, however, not at all easy about the state of things. "There is like to be fighting," he said to Steadfast, as they were busy together getting hay into the stable, "and that makes trouble even for quiet folks that only want to be let alone. Now, look you here," and he pulled out a canvas bag from the corner of the bin. "This has got pretty tolerably weighty of late, and I doubt me if this be the safest place for it." Stead opened his eyes. The family all knew that the stable was used as the deposit for money, though none of the young folks had been allowed to know exactly where it was kept. There were no banks in those days, and careful people had no choice but either to hoard and hide, or to lend their money to someone in business. The farmer poured out a heap of the money, all silver and copper, but he did not dare to wait to count it lest he should be interrupted. He tied up one handful, chiefly of pence, in the same bag, and put the rest into a bit of old sacking, saying, "You can get to the brook side, to the place you wot of, better than I can, Stead. Take you this with you and put it along with the other things, and then you will have something to fall back on in case of need. We'll put the rest back where it was before, for it may come handy." So Steadfast, much gratified, as well he might be, at the confidence bestowed on him by his father, took the bag with him under his smock when he went out with the cows, and bestowed it in a cranny not far from that in which that more precious trust resided.	{ "id": "6006" }
5	DESOLATION.	"They shot him dead at the Nine Stonerig, Beside the headless Cross; And they left him lying in his blood, Upon the moor and moss." SURTEES. More and more soldiers might be seen coming down the roads towards the town, not by any means always looking as gay as that first troop. Some of the feathers were as draggled as the old cock's tail after a thunderstorm, some reduced even to the quill, the coats looked threadbare, the scarves stained and frayed, the horses lean and bony. There was no getting into the town now, and the growling thunder of a cannon might now and then be heard. Jeph would have liked to spend all his time on the hill-side where he could see the tents round the town, and watch bodies of troops come out, looking as small as toy soldiers, and see the clouds of smoke, sometimes the flashes, a moment or two before the report. He longed to go down and see the camp, taking a load of butter and eggs, but the neighbours told his father that these troops were bad paymasters, and that there were idle fellows lurking about who might take his wares without so much as asking the price. However, Jeph grew suddenly eager to herd the cattle, because thus he had the best chance of watching the long lines of soldiers drawn out from the camp, and seeing the smoke of the guns, whose sound made poor Patience stay and tremble at home, and hardly like to have her father out of her sight. There was worse coming. Jeph had been warned to keep his cattle well out of sight from any of the roads, but when he could see the troops moving about he could not recollect anything else, and one afternoon Croppie strayed into the lane where the grass grew thick and rank, and the others followed her. Jeph had turned her back and was close to the farmstead when he heard shouts and the clattering of trappings. Half-a-dozen lean, hungry-looking troopers were clanking down the lane, and one called out, "Ha! good luck! Just what we want! Beef and forage. Turn about, young bumpkin, I say. Drive your cattle into camp. For the King's service." "They are father's," sturdily replied Jeph, and called aloud for "Father." He was answered with a rude shout of derision, and poor Croppie was pricked with the sword's point to turn her away. Jeph was wild with passion, and struck back the sword with his stick so unexpectedly that it flew out of the trooper's hand. Of course, more than one stout man instantly seized the boy, amid howls of rage; and one heavy blow had fallen on him, when Kenton dashed forward, thrusting himself between his son, and the uplifted arm, and had begun to speak, when, with the words "You will, you rebel dog?" a pistol shot was fired. Jeph saw his father fall, but felt the grasp upon himself relax, and heard a voice shouting, "How now, my men, what's this?" "He resisted the King's requisition, your Grace," said one of the troopers, as a handsome lad galloped up. "King's requisition! Your own robbery. What have you done to the poor man, you Schelm? See here, Rupert," he added, as another young man rode hastily up. "Rascals! How often am I to tell you that this is not to be made a place for your plunder and slaughter," thundered the new comer, rising in his stirrups, and striking at the troopers with the flat of his sword, so that they fell back with growls about "soldiers must live," and "curs of peasants." The younger brother had leapt from his horse, and was trying to help Jephthah raise poor Kenton's head, but it fell back helplessly, deaf to the screams of "Father, father," with which Patience and Rusha had darted out, as a cloud of smoke began to rise from the straw yard. Poor children, they screamed again at what was before them. Rusha ran wildly away at sight of the soldiers, but Patience, with the baby in her arms, came up. She did not see her father at first, and only cried aloud to the gentlemen. "O sir, don't let them do it. If they take our cows, the babe will die. He has no mother!" "They shall not, the villains! Brother, can nothing be done?" cried the youth, with a face of grief and horror. And then there was a great confusion. The two young officers were vehemently angry at sight of the fire, and shouted fierce orders to the guard of soldiers who had accompanied them to endeavour to extinguish it, themselves doing their best, and making the men release Steadfast, whom they had seized upon as he was trying to trample out the flame, kindled by a match from one of the soldiers who had scattered themselves about the yard during the struggle with Jephthah. But either the fire was too strong, or the men did not exert themselves; it was soon plain that the house could not be saved, and the elder remounted, saying in German, "'Tis of no use, Maurice, we must not linger here." "And can nothing be done?" again asked Prince Maurice. "This is as bad as in Germany itself." "You are new to the trade, Maurice. You will see many such sights, I fear, ere we have done; though I hoped the English nature was more kindly." Then using the word of command, sending his aides-de-camp, and with much shouting and calling, Prince Rupert got the troop together again, very sulky at being baulked of their plunder. They were all made to go out of the farm yard, and ride away before him, and then the two princes halted where the poor children, scarce knowing that their home was burning behind them, were gathered round their father, Patience stroking his face, Steadfast chafing his hands, Jephthah standing with folded arms, and a terrible look of grief and wrath on his face. "Is there no hope?" asked Prince Maurice, sorrowfully. "He is dead. That's all," muttered Jeph between his clenched teeth. "Mark," said Prince Rupert, "this mischance is by no command of the King or mine. The fellow shall be brought to justice if you can swear to him." "I would have hindered it, if I could," said the other prince, in much slower, and more imperfect English. "It grieves me much. My purse has little, but here it is." He dropped it on the ground while setting spurs to his horse to follow his brother. And thus the poor children were left at first in a sort of numb dismay after the shock, not even feeling that a heavy shower had begun to fall, till the baby, whom Patience had laid on the grass, set up a shriek. Then she snatched him up, and burst into a bitter cry herself--wailing "father was dead, and he would die," in broken words. Steadfast then laid a hand on her, and said "He won't die, Patience, I see Croppie there, I'll get some milk. Take him." There were only smoking walls, but the fire was burning down under the rain, and had not touched the stable, the wind being the other way. "Take him there," the boy said. "But father--we can't leave him." Without more words Jephthah and Steadfast took the still form between them and bore it into the stable, the baby screaming with hunger all the time, so that Jephthah hotly said-- "Stop that! I can't bear it." Steadfast then said he would milk the cow if Jeph would run to the next cottage and get help. People would come when they knew the soldiers were gone. There was nothing but Steadfast's leathern cap to hold the milk, and he felt as if his fingers had no strength to draw it; but when he had brought his sister enough to quiet little Ben, she recollected Rusha, and besought him to find her. She could hardly sit still and feed the little one while she heard his voice shouting in vain for the child, and all the time she was starting with the fancy that she saw her father move, or heard a rustling in the straw where her brothers had laid him. And when little Ben was satisfied, she was almost rent asunder between her unwillingness to leave unwatched all that was left of her father, still with that vain hopeless hope that he might revive, all could not have been over in such a moment, and her terrible anxiety about her little sister. Could she have run back into the burning house? Or could those dreadful soldiers have killed her too? Steadfast presently came back, having found some of the startled cattle and driven them in, but no Rusha. Patience was sure she could find her, and giving the baby to Steadfast ran out in the rain and smouldering smoke calling her; all in vain. Then she heard voices and feet, and in a fresh fright was about to turn again, when she knew Jephthah's call. He had the child in his arms. He had been coming back from the village with some neighbours, when they saw the poor little thing, crouched like a hare in her form under a bush. No sooner did she hear them, than like a hare, she started up to run away; but stumbling over the root of a tree, she fell and lay, too much frightened even to scream till her brother picked her up. Kind motherly arms were about the poor girls. Old Goody Grace, who had been with them through their mother's illness, had hobbled up on hearing the terrible news. She looked like a witch, with a tall hat, short cloak, and nose and chin nearly meeting, but all Elmwood loved and trusted her, and the feeling of utter terror and helplessness almost vanished when she kissed and grieved over the orphans, and took the direction of things. She straightened and composed poor John Kenton's limbs, and gave what comfort she could by assuring the children that the passage must have been well nigh without pain. "And if ever there was a good man fit to be taken suddenly, it was he," she added. "He be in a happier place than this has been to him since your good mother was took." Several of the men had accompanied her, and after some consultation, it was decided that the burial had better take place that very night, even though there was no time to make a coffin. "Many an honest man will be in that same case," said Harry Blane, the smith, "if they come to blows down there." "And He to Whom he is gone will not ask whether he lies in a coffin, or has the prayers said over him," added Goody, "though 'tis pity on him too, for he always was a man for churches and parsons and prayers." "Vain husks, said the pious captain," put in Oates. "Well," said Harry Blane, "those could hardly be vain husks that made John Kenton what he was. Would that the good old times were back again; when a sackless man could not be shot down at his own door for nothing at all." Reverently and carefully John Kenton's body was borne to the churchyard, where he was laid in the grave beside his much loved wife. No knell was rung: Elmwood, lying far away over the hill side in the narrow wooded valley with the river between it and the camp, had not yet been visited by any of the Royalist army, but a midnight toll might have attracted the attention of some of the lawless stragglers. Nor did anyone feel capable of uttering a prayer aloud, and thus the only sound at that strange sad funeral was the low boom of a midnight gun fired in the beleaguered city. Then Patience with Rusha and the baby were taken home by kind old Goody Grace, while the smith called the two lads into his house.	{ "id": "6006" }
6	LEFT TO THEMSELVES.	"One look he cast upon the bier, Dashed from his eye the gathering tear, Then, like the high bred colt when freed First he essays his fire and speed, He vanished---" SCOTT. Steadfast was worn and wearied out with grief and slept heavily, knowing at first that his brother was tossing about a good deal, but soon losing all perception, and not waking till on that summer morning the sun had made some progress in the sky. Then he came to the sad recollection of the last dreadful day, and knew that he was lying on Master Blane's kitchen floor. He picked himself up, and at the same moment heard Jephthah calling him from the outside. "Stead," he said, "I am going!" "Going!" said poor Stead, half asleep. "Yes. I shall never rest till I have had a shot at those barbarous German princes and the rest of the villains. My father's blood cries to me from the ground for vengeance." "Would father have said like that?" said the boy, bewildered, but conscious of something defective, though these were Bible words. "That's not the point! Captain Venn called every man to take the sword and hew down the wicked, and slay the ungodly and the murderers. I will!" cried Jeph, "none shall withhold me." He had caught more phrases from these fiery preachers than he himself knew, and they broke forth in this time of excitement. "But, Jeph, what is to become of us? The girls, and the little one! You are the only one of us who can do a man's work." "I could not keep you together!" said Jeph. "Our house burnt by those accursed sons of Belial, all broken up, and only a lubber like you to help! No, Goody Grace or some one will take in the girls for what's left of the stock, and you can soon find a place--a strong fellow like you; Master Blane might take you and make a smith of you, if you be not too slow and clumsy." "But Jeph--" "Withhold me not. Is it not written--" "I wish you would not say is it not written," broke in Stead, "I know it is, but you don't say it right." "Because you are yet in darkness," said Jeph, contemptuously. "Hold your tongue. I must be off at once. Market folk can get into the town by the low lane out there, away from the camp of the spoilers, early in the morning, and I must hasten to enlist under Captain Venn. No, don't call the wenches, they would but strive to daunt my spirit in the holy work of vengeance on the bloodthirsty, and I can't abide tears and whining. See here, I found this in the corn bin. I'm poor father's heir. You won't want money, and I shall; so I shall take it, but I'll come back and make all your fortunes when I am a captain or a colonel. I wonder this is not more. We got a heap of late. Maybe father hid it somewhere else, but 'tis no use seeking now. If you light upon it you are welcome to do what you will with it. Fare thee well, Steadfast. Do the best you can for the wenches, but a call is laid on me! I have vowed to avenge the blood that was shed." He strode off into the steep woodland path that clothed the hill side, and Steadfast looked after him, and felt more utterly deserted than before. Then he looked up to the sky, and tried to remember what was the promise to the fatherless children. That made him wonder whether the Bible and Prayer-book had been burnt, and then his morning's duty of providing milk for the little ones' breakfast pressed upon him. He took up a pail of Mrs. Blane's which he thought he might borrow and went off in search of the cows. So, murmuring the Lord's Prayer as he walked, and making the resolution not to be dragged away from his trust in the cavern, nor to forsake his little sister--he heard the lowing of the cows as he went over the hill, and found them standing at the gate of the fold yard, waiting to be eased of their milk. Poor creatures, they seemed so glad to welcome him that it was the first thing that brought tears to his eyes, and they came with such a rush that he had much ado to keep them from dropping into the pail as he leant his head against Croppie's ruddy side. There was a little smouldering smoke; but the rain had checked the fire, and though the roof of the house was gone and it looked frightfully dreary and wretched, the walls were still standing and the pigs were grunting about the place. However, Steadfast did not stop to see what was left within, as he knew Ben would be crying for food, but he carried his foaming pail back to Goody Grace's as fast as he could, after turning out the cows on the common, not even stopping to count the sheep that were straggling about. His sisters were watching anxiously from the door of Goody Grace's hovel, and eagerly cried out "Where's Jeph?" Then he had to tell them that Jeph was gone for a soldier, to have his revenge for his father's death. "Jeph gone too!" said poor Patience, looking pale. "Oh, what shall we ever do?" "He did not think of that, I'll warrant, the selfish fellow," said Goody Grace. "That's the way with lads, nought but themselves." "It was because of what they did to poor father," replied Stead. "And if he, or the folks he is gone to, call that the Christian religion, 'tis more than I do!" rejoined the old woman. "I wish I had met him, I'd have given him a bit of my mind about going off to his revenge, as he calls it, without ever a thought what was to become of his own flesh and blood here." "He did say I might go to service (not that I shall), and that some one would take you in for the cattle's sake." "O don't do that, Stead," cried Patience, "don't let us part!" He had only just time to answer, "No such thing," for people were coming about them by this time, one after another emerging from the cottages that stood around the village green. The women were all hotly angry with Jeph for going off and leaving his young brothers and sisters to shift for themselves. "He was ever an idle fellow," said one, "always running after the soldiers and only wanting an excuse." "Best thing he could do for himself or them," growled old Green. "Eh! What, Gaffer Green! To go off without a word or saying by your leave to his poor little sister before his good father be cold in his grave," exclaimed a whole clamour of voices. "Belike he knew what a clack of women's tongues there would be, and would fain be out of it," replied the old man shrewdly. It was a clamour that oppressed poor Patience and made her feel sick with sorrow and noise. Everybody meant to be very kind and pitiful, but there was a great deal too much of it, and they felt quite bewildered by the offers made them. Farmer Mill's wife, of Elmwood Cross, two miles off, was reported by her sister to want a stout girl to help her, but there was no chance of her taking Rusha or the baby as well as Patience. Goody Grace could not undertake the care of Ben unless she could have Patience, because she was so often called away from home, nor could she support them without the cows. Smith Blane might have taken Stead, but his wife would not hear of being troubled with Rusha. And Dame Oates might endure Rusha for the sake of a useful girl like Patience, but certainly not the baby. It was an utter Babel and confusion, and in the midst of it all, Patience crept up to her brother who stood all the time like a stock, and said "Oh! Stead, I cannot give up Ben to anyone. Cannot we all keep together?" "Hush, Patty! That's what I mean to do, if you will stand by me," he whispered, "wait till all the clack is over." And there he waited with Patience by his side while the parish seemed to be endlessly striving over them. If one woman seemed about to make a proposal, half-a-dozen more fell on her and vowed that the poor orphans would be starved and overworked; till she turned on the foremost with "And hadn't your poor prentice lad to go before the justices to shew the weals on his back?" "Aye, Joan Stubbs, and what are you speaking up for but to get the poor children's sheep? Hey, you now, Stead Kenton--Lack-a-day, where be they?" For while the dispute was at its loudest and hottest, Stead had taken Rusha by the hand, made a sign to Patience, and the four deserted children had quietly gone away together into the copsewood that led to the little glen where the brook ran, and where was the cave that Steadfast looked on as his special charge. Rusha, frightened by the loud voices and angry gestures, had begun to cry, and beg she might not be given to anyone, but stay with her Patty and Stead. "And so you shall, my pretty," said Steadfast, sitting down on the stump of a tree, and taking her on his knee, while Toby nuzzled up to them. "Then you think we can go on keeping ourselves, and not letting them part us," said Patience, earnestly. "If I have done the house work all this time, and we have the fields, and all the beasts. We have only lost the house, and I could never bear to live there again," she added, with a shudder. "No," said Steadfast, "it is too near the road while these savage fellows are about. Besides--" and there he checked himself and added, "I'll tell you, Patty. Do you remember the old stone cot down there in the wood?" "Where the old hermit lived in the blind Popish times?" "Aye. We'll live there. No soldiers will ever find us out there, Patty." "Oh! oh! that is good," said Patience. "We shall like that, shan't we, Rusha?" "And," added Steadfast, "there is an old cowshed against the rock down there, where we could harbour the beasts, for 'tis them that the soldiers are most after." "Let us go down to it at once," cried the girl, joyfully. But Steadfast thought it would be wiser to go first to the ruins of their home; before, as he said, anyone else did so, to see what could be saved therefrom. Patience shrank from the spectacle, and Rusha hung upon her, saying the soldiers would be there, and beginning to cry. At that moment, however, Tom Gates' voice came near shouting for "Stead! Stead Kenton!" "Come on, Stead. You'll be prentice-lad to Dick Stiggins the tailor, if so be you bring Whitefoot and the geese for your fee; and Goodman Bold will have the big wench; and Goody Grace will make shift with the little ones, provided she has the kine!" "We don't mean to be beholden to none of them," said Steadfast, sturdily, with his hands in his pockets. "We mean to keep what belongs to us, and work for ourselves." "And God will help us," Patience added softly. "Ho, ho!" cried Tom, and proud of having found them, he ran before them back to the village green, and roared out, "Here they be! And they say as how they don't want none of you, but will keep themselves. Ha! ha!" Anyone who saw those four young orphans would not have thought their trying to keep themselves a laughing matter; and the village folk, who had been just before so unwilling to undertake them, now began scolding and blaming them for their folly and ingratitude. Nothing indeed makes people so angry as when a kindness which has cost them a great effort turns out not to be wanted. "Look for nothing from us," cried Dame Bold. "I'd have made a good housewife of you, you ungrateful hussy, and now you may thank yourself, if you come to begging, I shall have nothing for you." "Beggary and rags," repeated the tailor. "Aye, aye; 'tis all very fine strolling about after the sheep with your hands in your pockets in summer weather, but you'll sing another song in winter time, and be sorry you did not know when you had a good offer." "The babe will die as sure as 'tis born," added Jean Oates. "If they be not all slain by the mad Prince's troopers up in that place by the roadside," said another. Blacksmith Blane and Goody Grace were in the meantime asking the children what they meant to do, and Stead told them in a few words. Goody Grace shook her head over little Ben, but Blane declared that after all it might be the best thing they could do to keep their land and beasts together. Ten to one that foolish lad Jephthah would come back with his tail between his legs, and though it would serve him right, what would they do if all were broken up? Then he slapped Stead on the back, called him a sensible, steady lad, and promised always to be his friend. Moreover he gave up his morning's work to come with the children to their homestead, and see what could be saved. It was a real kindness, not only because his protection made Patience much less afraid to go near the place, and his strong arm would be a great help to them, but because he was parish constable and had authority to drive away the rough lads whom they found already hanging about the ruins, and who had frightened Patience's poor cat up into the ash tree. The boys and two curs were dancing round the tree, and one boy was stripping off his smock to climb up and throw poor pussy down among them when Master Blane's angry shout and flourished staff put them all to flight, and Patience and Rusha began to coax the cat to come down to them. Hunting her had had one good effect, it had occupied the boys and prevented them from carrying anything off. The stable was safe. What had been burnt was the hay rick, whence the flames had climbed to the house. The roof had fallen in, and the walls and chimney stood up blackened and dismal, but there was a good deal of stone about the house, the roof was of shingle, and the heavy fall, together with the pouring rain, had done much to choke the fire, so that when Blane began to throw aside the charred bits of beams and of the upper floor, more proved to be unburnt, or at least only singed, than could have been expected. The great black iron pot still hung in the chimney with the very meal and kail broth that Patience had been boiling in it, and Rusha's little stool stood by the hearth. Then the great chest, or ark as Patience called it, where all the Sunday clothes were kept, had been crushed in and the upper things singed, but all below was safe. The beds and bedding were gone; but then the best bed had been only a box in the wall with an open side, and the others only chaff or straw stuffed into a sack. Patience's crocks, trenchers, and cups were gone too, all except one horn mug; but two knives and some spoons were extracted from the ashes. Furniture was much more scanty everywhere than now. There was not much to lose, and of that they had lost less than they had feared. "And see here, Stead," said Patience joyfully holding up a lesser box kept within the other. It contained her mother's Bible and Prayer-book. The covers were turned up, a little warped by the heat, and some of the corners of the leaves were browned, but otherwise they were unhurt. "I was in hopes 'twas the money box," said Blane. "Jeph has got the bag," said Patience. "More shame for him," growled their friend. Steadfast did not think it necessary to say that was not all the hoard. Another thing about which Patience was very anxious was the meal chest. With much difficulty they reached it. It had been broken in by the fall of the roof, and some of the contents were scattered, but enough was gathered up in a pail fetched from the stable to last for some little time. There were some eggs likewise in the nests, and altogether Goodman Blane allowed that, if the young Kentons could take care of themselves, and keep things together, they had decided for the best; if they could, that was to say. And he helped them to carry their heavier things to the glen. He wanted to see if it were fit for their habitation, but Steadfast was almost sorry to show anyone the way, in spite of his trust and gratitude to the blacksmith. However, of course, it was not possible to keep this strange hiding-place a secret, so he led the way by the path the cattle had trodden out through the brushwood to the open space where they drank, and where stood the hermit's hut, a dreary looking den built of big stones, and with rough slates covering it. There was a kind of hole for the doorway, and another for the smoke to get out at. Blane whistled with dismay at the sight of it, and told Stead he could not take the children to such a place. "We will get it better," said Stead. "That we will," returned Patience, who felt anything better than being separated from her brother. "It is weather-tight," added Stead, "and when it is cleaned out you will see!" "And the soldiers will never find it," added Patience. "There is something in that," said Blane. "But at any rate, though it be summer, you can never sleep there to-night." "The girls cannot," said Stead, "but I shall, to look after things." These were long days, and by the evening many of the remnants of household stuff had been brought, the cows and Whitefoot had been tied up in their dilapidated shed, with all the hay Stead could gather together to make them feel at home. There was a hollow under the rock where he hoped to keep the pigs, but neither they nor the sheep could be brought in at present. They must take their chance, the sheep on the moor, the pigs grubbing about the ruins of the farmyard. The soldiers must be too busy for marauding, to judge by the constant firing that had gone on all day, the sharp rattle of the musquets, and now and then the grave roll of a cannon. Stead had been too busy to attend, but half the village had been watching from the height, which accounted perhaps for the move from the farm having been so uninterrupted after the first. It was not yet dark, when, tired out by his day's hard work, Stead sat himself down at the opening of his hut with Toby by his side. The evening gold of the sky could hardly be seen through the hazel and mountain-ash bushes that clothed the steep opposite bank of the glen and gave him a feeling of security. The brook rippled along below, plainly to be heard since all other sounds had ceased except the purring of a night-jar and the cows chewing their cud. There was a little green glade of short grass sloping down to the stream from the hut where the rabbits were at play, but on each side the trees and brushwood were thick, with only a small path through, much overgrown, and behind the rock rose like a wall, overhung with ivy and traveller's joy. Only one who knew the place could have found the shed among the thicket where the cows were fastened, far less the cavern half-way up the side of the rock where lay the treasures for which Steadfast was a watchman. He thought for a moment of seeing if all were safe, but then decided, like a wise boy, that to disturb the creepers, and wear a path to the place, was the worst thing he could do if he wished for concealment. He had had his supper at the village, and had no more to do, and after the long day of going to and fro, even Toby was too much tired to worry the rabbits, though he had had no heavy weights to carry. Perhaps, indeed, the poor dog had no spirits to interfere with their sports, as they sat upright, jumped over one another, and flashed their little white tails. He missed his old master, and knew perfectly well that his young master was in trouble and distress, as he crept close up to the boy's breast, and looked up in his face. Stead's hand patted the rough, wiry hair, and there was a sort of comfort in the creature's love. But how hard it was to believe that only yesterday he had a father and a home, and that now his elder brother was gone, and he had the great charge on him of being the mainstay of the three younger ones, as well as of protecting that treasure in the cavern which his father had so solemnly entrusted to him. The boy knelt down to say his prayers, and as he did so, all alone in the darkening wood, the words "Father of the fatherless, Helper of the helpless," came to his aid.	{ "id": "6006" }
7	THE HERMIT'S GULLEY.	"O Bessie Bell and Mary Grey, They were twa bonnie lasses-- They digged a bower on yonder brae, And theek'd it o'er wi' rashes." BALLAD. Steadfast slept soundly on the straw with Toby curled up by his side till the morning light was finding its way in through all the chinks of his rude little hovel. When he had gathered his recollections he knew how much there was to be done. He sprang to his feet, showing himself still his good mother's own boy by kneeling down to his short prayer, then taking off the clothes in which he had slept, and giving himself a good bath in the pool under the bush of wax-berried guelder rose, and as good a wash as he could without soap. Then he milked the cows, for happily his own buckets had been at the stable and thus were safe. He had just released Croppie and seen her begin her breakfast on the grass, when Patience in her little red hood came tripping through the glen with a broom over her shoulder, and without the other children. Goody Grace had undertaken to keep them for the day, whilst Patience worked with her brother, and had further lent her the broom till she could make another, for all the country brooms of that time were home-made with the heather and the birch. She had likewise brought a barley cake, on which and on the milk the pair made their breakfast, Goody providing for the little ones. "We must use it up," said Patience, "for we have got no churn." "And we could not get into the town to sell the butter if we had," returned her brother. "We had better take it up to some one in the village who might give us something for it, bread or cheese maybe." "I would like to make my own butter," sighed Patience, whose mother's cleanly habits had made her famous for it. "So you shall some day, Patty," said her brother, "but there's no getting into Bristol to buy one or to sell butter now. Hark! they are beginning again," as the growl of a heavy piece of cannon shook the ground. "I wonder where our Jeph is," said the little girl sadly. "How could he like to go among all those cruel fighting men? You won't go, Stead?" "No, indeed, I have got something else to do." The children were hard at work all the time. They cleared out the inside of their hovel, which had a floor of what was called lime ash, trodden hard, and not much cracked. Probably other hermits in earlier times had made the place habitable before the expelled monk whom the Kentons' great-grandfather recollected; for the cell, though rude, was wonderfully strong, and the stone walls were very stout and thick, after the fashion of the middle ages. There was a large flat stone to serve as a hearth, and an opening at the top for smoke with a couple of big slaty stones bent towards one another over it as a break to the force of the rain. The children might have been worse off though there was no window, and no door to close the opening. That mattered the less in the summer weather, and before winter came, Stead thought he could close it with a mat made of the bulrushes that stood up in the brook, lifting their tall, black heads. Straw must serve for their beds till they could get some sacking to stuff it into, and as some of the sheep would have to be killed and salted for the winter, the skins would serve for warmth. Patience arranged the bundles of straw with a neat bit of plaiting round them, at one corner of the room for herself and Rusha, at the opposite one for Stead. For the present they must sleep in their clothes. Life was always so rough, and, to present notions, comfortless, that all this was not nearly so terrible to the farmer's daughter of two centuries ago as it would be to a girl of the present day. Indeed, save for the grief for the good father, the sense of which now and then rushed on them like a horrible, too true dream, Steadfast and Patience would almost have enjoyed the setting up for themselves and all their contrivances. Some losses, however, besides that of the churn were very great in their eyes. Patience's spinning wheel especially, and the tools, scythe, hook, and spade, all of which had been so much damaged, that Smith Blane had shaken his head over them as past mending. Perhaps, however, Stead might borrow and get these made for him. As to the wheel, that must, like the churn, wait till the siege was over. "But will not those dreadful men burn the town down and not leave one stone on another, if Jeph and the rest of them don't keep them out?" asked Patience. "No," said Stead. "That is not the way in these days--at least not always. So poor father said last time we went into Bristol, when he had been talking to the butter-merchant's man. He said the townsfolk would know the reason why, if the soldiers were for holding out long enough to get them into trouble." "Then perhaps there will not be much fighting and they will not hurt Jeph," said Patience, to whom Jeph was the whole war. "There's no firing to-day. Maybe they are making it up," said Steadfast. "I never heeded," said Patience, "we have been so busy! But Stead, how shall we get the things? We have no money. Shall we sell a sheep or a pig?" Stead looked very knowing, and she exclaimed "Have you any, Stead? I thought Jeph took it all away." Then Stead told her how his father had entrusted him with the bulk of the savings, in case of need, and had made it over to the use of the younger ones. "It was well you did not know, Patty," he added. "You told no lie, and Jeph might have taken it all." "O! he would not have been so cruel," cried Patience. "He would not want Rusha and Ben to have nothing." Stead did not feel sure, and when Patience asked him where the hoard was, he shook his head, looked wise, and would not tell her. And then he warned her, with all his might and main against giving a hint to anyone that they had any such fund in reserve. She was a little vexed and hurt at first, but presently she promised. "Indeed Stead, I won't say one word about it, and you don't think I would ever touch it without telling you." "No, Patty, you wouldn't, but don't you see, if you know nothing, you can't tell if people ask you." In truth, Stead was less anxious about the money than about the other treasure, and when presently Patience proposed that the cave where they used to play should serve for the poultry, so as to save them from the foxes and polecats, he looked very grave and said "No, no, Patty, don't you ever tell anyone of that hole, nor let Rusha see it." "Oh! I know then!" cried Patience, with a little laugh, "I know what's there then." "There's more than that, sister," and therewith Stead told in her ear of the precious deposit. She looked very grave, and said "Why then it is just like church! O no, Stead, I'll never tell till good Mr. Holworth comes back. Could not we say our prayers there on Sundays?" Stead liked the thought but shook his head. "We must not wear a path up to the place," he said, "nor show the little ones the way." "I shall say mine as near as I can," said Patience. "And I shall ask God to help us keep it safe." Then the children became absorbed in seeking for a place where their fowls could find safe shelter from the enemies that lurked in the wood, and ended by an attempt of Stead's to put up some perches across the beam above the cow-shed. Things were forward enough for Rusha and Ben to be fetched down to their new home that night; when Patience went to fetch them, she heard that the cessation of firing had really been because the troops within the town were going to surrender to the King's soldiers outside. "Then there will be no more fighting," she anxiously asked of Master Blane. "No man can tell," he answered. "And will Jeph come back?" But that he could tell as little, and indeed someone else spoke to him, and he paid the child no more attention. Rusha had had a merry day among the children of her own age in the village; she fretted at coming away, and was frightened at turning into so lonely a path through the hazel stems, trotting after Patience because she was afraid to turn back alone, but making a low, peevish moan all the time. [Illustration: Stead Stirring The Porridge.] Patience hoped she would be comforted when they came out on their little glade, and she saw Stead stirring the milk porridge over the fire he had lighted by the house. For he had found the flint and steel belonging to the matchlock of his father's old gun, and there was plenty of dry leaves and half-burnt wood to serve as tinder. The fire for cooking would be outside, whenever warmth and weather served, to prevent indoor smoke. And to Patience's eyes it really looked pleasant and comfortable, with Toby sitting wisely by his young master's side, and the cat comfortably perched at the door, and Whitefoot tied to a tree, and the cows in their new abode. But Jerusha was tired and cross, she said it was an ugly place, and she was afraid of the foxes and the polecats, she wanted to go home, she wanted to go back to Goody Grace. Stead grew angry, and threatened that she should have no supper, and that made her cry the louder, and shake her frock at him; but Patience, who knew better how to deal with her, let her finish her cry, and come creeping back, promising to be good, and glad to eat the supper, which was wholesome enough, though very smoky: however, the children were used to smoke, and did not mind it. They said their prayers together while the sun was touching the tops of the trees, crept into their hut, curled themselves up upon their straw and went to sleep, while Toby lay watchful at the door, and the cat prowled about in quest of a rabbit or some other evening wanderer for her supper. The next day Patience spent in trying to get things into somewhat better order, and Steadfast in trying to gather together his live stock, which he had been forced to leave to take care of themselves. Horse, donkey, and cows were all safe round their hut; but he could find only three of the young pigs and the old sow at the farmyard, and it plainly was not safe to leave them there, though how to pen them up in their new quarters he did not know. The sheep were out on the moor, and only one of them seemed to be missing. The goat and the geese had likewise taken care of themselves and seemed glad to see him. He drove them down to their new home, and fed them there with some of the injured meal. "But what can we do with the pigs? There's no place they can't get out of but this," said Stead, looking doubtfully. "Do you think I would have pigs in here? No, I am not come to that!" It ended in Stead's going to consult Master Blane, who advised that the younger pigs should be either sold, or killed and salted, and nothing left but the sow, who was a cunning old animal, and could pretty well take care of herself, besides that she was so tough and lean that one must be very hungry indeed to be greatly tempted by her bristles. But how sell the pigs or buy the salt in such days as these? There was, indeed, no firing. There was a belief that treaties were going on, but leisure only left the besiegers more free to go wandering about in search of plunder; and Stead found all trouble saved him as to disposing of his pigs. They were quite gone next time he looked for them, and the poor old sow had been lamed by a shot; but did not seem seriously hurt, and when with some difficulty she had been persuaded to be driven into the glen, she seemed likely to be willing to stay there in the corner of the cattle shed. The children were glad enough to be in their glen, with all its bareness and discomfort, when they heard that a troop of horse had visited Elmwood, and made a requisition there for hay and straw. They had used no violence, but the farmers were compelled to take it into the camp in their own waggons, getting nothing in payment but orders on the treasury, which might as well be waste paper. And, indeed, they were told by the soldiers that they might be thankful to get off with their carts and horses.	{ "id": "6006" }
8	STEAD IN POSSESSION.	"At night returning, every labour sped, He sits him down, the monarch of a shed." GOLDSMITH. Another day made it certain that the garrison of Bristol had surrendered to the besiegers. A few shots were heard, but they were only fired in rejoicing by the Royalists, and while Steadfast was studying his barley field, already silvered over by its long beards, and wondering how soon it would be ripe, and how he should get it cut and stacked, his name was shouted out, and he saw Tom Oates and all the rest of the boys scampering down the lane. "Come along, Stead Kenton, come on and see, the Parliament soldiers come out and go by." Poor Steadfast had not much heart for watching soldiers, but it struck him that he might see or hear something of Jephthah, so he came with the other boys to the bank, where from behind a hedge they could look down at the ranks of soldiers as they marched along, five abreast, the road was not wide enough to hold more. They had been allowed to keep their weapons, so the officers had their swords, and the men carried their musquets. Most of them looked dull and dispirited, and the officers had very gloomy, displeased faces. In fact, they were very angry with their commander, Colonel Fiennes, for having surrendered so easily, and he was afterwards brought to a court-martial for having done so. Stead did not understand this, he thought only of looking under each steel cap or tall, slouching hat for Jephthah. Several times a youthful, slender figure raised his hopes, and disappointed him, and he began to wonder whether Jeph could have after all stayed behind in the town, or if he could have been hurt and was ill there. By-and-by came a standard, bearing a Bible lying on a sword, and behind it rode a grave looking officer, with long hair, and a red scarf, whom the lads recognised as the same who had preached at Elmwood. His men were in better order than some of the others, and as Steadfast eagerly watched them, he was sure that he knew the turn of Jeph's head, in spite of his being in an entirely new suit of clothes, and with a musquet over his shoulder. Stead shook the ash stem he was leaning against, the men looked up, he saw the well-known face, and called out "Jeph! Jeph!" But some of the others laughed, Jeph frowned and shook his head, and marched on. Stead was disappointed, but at any rate he could carry back the assurance to Patience that Jeph was alive and well, though he seemed to have lost all care for his brothers and sisters. Yet, perhaps, as a soldier he could not help it, and it might not be safe to straggle from the ranks. There was no more fighting for the present in the neighbourhood. The princes and their army departed, only leaving a garrison to keep the city, and it was soon known in the village that the town was in its usual state, and that it was safe to go in to market as in former times. Stead accordingly carried in a basket of eggs, which was all he could yet sell. He was ferried across the river, and made his way in. It was strange to find the streets looking exactly as usual, and the citizens' wives coming out with their baskets just as if nothing had happened. There was the good-natured face of Mistress Lightfoot, who kept a baker's shop at the sign of the Wheatsheaf, and was their regular customer. "Ha, little Kenton, be'st thou there? I'm right glad to see thee. They said the mad fellows had burnt the farm and made an end of all of you, but I find 'em civil enow, and I'm happy to see 'twas all leasing-making." "It is true, mistress," said Stead, "that they burnt our house and shot poor father." "Eh, you don't say so, my poor lad?" and she hurried her kind questions, tears coming into her eyes, as she thought of the orphans deserted by their brother. She was very anxious to have Patience butter-making again and promised to come with Stead to give her assistance in choosing both a churn and a spinning wheel if he would come in the next day, for he had not ventured on bringing any money with him. She bought all his eggs for her lodger, good Doctor Eales, who could hardly taste anything and had been obliged to live cooped up in an inner chamber for fear of the Parliament soldiers, who were misbehaved to Church ministers though civil enough to women; while these new comers were just the other way, hat in hand to a clergyman, but apt to be saucy to the lasses. But she hoped the Doctor would cheer up again, now that the Cathedral was set in order, so far as might be, and prayers were said there as in old times. In fact the bells were ringing for morning prayer, and Stead was so glad to hear them that he thought he might venture in and join in the brief daily service. There were many others who had done so, for these anxious days had quickened the devotion of many hearts, and people had felt what it was to be robbed of their churches and forbidden the use of their prayer-books. Moreover, some had sons or brothers or husbands fighting on the one side or the other, and were glad to pray for them, so that Stead found himself in the midst of quite a congregation, though the choir had been too much dispersed and broken up for the musical service, and indeed the organ had been torn to pieces by the Puritan soldiers, who fancied it was Popish. But Stead found himself caring for the Psalms and Prayers in a manner he had never done before, and which came of the sorrow he had felt and the troubles that pressed upon him. He fancied all would come right now, and that soon Mr. Holworth would be back, and he should be able to give up his charge; and he went home, quite cheered up. When he came into the gulley he heard voices through the bushes, and pressing forward anxiously he saw Blane and Oates before the hovel door, Patience standing there crying, with the baby in her arms, and Rusha holding her apron, and an elderly man whom Stead knew as old Lady Elmwood's steward talking to the other men, who seemed to be persuading him to something. As soon as Stead appeared, the other children ran up to him, and Rusha hid herself behind him, while Patience said "O Stead, Stead, he has come to turn us all out! Don't let him!" "Nay, nay, little wench, not so fast," said the steward, not unkindly. "I am but come to look after my Lady's interests, seeing that we heard your poor father was dead, God have mercy on his soul (touching his hat reverently), and his son gone off to the wars, and nothing but a pack of children left." "But 'tis all poor father's," muttered Stead, almost dumbfounded. "It is held under the manor of Elmwood," explained the steward, "on the tenure of the delivery of the prime beast on the land on the demise of lord or tenant, and three days' service in hay and harvest time." What this meant Steadfast and Patience knew as little as did Rusha or Ben, but Goodman Blane explained. "The land here is all held under my Lady and Sir George, Stead--mine just the same--no rent paid, but if there's a death--landlord or tenant--one has to give the best beast as a fee, besides the work in harvest." "And the question is," proceeded the steward, "who and what is there to look to. The eldest son is but a lad, if he were here, and this one is a mere child, and the house is burnt down, and here they be, crouching in a hovel, and how is it to be with the land. I'm bound to look after the land. I'm bound to look after my Lady's interest and Sir George's." "Be they ready to build up the place if you had another tenant?" asked Blane, signing to Stead to hold his peace. "Well--hum--ha! It might not come handy just now, seeing that Sir George is off with the King, and all the money and plate with him and most of the able-bodied servants, but I'm the more bound to look after his interests." That seemed to be Master Brown's one sentence. But Blane took him up, "Look you here, Master Brown, I, that have been friend and gossip this many years with poor John Kenton--rest his soul--can tell you that your lady is like to be better served with this here Steadfast, boy though he be, than if you had the other stripling with his head full of drums and marches, guns and preachments, and what not, and who never had a good day's work in him without his father's eye over him. This little fellow has done half his share and his own to boot long ago. Now they are content to dwell down here, out of the way of the soldiering, and don't ask her ladyship to be at any cost for repairing the farm up there, but will do the best they can for themselves. So, I say, Master Brown, it will be a real good work of charity, without hurt to my Lady and Sir George to let them be, poor things, to fight it out as they can." "Well, well, there's somewhat in what you say Goodman Blane, but I'm bound to look after my Lady's interests and Sir George's." "I would come and work like a good one at my Lady's hay and harvest," said Stead, "and I shall get stronger and bigger every year." "But the beast," said the steward, "my Lady's interests must come first, you see." "O don't let him take Croppie," cried Patience. "O sir, not the cows, or baby will die, and we can't make the butter." "You see, Master Brown," explained Blane, "it is butter as is their chief stand-by. Poor Dame Kenton, as was took last spring, was the best dairywoman in the parish, and this little maid takes after her. Their kine are their main prop, but there's the mare, there's not much good that she can do them." "Let us look!" said the steward. "A sorry jade enow! But I don't know but she will serve our turn better than the cow. There was a requisition, as they have the impudence to call it, from the Parliament lot that took off all our horses, except old grey Dobbin and the colt, and this beast may come in handy to draw the wood. So I'll take her, and you may think yourself well off, and thank my Lady I'm so easy with you. 'Be not hard on the orphans,' she said. 'Heaven forbid, my Lady,' says I, 'but I must look after your interests.'" The children hung round old Whitefoot, making much of her for the last time, and Patience and Rusha both cried sadly when she was led away; and it was hard to believe Master Blane, who told them it was best for Whitefoot as well as for themselves, since they would find it a hard matter to get food even for the more necessary animals in the winter, and the poor beast would soon be skin and bone; while for themselves the donkey could carry all they wanted to market; and it might be more important than they understood to be thus regularly accepted as tenants by the manor, so that no one could turn them out. And Stead, remembering the cavern, knew that he ought to be thankful, while the two men went away, Brown observing, "One can scarce turn 'em out, poor things, but such a mere lubber as that boy is can do no good! If the elder one had thought fit to stay and mind his own business now!" "A good riddance, I say," returned Blane. "Stead's a good-hearted lad, though clownish, and I'll do what I can for him."	{ "id": "6006" }
9	WINTRY TIMES.	"Thrice welcome may such seasons be, But welcome too the common way, The lowly duties of the day." There was of course much to do. Steadfast visited his hoard and took from thence enough to purchase churn, spinning wheel, and the few tools that he most needed; but it was not soon that Patience could sit down to spin. That must be for the winter, and their only chance of light was in making candles. Rusha could gather the green rushes, though she could not peel them without breaking them; and Patience had to take them out of her hands and herself strip the white pith so that only one ribbon of green was left to support it. The sheep, excepting a few old ewes, were always sold or killed before the winter, and by Blane's advice, Stead kept only three. The butcher Oates took some of the others, and helped Stead to dispose of four more in the market. Two were killed at different intervals for home use, but only a very small part was eaten fresh, as a wonderful Sunday treat, the rest was either disposed of among the neighbours, who took it in exchange for food of other kinds; or else was salted and dried for the winter's fare, laid up in bran in two great crocks which Stead had been forced to purchase, and which with planks from the half-burnt house laid over them served by turns as tables or seats. The fat was melted up in Patience's great kettle, and the rushes dipped in it over and over again till they had such a coating of grease as would enable them to be burnt in the old horn lantern which had fortunately been in the stable and escaped the fire. Kind neighbours helped Stead to cut and stack his hay, and his little field of barley. All the grass he could cut on the banks he also saved for the animals' winter food, and a few turnips, but these were rare and uncommon articles only used by the most advanced farmers, and his father had only lately begun to grow them, nor had potatoes become known except in the gardens of the curious. The vexation was that all the manor was called to give their three days' labour to Lady Elmwood's crops just as all their own were cut, and as, of course, Master Brown had chosen the finest weather, every one went in fear and trembling for their own, and Oates and others grumbled so bitterly at having to work without wage, that Blane asked if they called their own houses and land nothing. There was fresh grumbling too that the food sent out to the labourers in the field was not as it used to be, good beef and mutton, but only bread and very hard cheese, and bowls of hasty pudding, with thin, sour small beer to wash it down. Oates growled and vowed he would never come again to be so scurvily used; and perhaps no one guessed that my lady was far more impoverished than her tenants, and had a hard matter to supply even such fare as this. Happily the weather lasted good long enough to save the Kentons' little crop, though there was a sad remembrance of the old times, when the church bell gave the signal at sunrise for all the harvesters to come to church for the brief service, and then to start fair in their gleaning. The bell did still ring, but there were no prayers. The vicar had never come back, and it was reported that he had been sent to the plantations in America. There was no service on Sunday nearer than Bristol. It was the churchwardens' business to find a minister, and of these, poor Kenton was dead, and the other, Master Cliffe, was not likely to do anything that might put the parish to expense. Goodman Blane, and some of the other more seriously minded folk used to walk into Bristol to church when the weather was tolerably fine. If it were wet, the little stream used to flood the lower valley so that it was not possible to get across. Steadfast was generally one of the party. Patience could not go, as it was too far for Rusha to walk, or for the baby to be carried. Once, seeing how much she wished to go again to church, Stead undertook to mind the children, the cattle, and the dinner in her place; but what work he found it! When he tried to slice the onions for the broth, little Ben toddled off, and had to be caught lest he should tumble into the river. Then Rusha got hold of the knife, cut her hand, and rolled it up in her Sunday frock, and Steadfast, thinking he had got a small bit of rag, tied it up in Patience's round cap, but that he did not know till afterwards, only that baby had got out again, and after some search was found asleep cuddled up close to the old sow. And so it went on, till poor Steadfast felt as if he had never spent so long a day. As to reading his Bible and Prayer-book, it was quite impossible, and he never had so much respect for Patience before as when he found what she did every day without seeming to think anything of it. She did not get home till after dark, but the Blanes had taken her to rest at the friends with whom they spent the time between services, and they had given her a good meal. "Somehow," said Patience, "everybody seems kinder than they used to be before the fighting began--and the parsons said the prayers as if they had more heart in them." Patience was quite right. These times of danger were making everyone draw nearer together, and look up more heartily to Him in Whom was there true help. But winter was coming on and bringing bad times for the poor children in their narrow valley, so close to the water. It was not a very cold season, but it was almost worse, for it was very wet. The little brook swelled, turned muddy yellow, and came rushing and tumbling along, far outside its banks, so that Patience wondered whether there could be any danger of its coming up to their hut and perhaps drowning them. "I think there is no fear," said Steadfast. "You see this house has been here from old times and never got washed away." "It wouldn't wash away very easily," said Patience, "I wish we were in one of the holes up there." "If it looks like danger we might get up," said Steadfast, and to please her he cleared a path to a freshly discovered cave a little lower down the stream, but so high up on the rocky sides of the ravine as to be safe from the water. Once Patience, left at home watching the rushing of the stream, became so frightened that she actually took the children up there, and set Rusha to hold the baby while she dragged up some sheepskins and some food. Steadfast coming home asked what she was about and laughed at her, showing her, by the marks on the trees, that the flood was already going down. Such alarms came seldom, but the constant damp was worse. Happily it was always possible to keep up a fire, wood and turf peat was plentiful and could be had for the cutting and carrying, and though the smoke made their eyes tingle, perhaps it hindered the damp from hurting them, when all the walls wept, in spite of the reed mats which they had woven and hung over them. And then it was so dark, Patience's rushes did not give light enough to see to do anything by them even when they did not get blown out, and when the sun had set there was nothing for it, but as soon as the few cattle had been foddered in their shed and cave, to draw the mat and sheepskins that made a curtain by way of door, fasten it down with a stone, share with dog and cat the supper of broth, or milk, or porridge which Patience had cooked, and then lie down on the beds of dried leaves stuffed into sacking, drawing over them the blankets and cloaks that had happily been saved in the chest, and nestling on either side of the fire, which, if well managed, would smoulder on for hours. There the two elder ones would teach Rusha her catechism and tell old stories, and croon over old rhymes till both the little ones were asleep, and then would hold counsel on their affairs, settle how to husband their small stock of money, consider how soon it would be expedient to finish their store of salted mutton and pork to keep them from being spoilt by damp, and wonder when their hens would begin to lay. It could hardly be a merry Christmas for the poor children, though they did stick holly in every chink where it would go, but there were not many berries that year, and as Rusha said, "there were only thorns." Steadfast walked to Bristol through slush and mire and rain, not even Smith Blane went with him, deeming the weather too bad, and thinking, perhaps, rather over much of the goose at home. Bristol people were keeping Christmas with all their might, making the more noise and revelry because the Parliament had forbidden the feast to be observed at all. It was easy to tell who was for the King and who for the Parliament, for there were bushes of holly, mistletoe, and ivy, at all the Royalist doors and windows, and from many came the savoury steam of roast beef or goose, while the other houses were shut up as close as possible and looked sad and grim. All the bells of all the churches were ringing, and everybody seemed to be trooping into them. As Steadfast was borne along by the throng, there was a pause, and a boy of his own age with a large hat and long feather, beneath which could be seen curls of jet-black hair, walked at the head of a party of gentlemen. Everyone in the crowd uncovered and there was a vehement outcry of "God save the King! God save the Prince of Wales!" Everyone thronged after him, and Steadfast had a hard struggle to squeeze into the Cathedral, and then had to stand all the time with his back against a pillar, for there was not even room to kneel down at first. There was no organ, but the choir men and boys had rallied there, and led the Psalms which went up very loudly and heartily. Then the Dean went up into the pulpit and preached about peace and goodwill to men, and how all ought to do all in their power to bring those blessed gifts back again. A good many people dropped off during the sermon, and more after it, but Steadfast remained. He had never been able to come to the Communion feast since the evil times had begun, and he had thought much about it on his lonely walk, and knew that it was the way to be helped through the hard life he was living. When all was over he felt very peaceful, but so hungry and tired with standing and kneeling so long after his walk, that he was glad to lean against the wall and take out the piece of bread that Patience had put in his wallet. Presently a step came near, and from under a round velvet skull-cap a kind old face looked at him which he knew to be that of the Dean. "Is that all your Christmas meal, my good boy?" he asked. "I shall have something for supper, thank your reverence," replied Steadfast, taking off his leathern cap. "Well, mayhap you could away with something more," said the Dean. "Come with me." And as Steadfast obeyed, he asked farther, "What is your name, my child? I know your face in church, but not in town." "No, sir, I do not live here. I am Steadfast Kenton, and I am from Elmwood, but we have no prayers nor sermon there since they took the parson away." "Ah! good Master Holworth! Alas! my child, I fear you will scarce see him back again till the King be in London once more, which Heaven grant. And, meantime, Sir George Elmwood being patron, none can be intruded into his room. It is a sore case, and I fear me the case of many a parish besides." Steadfast was so much moved by the good Dean's kindness as to begin to consider whether it would be betraying the trust to consult him about that strange treasure in the cave, but the lad was never quick of thought, and before he could decide one of the canons joined the Dean, and presently going up the steps to the great hall of the Deanery, Steadfast saw long tables spread with snowy napkins, trenchers laid all round, and benches on which a numerous throng were seating themselves, mostly old people and little children, looking very poor and ragged. Steadfast held himself to be a yeoman in a small way, and somewhat above a Christmas feast with the poor, but the Dean's kindness was enough to make him put away his pride, and then there was such a delicious steam coming up from the buttery hatch as was enough to melt away all nonsense of that sort from a hungry lad. Grand joints of beef came up in clouds of vapour, and plum puddings smoked in their rear, to be eaten with them, after the fashion of these days, when of summer vegetables there were few, and of winter vegetables none. The choirmen and boys, indeed all the Cathedral clergy who were unmarried, were dining there too, but the Dean and his wife waited on the table where the poorest were. Horns of ale were served to everyone, and then came big mince pies. Steadfast felt a great longing to take his home to his sisters, but he was ashamed to do it, even though he saw that it was permissible, they were such beggarly-looking folks who set the example. However, the Dean's wife came up to him with a pleasant smile and asked if he had no appetite or if he were thinking of someone at home, and when he answered, she kindly undertook to lend him a basket, for which he might call after evensong, and in the basket were also afterwards found some slices of the beef and a fine large cake. Then the young Prince and his suite came in, and he stood at the end of the hall, smiling and looking amused as everyone's cup was filled with wine--such wine as the Roundhead captains had left, and the Dean at the head of the table gave out the health of his most sacred Majesty King Charles, might God bless him, and confound all his enemies! The Prince bared his black shining locks and drank, and there was a deep Amen, and then a hurrah enough to rend the old vaulted ceiling; and equally enthusiastically was the Prince's health afterwards drunk. Stead heard the servants saying that such a meal had been a costly matter, but that the good Dean would have it so in order that one more true merry Christmas should be remembered in Bristol.	{ "id": "6006" }
10	A TERRIBLE HARVEST DAY.	"There is a reaper, whose name is death." LONGFELLOW. Spring came at last, cold indeed but dry, and it brought calves, and kids, and lambs, and little pigs, besides eggs and milk. The creatures prospered for two reasons no doubt. One was that Stead and Patience always prayed for a blessing on them, and the other was that they were almost as tender and careful over the dumb things as they were over little Ben, who could now run about and talk. All that year nothing particular happened to the children. Patience's good butter and fresh eggs had come to be known in Bristol, and besides, Stead and Rusha used to find plovers' eggs on the common, for which the merchants' ladies would pay them, or later for wild strawberries and for whortleberries. Stead could also make rush baskets and mats, and they were very glad of such earnings, some of which they spent on clothes, and on making their hut more comfortable, while some was stored up in case of need in the winter. For another year things went on much in the same manner, Bristol was still kept by the King's troops; but when Steadfast went into the place there was less cheerfulness among the loyal folk, and the Puritans began to talk of victories of their cause, while in the Cathedral the canon's voice trembled and grew choked in the prayer for the King, and the sermons were generally about being true and faithful to King and church whatever might betide. The Prince of Wales had long since moved away, indeed there were reports that the plague was in some of the low, crowded streets near the water, and Patience begged her brother to take care of himself. There had been no Christmas feast at the Deanery, it was understood that the Dean thought it better not to bring so many people together. Then as harvest time was coming on more soldiers came into the place. They looked much shabbier than the troops of a year ago, their coats were worn and soiled, and their feathers almost stumps, but they made up for their poverty by swagger and noise, and Steadfast was thankful that it was unlikely that any of them should find the way to his little valley with what they called requisitions for the King's service, but which meant what he knew too well. Some of the villagers formed into bands, and agreed to meet at the sound of a cowhorn, to drive anyone off on either side, who came to plunder, and they even had a flag with the motto-- "If you take our cattle We will give you battle." And they really did drive off some stragglers. Stead, however, accepted the offer from Tom Gates of a young dog, considerably larger and stronger than poor old Toby, yellow and somewhat brindled, and known as Growler. He looked very terrible, but was very civil to those whom he knew, and very soon became devoted to all the family, especially to little Ben. However, most of the garrison and the poorer folk of the town were taken up with mending the weak places in the walls, and digging ditches with the earth of which they made steep banks, and there were sentries at the gates, who were not always civil. Whatever the country people brought into the town was eagerly bought up, and was paid for, not often in the coin of the realm, but by tokens made of tin or some such metal with odd stamps upon them, and though they could be used as money they would not go nearly so far as the sums they were held to represent--at least in anyone's hands but those of the officers. There were reports that the Parliament army was about to besiege the town, and Prince Rupert was coming to defend it. Steadfast was very anxious, and would not let his sisters stir out of the valley, keeping the cattle there as much as possible. One day, when he had been sent for to help to gather in Lady Elmwood's harvest, in the afternoon the reaping and binding were suddenly interrupted by the distant rattle of musketry, such as had been heard two years ago, in the time of the first siege but it was in quite another direction from the town. Everyone left off work, and made what speed they could to the top of the sloping field, whence they could see what was going on. "There they be!" shouted Tom Gates. "I saw 'em first! Hurrah! They be at Luck's mill." "Hush! you good-for-nothing," shrieked Bess Hart, throwing her apron over her head. "When we shall all be killed and murdered." "Not just yet, dame," said Master Brown. "They be a long way off, and they have enow to do with one another. I wonder if Sir George be there. He writ to my lady that he hoped to see her ere long." "And my Roger," called out a woman. "He went with Sir George." "And our Jack," was the cry of another; while Steadfast thought of Jephthah, but knew he must be on the opposite side. From the top of the field, they could see a wide sweep of country dipping down less than two miles from them where there was a bridge over a small river, a mill, and one or two houses near. On the nearer side of the river could be seen the flash of steel caps, and a close, dark body of men, on the further side was another force, mostly of horsemen, with what seemed like waggons and baggage horses in the rear. They had what by its colours seemed to be the English banner, the others had several undistinguishable standards. Puffs of smoke broke from the windows of the mill. "Aye!" said Goodman Blane. "I would not be in Miller Luck's shoes just now. I wonder where he is, poor rogue. Which side have got his mill, think you, Master Brown?" "The round-headed rascals for certain," said Master Brown, "and the bridge too, trying to hinder the King's men from crossing bag and baggage to relieve the town." "See, there's a party drawing together. Is it to force the bridge?" "Aye, aye, and there's another troop galloping up stream. Be they running off, the cowards?" "Not they. Depend on it some of our folks have told them of Colham ford. Heaven be with them, brave lads." "Most like Sir George is there, I don't see 'em." "No, of course not, stupid, they'll be taking Colham Lane. See, see, there's a lot of 'em drawn up to force the bridge. Good luck be with them." More puffs of smoke from the mill, larger ones from the bank, and a rattle and roll came up to the watchers. There was a moment's shock and pause in the assault, then a rush forward, and the distant sound of a cheer, which those on the hill could not help repeating. But from the red coats on and behind the bridge, proceeded a perfect cloud of smoke, which hid everything, and when it began to clear away on the wind, there seemed to be a hand-to-hand struggle going on upon the bridge, smaller puffs, as though pistols were being used, and forms falling over the parapet, at which sight the men held their breath, and the women shrieked and cried "God have mercy on their poor souls." And then the dark-coated troops seemed to be driven back. "That was a feint, only a feint," cried Master Brown. "See there!" For the plumed troop of horsemen had indeed crossed, and came galloping down the bank with such a jingling and clattering, and thundering of hoofs as came up to the harvest men above, and Master Brown led the cheer as they charged upon the compact mass of red coats behind the bridge, and broke and rode them down by the vehemence of the shock. "Hurrah!" cried Blane. "Surely they will turn now and take the fellows on the bridge in the rear. No. Ha! they are hunting them down on to their baggage! Well done, brave fellows, hip! hip! --" But the hurrah died on his lips as a deep low hum--a Psalm tune sung by hundreds of manly voices--ascended to his ears, to the accompaniment of the heavy thud of horsehoofs, and from the London Road, between the bridge and the Royalist horsemen, there emerged a compact body of troopers, in steel caps and corslets. Forming in ranks of three abreast, they charged over the bridge, and speedily cleared off the Royalists who were struggling to obtain a footing there. There was small speech on the hill side, as the encounter was watched, and the Ironsides forming on the other side, charged the already broken troops before they had time to rally, and there was nothing to be seen but an utter dispersion and scattering of men, looking from that distance like ants when their nest has been broken into. It was only a skirmish, not to be heard of in history, but opening the way for the besiegers to the walls of Bristol, and preventing any of the supplies from reaching the garrison, or any of the intended reinforcements, except some of the eager Cavaliers, who galloped on thither, when they found it impossible to return and guard the bridge for their companions. The struggle was over around the bridge in less than two hours, but no more of Lady Elmwood's harvest was gathered in that evening. The people watched as if they could not tear themselves from the contemplation of the successful bands gathering together in their solid masses, and marching onwards in the direction of Bristol, leaving, however, a strong guard at the bridge, over which piled waggons and beasts of burthen continued to pass, captured no doubt and prevented from relieving the city. It began to draw towards evening, and Master Brown was beginning to observe that he must go and report to my lady, poor soul; and as to the corn, well, they had lost a day gaping at the fight, and they must come up again to-morrow, he only hoped they were not carting it for the round-headed rogues; when at that moment there was a sudden cry, first of terror, then of recognition, "Roger, Hodge Fitter! how didst come here?" For a weary, worn-out trooper, with stained buff coat, and heavy boots, stood panting among them. "I thought 'twas our folks," he said. "Be mother here?" "Hodge! My Hodge! Be'st hurt, my lad?" cried the mother, bursting through the midst and throwing herself on him, while his father contented himself with a sort of grunt. "All right, Hodge. How com'st here?" "And where's my Jack?" exclaimed Goody Bent. "And where's our Harry?" was another cry from Widow Lakin. While Stead longed to ask, but could not be heard in the clamour, whether his brother had been there. Hodge could tell little--seen less than the lookers on above. He had been among those who had charged through the enemy, and ridden towards Bristol, but his horse had been struck by a stray shot, and killed under him. He had avoided the pursuers by scrambling through a hedge, and then had thought it best to make his way through the fields to his own home, until, seeing the party on the hill, he had joined them, expecting to find his parents among them. Sir George he knew to be on before him, and probably almost at Bristol by this time. Poor Jack had been left weeks ago on the field of Naseby, though there had been no opportunity of letting his family know. "Ill news travels fast enough!" And as to Harry, he had been shot down by a trooper near about the bridge, but mayhap might be alive for all that. "And my brother, Jeph Kenton," Steadfast managed to say. "Was he there?" "Jeph Kenton! Why, he's a canting Roundhead. The only Elmwood man as is! More shame for him." "But was he there?" demanded Stead. "There! Well, Captain Venn's horse were there, and he was in them! I have seen him more than once on outpost duty, prating away as if he had a beard on his chin. I'd a good mind to put a bullet through him to stop his impudence, for a disgrace to the place." "Then he was in the fight?" reiterated Steadfast. "Aye, was he. And got his deserts, I'll be bound, for we went smack smooth through Venn's horse, like a knife through a mouldy cheese, and left 'em lying to the right and left. If the other fellows had but stuck by us as well, we'd have made a clean sweep of the canting dogs." Hodge's eloquence was checked by the not unwelcome offer of a drink of cider. "Seems quiet enough down there," said Nanny Lakin, peering wistfully over the valley where the shadows of evening were spreading. "Mayhap if I went down I might find out how it is with my poor lad." "Nay, I'll go, mother," said a big, loutish youth, hitherto silent; "mayn't be so well for womenfolk down there." "What's that to me, Joe, when my poor Harry may be lying a bleeding his dear life out down there?" "There's no fear," said Hodge. "To give them their due, the Roundheads be always civil to country folk and women--leastways unless they take 'em for Irish--and thinking that, they did make bloody work with the poor ladies at Naseby. But the dame there will be safe enough," he added, as she was already on the move down hill. "Has no one a keg of cider to give her? I know what 'tis to lie parching under a wound." Someone produced one, and as her son shouted "Have with you, mother," Steadfast hastily asked Tom Oates to let Patience know that he was gone to see after Jephthah, and joined Ned Lakin and his mother. Jeph had indeed left his brothers and sisters in a strange, wild way, almost cruel in its thoughtlessness; but to Stead it had never seemed more than that elder brotherly masterfulness that he took as a matter of course, and there was no resting in the thought of his lying wounded and helpless on the field--nay, the assurance that Hodge shouted out that the rebel dogs took care of their own fell on unhearing or unheeding ears, as Steadfast and Ned Lakin dragged the widow through a gap in the hedge over another field, and then made their way down a deep stony lane between high hedges. It was getting dark, in spite of the harvest moon, by the time they came out on the open space below, and began to see that saddest of all sights, a battlefield at night. A soldier used to war would perhaps have scorned to call this a battle, but it was dreadful enough to these three when they heard the sobbing panting, and saw the struggling of a poor horse not quite dead, and his rider a little way from him, a fine stout young man, cold and stiff, as Nanny turned up his face to see if it was her Harry's. A little farther on lay another figure on his back, but as Nanny stooped over it, a lantern was flashed on her and a gruff voice called out, "Villains, ungodly churls, be you robbing the dead?" and a tall man stood darkly before them, pistol in hand. "No, sir; no, sir," sobbed out Nanny. "I am only a poor widow woman, come down to see whether my poor lad be dead or alive and wanting his mother." "What was his regiment?" demanded the soldier in a kinder voice. "Oh, sir, your honour, don't be hard on him--he couldn't help it--he went with Sir George Elmwood." "That makes no odds, woman, when a man's down," said the soldier. "Unless 'tis with the Fifth Monarchy sort, and I don't hold with them. I have an uncle and a cousin or two among the malignants, as good fellows as ever lived--no Amalekites and Canaanites--let Smite-them Derry say what he will. Elmwood! let's see--that was the troop that forded higher up, and came on Fisher's corps. This way, dame. If your son be down, you'll find him here; that is, unless he be carried into the mill or one of the houses. Most of the wounded lie there for the night, but the poor lads that are killed must be buried to-morrow. Take care, dame," as poor Nanny cried out in horror at having stumbled over a dead man's legs. He held his lantern so that she could see the face while she groaned out, "Poor soul." And thus they worked their sad way up to the buildings about the water mill. There was a shed through the chinks of which light could be seen, and at the door of which a soldier exclaimed-- "Have ye more wounded, Sam? There's no room for a dog in here. They lie as thick as herrings in a barrel." "Nay, 'tis a poor country woman come to look for her son. What's his name? Is there a malignant here of the name of Harry Lakin?" The question was repeated, and a cry of gladness, "Mother! mother!" ended in a shriek of pain in the distance within. "Aye, get you in, mother, get you in. A woman here will be all the better, be she who she may." The permission was not listened to. Nanny had already sprung into the midst of the mass of suffering towards the bloody straw where her son was lying. Steadfast, who had of course looked most anxiously at each of the still forms on the way, now ventured to say:-- "So please you, sir, would you ask after one Jephthah Kenton? On your own side, sir, in Captain Venn's troop? I am his brother." "Oh, ho! you are of the right sort, eh?" said the soldier. "Jephthah Kenton. D'ye know aught of him, Joe?" "I heard him answer to the roll call before Venn's troop went off to quarters," replied the other man. "He is safe and sound, my lad, and Venn's own orderly." Steadfast's heart bounded up. He longed still to know whether poor Harry Lakin was in very bad case, but it was impossible to get in to discover, and he was pushed out of the way by a party carrying in another wounded man, whose moans and cries were fearful to listen to. He thought it would be wisest to make the best of his way home to Patience, and set her likewise at rest, for who could tell what she might not have heard. The moon was shining brightly enough to make his way plain, but the scene around was all the sadder and more ghastly in that pallid light, which showed out the dark forms of man and horse, and what was worse the white faces turned up, and those dark pools in which once or twice he had slipped as he saw or fancied he saw movements that made him shudder, while a poor dog on the other side of the stream howled piteously from time to time. Presently, as he came near a hawthorn bush which cast a strangely shaped shadow, he heard a sobbing--not like the panting moan of a wounded man, but the worn out crying of a tired child. He thought some village little one must have wandered there, and been hemmed in by the fight, and he called out-- "Is anyone there?" The sobbing ceased for a moment and he called again, "Who is it? I won't hurt you," for something white seemed to be squeezing closer into the bush. "Who are you for?" piped out a weak little voice. "I'm no soldier," said Steadfast. "Come out, I'll take you home by-and-by." "I have no home!" was the answer. "I want father." Steadfast was now under the tree, and could see that it was a little girl who was sheltering there of about the same size as Rusha. He tried to take her hand, but she backed against the tree, and he repeated "Come along, I wouldn't hurt you for the world. Who is your father? Where shall we find him?" "My father is Serjeant Gaythorn of Sir Harry Blythedale's troopers," said the child, somewhat proudly, then starting again, "You are not a rebel, are you?" "No, I am a country lad," said Steadfast; "I want to help you. Come, you can't stay here." For the little hand she had yielded to him was cold and damp with the September dews. His touch seemed to give her confidence, and when he asked, "Can't I take you to your mother?" she answered-- "Mother's dead! The rascal Roundheads shot her over at Naseby." "Poor child! poor child!" said Steadfast. "And you came on with your father." "Yes, he took me on his horse over the water, and told me to wait by the bush till he came or sent for me, but he has not come, and the firing is over and it is dark, and I'm so hungry." Steadfast thought the child had better come home with him, but she declared that father would come back for her. He felt convinced that her father, if alive, must be in Bristol, and that he could hardly come through the enemy's outposts, and he explained to her this view. To his surprise she understood in a moment, having evidently much more experience of military matters than he had, and when he further told her that Hodge was at Elmwood, and would no doubt rejoin his regiment at Bristol the next day, she seemed satisfied, and with the prospect of supper before her, trotted along, holding Steadfast's hand and munching a crust which he had found in his pouch, the remains of the interrupted meal, but though at first it seemed to revive her a good deal, the poor little thing was evidently tired out, and she soon began to drag, and fret, and moan. The three miles was a long way for her, and tired as he was, Steadfast had to take her on his back, and when at last he reached home, and would have set her down before his astonished sisters, she was fast asleep with her head on his shoulder.	{ "id": "6006" }
11	THE FORTUNES OF WAR.	"Hear and improve, he pertly cries, I come to make a nation wise." GAY Very early in the morning, before indeed anyone except Patience was stirring, Steadfast set forth in search of Roger Fitter to consult him about the poor child who was fast asleep beside Jerusha; and propose to him to take her into Bristol to find her father. Hodge, who had celebrated his return by a hearty supper with his friends, was still asleep, and his mother was very unwilling to call him, or to think of his going back to the wars. However, he rolled down the cottage stair at last, and the first thing he did was to observe-- "Well, mother, how be you? I felt like a boy again, waking up in the old chamber. Where's my back and breast-piece? Have you a cup of ale, while I rub it up?" "Now, Hodge, you be not going to put on that iron thing again, when you be come back safe and sound from those bloody wars?" entreated his mother. "Ho, ho! mother, would you have me desert? No, no! I must to my colours again, or Sir George and my lady might make it too hot to hold you here. Hollo, young one, Stead Kenton, eh? Didst find thy brother? No, I'll be bound. The Roundhead rascals have all the luck." "I found something else," said Steadfast, and he proceeded to tell about the child while Dame Fitter stood by with many a pitying "Dear heart!" and "Good lack!" Hodge knew Serjeant Gaythorn, and knew that the poor man's wife had been shot dead in the flight from Naseby; but he demurred at the notion of encumbering himself with the child when he went into the town. He suspected that he should have much ado to get in himself, and if he could not find her father, what could he do with her? Moreover, he much doubted whether the serjeant was alive. He had been among those on whom the sharpest attack had fallen, and not many of them had got off alive. "What like was he?" said Steadfast. "We looked at a many of the poor corpses that lay there. They'll never be out of my eyes again at night!" "A battlefield or two would cure that," grimly smiled Hodge. "Gaythorn--he was a man to know again--had big black moustaches, and had lost an eye, had a scar like a weal from a whip all down here from a sword-cut at Long Marston." "Then I saw him," said Stead, in a low voice. "Did he wear a green scarf?" "Aye, aye. Belonged to the Rangers, but they are pretty nigh all gone now." "Under the rail of the miller's croft," added Stead. "Just so. That was where I saw them make a stand and go down like skittles." "Poor little maid. What shall I tell her?" "Well, you can never be sure," said Hodge. "There was a man now I thought as dead as a door nail at Newbury that charged by my side only yesterday. You'd best tell the maid that if I find her father I'll send him after her; and if not, when the place is quiet, you might look at the mill and see if he is lying wounded there." Steadfast thought the advice good, and it saved him from what he had no heart to do, though he could scarcely doubt that one of those ghastly faces had been the serjeant's. When he approached his home he was surprised to hear, through the copsewood, the sound of chattering, and when he came in sight of the front of the hut, he beheld Patience making butter with the long handled churn, little Ben toddling about on the grass, and two little girls laughing and playing with all the poultry round them. One, of course, was stout, ruddy, grey-eyed Rusha, in her tight round cap, and stout brown petticoat with the homespun apron over it; the other was like a fairy by her side; slight and tiny, dressed in something of mixed threads of white and crimson that shone in the sun, with a velvet bodice, a green ribbon over it, and a gem over the shoulder that flashed in the sun, a tiny scarlet hood from which such a quantity of dark locks streamed as to give something the effect of a goldfinch's crown, and the face was a brilliant little brown one, with glowing cheeks, pretty little white teeth, and splendid dark eyes. Patience could have told that this bright array was so soiled, rumpled, ragged, and begrimed, that she hardly liked to touch it, but to Steadfast, who had only seen the child in the moonlight, she was a wonderful vision in the morning sunshine, and his heart was struck with a great pity at her clear, merry tones of laughter. As he appeared in the open space, Toby running before him, the little girl looked up and rushed to him crying out-- "It's you. Be you the country fellow who took me home? Where's father?" Stead was so sorry for her that he took her up in his arms and said-- "Hodge Fitter is gone into town to look for him, my pretty. You must wait here till he comes for you," and he would have kissed her, but she turned her head away, pouted, and said, "I didn't give you leave to do that, you lubber lad." Steadfast was much diverted. He was now a tall sturdy youth of sixteen, in a short smock frock, long leathern gaiters, and a round straw hat of Patience's manufacture, and he felt too clumsy for the dainty little being, whom he hastened to set on her small feet--in once smart but very dilapidated shoes. His sisters were somewhat shocked at her impertinence and Rusha breathed out "Oh--!" "I am to wait here for Serjeant Gaythorn," observed the little damsel somewhat consequentially. "Well! it is a strange little makeshift of a place, but 'tis the fortune of war, and I have been in worse." "It is beautiful!" said Rusha, "now we have got a glass window--and a real door--and beds--" all which recent stages in improvement she enumerated with a gasp of triumph and admiration between each. "So you think," said little Mistress Gaythorn. "But I have lived in a castle." She was quite ready to tell her history. Her name was Emlyn, and the early part of the eight years of her life had been spent at Sir Harry Blythedale's castle, where her father had been butler and her mother my lady's woman. Sir Harry had gone away to the wars, and in his absence my lady had held out the castle (perhaps it was only a fortified house) against General Waller, hoping and hoping in vain for Lord Goring to come to her relief. "That was worst of all," said Emlyn, "we had to hide in the cellars when they fired at us--and broke all the windows, and a shot killed my poor dear little kitten because she wouldn't stay down with me. And we couldn't get any water, except by going out at night; young Master George was wounded at the well. And they only gave us a tiny bit of dry bread and salt meat every day, and it made little Ralph sick and he died. And at last there was only enough for two days more--and a great breach--that's a hole," she added condescendingly,--"big enough to drive my lady's coach-and-six through in the court wall. So then my lady sent out Master Steward with one of the best napkins on the end of a stick--that was a flag of truce, you know--and all the rascal Roundheads had to come in, and we had to go out, with only just what we could carry. My lady went in her coach with Master George, because he was hurt, and the young ladies, and some of the maids went home; but the most of us kept with my lady, to guard her to go to his Honour and the King at Oxford. Father rode big Severn, and mother was on a pillion behind him, with baby in her arms, and I sat on a cushion in front." After that, it seemed that my lady had found a refuge among her kindred, but that the butler had been enrolled in his master's troop of horse, and there being no separate means of support for his wife and children, they had followed the camp, a life that Emlyn had evidently enjoyed, although the baby died of the exposure. She had been a great pet and favourite with everybody, and no doubt well-cared for even after the sad day when her mother had perished in the slaughter at Naseby. Patience wondered what was to become of the poor child, if her father never appeared to claim her; but it was no time to bring this forward, for Steadfast, as soon as he had swallowed his porridge, had to go off to finish his day's labour for the lady of the manor, warning his sisters that they had better keep as close as they could in the wood, and not let the cattle stray out of their valley. He had not gone far, however, before he met a party of his fellow labourers running home. Their trouble had been saved them. The Roundhead soldiers had taken possession of waggons, horses, corn and all, as the property of a malignant, and were carrying them off to their camp before the town. Getting up on a hedge, Stead could see these strange harvestmen loading the waggons and driving them off. He also heard that Sir George had come late in the evening, and taken old Lady Elmwood and several of the servants into Bristol for greater safety. Then came the heavy boom of a great gun in the distance. "The Parliament men are having their turn now--as the King's men had before," said Gates. And all who had some leisure--or made it--went off to the church tower to get a better view of the white tents being set up outside the city walls, and the compact bodies of troops moving about as if impelled by machinery, while others more scattered bustled like insects about the camp. Steadfast, however, went home, very anxious about his own three cows, and seven sheep with their lambs, as well as his small patches of corn, which, when green, had already only escaped being made forage of by the Royalist garrison, because he was a tenant of the loyal Elmwoods. These fields were exposed, though the narrow wooded ravine might protect the small homestead and the cattle. He found his new guest very happy cracking nuts, and expounding to Rusha what kinds of firearms made the various sounds they heard. Patience had made an attempt to get her to exchange her soiled finery for a sober dress of Rusha's; but "What shall I do, Stead?" said the grave elder sister, "I cannot get her to listen to me, she says she is no prick-eared Puritan, but truly she is not fit to be seen." Stead whistled. "Besides that she might bring herself and all of us into danger with those gewgaws." "That's true," said Stead. "Look you here, little maid--none can say whether some of the rebel folk may find their way here, and they don't like butterflies of your sort, you know. If you look a sober little brown bee like Rusha here, they will take no notice, but who knows what they might do it they found you in your bravery." "Bravery," thought Patience, "filthy old rags, me seems," but she had the prudence not to speak, and Emlyn nodded her head, saying, "I'll do it for you, but not for her." And when all was done, and she was transformed into a little russet-robed, white-capped being, nothing would serve her, but to collect all the brightest cranesbill flowers she could find, and stick them in her own bodice and Rusha's. Patience could not at all understand the instinct for bright colours, but even little Ben shouted "Pretty, pretty." Perhaps it was well that the delicate pink blossoms were soon faded and crushed, and that twilight veiled their colours, for just as the cattle were being foddered for the night, there was a gay step on the narrow path, and with a start of terror, Patience beheld a tall soldier, in tall hat, buff coat, and high boots before her; while Growler made a horrible noise, but Toby danced in a rapture of delight. "Ha! little Patience, is't thou?" "Jephthah," she cried, though the voice as well as the form were greatly changed in these two years between boyhood and manhood. "Aye, Jephthah 'tis," he said, taking her hand, and letting her kiss him. "My spirit was moved to come and see how it was with you all, and to shew how Heaven had prospered me, so I asked leave of absence after roll-call, and could better be spared, as that faithful man, Hold-the-Faith Jenkins, will exhort the men this night. I came up by Elmwood to learn tidings of you. Ha, Stead! Thou art grown, my lad. May you be as much grown in grace." "You are grown, too," said Patience, almost timidly. "What a man you are, Jeph! Here, Rusha, you mind Jeph, and here is little Benoni." "You have reared that child, then," said Jeph, as the boy clung to his sister's skirts, "and you have kept things together, Stead, as I hardly deemed you would do, when I had the call to the higher service." It was an odd sort of call, but there was no need to go into that matter, and Stead answered gravely, "Yes, I thank God. He has been very good to us, and we have fared well. Come in, Jeph, and see, and have something to eat! I am glad you are come home at last." Jephthah graciously consented to enter the low hut. He had to bend his tall figure and take off his steeple-crowned hat before he could enter at the low doorway, and then they saw his closely cropped head. Patience tarried a moment to ask Rusha what had become of Emlyn. "She is hiding in the cow shed," was the answer. "She ran off as soon as she saw Jeph coming, and said he was a crop-eared villain." This was not bad news, and they all entered the hut, where the fire was made up, and one of Patience's rush candles placed on the table with a kind of screen of plaited rushes to protect it from the worst of the draught. Jeph had grown quite into a man in the eyes of his brothers and sisters. He looked plump and well fed, and his clothes were good and fresh, and his armour bright, a contrast to Steadfast's smock, stained with weather and soil, and his rough leathern leggings, although Patience did her best, and his shirt was scrupulously clean every Sunday morning. The soldier was evidently highly satisfied. "So, children, you have done better than I could have hoped. This hovel is weather-tight and quite fit to harbour you. You have done well to keep together, and it is well said that he who leaves all in the hands of a good Providence shall have his reward." Jeph's words were even more sacred than these, and considerably overawed Patience, who, as he sat before her there in his buff coat and belt, laying down the law in pious language, was almost persuaded to believe that their present comfort and prosperity (such as it was) was owing to the faith which he said had led to his desertion of his family, though she had always thought it mere impatience of home work fired by revenge for his father's death. No doubt he believed in this reward himself, in his relief at finding his brothers and sisters all together and not starving, and considered their condition a special blessing due to his own zeal, instead of to Steadfast's patient exertion. He was much more disposed to talk of himself and the mercies he had received, but which the tone of his voice showed him to consider as truly his deserts. Captain Venn had, it seemed, always favoured him from the time of his enlistment and nothing but his youth prevented him from being a corporal. He had been in the two great battles of Marston Moor and Naseby, and come off unhurt from each, and moreover grace had been given him to interpret the Scriptures in a manner highly savoury and inspiriting to the soldiery. Here Patience, in utter amaze, could not help crying out "Thou, Jeph! Thou couldst not read without spelling, and never would." He waved his hand. "My sister, what has carnal learning to do with grace?" And taking a little black Bible from within his breastplate, he seemed about to give them a specimen, when Emlyn's impatience and hunger no doubt getting the better of her prudence, she crept into the room, and presently was seen standing by Steadfast's knee, holding out her hand for some of the bread and cheese on the table. [Illustration: Finding of Emlyn] "And who is this little wench?" demanded Jeph, somewhat displeased that his brother manifested a certain inattention to his exhortation by signing to Patience to supply her wants. Stead made unusual haste to reply to prevent her from speaking. "She is biding with us till she can join her father, or knows how it is with him." "Humph! She hath not the look of one of the daughters of our people." "Nay," said Steadfast. "I went down last night to the mill, Jeph, to see whether perchance you might be hurt and wanting help, and after I had heard that all was well with you, I lighted on this poor little maid crouching under a bush, and brought her home with me for pity's sake till I could find her friends." "The child of a Midianitish woman!" exclaimed Jeph, "one of the Irish idolaters of whom it is written, 'Thou shalt smite them, and spare neither man, nor woman, infant, nor suckling.'" "But I am not Irish," broke out Emlyn, "I am from Worcestershire. My father is Serjeant Gaythorn, butler to Sir Harry Blythedale. Don't let him kill me," she cried in an access of terror, throwing herself on Steadfast's breast. "No, no. He would not harm thee, on mine hearth. Fear not, little one, he _shall_ not." "Nay," said Jephthah, who, to do him justice, had respected the rights of hospitality enough not to touch his weapon even when he thought her Irish, "we harm not women and babes save when they are even as the Amalekites. Let my brother go, child. I touch thee not, though thou be of an ungodly seed; and I counsel thee, Steadfast, touch not the accursed thing, but rid thyself thereof, ere thou be defiled." "I shall go so soon as father comes," exclaimed Emlyn. "I am sure I do not want to stay in this mean, smoky hovel a bit longer than I can help." "Such are the thanks of the ungodly people," said Jeph, gravely rising. "I must be on my way back. We are digging trenches about this great city, assuredly believing that it shall be delivered into our hands." "Stay, Jeph," said Patience. "Our corn! Will your folk come and cart it away as they have done my lady's?" "The spoil of the wicked is delivered over to the righteous," said Jeph. "But seeing that the land is mine, a faithful servant of the good cause, they may not meddle therewith." "How are they to know that?" said Steadfast, not stopping to dispute what rather startled him, since though Jeph was the eldest son, the land had been made over to himself. To save the crop was the point. "Look you here," said Jeph, "walk down with me to my good Captain's quarters, and he will give you a protection which you may shew to any man who dares to touch aught that is ours, be it corn or swine, ox or ass." It was a long walk, but Steadfast was only too glad to take it for the sake of such security, and besides, there was a real pleasure in being with Jeph, little as he seemed like the same idle, easy-going brother, except perhaps in those little touches of selfishness and boastfulness, which, though Stead did not realise them, did recall the original Jeph. All through the moonlight walk Jeph expounded his singular mercies, which apparently meant his achievements in killing Cavaliers, and the commendations given to him. One of these mercies was the retention of the home and land, though he kindly explained that his brothers and sisters were welcome to get their livelihood there whilst he was serving with the army, but some day he should come home "as one that divideth the spoil," and build up the old house, unless, indeed, and he glanced towards the sloping woods of Elmwood Manor, "the house and fields of the malignants should be delivered to the faithful." "My lady's house," said Steadfast under his breath. "Wherefore not? Is it not written 'Goodly houses that ye builded not.' Thou must hear worthy Corporal Hold-the-Faith expound the matter, my brother." They crossed the ferry and reached the outposts at last, and Stead was much startled when the barrel of a musquet gleamed in the moonlight, and a gruff voice said "Stand." "The jawbone of an ass," promptly answered Jephthah. "Pass, jawbone of an ass," responded the sentry, "and all's well. But who have you here, comrade!" Jeph explained, and they passed up the narrow lane, meeting at the end of it another sentinel, with whom the like watchword was exchanged, and then they came out on a large village green, completely changed from its usual aspect by rows of tents, on which the moonlight shone, while Jeph seemed to know his way through them as well as if he were in the valley of Elmwood. Most of the men seemed to be asleep, for snores issued from sundry tents. In others there were low murmurings, perhaps of conversation, perhaps of prayer, for once Stead heard the hum of an "Amen." One or two men were about, and Jeph enquired of one if the Captain were still up, and heard that he was engaged in exercise with the godly Colonel Benbow. Their quarters were in one of the best houses of the little village, where light gleamed from the window, and an orderly stood within the door, to whom Jeph spoke, and who replied that they were just in time. In fact two officers in broad hats and cloaks were just coming out, and Stead admired Jeph's military salute to them ere he entered the farmhouse kitchen, where two more gentlemen sat at the table with a rough plan of the town laid before them. "Back again, Kenton," said his captain in a friendly tone. "Hast heard aught of thy brethren?" "Yes, sir, I have found them well and in good heart, and have brought one with me." "A helper in the good cause? Heaven be gracious to thee, my son. Thou art but young, yet strength is vouchsafed to the feeble hands." "Please, sir," said Steadfast, who was twisting his hat about, "I've got to mind the others, and work for them." "Yea, sir," put in Jeph, "there be three younger at home whom he cannot yet leave. I brought him, sir, to crave from you a protection for the corn and cattle that are in a sort mine own, being my father's eldest son. They are all the poor children have to live on." "Thou shalt have it," said the captain, drawing his writing materials nearer to him. "There, my lad. It may be thou dost serve thy Maker as well by the plough as by the sword." Steadfast pulled his forelock, thanked the captain, was reminded of the word for the night, and safely reached home again.	{ "id": "6006" }
12	FAREWELL TO THE CAVALIERS.	[Illustration: Farewell To The Cavaliers] "If no more our banners shew Battles won and banners taken, Still in death, defeat, and woe, Ours be loyalty unshaken." SCOTT The next day the whole family turned out to gather in the corn. Rusha was making attempts at reaping, while Emlyn played with little Ben, who toddled about, shouting and chasing her in and out among the shocks. Now and again they paused at the low, thunderous growl of the great guns in the distance, in strange contrast to their peaceful work, and once a foraging party of troopers rode up to the gate of the little field, but Steadfast met them there, and showed the officer Captain Venn's paper. "So you belong to Kenton of Venn's Valiants? It is well. A blessing on your work!" said the stern dark-faced officer, and on he went, happily not seeing Emlyn make an ugly face and clench her little fist behind him. "How can you, Stead?" she cried. "I'd rather be cursed than blessed by such as he!" Stead shook his head slowly. "A blessing is better than a curse any way," said he, but his mind was a good deal confused between the piety and good conduct of these Roundheads, in contrast with their utter contempt of the Church, and rude dealing with all he had been taught to hold sacred. His harvest was, however, the matter in hand, and the little patch of corn was cut and bound between him and his sisters, without further interruption. The sounds of guns had ceased early in the day, and a neighbour who had ventured down to the camp to offer some apples for sale leant over the gate to wonder at the safety of the crop, "though to be sure the soldiers were very civil, if they would let alone preaching at you;" adding that there was like to be no more fighting, for one of the gentlemen inside had ridden out with a white flag, and it was said the Prince was talking of giving in. "Give in!" cried Emlyn setting her teeth. "Never. The Prince will soon make an end of the rebels, and then I shall ride-a-cock horse with our regiment again! I shall laugh to see the canting rogues run!" But the first thing Steadfast heard the next day was that the royal standard had come down from the Cathedral tower. He had gone up to Elmwood to get some provisions, and Tom Oates, who spent most of his time in gazing from the steeple, assured him that if he would come up, he would see for himself that the flags were changed. Indeed some of the foot soldiers who had been quartered in the village to guard the roads had brought the certain tidings that the city had surrendered and that the malignants, as they called the Royalists, were to march out that afternoon, by the same road as that by which the parliamentary army had gone out two years before. This would be the only chance for Emlyn to rejoin her father or to learn his fate. The little thing was wild with excitement at the news. Disdainfully she tore off what she called Rusha's Puritan rags, though as that offended maiden answered "her own were _real_ rags in spite of all the pains Patience had taken with them. Nothing would make them tidy," and Rusha pointed to a hopeless stain and to the frayed edges past mending. "I hate tidiness. Only Puritan rebels are tidy!" "We are not Puritans!" cried Rusha. Emlyn laughed. "Hark at your names," she said. "And what's that great rebel rogue of a brother of yours?" "Oh! he is Jeph! He ran away to the wars! But Stead isn't a Puritan," cried Rusha, growing more earnest. "He always goes to church--real church down in Bristol. And poor father was churchmartin, and knew all the parson's secrets." "Hush, Rusha," said Patience, not much liking this disclosure, however Jerusha might have come by the knowledge, "you and Emlyn don't want to quarrel when she is just going to say good-bye!" This touched the little girls. Rusha had been much enlivened by the little fairy who had seen so much of the world, and had much more playfulness than the hard-worked little woodland maid; and Emlyn, who in spite of her airs, knew that she had been kindly treated, was drawn towards a companion of her own age, was very fond of little Ben, and still more so of Steadfast. Ben cried, "Em not go;" and Rusha held her hand and begged her not to forget. "O no, I won't forget you," said Emlyn, "and when we come back with the King and Prince, and drive the Roundhead ragamuffins out of Bristol, then I'll bring Stead a protection for Croppie and Daisy and all, a silver bodkin for you, and a Flanders lace collar for Patience, and a gold chain for Stead, and--But oh! wasn't that a trumpet? Stead! Stead! We must go, or we shall miss them." Then as she hugged and kissed them, "I'll tell Sir Harry and my lady how good you have been to me, and get my lady to make you a tirewoman, Rusha. And dear, dear little Ben shall be a king's guard all in gold." Ben had her last smothering kiss, and Rusha began to cry and sob as the gay little figure, capering by Stead's side, disappeared between the stems of the trees making an attempt, which Steadfast instantly quenched, at singing, "The king shall enjoy his own again." Patience did not feel disposed to cry. She liked the child, and was grieved to think what an uncertain lot was before the merry little being, but her presence had made Rusha and Ben more troublesome than they had ever been in their lives before, and there was also the anxiety lest her unguarded tongue should offend Jeph and his friends. Emlyn skipped along by Steadfast's side, making him magnificent promises. They paused by the ruins of the farm where Stead still kept up as much of the orchard and garden as he could with so little time and so far from home, and Emlyn filled her skirt with rosy-cheeked apples, saying in a pretty gentle manner, "they were such a treat to our poor rogues on a dusty march," and Stead aided her by carrying as many as he could. However, an occasional bugle note, clouds of dust on the road far below in the valley, and a low, dull tramp warned them to come forward, and station themselves in the hedge above the deep lane where Steadfast had once watched for his brother. Only a few of the more adventurous village lads were before them now, and when Stead explained that the little wench wanted to watch for her father, they were kind in helping him to perch her in the hollow of a broken old pollard, where she could see, and not be seen. For the poor camp maiden knew the need of caution. She drew Steadfast close to her, and bade him not show himself till she told him, for some of the wilder sort would blaze away their pistols at anything, especially when they had had any good ale, or were out of sorts. Poor fellows, there was no doubt of their being out of sorts, as they tramped along, half hidden in dust, even the officers, who rode before them, with ragged plumes and slouched hats. The silken banners, which they had been allowed to carry out, because of their prompt surrender, hung limp and soiled, almost like tokens of a defeat, and if any one of those spectators behind the hawthorns had been conversant with Roman history, it would have seemed to them like the passing under the yoke, so dejected, nay, ashamed was the demeanour of the gentlemen. Emlyn whispered name after name as they went by, but even she was hushed and overawed by the spectacle, as four abreast these sad remnants of the royal army marched along the lane, one or two trying to whistle, a few more talking in under tones, but all soon dying away, as if they were too much out of heart to keep anything up. She scarcely stirred while the infantry, who were by far the most numerous, were going by, only naming corps or officer to Stead, then there came an interval, and the tread of horses and clank of their trappings could be heard. Then she almost forgot her precautions in her eagerness to crane forward. "They are coming!" she said. "All there are of them will be a guard for the Prince." Stead felt a strange thrill of pain as he remembered the terrible scene when he had last beheld that tall, slight young figure, and dark face, now far sterner and sadder than in those early days, as Rupert went to meet the bitterest hour of his life. Several gentlemen rode with him, whom Emlyn named as his staff, and then came more troopers, not alike in dress, being, in fact, remnants of shattered regiments. She was trembling all over with eagerness, standing up, and so leaning forward, that she might have tumbled into the lane, had not Steadfast held her. At last came a scream. "There's Sir Harry! There's Dick! There's Staines! Oh! Dick, Dick, where's father?" There was a halt, and bronzed faces looked up. "Ha! Who's there?" "I! I! Emlyn. Oh! Dick, is father coming?" "Hollo, little one! Art thou safe after all?" "I am, I am. Father! father! Come! Where is he?" "It is poor Gaythorn's little wench," explained one of the soldiers, as Sir Harry, a grey-haired man, looking worn and weary, turned back, while Steadfast helped the child out on the bank with some difficulty, for her extreme haste had nearly brought her down, and she stood curtseying, holding out her arms, and quivering with hope that began to be fear. "Poor child!" were the old gentleman's first words. "And where were you?" "Please your honour, father left me in the thorn brake," said Emlyn, "and said he would come for me, but he did not; it got dark, and this country lad found me, and took me home. Is father coming, your honour?" "Ah! my poor little maid, your father will never come again," said Sir Harry, sadly. "He went down by the mill stream. I saw him fall. What is to be done for her?" he added, turning to a younger gentleman, who rode by him, as the child stood as it were stunned for a moment. "This is the worst of it all. Heaven knows we freely sacrifice ourselves in the cause of Church and King, but it is hard to sacrifice others. Here are these faithful servants, their home broken up with ours, their children dying, and themselves killed--she, by the brutes after Naseby, he, in this last skirmish. 'Tis enough to break a man's heart. And what is to become of this poor little maid?" "Oh! I'll go with your honour," cried Emlyn, stretching out her arms. "I can ride behind Dick, and I'll give no one any trouble. Oh! take me, sir." "It cannot be done, my poor child," said Sir Harry. "We have no women with us now, and we have to make our way to Newark by forced marches to His Majesty. I have no choice but to bestow you somewhere till better times come. Hark you, my good lad, she says you found her, and have been good to her. Would your mother take charge of her? I'll leave what I can with you, and when matters are quiet, my wife, or the child's kindred, will send after her. Will your father and mother keep her for the present?" "I have none," said Steadfast. "My father was killed in his own yard by some soldiers who wanted to drive our cows. Mother had died before, but my sister and I made a shift to take care of the little ones in a poor place of our own." "And can you take the child in? You seem a good lad." "We will do our best for her, sir." "What's your name?" and "Where do you live?" followed. And as Steadfast replied the old Cavalier took out his tablets and noted them, adding, "Then you and your sister will be good to her till we can send after her." "We will treat her like our little sister, sir." "And here's something for her keep for the present, little enough I am afraid, but we poor Cavaliers have not much left. The King's men were well to do when I heard last of them, and they will make it up by-and-by. Or if not, my boy, can you do this for the love of God?" "Yes, sir," said Steadfast, looking up with his honest eyes, and touching his forelock at the holy Name. "Here, then," and Sir Harry held out two gold pieces, to which his companion added one, and two or three of the troopers, saying something about poor Gaythorn's little maid, added some small silver coins. There was something in Steadfast's mind that would have preferred declining all payment, but he was a little afraid of Patience's dismay at having another mouth to provide for all the winter, and he thought too that Jeph's anger at the adoption of the Canaanitish child might be averted if it were a matter of business and payment, so he accepted the sum, thanked Sir Harry and the rest, and renewed his promise to do the best in his power for the little maiden. He rather wondered that no questions were asked as to which side he held; but Sir Harry had no time to inquire, and could only hope that the honest, open face, respectful manner, clean dress, and the kindness which had rescued the child on the battlefield were tokens that he might be trusted to take care of the poor little orphan. Besides, many of the country people were too ignorant to understand the difference between the sides, but only took part with their squire, or if they loved their clergyman, clung to him. So the knight would not ask any questions, and only further called out "Fare thee well, then, poor little maid, we will send after thee when we can," and then giving a sharp, quick order, all the little party galloped off to overtake the rest. Emlyn had been bred up in too much awe of Sir Harry to make objections, but as her friends rode off she gave a sharp shriek, screamed out one name after another, and finally threw herself down on the road bank in a wild passion of grief, anger, and despair, and when Steadfast would have lifted her up and comforted her, she kicked and fought him away. Presently he tried her again, begging her to come home. "I won't! I won't go to your vile, tumble-down, roundhead, crop-eared hole!" she sobbed out. "But, Sir Harry--" "I won't! I say." He was at his wits' end, but after all, the sound of other steps coming up startled her into composing herself and sitting up. "Hollo, Stead Kenton! Got this little puppet on your hands?" said young Gates. "Hollo, mistress, you squeal like a whole litter of pigs." "I am to take charge of her till her friends can send for her," said Stead, with protecting dignity. "And that will be a long day! Ho, little wench, where didst get that sweet voice?" "Hush, Tom! the child has only just heard that her father is dead." This silenced the other lads, and Emlyn's desire to get away from them accomplished what Steadfast wished, she put her hand into his and let him lead her away, and as there were sounds of another troop of cavalry coming up the lane, the boys did not attempt to follow her. She made no more resistance, though she broke into fresh fits of moaning and crying all the way home, such as went to Steadfast's heart, though he could not find a word to comfort her. Patience was scarcely delighted when Rusha darted in, crying out that Emlyn had come back again, but perhaps she was not surprised. She took the poor worn-out little thing in her arms, and rocked her, saying kind, tender little words, while Steadfast looked on, wondering at what girls could do, but not speaking till, finding that Emlyn was fast asleep, Patience laid her down on the bed without waking her, and then had time to listen to Stead's account of the interview with Sir Harry Blythedale. "I could not help it, Patience," he said, "we couldn't leave the poor fatherless child out on the hedge-side." "No," said Patience, "we can't but have her, as the gentleman said, for the love of God. He has taken care of us, so we ought to take care of the fatherless--like ourselves." "That's right, Patience," said Steadfast, much relieved in his mind, "and see here!" "I wonder you took that, Stead, and the poor gentlemen so ill off themselves." "Well, Patience, I thought if you would not have her, Goody Grace might for the pay, but then who knows when any more may come?" "Aye," said Patience, "we must keep her, though she will be a handful. Anyway, all this must be laid out for her, and the first chance I have, some shall be in decent clothes. I can't a-bear to see her in those dirty gewgaws."	{ "id": "6006" }
13	GODLY VENN'S TROOP.	"Ye abbeys and ye arches, Ye old cathedrals dear, The hearts that love you tremble, And your enemies have cheer." BP. CLEVELAND COXE. "What would Jeph say?" was the thought of both Steadfast and Patience, as Emlyn ran about with Rusha and Ben, making herself tolerably happy and enlivening them all a good deal. After one fight she found that she must obey Patience, though she made no secret that she liked the sober young mistress of the hut much less than the others, and could even sometimes get Steadfast to think her hardly used, but he seldom showed that feeling, for he had plenty of sense, and could not bear to vex his sister; besides, he saw there would be no peace if her authority was not supported. It was a relief that there was no visit from Jeph for some little time, though the fighting was all over, and people were going in and out of Bristol as before. Stead took the donkey with the panniers full of apples and nuts on market day, and a pile of fowls and ducks on its back, while he carried a basket of eggs on his arm, and in his head certain instructions from Patience about the grogram and linen he was to purchase for Emlyn, in the hope of making her respectable before Jeph's eyes should rest upon her. Stead's old customers were glad to see him again, especially Mrs. Lightfoot, who had Dr. Eales once again in her back rooms, keeping out of sight, while the good Dean was actually in prison for using the Prayer-book. Three soldiers were quartered upon her at the Wheatsheaf, and though, on the whole, they were more civil and much less riotous than some of her Cavalier lodgers had been, she was always in dread of their taking offence at the doctor and hauling him off to gaol. Steadfast confided to her Patience's commission, which she undertook to execute herself. It included a spinning-wheel, for Patience was determined to teach Emlyn to spin, an art of which no respectable woman from the Queen downwards was ignorant in those days. As to finding his brother, the best way would be to ask the soldiers who were smoking in the kitchen where he was likely to be. They said that the faithful and valiant Jephthah Kenton of Venn's horse would be found somewhere about the great steeple house, profanely called the Cathedral, for there the troops were quartered; and thither accordingly Stead betook himself, starting as he saw horses gearing or being groomed on the sward in the close which had always been kept in such perfect order. Having looked in vain outside for his brother, he advanced into the building, but he had only just had a view of horses stamping between the pillars, the floor littered down with straw, a fire burning in one of the niches, and soldiers lying about, smoking or eating, in all manner of easy, lounging attitudes, when suddenly there was a shout of "Prelatist, Idolater, Baal-worshipper, Papist," and to his horror he found it was all directed towards himself. They were pointing to his head, and two of them had caught him by the shoulders, when another voice rose "Ha! Let him alone. I say, Bill! Faithful! It's my brother. He knows no better!" Then dashing up, Jeph rammed the great hat down over Stead's brow, eyes and all, and called out, "Whoever touches my brother must have at me first." "There," said one of the others, "the old Adam need not be so fierce in thee, brother Jephthah! No one wants to hurt the lad, young prelatist though he be, so he will make amends by burning their superstitious books on the fire, even as Jehu burnt the worshippers of Baal." Steadfast felt somewhat as Christians of old may have felt when called on to throw incense on the altar of Jupiter, as a handful of pages torn from a Prayer-book was thrust into his hands. Words did not come readily to him, but he shook his head and stood still, perhaps stolid in resistance. "Come," said Jeph, laying hold of his shoulder to drag him along. "I cannot; 'tis Scripture," said Stead, as in his distress his eye fell on the leaves in his hand, and he read aloud to prove it-- "Thy Word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my path." There was one moment's pause. Perhaps the men had absolutely forgotten how much of their cherished Bible was integral in the hated Prayer-book; at any rate they were enough taken aback to enable Jeph to pull his brother out at the door, not without a fraternal cuff or two, as he exclaimed: "Thou foolish fellow! ever running into danger for very dullness." "What have I done, Jeph?" asked poor Stead, still bewildered. "Done! Why, doffed thy hat, after the superstitious and idolatrous custom of our fathers." "How can it be idolatrous? 'Twas God's house," said Stead. "Aye, there thou art in the gall of bitterness. Know'st thou not that no house is more holy than another?" and Jeph would have gone on for some time longer, but that he heard sounds which made him suspect that someone had condemned the version of the Psalms as prelatical and profane, and that his comrades might yet burst forth to visit their wrath upon his young brother, whom he therefore proceeded to lead out of sight as fast as possible into the Dean's garden, where he had the entree as being orderly to Captain Venn, who, with other officers, abode in the Deanery. There, controversy being dropped for the moment, Stead was able to tell his brother of his expedition, and how he had been obliged to keep the child, for very pity's sake, even if her late father's master had not begged him to do so, and given an earnest of the payment. Jeph laughed a little scornfully at the notion of a wild Cavalier ever paying, but he was not barbarous, and allowed that there was no choice in the matter, as she could not be turned out to starve. When he heard that Stead had come with market produce he was displeased at it not having been brought up for the table of his officers, assuring Stead that they were not to be confounded with the roistering, penniless malignants, who robbed instead of paying. Stead said he always supplied Mistress Lightfoot, but this was laughed to scorn. "The rulers of the army of saints had a right to be served first, above all before one who was believed to harbour the idolater, even the priest of the groves." Jeph directed that the next supply should come to the Deanery, as one who had the right of ownership, and Stead submitted, only with the secret resolve that Dr. Eales should not want his few eggs nor his pat of fresh butter. Jeph was not unkind to Stead, and took him to dine with the other attendants of the officers in the very stone hall where he had eaten that Christmas dinner some twenty months before. There was a very long grace pronounced extempore, and the guests were stout, resolute, grave-looking men, who kept on their steeple-crowned hats all the time and conversed in low, deep voices, chiefly, as far as Stead could gather, on military matters, but they seemed to appreciate good beef and ale quite as much as any Cavalier trooper could have done. One of them noticing Stead asked whether he had come to take service with the saints and enjoy their dominion, but Jeph answered for him that his call lay at home among those of his own household, until his heart should be whole with the cause. On the whole Stead was proud to see Jeph holding his own, though the youngest among these determined-looking men. These two years had made a man of the rough, idle, pleasure-loving boy, and a man after the Ironsides' fashion, grave, self-contained, and self-depending. Stead had been more like the elder than the younger brother in old times, but he felt Jeph immeasurably his elder in the new, unfamiliar atmosphere; and yet the boy had a strong sense that all was not right; that these were interlopers in the kind old Dean's house; that the talk about Baal was mere absurdity; and the profanation of the Cathedral would have been utterly shocking to his good father. His mind, however, worked slowly, and he would have had nothing to say even if he could have ventured to speak; but he was very anxious to get away; and when Jeph would have kept him to hear the serjeant expound a chapter of Revelation, he pleaded the necessity of getting home in time to milk the cows, and made his escape. On the whole it was a relief that Jeph was too much occupied with his military duties to make visits to his home. It might not have been over easy to keep the peace between him and Emlyn, fiery little Royalist as she was, and too much used to being petted and fascinating everyone by her saucy audacity to be likely to be afraid of him. If Patience crossed her she would have recourse to Stead, and he could seldom resist her coaxing, or be entirely disabused of the notion that his sister expected too much of her. And perhaps it was true. Patience was scarcely likely to understand differences of character and temperament, and not merely to recollect that Emlyn was only eighteen months younger than she had been when she had been forced into the position of the house mother. So, while Emlyn's wayward fancies were a great trial, Steadfast's sympathy with them was a greater one. Stead continued to see Jeph when taking in the market produce, for which he was always duly paid. Jeph also wished the whole family to come in on Sunday to profit by the preaching of some of the great Independent lights; but Stead, after trying it once, felt so sure that Patience would be miserable at anything so unaccustomed, so thunderous, and, as it seemed to him, so abusive, that he held to it that the distance was too great, and that the cattle could not be left. The soldiery seemed to him to spend their spare time in defacing the many churches of the city, chiefly in order to do what they called purifying them from all idols, in which term they included every sort of carving or picture, or even figures on monuments. And in this work of destruction a chest containing church plate had been come upon, making their work greedy instead of only mischievous. When all the churches in Bristol had been ransacked, they began to extend their search to the parish churches in the neighbourhood, and Stead began to be very anxious, though he hoped and believed that the cave was a perfectly safe place.	{ "id": "6006" }
14	THE QUESTION.	"Dogged as does it." --TROLLOPE. "Stead, Stead," cried Rusha, running up to him, as he was slowly digging over his stubble field to prepare it for the next crop, "the soldiers are in Elmwood." "Yes," said Emlyn, coming up at the same time, "they are knocking about everything in the church and pulling up the floor." "Patience sent us to get some salt," explained Rusha, "and we saw them from Dame Redman's door. She told us we had better be off and get home as fast as we could." "But I thought we would come and tell you," added Emlyn, "and then you could get out the long gun and shoot them as they come into the valley--that is if you can take aim--but I would load and show you how, and then they would think it was a whole ambush of honest men." "Aye, and kill us all--and serve us right," said Stead. "They don't want to hurt us if we don't meddle with them. But there's a good wench, Rusha, drive up the cows and sheep this way so that I can have an eye on them, and shew Captain Venn's paper, if any of those fellows should take a fancy to them." "They are digging all over old parson's garden," said Rusha, as she obeyed. "Was Jeph there?" asked Stead. "I didn't see him," said the child. Steadfast was very uneasy. That turning up the parson's garden looked as if they might be in search of the silver belonging to the Church, but after all they were unlikely to connect him with it, and it was wiser to go on with his regular work, and manifest no interest in the matter; besides that, every spadeful he heaved up, every chop he gave the stubble, seemed to be a comfort, while there was a prayer on his soul all the time that he might be true to his trust. By-and-by he saw Tom Oates running and beckoning to him, "Stead, Stead Kenton, you are to come." "What should I come for?" said Stead, gruffly. "The soldiers want you." "What call have they to me?" "They be come to cleanse the steeple house, they says, and take the spoil thereof, and they've been routling over the floor and parson's garden like so many hogs, and are mad because they can't find nothing, and Thatcher Jerry says, says he, 'Poor John Kenton as was shot was churchwarden and was very great with Parson. If anybody knows where the things is 'tis Steadfast Kenton.' So the corporal says, 'Is this so, Jephthah Kenton?' and Jeph, standing up in his big boots, says, 'Aye, corporal, my father was yet in the darkness of prelacy, and was what in their blindness they call a Churchwarden, but as to my brother, that's neither here nor there, he were but a boy and not like to know more than I did.' But the corporal said, 'That we will see. Is the lad here?' So I ups and said nay, but I'd seen you digging your croft, and then they bade me fetch you. So you must come, willy-nilly, or they may send worse after you." Stead was a little consoled by hearing that his brother was there. He suspected that Jeph would have consideration enough for his sisters and for the property that he considered his own to be unwilling to show the way to their valley; and he also reflected that it would be well that whatever might happen to himself should be out of sight of his sisters. Therefore he decided on following Oates, going through on the way the whole question whether to deny all knowledge, and yet feeling that the things belonging to God should not be shielded by untruth. His resolution finally was to be silent, and let them make what they would out of that, and Stead, though it was long since he had put it on, had a certain sullen air of stupidity such as often belongs to such natures as his, and which Jeph knew full well in him. They came in sight of the village green where the soldiers were refreshing themselves at what once had been the Elmwood Arms, for though not given to excess, total abstinence formed no part of the discipline of the Puritans; and one of the men started forward, and seizing hold of Steadfast by the shoulder exclaimed-- "As I live, 'tis the young prelatist who bowed himself down in the house of Rimmon! Come on, thou seed of darkness, and answer for thyself." If he had only known it, he was making the part of dogged silence and resistance infinitely easier to Steadfast by the rudeness and abuse, which, even in a better cause, would have made it natural to him to act as he was doing now, giving the soldier all the trouble of dragging him onward and then standing with his hands in his pockets like an image of obstinacy. "Speak," said the corporal, "and it shall be the better for thee. Hast thou any knowledge where the priests of Baal have bestowed the vessels of their mockery of worship." Stead moved not a muscle of his face. He had no acquaintance with priests of Baal or their vessels, so that he was not in the least bound to comprehend, and one of them exclaimed "The oaf knows not your meaning, corporal. Speak plainer to his Somerset ears. He knows not the tongue of the saints." "Ho, then, thou child of darkness. Know'st thou where the mass-mongering silver and gold of this church be hidden from them of whom it is written 'haste to the spoil.' Come, speak out. A crown if thou dost speak--the lash if thou wilt not answer, thou dumb dog." Stead was really not far removed from a dumb dog. All his faculties were so entirely wrought up to resistance that he had hardly distinguished the words. "Come, come, Stead," said Jeph, "thou art too old for thine old sulky moods. Speak up, and tell if thou know'st aught of the Communion Cup and dish, or it will be the worse for thee. Yes or no?" Stead made a move with his shoulder to push away his brother, and still stood silent. "There," said Jeph, "it is all Faithful's fault for his rough handling. His back is set up. It was always so from a boy, and you'll get nought out of him." "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him," quoted the Corporal, taking up a waggoner's whip which stood by the inn door, and the like of which had no doubt once been a more familiar weapon to him than the sword. "Speak lad--or--" and as no speech came, the lash descended on Stead's shoulders, not, however, hurting him much save where it grazed the skin of his face. "Now? Not a word? Take off his leathern coat, Faithful, then shall he feel the reward of sullenness." That Jeph did not interfere, while Faithful and another soldier tugged off his leathern coat, buffeting and kicking him roughly as they did so, brought additional hardness to Stead. He had been flogged in his time before, and not without reason, and had taken a pride in not giving in, or crying out for pain; and the ancient habit acquired in a worse cause, came to his help. He scarcely recollected the cause of his resistance; all his powers were concentrated in holding out, and when after another "Now, vile prelatic spawn, is thy heart still hardened? Yes or no?" the terrible whip came stinging and biting down on his shoulders and back, only protected by his shirt, he was entirely bound up in the determination to endure the pain without a groan or cry. But after blows enough had fallen to mark the shirt with streaks of blood, Jeph could bear it no longer. "Hold!" he said. "You will never make him speak that way. Father and mother never could. Strokes do but harden him." "The sure token of a fool," said the corporal, and prepared for another lash. " 'Tis plain he knows," said one of the others. "He would never stand this if a word would save him." "Mere malice and obstinacy," said Faithful, "and wilfulness. He will not utter a word. I would beat it out of him, as I was wont with our old ass." Another stroke descended, worse than all the others after the brief interval, but Jeph again spoke, "Look you, I know the lad of old and you'll get no more that way than if you were flogging the sign-post there. Whether he knows where the things are or not, the temper that is in him will never answer while you beat him, were it to save his life. Leave him to me, and I'll be bound to get an answer from him." "And I am constable, and I must say," said Blacksmith Blane, moving forwards, with a bar of iron in his hand, and four or five stout men behind him, "that to come and abuse and flog a hard-working, fatherless lad, that never did you no harm, nor anyone else, is not what honest men look for from soldiers that talk so big about Parliament and rights and what not!" " 'Twas for contumacy," began the corporal. "Contumacy forsooth, as though 'twas the will of the honest gentlemen in Parliament that boys should be misused for nothing at all!" "If the young dog would have spoken," began the corporal, but somehow he did not like the look of Blane's iron bar, and thought it best to look up at the sun, and discover that it was time to depart if the party were to be in time for roll-call. As it was a private marauding speculation, it might not be well to have complaints made to Captain Venn, who never sanctioned plunder nor unnecessary violence. Even Jeph had to march off, and Steadfast, who had no mind to be pitied, nor asked by the neighbours what was the real fact, had picked up his spade and jerkin, and was out of sight while the villagers were watching the soldiers away. The first thing he did was to give thanks in heart that he had been aided thus far not to betray his trust, and then to feel that Corporal Dodd's flogging was a far severer matter than the worst chastisement he had ever received from his father, even when he kept Jeph's secret about the stolen apples. Putting on his coat was impossible, and he was so stiff and sore that he could not hope to conceal his condition from Patience. At home all were watching for him. They ran up in anxiety, for one of the ever ready messengers of evil had rushed down the glen to tell Patience that the soldiers were beating Stead shamefully, and Jeph standing by not saying one word. Little Ben broke out with "Poor, poor!" and Rusha burst into tears at sight of the blood, while Emlyn said "Just what comes of going among the rascal Roundheads," and Patience looked up at him and said "Was it--?" he nodded, and she quietly said "I'm glad." He added, "Jeph's coming soon," and she knew that the trial was not over. The brother and sister needed very few words to understand one another, and they were afraid to say anything that the younger ones could understand. Patience washed the weals with warm water and milk, and wrapped a cloak round him, but even the next morning, he could not use his arms without fresh bleeding, and the hindrance to the work was serious. He could do nothing but herd the cattle, and he was much inclined to drive them to the further end of the moorland where Jephthah would hardly find him, but then he recollected that Patience would be left to bear the brunt of the attack, so that he would not go far off, never guessing, poor fellow, that in his dull, almost blundering fashion, he was doing like the heroes and the martyrs, but only feeling that he must keep his trust at all costs. Jeph, however, did not come that day or the next, so that inwardly, the wound-up feeling had passed into a weariness of expectation, and outwardly the stripes had healed enough for Stead to go about his work as usual only a little stiffly. He went into Bristol on market day as usual, and then it was, on his way out that Jeph joined him, saying it was to bid Patience and the little ones farewell, since the marching orders were for the morrow. He was unusually kind and good-natured; he had a load of comfits for Rusha and Ben, and a stout piece of woollen stuff for Patience which he said was such as he was told godly maidens wore, and which possibly the terror of his steel cap and corslet had cheapened at the mercer's; also he had a large packet of tractates for Stead's own reading, and he enquired whether they possessed a Bible. Stead wondered whether all this was out of regret at the treatment he had undergone, or whether it was to put him off his guard, and this occupied him when Jeph began to preach, as he did uninterruptedly for the last mile, without any of the sense, if there were any, reaching the mind of the auditor. They reached the hut, the gifts were displayed; and when the young ones, who were all a little afraid of the elder brother, had gone off to feast upon the sweets, Jeph began with enquiries after Steadfast's back, and he replied that it was mending fast, while Patience exclaimed at the cruelty and wickedness of so using him. "Why wouldn't he speak then?" said Jeph. "Yea or nay would have ended it in a moment, but that's Stead's way. He looks like it now!" and he did, elbows on knees, and chin on hands. "Come now, Stead, thou canst speak to me! Was it all because Faithful hauled thee about?" "He did, and he had no call to," said Stead, surlily. "Well, that's true, but I'm not hauling thee. Tell me, Stead, I mind now that thou wast out with father that last day ere the Parson was taken to receive his deserts. I don't believe that even thy churlishness would have stood such blows if thou hadst known naught of the idolatrous vessels, and couldst have saved thy skin by saying so! No answer. Why, what have these malignants done for thee that thou shouldst hold by them? Slain thy father! Burnt thine house! No fault of theirs that thou art alive this day! Canst not speak?" Jeph's temper giving way at the provocation, he forgot his conciliatory intentions and seizing Stead by the collar shook him violently. Growler almost broke his chain with rage, Patience screamed and flew to the rescue, just as she had often done when they were all children together, and Jeph threw his brother from him so that he fell on the root of a tree, and lay for a moment or two still, then picked himself up again evidently with pain, though he answered Patience cheerfully that it was nought. "Thou art enough to drive a man mad with thy surly silence," exclaimed Jeph, whom this tussle had rendered much more like his old self, "and after all, knowing that even though thou art not one of the holy ones, thou wilt not tell a lie, it comes to the same thing. I know thou wottest where these things are, and it is only thy sullen scruples that hinder thee from speaking. Nevertheless, I shall leave no stone unturned till I find them! For what is written 'Thou shalt break down their altars.'" "Jeph," said Stead, firmly. "You left home because of your grief and rage at father's death. Would you have me break the solemn charge he laid on me?" "Father was a good man after his light," said Jeph, a little staggered, "but that light was but darkness, and we to whom the day itself is vouchsafed are not bound by a charge laid on us in ignorance. Any way, he laid no bonds on me, but I must needs leave thee alone in thy foolishness of bondage! Come, Patience, wench, and aid me, I know this rock is honeycombed with caves, like a rabbit warren, no place so likely." "I help thee--no indeed'" cried Patience. "Would I aid thee to do what would most grieve poor father, that thou once mad'st such a work about! I should be afraid of his curse." Possibly if Jeph had not pledged himself to his comrades to overcome his brother's resistance, and bring back the treasures, he might have desisted; but what he did was to call to Rusha to bring him a lantern, and show him the holes, promising her a tester if she would. She brought the lantern, but she was a timid, little, unenterprising thing, and was mortally afraid of the caverns, a fear that Patience had thought it well not to combat. Emlyn who had already scrambled all over the face of the slope, and peeped into all, could have told him a great deal more about them; but she hated the sight of a rebel, and sat on the ground making ugly faces and throwing little stones after him whenever his back was turned. Stead, afraid to betray by his looks of anxiety, when Jeph came near the spot, sat all the time with his elbows on his knees, and his hands over his face, fully trusting to what all had agreed at the time of the burial of the chest, that there was no sign to indicate its whereabouts. He felt rather than saw that Jeph, after tumbling out the straw and fern that served for fodder in the lower caves, where the sheep and pigs were sheltered in winter, had scrambled up to the hermit's chapel, when suddenly there was a shout, but not at all of exultation, and down among the bushes, lantern and all came the soldier, tumbling and crashing into the midst of an enormous bramble, whence Stead pulled him out with the lantern flattened under him, and his first breathless words were-- "Beelzebub himself!" Then adding, as he stood upright, "he made full at me, and I saw his eyes glaring. I heard him groaning. It is an unholy popish place. No wonder!" Patience and Rusha were considerably impressed, for it was astonishing to see how horribly terrified and shaken was the warrior, who had been in two pitched battles, and Ben screamed, and needed to be held in Stead's arms to console him. Jeph had no mind to pursue his researches any further. He only tarried long enough to let Patience pick out half-a-dozen thorns from his cheeks and hands, and to declare that if he had not to march to-morrow, he should bring that singular Christian man, Captain Venn, to exorcise the haunt of Apollyon. Wherewith he bade them all farewell, with hopes that by the time he saw them again, they would have come to the knowledge of the truth. No sooner was he out of sight among the bushes than Emlyn seized on Rusha, and whirled her round in a dance as well as her more substantial proportions would permit, while Steadfast let his countenance expand into the broad grin that he had all this time been stifling. "What _do_ you think it was?" asked Patience, still awestruck. "Why--the old owl--and his own bad conscience. He might talk big, but he didn't half like going against poor father. Thank God! He has saved His own, and that's over!"	{ "id": "6006" }
15	A TABLE OF LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS.	"Yet along the Church's sky Stars are scattered, pure and high; Yet her wasted gardens bear Autumn violets, sweet and rare, Relics of a Spring-time clear, Earnests of a bright New Year." KEBLE No more was heard or seen of Jephthah, or of Captain Venn's troop. The garrison within Bristol was small and unenterprising, and in point of fact the war was over. News travelled slowly, but Stead picked up scraps at Bristol, by which he understood that things looked very bad for the King. Moreover, Sir George Elmwood died of his wounds; poor old Lady Elmwood did not long survive him, and the estate, which had been left to her for her life, was sequestrated by the Parliament, and redeemed by the next heir after Sir George, so that there was an exchange of the Lord of the Manor. The new squire was an elderly man, hearty and good-natured, who did not seem at all disposed to interfere with any one on the estate. He was a Presbyterian, and was shocked to find that the church had been unused for three years. He had it cleaned from the accumulation of dirt and rubbish, the broken windows mended with plain glass, and the altar table put down in the nave, as it had been before Mr. Holworth's time; and he presented to the living Mr. Woodley, a scholarly-looking person, who wore a black gown and collar and bands. The Elmwood folk were pleased to have prayers and sermon again, and Patience was glad that the children should not grow up like heathens; but her first church going did not satisfy her entirely. "It is all strange," she said to Stead, who had stayed with the cattle. "He had no book, and it was all out of his own head, not a bit like old times." "Of course not," said Emlyn. "He had got no surplice, and I knew him for a prick-eared Roundhead! I should have run off home if you had not held me, Patience. I'll never go there again." "I am sure you made it a misery to me, trying to make Rusha and Ben as idle and restless as yourself," said Patience. "They ought not to listen to a mere Roundhead sectary," said Emlyn, tossing her head. "I couldn't have borne it if I had not had the young ladies to look at. They had got silk hoods and curls and lace collars, so as it was a shame a mere Puritan should wear." "O Emlyn, Emlyn, it is all for the outside," said Patience. "Now, I did somehow like to hear good words, though they were not like the old ones." "Good, indeed! from a trumpery Puritan." Stead went to church in the afternoon. He was eighteen now, and that great struggle and effort had made him more of a man. He thought much when he was working alone in the fields, and he had spent his time on Sundays in reading his Bible and Prayer-book, and comparing them with Jeph's tracts. Since Emlyn had come, he had made a corner of the cowshed fit to sleep in, by stuffing the walls with dry heather, and the sweet breath of the cows kept it sufficiently warm, and on the winter evenings, he took a lantern there with one of Patience's rush lights, learnt a text or two anew, and then repeated passages to himself and thought over them. What would seem intolerably dull to a lad now, was rest to one who had been rendered older than his age by sorrow and responsibility, and the events that were passing led people to consider religious questions a great deal. But Stead was puzzled. The minister was not like the soldiers whom he had heard raving about the reign of the saints, and abusing the church. He prayed for the King's having a good deliverance from his troubles, and for the peace of the kingdom, and he gave out that there was to be a week of fasting, preaching, and preparation for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The better sort of people in the village were very much pleased, nobody except Goody Grace was dissatisfied, and people told her that was only because she was old and given to grumbling at everything new. Blane the Smith tapped Stead on the shoulder, and said, "Hark ye, my lad. If it be true that thou wast in old Parson's secrets, now's the time for thou know'st what." Stead's mouth was open, and his face blank, chiefly because he did not know what to do, and was taken by surprise, and Blane took it for an answer. "Oh! if you don't know, that's another thing, but then 'twas for nothing that the troopers flogged you? Well," he muttered, as Stead walked off, "that's a queer conditioned lad, to let himself be flogged, as I wouldn't whip a dog, all out of temper, because he wouldn't answer a question. But he's a good lad, and I'll not bring him into trouble by a word to squire or minister." The children went off to gather cowslips, and Stead was able to talk it over with Patience, who at first was eager to be rid of the dangerous trust, and added, with a sigh, "That she had never taken the Sacrament since the Easter before poor father was killed, and it must be nigh upon Whitsuntide now." "That's true," said Stead, "but nobody makes any count of holy days now. It don't seem right, Patience." "Not like what it used to be," said Patience. "And yet this minister is surely a godly man." "Father and parson didn't say ought about a godly man. They made me take my solemn promise that I'd only give the things to a lawfully ordained minister." "He is a minister, and he comes by law," argued Patience. "Do be satisfied, Stead. I'm always in fear now that folks guess we have somewhat in charge; and Emlyn is such a child for prying and chattering. And if they should come and beat thee again, or do worse. Oh, Stead! surely you might give them up to a good man like that; Smith Blane says you ought!" "I doubt me! I know that sort don't hold with Bishops, and, so far as I can see, by father's old Prayer-book, a lawful minister must have a Bishop to lay hands on him," said Stead, who had studied the subject as far as his means would allow, and had good though slow brains of his own, matured by responsibility. "I'll tell you what, Patience, I'll go and see Dr. Eales about it. I wot he is a minister of the old sort, that father would say I might trust to." Dr. Eales was still living in Mrs. Lightfoot's lodgings, at the sign of the Wheatsheaf, or more properly starving, for he had only ten pounds a year paid to him out of the benefice that had been taken away from him; and though that went farther then than it would do now, it would not have maintained him, but that his good hostess charged him as little as she could afford, and he also had a few pupils among the gentry's sons, but there were too many clergymen in the same straits for this to be a very profitable undertaking. There were no soldiers in Mrs. Lightfoot's house now, and the doctor lived more at large, but still cautiously, for in the opposite house, named the "Ark," whose gable end nearly met the Wheatsheaf's, dwelt a rival baker, a Brownist, whose great object seemed to be to spy upon the clergyman, and have something to report against him, nor was Mrs. Lightfoot's own man to be trusted. Stead lingered about the open stall where the bread was sold till no customer was at hand, and then mentioned under his breath to the good dame his desire to speak with her lodger. "Certainly," she said, but the Doctor was now with his pupils at Mistress Rivett's. He always left them at eleven of the clock, more shame of Mrs. Rivett not to give the good man his dinner, which she would never feel. Steadfast had better watch for him at the gate which opened on the down, for there he could speak more privately and securely than at home. He took the advice, and passed away the time as best he could, learning on the way that a news letter had been received stating that the King was with the Scottish army at Newcastle, and that it was expected that on receiving their arrears of pay, the Scots would surrender him to the Parliament, a proceeding which the folk in the market-place approved or disapproved according to their politics. Mrs. Rivett's house stood a little apart from the town, with a court and gates opening on the road over the down; and just as eleven strokes were chiming from the town clock below, a somewhat bent, silver-haired man, in a square cap and black gown, leaning on a stick, came out of it. Stead, after the respectful fashion of his earlier days, put his knee to the ground, doffed his steeple-crowned hat and craved a blessing, both he and the Doctor casting a quick glance round so as to be sure there was no one in sight. Dr. Eales gave it earnestly, as one to whom it was a rare joy to find a country youth thus demanding it, and as he looked at the honest face he said: "You are mine hostess' good purveyor, methinks, to whom I have often owed a wholesome meal." "Steadfast Kenton, so please your reverence. There is a secret matter on which I would fain have your counsel, and Mistress Lightfoot thought I might speak to you here with greater safety." "She did well. Speak on, my good boy, if we walk up and down here we shall be private. It does my heart good to commune with a faithful young son of the Church." Steadfast told his story, at which the good old Canon was much affected. His brother Holworth, as he called him, was not in prison but in the Virginian plantations. He was still the only true minister of Elmwood, and Mr. Woodley, though owned by the present so-called law of the land, was not there rightly by the law of the Church, and, therefore, Stead was certainly not bound to surrender the trust to him, but rather the contrary. The Doctor could have gone into a long disquisition about Presbyterian Orders, contradicting the arguments many good and devout people adduced in favour of them, but there was little time, so he only confirmed with authority Stead's belief that a Bishop's Ordination was indispensable to a true pastor, "the only door by which to enter to the charge of the fold." Then came the other question of attendance on his ministry, and whether to attend the feast given out for the Sunday week, after the long-forced abstinence: Patience's, ever since the break-up of the parish; Steadfast's, since the siege of Bristol. Dr. Eales considered, "I cannot bid you go to that in the efficacy of which neither you nor I believe, my son," he said. "It would not be with faith. Here, indeed, I have ministered privately to a few of the faithful in their own houses, but the risk is over great for you and your sister to join us, espied as we are. How is it with your home?" "O, sir, would you even come thither?" exclaimed Steadfast, joyfully, and he described his ravine, which was of course known to the Elmwood neighbours, but very seldom visited by them, never except in the middle of the day, and where the thicket and the caverns afforded every facility for concealment. Whitsun Day was coming, and Dr. Eales proposed to come over to the glen and celebrate the Holy Feast in the very early morning before anyone was astir. There were a few of his Bristol flock who would be thankful for the opportunity of meeting more safely than they could do in the city, since at Easter they had as nearly as possible been all arrested in a pavilion in Mr. Rivett's garden which they had thought unsuspected. There would be one market day first, and on that Stead would come and explain his preparations, and hear what the Doctor had arranged. And so it was. The time was to be three o'clock, the very dawn of the long summer day, the time when sleep is deepest. Dr. Eales and Mrs. Lightfoot would come out the night before, he not returning after his lesson to the Rivetts, and she making some excuse about going to see friends for the Sunday. The Rivetts, living outside the gates where sentries still kept guard, could start in the morning, and so could the four others who were to form part of the congregation. Goody Grace was the only person near home whom Patience wished to invite, for she too had grieved over the great deprivation, and had too much heart for the Church to be satisfied with Mr. Woodley's ministrations. Perhaps even she did not understand the difference, but she could be trusted, and the young people knew how happy it would make her. Little can we guess what such an opportunity was to the faithful children of the Church in those sad days. Goody Grace folded her hands and murmured, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," when Patience told her of the invitation, and Patience, though she had all her ordinary work to do, went quietly about it, as if she had some great thought of peace and awe upon her. "Why, Patience, you seem as if you were making ready for some guest, the Prince of Wales at least!" said Emlyn, on Saturday night. Patience smiled a sweet little happy smile and in her heart she said "And so I am, and for a greater far!" but she did say "Yes, Emlyn, Dr. Eales is coming to sleep here to-night, and he will pray with us in the early morning." It had been agreed that the Celebration should take place first, and then after a short pause, the Morning Service. Jerusha was eleven years old, and a very good girl, and since Confirmation was impossible, her brother and sister would have asked for her admission to the Holy Feast without it, but she could not be called up without the danger of awaking Emlyn; and Patience was so sure that it was not safe to trust that damsel with the full knowledge of the treasure that, though Steadfast always thought his sister hard on her, he was forced to give way. The children were to be admitted to Matins, for if any idea oozed out that this latter service had been held, no great danger was likely to come of it. Dr. Eales arrived in the evening, Steadfast meeting him to act as guide, and Patience set before him of her best. A fowl, which she had been forced to broil for want of other means of dressing it; bread baked in a tin with a fire of leaves and small sticks heaped over it; roasted eggs, excellent butter and milk. She apologised for not having dared to fetch any ale for fear of exciting suspicion, but the doctor set her quite at ease by his manifest enjoyment of her little feast, declaring that he had not made so good a meal since Bristol was taken. Then he catechised the children. Little Ben could say the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and some of the shorter Commandments, and the doctor patted his little round white cap, and gave him two Turkey figs as a reward. Jerusha, when she got over her desperate fright enough to speak above a whisper, was quite perfect from her name down to "charity with all men," but Emlyn stumbled horribly over even the first answers, and utterly broke down in the Fourth Commandment; but she smiled up in the doctor's face in her pretty way, and blushed as she said "The chaplain at Blythedale had taught us so far, your reverence." "And have you learnt no further?" "If you were here to teach me, sir, I would soon learn it," said the little witch, but she did not come over him as she did with most people. "You have as good an instructor as I for your needs, in this discreet maiden," said Dr. Eales, and as something of a pout descended on the sparkling little face, "when you know all the answers, perchance Steadfast here may bring you to my lodgings and I will hear you." "I could learn them myself if I had the book," said Emlyn. The fact being that the Catechism was taught by Patience from memory in those winter evenings when all went to bed to save candle light, but that when Steadfast retired to the cow-house, Emlyn either insisted on playing with the others or pretended to go to sleep; and twitted Patience with being a Puritan. However, the hopes of going into Bristol might be an incentive, though she indulged in a grumble to Rusha, and declared that she liked a jolly chaplain, and this old doctor was not a bit better than a mere Puritan. Rusha opened her big eyes. She never did understand Emlyn, and perhaps that young maiden took delight in shocking her. They were ordered off to bed much sooner than they approved on that fair summer night, when the half-moon was high and the nightingales were singing all round--not that they cared for that, but there was a sense about them that something mysterious was going on, and Emlyn was wild with curiosity and vexation at being kept out of it. She would have kept watch and crept out; but that Patience came in, and lay down, so close to the door that it was impossible to get out without waking her, and besides if Emlyn did but stir, she asked what was the matter. "They mean something!" said Emlyn to herself, "and I'll know what it is. They have no right to keep me out of the plot; I am not like stupid little Rusha! I have been in a siege, and four battles, besides skirmishes! I'll watch till they think I'm asleep, if I pull all the hulls out of my bed! Then they will begin." But nothing moved that Emlyn could hear or see. She woke and slept, but was quite aware when Patience rose up after a brief doze, and found the first streaks of dawn in the sky, a cuckoo calling as if for very life in the nearest tree, and Steadfast quietly sweeping the dew from the grass in a little open space shut in by rocks, trees, and bushes, close to the bank of the brook. A chest which he kept in the cow-shed, and which bore traces of the fire in the old house, had been brought down to serve as an Altar, and it was laid over, for want of anything better, with one of poor Mrs. Kenton's best table-cloths, which Patience had always thought too good for use. The next thing was to meet the rest of the scanty congregation at the entrances of the wood, and guide them to the spot. This was safely done, Goody Grace knew the way, and had guided one of the old Elmwood maid servants whom she had managed to shelter for the night. Mrs. Lightfoot was there with Mrs. Rivett, her daughter, elder son, and a grave-looking man servant, Mr. Henshaw, a Barbados merchant, with his wife, and a very worn battered shabby personage, but unmistakably a gentleman of quality, and wounded in the wars, for he was so lame that the merchant had to help him over the rough paths. It was a wonderful Whitsun-day morning that none of the little party could ever forget. The sunrise could not be seen in that deep, narrow place, but the sky was of a strange pale shining blue, and the tender young green of the trees overhead was touched with gold, the glades of the wood were intensely blue with hyacinths, and with all sorts of delicate greens twined above in the bushes over them. A wild cherry, all silver white, was behind their Altar, the green floor was marbled with cuckoo flowers and buttercups, and the clear little stream whose voice murmured by was fringed with kingcups and forget-me-nots. The scents were of the most delicious dewy freshness; and as to the sounds! Larks sang high up in the sky, wood pigeons cooed around, nightingales, thrushes, every bird of the wood seemed to be trying to make music and melody. And in the midst the grey-haired priest stood close to an ivy-covered rock, with the white covered Altar, and the bright golden vessels which he had carefully looked to in the night, and the little congregation knelt close round him on cloaks and mats, the women hooded, the old Cavalier's long thin locks, the merchant's dark ones, and the close cropped heads of the servant and of Steadfast bared to the morning breeze in its pure, dewy, soft freshness, fit emblem of the Comforter. No book was produced, all was repeated from memory. They durst not raise their voices, but the birds were their choir, and as they murmured their _Gloria in Excelsis_, the sweet notes rang out in that unconscious praise. When the blessing of peace had been given there was a long hush, and no one rose till after the vessels had been replaced in their casket, and Stead was climbing up with it again to the hiding place. Then there was a move to the front of the hut, where Rusha was just awakening, and Emlyn feigned to be still asleep. It was not yet four o'clock, but the sweet freshness was still around everything. Young Mistress Alice Rivett and her brother were enchanted to gather flowers, and ran after their hosts to see the cows milked, and the goats, pigs, and poultry fed, sights new to them; but the elder ladies shivered and were glad to warm themselves at the little fire Patience hastily lighted, after cleaning the hut as fast as she could, by rolling up the bedding, and fairly carrying Ben out to finish his night's rest in the cow-house. The guests had brought their provisions, and insisted that their young hosts should eat with them, accepting only the warm milk that Patience brought in her pail, and they drank from the horn cups of the family. Dr. Eales observed to the Cavalier that it was a true _Agape_ or love-feast like those of the ancient Church, and the gentleman's melancholy, weather-beaten face relaxed into a smile as he sighed and hoped that the same endurance as that of the Christians of old would be granted in this time of persecution. Emlyn was gratified at being a good deal noticed by the company as so unlike the others. She was not shy and frightened like Rusha, who hung her head and had not a word to say for herself, but chattered away to the young Rivetts, showing them the kid, the calves, and the lambs, taking Mistress Alice to the biggest cowslips and earliest wild roses, and herself making a sweet posy for each of the ladies. The old Cavalier himself, Colonel Harford, was even amused with the pretty little maid, who, he told Dr. Eales, resembled Mirth as Master John Milton had depicted her, ere he took up with General Cromwell and his crew; and was a becoming figure for this early morn. On learning the child's history, he turned out to know Sir Harry Blythedale, but not to have heard of him since they had parted at Newark, he to guard the king to Oxford, Sir Harry to join Lord Astley, and he much feared that the old knight had been killed at Stowe, in the fight between Astley and Brereton. This would account for nothing having been heard from him about Emlyn, but Colonel Harford promised, if any opportunity should offer, to communicate with Lady Blythedale, whom he believed to be living at Worcester; and he patted Emlyn on the head, called her a little loyal veteran, accepted a tiny posy of forget-me-not from her, and after fumbling in his pocket, gave her a crown piece. Steadfast and Patience were afraid it was his last, and much wished she had contrived not to take it, but she said she should keep it for a remembrance. After this rest, the beautiful Whitsuntide Matins was said in the fair forest church, and before six o'clock this strange and blessed festival had ended, though not the peace and thankfulness in the hearts of the little flock. Indeed, instead of a sermon, Dr. Eales's parting words were "And he went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights."	{ "id": "6006" }
16	A FAIR OFFER.	"We be content," the keepers said, "We three and you no less, Then why should we of you be afraid, As we never did transgress." ROBIN HOOD BALLAD. Steadfast was busy weeding the little patch of barley that lay near the ruins of the old farm house with little Ben basking round him. The great carefulness as to keeping the ground clear had been taught him by his father, and was one reason why his fields, though so small, did not often bear a bad crop. He heard his name called over the hedge, and looking up saw the Squire, Mr. Elmwood, on horseback. He came up, respectfully taking off his hat and standing with it in his hand as was then the custom when thus spoken to. "What is this I hear, Kenton," said the squire, "that you have been having a prelatist service on your ground?" Steadfast was dismayed, but did not speak, till Mr. Elmwood added, "Is it true?" "Yes, sir," he answered resolutely. "Did you know it was against the law to use the Book of Common Prayer?" "There was no book, sir." "But you do not deny it was the same superstitious and Popish ceremony and festival abolished by law." "No, sir," Stead allowed, though rather by gesture than word. "Now, look you here, young Kenton, I ask no questions. I do not want to bring anyone into trouble, and you are a hard-working, honest lad by what they tell me, who have a brother fighting in the good Cause and have suffered from the lawless malignants yourself. Was it not the Prince's troopers that wrought this ruin?" pointing towards the blackened gable, "and shot down your father? Aye! The more shame you should hold with them! I wish you no harm I say, nor the blinded folk who must have abused your simplicity: but I am a justice of the peace, and I will not have laws broken on my land. If this thing should happen again, I shall remember that you have no regular or lawful tenure of this holding, and put you forth from it." He waited, but a threat always made silent resistance easy to Steadfast, and there was no answer. Mr. Elmwood, however, let that pass, for he was not a hard or a fanatical man, and he knew that to hold such a service was not such an easy matter that it was likely to be soon repeated. He looked round at the well-mended fences, the clean ground, and the tokens of intelligent industry around, and the clean homespun shirt sleeves that spoke of the notable manager at home. "You are an industrious fellow, my good lad," he said, "how long have you had this farm to yourself?" "Getting on for five years, your honour," said Steadfast. "And is that your brother?" "Yes, please your honour," picking Ben up in his arms to prevent the barley from being pulled up by way of helping him. "How many of you are there?" "Five of us, sir, but my eldest brother is in Captain Venn's troop." "So I heard, and what is this about a child besides?" "An orphan, sir, I found after the skirmish at the mill stream, who was left with us till her friends can send after her." "Well, well. You seem a worthy youth," said Mr. Elmwood, who was certainly struck and touched by the silent uncomplaining resolution of the mere stripling who had borne so heavy a burthen. "If you were heartily one of us, I should be glad to make you woodward, instead of old Tomkins, and build up yonder house for you, but I cannot do it for one who is hankering after prelacy, and might use the place for I know not what plots and conspiracies of the malignants." Again Steadfast took refuge in a little bow of acknowledgment, but kept his lips shut, till again the squire demanded, "What do you think of it? There's a fair offer. What have you to say for yourself?" He had collected himself and answered, "I thank you, sir. You are very good. If you made me woodward, I would serve your honour faithfully, and have no plots or the like there. But, your honour, I was bred up in the Church and I cannot sell myself." "Why, you foolish, self-conceited boy, what do you know about it? Is not what is good enough for better men than you fit to please you?" To this Stead again made no answer, having said a great deal for him. "Well," said Mr. Elmwood, angered at last, "if ever I saw a dogged moon-calf, you are one! However, I let you go scot free this time, in regard for your brother's good service, and the long family on your hands, but mind, I shall put in an active woodward instead of old Tomkins, who has been past his work these ten years, and if ever I hear of seditious or prelatical doings in yonder gulley again, off you go." He rode off, leaving Steadfast with temper more determined, but mind not more at ease. The appointment of a woodward was bad news, for the copsewood and the game had been left to their fate for the last few years, and what were the rights of the landlord over them Stead did not know, so that there might be many causes of trouble, especially if the said woodward considered him a person to be specially watched. Indeed, the existence of such a person would make a renewal of what Mr. Elmwood called the prelatist assembly impossible, and with a good deal of sorrow he announced the fact on the next market day to Mrs. Lightfoot. He could not see Dr. Eales, but when next he came in, she gave him a paper on which was simply marked "Ps. xxxvii, 7." He looked out the reference and found "Hold thee still in the Lord and abide patiently upon Him." Stead hoped that Patience and the rest would never know what an offer had been made to him, but Master Brown, who had recommended him, and who did not at all like the prospect of a strange woodward, came to expostulate with him for throwing away such a chance for a mere whim, telling Patience she was a sensible wench and ought to persuade her brother to see what was for his own good and the good of all, holding up himself as an example. "I never missed my church and had the parson's good word all along, and yet you see I am ready to put up with this good man without setting myself up to know more than my elders and betters! Eh! Hast not a word to say for thyself? Then I'll tell the squire, who is a good and friendly gentleman to all the old servants, that you have thought better of it, and will thankfully take his kindness, and do your best." "I cannot go against father," said Steadfast. "And what would he have done, good man, but obey them that have the rule, and let wiser folk think for thee. But all the young ones are pig-headed as mules now-a-days, and must think for themselves, one running off to the Independents, and one to the Quakers and Shakers, and one to the Fifth Monarchy men, and you, Steadfast Kenton, that I thought better things of, talking of the Church and offending the squire with thy prelatic doings, that have been forbidden by Act of Parliament. What say you to that, my lad? Come, out with it," for Stead had more difficulty in answering Master Brown, who had been a great authority throughout his life, than even the Squire himself. "Parson said there was higher law than Parliament." "Eh! What, the King? He is a prisoner, bless him, but they will never let him go till they have bent him to their will, and what will you do then?" "Not the King," muttered Steadfast. "Eh! what! If you have come to pretending to know the law of God better than your elders, you are like the rest of them, and I have done with you." And away tramped the steward in great displeasure, while Patience put her apron over her head and cried bitterly. She supposed Stead might be right, but what would it not have been to have the old house built up, and all decent about them as it was in mother's time, and fit places to sleep in, now that the wenches were growing bigger? "But you know, Patty, we are saving for that." "Aye, and how long will it take? And now this pestilent woodward will be always finding fault--killing the fowls and ducks, and seizing the swine and sheep, and very like slaughtering the dogs and getting us turned out of house and home; for now you have offended the squire, he will believe anything against us." "Come, Patty, you know I could not help it. This is sorest of all, you that have always stood by me and father's wish." "Yes, yes," sobbed Patience. "I wot you are right, Stead. I'll hold to you, though I wish--I wish you would think like other folk." Yet Patience knew in her secret soul that then he would not be her own Steadfast, and she persuaded him no more, though the discomforts and deficiencies of their present home tried her more and more as the family grew older. Stead had contrived a lean-to, with timbers from the old house, and wattled sides stuffed with moss, where he and little Ben slept in summer time, and they had bought or made some furniture--a chair and table, some stools, bedding, and kitchen utensils, and she toiled to keep things clean, but still it was a mere hovel, with the door opening out into the glade. Foxes and polecats prowled, owls hooted, and the big dog outside was a needful defender, even in summer time, and in winter the cold was piteous, the wet even worse, and they often lost some of their precious animals--chickens died of cold, and once three lambs had been carried away in a sudden freshet. Yet Patience, when she saw Steadfast convinced, made up her mind to stand by him, and defended him when the younger girls murmured. Rusha was of a quiet, acquiescent, contented nature, and said little, as Emlyn declared, "She knew nothing better;" but Emlyn was more and more weary of the gulley, and as nothing was heard of her friends, and she was completely one of the home, she struggled more with the dullness and loneliness. She undertook all errands to the village for the sake of such change as a chatter with the young folk there afforded her, or for the chance of seeing the squire's lady or sons and daughters go by; and she was wild to go on market days to Bristol. [Illustration: Emlyn at the Market] In spite of Puritan greyness, soldiers, sailors, gentlemen, ladies, and even fashions, such as they were, could be seen there, and news picked up, and Emlyn would fain have persuaded Steadfast that she should be the most perfect market woman, if he would only let her ride in on the donkey between the panniers, in a broad hat, with chickens and ducks dangling round, eggs, butter, and fruit or nuts, and even posies, according to the season, and sit on the steps of the market-place among the other market women and girls. Steadfast would have been the last to declare that her laughing dark eyes, and smiling lips, and arch countenance would not bring many a customer, but he knew well that his mother would never have sent his sister to be thus exposed, and he let her pout, or laughed away her refusal by telling her that he was bound not to let a butler's daughter demean herself to be stared at by all the common folk, who would cheapen her wares. And when she did coax him to take her to Bristol on any errand she could invent, to sell her yarns, or buy pins, or even a ribbon, he was inexorable in leaving her under Mrs. Lightfoot's care, and she had to submit, even though it sometimes involved saying her catechism to Dr. Eales. Yet that always ended in the old man's petting her. It was only from her chatter that the old clergyman ever knew of the proposal that Stead had rejected for conscience's sake. It vexed the lad so much that he really could not bear to think of it, and it would come over him now and then, was it all for nothing? Would the Church ever lift up her head again? or would Mr. Woodley be always in possession at Elmwood Church, where everyone seemed to be content with him. The Kentons went thither. It was hardly safe to abstain, for a fine upon absence was still the law of the land, though seldom enforced; and Dr. Eales who considered Presbyterianism by far the least unorthodox and most justifiable sect, had advised Stead not to allow himself or the others altogether to lose the habit of public worship, but to abstain from Communions which might be an act of separation from the Church, and which could not be accepted by her children as genuine. Such was the advice of most of the divines of the English Church in this time of eclipse; and though Stead, and still less Patience, did not altogether follow the reasoning, they obeyed, while aware that they incurred suspicion from the squire by not coming to "the table." The new woodward, Peter Pierce, was not one of the villagers as usual, but had been a soldier in one of the regiments of the Earl of Essex, in which Mr. Elmwood's eldest son had served. Instead of succeeding to old Tomkins's lodge in the great wood, he had a new one built for him, so as to command the opening of Hermit's Gulley towards the village, and one of the Bristol roads. Could this be for the sake of watching over anything so insignificant as the Kentons? The copse on their side of the brook was their own, free to do what they chose with except cutting down the timber trees, but the further side was the landlord's, as they had now to remember; and as, when the brook was at its lowest, their pigs and goats were by no means likely to recollect; though Steadfast was extremely anxious to give no occasion for the mistrust and ill-will with which Pierce regarded him, as a squatter, trespasser, and poacher, almost as a matter of course, and likewise a prelatist and plotter. Once he did find a kid on the wrong side, standing on a rock, browsing a honeysuckle, and was about either to seize it or shoot it, as it went off in three bounds, when Emlyn darted out, and threw herself between. It was her darling kid, it should never trespass again, she would--she would thank him ever more--if he would spare it this once. And Emlyn as usual had touched the soft place in the heart of even a woodward. He told her not to cry, and contented himself with growling a tremendous warning to Steadfast and Patience. There were several breezes about Growler, who was only too apt to use his liberty in pursuing rabbits on the wrong side, and whom Peter more than once condemned; but Emlyn and Ben begged him off, and he was kept well chained up. At last, however, he won even the woodward's favour by the slaughter of a terrible wild cat and her brood, after all Peter's dogs had returned with bleeding faces from the combat. The woodward had another soft place in his heart. He had a pretty young wife and a little son. Nanny Pierce was older in years, but far more childish than Patience, and the life in this gulley seemed to her utter solitude and desolation, and if Patience had been ten times a poacher and a prelatist, she could not have helped making friends with the only creature of her own kind within a mile. And when Patience's experience with Ben and other older babes at rest in the churchyard, had aided the poor little helpless woman through a convulsion fit of her baby's before Goody Grace could arrive, Peter himself owned that "the Kenton wench was good for somewhat," though he continued to think Steadfast's great carefulness not to transgress, only a further proof that "he was a deep one"--all the more because he refused to let anyone but himself have a search for a vanished polecat in "them holes," which Peter was persuaded contained some mystery, though Steadfast laid it, and not untruly, on the health of the young stock he kept penned in the caves, which were all, he hoped, of which Peter was aware. All this was harassing, but a greater trouble came in the second winter. Good Dr. Eales was failing, and the tidings of the King's execution were a blow that he never recovered. Mrs. Lightfoot had tears in her eyes when Stead asked after him, week by week, and she could only say that he was feebler, and spent all his days in prayer--often with tears. At last came peace. He lay still and calm, and sent a message that young Kenton should be brought to him for a last farewell. And as Stead stood sorrowful and awed by his bed side, he bade the youth never despair or fall away from his hope of the restoration of the Church. "Remember," he said, "she is founded on a rock, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against her. She shall stand forth for evermore as the moon, which wanes but to wax again; and I have good hope that thou wilt see it, my son. He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." Then Dr. Eales pointed to a small parcel of books, which he had caused Mrs. Lightfoot to put together, telling Steadfast that he had selected them alike for devotion and for edification, and that if he studied them, he would have no doubt when he might deliver up his trust to a true priest of the Church. "And if none should return in my time?" asked Steadfast. "Have I not told thee never to despair of God's care for His Church? Yet His time is not as our time, and it may be--that young as thou art--the days of renewal may not be when thou shalt see them. Should it thus be, my son, leave the secret with one whom thou canst securely trust. Better the sacred vessels should lie hidden than that thou shouldst show thy faith wanting by surrendering them to any, save according to the terms of thy vow. See, Steadfast, among these books is a lighter one, a romance of King Arthur, that I loved well in my boyhood, and which may not only serve thee as fair pastime in the winter nights, but will mind thee of thine high and holy charge, for it goeth deeper than the mere outside." His voice was growing weak. Mrs. Lightfoot gave him a cordial, and Stead knelt by his bedside, felt his hand on his head, and heard his blessing for the last time. The next market day, when he called at the good bakester's stall, she told him in floods of tears that the guest who had brought a blessing on her house, was gone to his rest.	{ "id": "6006" }
17	THE GROOM IN GREY.	"Heroes and kings, in exile forced to roam, Leave swelling phrase and seven-leagued words at home." SCOTT. Another summer and winter had gone by and harvest time had come again, when Steadfast with little Ben, now seven years old, for company, took two sacks of corn to be ground at the mill, where the skirmish had been fought in which Emlyn's father had been killed. The sacks were laid across a packsaddle on a stout white horse, with which, by diligent saving, Steadfast had contrived to replace Whitefoot, Ben was promised a ride home when the sacks should have been emptied, and trotted along in company with Growler by his brother's side, talking more in an hour than Stead did in a week, and looking with great interest to be shown the hawthorn bush where Emlyn had been found. For Stead and Ben were alike in feeling the bright, merry, capricious, laughing, teasing Emlyn the charm and delight of home. In trouble, or for real aid, they went to Patience, but who was like Emlyn for drollery and diversion? Who ever made Stead laugh as she could, or who so played with Ben, and never, like Rusha, tried to be maidenly, discreet, nay, dull? It was very inconvenient that just as they reached the famous thorn bush, the white horse began to demonstrate that his shoe was loose. They were very near the mill, and after disposing of the sacks, the brothers led the horse on to a forge, about a furlong beyond. It was not a place of which Stead was fond, as the smith was known to be strong for the Covenant, and he could not help wishing that the shoe had come off nearer to his good friend Smith Blane. Original-Sin Hopkins, which was the name of the blacksmith, was in great excitement, as he talked of the crowning mercy vouchsafed at Worcester, and how the son of the late man, Charles Stewart, had been utterly defeated, and his people scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Three or four neighbours were standing about, listening to the tidings he had heard from a messenger on the way to Bristol. One was leaning on the unglazed window frame, and a couple of old men basking, even in that September day, in the glow of the fire, while a few women and children loitered around, thinking it rather fine to hear Master Original-Sin declaim on the backsliding of the Scots in upholding the son of the oppressor. The shoeing of Stead Kenton's horse seemed a trivial matter beneath the attention of such an orator; but he vouchsafed to bid his lad drive in a few nails; and just as the task was commenced, there came to the forge a lady in a camlet riding dress and black silk hood, walking beside a stout horse, which a groom was leading with great care, for it had evidently lost a shoe. And it had a saddle with a pillion on which they had been riding double, after the usual fashion of travelling for young and healthy gentlewomen in those days of bad roads. The lady, a quiet, self-possessed person, not in her first youth, came forward, and in the first pause in the blacksmith's declamation, begged that he would attend to her horse. He gave a nod as if intending her to wait till Steadfast's work was done, and went on. "And has it not been already brought about that the man of blood hath--" "So please you," interrupted the lady, "to shoe my horse at once. I am on my way to Abbotsleigh, and my cousin, Mr. Norton, knows that my business brooks no delay." Mr. Norton, though a Royalist, was still the chief personage in that neighbourhood, and his name produced sufficient effect on Original-Sin to make him come forward, look at the hoof, and select a shoe from those hung on the walls of his forge. Little Ben looked on, highly delighted to watch the proceedings, and Steadfast, as he waited, glanced towards the servant, a well-made young man, in a trim, sober suit of grey cloth, with a hat a good deal slouched over a dark swarthy face, that struck Stead as having been seen by him before. After all, the lady's horse was the first finished. Hopkins looked at all the other three shoes, tapped them with his hammer, and found them secure, received the money from the lady, but gave very slight salutations as the pair remounted, and rode away. Then he twisted up his features and observed, "Here is a dispensation! As I am a living soul, this horse shoe was made at Worcester. I know the make. My cousin was apprenticed there." "Well, outlandish work goes against one's stomach," said one of the bystanders, "but what of that, man?" "Seest thou not, Jabez Holt? Is not the young man there one of them who trouble Israel, and the lady is striving for his escape. Mr. Norton is well known as a malignant at heart, and his man Pope hath been to and fro these last days as though evil were being concerted. I would that good Master Hatcham were here." "Poor lad. Let him alone. 'Tis hard he should not get off," said one of the bystanders. "I tell thee he is one of the brood of Satan, who have endeavoured to break up the godly peace of the saints, and fill this goodly land with blood and fire. Is it not said 'Root them out that they be no more a people?'" "Have after them, then," said another of the company. "We want no more wars, to be taking our cows and killing our pigs. After them, I say!" "You haven't got no warrant, 'Riginal," said a more cautious old man. "Best be on the safe side. Go after constable first, and raise the hue-and-cry. You'll easy overtake them. Breakneck Hill be sore for horseflesh." "I'd fain see Master Hatcham," said the smith, scratching his head. Stead had meantime been listening as he paid his pence. It flashed over him now where he had beheld those intensely dark eyes, and the very peculiar cut of features, though they had then been much more boyish. It was when he had seen the Prince of Wales going to the Cathedral on Christmas Day, in the midst of all his plumed generals, with their gay scarfs, and rich lace collars. He had put little Ben on horseback, and turned away into the long, dirty lane, or rather ditch, that led homeward, before, through his consternation, there dawned on him what to do. A gap in the hedge lay near, through which he dragged the horse into a pasture field, to the great amazement of Ben, saying "See here, Ben, those folk want to take yonder groom in grey. We will go and warn them." Ben heartily assented. "I like the groom," he said. "He jumped me five times off the horseblock, and he patted Growler and called him a fine fellow, who didn't deserve his name--worth his salt he was sure. We won't give Growler salt, Stead, but don't let that ugly preaching man get the good groom!" Steadfast was by this time on the horse behind his little brother, pressing through the fields, which by ancient custom were all thrown open from harvest time till Christmas; and coming out into the open bit of common that the travellers had to pass before arriving at Breakneck Hill, he was just in time to meet them as they trotted on. He hardly knew what he said, as he doffed his hat, and exclaimed-- "Madam, you are pursued." "Pursued!" Both at once looked back. "There's time," said Steadfast; "but Smith Hopkins said one of the shoes was Worcester make, and he is gone to fetch the constable and raise the hue-and-cry." "And you are a loyal--I mean an honest lad--come to warn us," said the groom. "Yes, sir. I think, if you will trust me, they can be put off the track." "Trusty! Your face answers for you. Eh, fair Mistress Jane?" "Sir, it must be as you will." "This way then, sir," said Steadfast, who was off his own horse by this time, and leading it into a rough track through a thicket whence some timber had been drawn out in the summer. "They will see where we turned off," whispered the lady. "No, ma'am, not unless you get off the hard ground. Besides they will go on the way to Breakneck Hill. Hark! I hear a hallooing. Not near--no--no fear, madam." They were by this time actually hidden from the common by the copsewood, and the distant shouts of the hue-and-cry kept all silent till they were fairly out beyond it, not far from Stead's own fields. Happily they had hitherto met no one, but there was danger now of encountering gleaners, and indeed Stead's white horse could be seen from a distance, and might attract attention to his companions. "Hallo!" exclaimed the groom, as they halted under shelter of a pollard willow. "I've heard tell that a white horse is the surest mark for a bullet in a battle, and if that be Breakneck Hill, as you call it, your beast may bring the sapient smith down on us. Had we not best part?" "Aye," said Steadfast. "I was thinking what was best. Whither were you going?" He blurted it out, not knowing to whom to address himself, or how to frame his speech. The lady hesitated, but her companion named Castle Carey. "Then, please your honour," said Stead, impartially addressing both, "methinks the best course would be, if this--" "Groom William," suggested that personage. "Would go down into yonder covert with my little brother here, where my poor place is, and where my sister can show a safe hiding-place, in case Master Hopkins suspects me, and follows; but I scarce think he will. Then meanwhile, if the lady will trust herself to me--" "O! there is no danger for me," she said. "Go on, my Somerset Solomon," said the groom. "Then would I take the lady on for a short space to a good woman in Elmwood there. And on the way this horse shall lose his Worcester shoe, and I will get Smith Blane, who is an honest fellow, to put on another; and when the chase is like to be over, I will come back for him and put you on the cross lane for Castle Carey, which don't join with the road you came by, till just ere you get into the town." "There's wit as well as cheese in Somerset. What say you, my guardian angel?" said Groom William. "It sounds well," she reluctantly answered. "Does Mr. Norton know you, young man?" "No, madam," said Stead, with much stumbling. "But I have seen him in Bristol. My Lady Elmwood knew of me, and Sir George Elmwood too, and the Dean could say I was honest." "Which the face of you says better than your tongue," said the groom. "Have with you then, my bold little elf," he added, taking the bridle of the horse on which Ben was still seated. "Or one moment more. You knew me, my lad--are there any others like to do so?" "I had seen you, sir, at Bristol, and that is why I would not have you shew yourself in Elmwood. But my sister has never seen you, and the only neighbours who ever come in are the woodward and his wife. He served in my Lord of Essex's army, but he has never seen you. Moreover, he was to be at the squire's to-day helping to stack his corn. Ben, do you tell Patience that _he_"--again taking refuge in a pronoun--"is a gentleman in danger, and she must see to his safety for an hour or two till I come back for him." "A gentleman in danger," repeated Ben, anxious to learn his lesson. "He and I will take care of that," said the grey-coated groom gaily, as he turned the horse's head, and waved his hat in courtly fashion to the lady so that Steadfast saw that his hair was cropped into black stubble. "Ah!" said the lady with a sigh, for the loss of a Cavalier's locks was a dreadful thing. "You know him then." "I have seen him at Bristol," said Steadfast, with considerably less embarrassment, though still in the clownish way he could not shake off. "And you know how great is the trust you--nay, we have undertaken. But, as he says, he has learnt the true fidelity of a leathern jerkin." Then Jane Lane told Steadfast of the King's flight from Worcester, and adventures at Boscobel with the Penderells, and how she had brought him to Abbotsleigh, in hopes of finding a ship at Bristol, but that failing, it was too perilous for him to remain there, so that she was helping him as far as Castle Carey on his way to Trent. Before they were clear of the wood, Stead asked her to pause. He knocked off the tell-tale shoe with the help of a stone, threw it away into the middle of a bramble, and then after a little consultation, she decided on herself encountering the smith, not perhaps having much confidence in the readiness of speech or invention of her companion. When they arrived at the forge, where good-humoured, brawny Harry Blane was no small contrast to his gaunt compeer Original-Sin Hopkins, she averred that she was travelling from her relations, and having been obliged to send her servant back for a packet that had been forgotten, this good youth, who had come to her help when her horse had cast a shoe, had undertaken to guide her to the smith's, and to take her again to meet her man, if he did not come for her himself. Might she be allowed in the meantime to sit with Master Blane's good housewife? Master Blane was only too happy, and Mistress Jane Lane was accordingly introduced to the pleasant kitchen, with sanded floor, and big oak table, open hearth, and beaupots in the oriel window where the spinning-wheel stood, and where the neat and hospitable Dame Blane made her kindly welcome. Steadfast, marvelling at her facility of speech, and glad the king's safety did not depend on his uttering such a story, told Blane that he must go after his cattle and should look after the groom on the way. As he walked through the wood, and drew near the glade, he was dismayed to hear voices, and to see Peter Pierce leaning against the wall of the house, but Rusha came running up to him exclaiming, "Oh! Stead, here is this good stranger that you met, telling us all about brother Jeph." "Yes, my kind host," said the grey-coated guest, with a slight nasal intonation, rising as Stead came near, "I find that you are the very lad my friend and brother Jephthah Kenton, that singular Christian man, bade me search out. 'If you go near Bristol, beloved,' quoth he,' search me out my brothers Steadfast and Benoni, and my sisters, Patience and Jerusha, and greet them well from me, and bear witness of me to them. They dwell, said he, in a lonely hut in the wood side, and with them a fair little maiden, sprung of the evil and idolatrous seed of the malignants, but whom their pious nurture may yet bring to a knowledge of the truth,' and by that token, I knew that it was the same." There was an odd little twinkle towards Emlyn just then. "And Stead, Jeph is an officer," said Patience, who was busied in setting before the visitor on a little round table, the best ale, bread, cheese, and butter that her hut afforded, together with an onion, which, he declared, was "what his good grandfather, a valiant man for the godly, had ever loved best." "An officer! Aye is he. A captain of his Ironside troop, very like to be Colonel ere long." Stead was absolutely bewildered, and could not find speech, beyond an awkward "Where?" "Where was he when I last saw him? Charging down the main street of Worcester, where the malignants and Charles Stewart made their last stand. Smiting them hip and thigh with the sword of Gedaliah, nay, my tongue tripped, 'twas Gideon I would say." "Aye," said the woodward, "Squire had the tidings two days back in a news letter. It was a mighty victory of General Cromwell." "In sooth it was," returned the groom; "and I hear he hath ordered a solemn thanksgiving therefore." "But Jephthah," put in Patience, "you are sure he was not hurt?" "The hand of Heaven protecteth the godly," again through his nose spoke the guest. "He was well when I left him; being sent south by my master to attend my mistress, and so being no more among them that divide the spoil." "Where have you served, sir?" demanded the woodward. "I am last from Scotland," was the answer. "A godly land!" "Ah! I know nought of Scotland," said the woodward. "I was disbanded when my Lord Essex gave up the command, more's the pity, for he was for doing things soberly and reasonably, and ever in the name of the poor King that is gone! You look too young to have seen fire at Edgehill or Exeter, sir." "Did I not?" said the youth. "Aye, I was with my father, though only as a boy apart on a hill." The reminiscences that were exchanged astonished Steadfast beyond measure, and really made him doubt whether what had previously passed had not been all a dream. The language was so like Jephthah's own too, all except that one word "fair" applied to Emlyn; and Patience, Rusha, and the Pierces were entirely without a suspicion, that their guest was other than he seemed. How much must have been picked out of little Ben, without the child's knowing it, to make such acting possible? And how was the woodward, who was so much delighted with the visitor, to be shaken off? Stead stood silent, puzzled, anxious, and wondering what to do next, a very heavy and awkward host, so that even Patience wondered what made him so shy. Suddenly, however, a whistle, and the sharp yap of a dog was heard across the stream. Nanny Pierce exclaimed, "There are those rascal lads after the rabbits again!" and the gamekeeper's instinct awoke. Pierce shook hands with his fellow soldier, regretted he could not see more of him, and received his promise that if he came that way again, he would share a pottle of ale at the lodge; and then tramped off after his poachers over the stream. Groom William then kissed the young women (the usual mode of salutation then), Nanny Pierce and all, thanked Patience, and looked about for the goodly little malignant, as he called Emlyn, but she was nowhere to be seen, and Stead hurried him off through the wood. "Ho! ho! sly rascal," said Charles, as they turned away. "You're jealous! You would keep the game to yourself." Stead had no answer to make to this banter, the very notion of Emlyn as aught but the orphan in his charge was new to him. They were not yet beyond the gulley when from between the hazel stems, out sprang Emlyn, and kneeling on the ground caught the King's hand and kissed it. "Fairy-haunted wood!" cried Charles, and indeed it was done with great natural grace, and the little figure with the glowing cheeks, her hood flying back so as to shew her brilliant eyes sparkling with delight and enthusiasm, was a truly charming vision. "It is like one of the masques of the merry days of old." And as he retained her hand and returned the salute on her lips, "Queen Mab herself, for who else saw through thy poor brother sovereign's mean disguise?" "I had seen your Majesty with the army," replied Emlyn, modestly blushing a good deal. "Ah! The Fates have provided me with a countenance the very worst for straits like mine. But that matters the less since it is only my worthy subjects who see through the grey coat. I would lay my crown, if I had it, to one of those crispy ringlets of yours, that Queen Mab was the poacher who drew off the crop-eared keeper." " 'Tis Robin Goodfellow, please your Majesty, who leads clowns astray," said Emlyn in the same tone. "Sometimes a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound," quoted the King. Stead could only listen in amazement without a word to say for himself. Near the confines of the wood, he had to leave Emlyn to guide the King over a field-path while he fetched Mrs. Jane Lane and the horse to meet them beyond, as it was wiser for the King not to shew himself in the village. Again Charles jested on his supposed jealousy of leaving the fair Queen Mab alone in such company, and on his blunt answer, "I only feared the saucy child might be troublesome, sir." At which the King laughed the more, and even Emlyn smiled a little. All was safely accomplished, and when Steadfast had brought Mrs. Lane to the deep lane, they found the King and Emlyn standing by the stile, and could hear the laughter of both as they approached. "He can always thus while away his cares," said Jane Lane in quite a motherly tone. "And well it is that he is of so joyous a nature." Perhaps it was said as a kind of excuse for the levity of one in so much danger chattering to the little woodland maid so mirthfully, and like one on an equality. When they appeared, Charles bestowed a kiss on Emlyn's lips, and shook hands cordially with Steadfast, lamenting that he had no reward, nor even a token to leave with them. Stead made his rustic bow, pinched his hat, and muttered, "It is enough to--" "Enough reward to have served your Majesty," said Emlyn, "he would say." "Yea, and it is your business to find words for him, pretty one," said the King. "A wholesome partnership--eh? He finds worth, and you find wit! And so we leave the fairy buried in the woodland." And on the wanderers rode, while Steadfast and Emlyn turned back over the path through the fields; and she eagerly told that the King had slept at Blythedale on his way to Worcester, and that though Sir Harry was dead, his son was living in Holland. "And if the King gets there safely, he will tell Master George, and if my uncle is with him, no doubt he will send for me, or mayhap, come and fetch me." There was a shock of pain in Steadfast's heart. "You would be glad?" "Poor old Stead. I would scarce be glad to quit you. I doubt me if the Hague, as they call it, would show me any one I should care for as much as for your round shoulders, you good old lubber! But you should come too, and the King would give you high preferment, when he comes to his own again, and then we won't be buried alive in this Hermit's Gulley." She danced about in exultation, hardly knowing what wild nonsense she talked, and Stead was obliged to check her sharply in an attempt to sing "The king shall enjoy his own again." "But Stead," asked Ben, after long reflection, "how could Groom William know all about brother Jeph?" A question Stead would not hear, not wishing to destroy confidence in His Majesty's veracity.	{ "id": "6006" }
18	JEPH'S GOOD FORTUNE.	"Still sun and rain made emerald green the loveliest fields on earth, And gave the type of deathless hope, the little shamrock, birth." IRISH BALLAD. The King's visit left traces. Emlyn had become far more restless and consciously impatient of the dullness and seclusion of the Hermit's Gulley. Not only did she, as before, avail herself of every pretext for going into the village, or for making expeditions to Bristol, but she openly declared the place a mere grave, intolerable to live in, and she confided to Jerusha that the King had declared that it was a shame to hide her there--such charms were meant for the world. The only way of getting into the world that occurred to her was going into service at Bristol, and she talked of this whenever she specially hated her spinning, or if Patience ventured to complain of her gadding about, gossipping with Nanny Pierce or Kitty Blane, or getting all the young lads in Elmwood round her, to be amused and teased by her lively rattle. Patience began to be decidedly of opinion that it would be much better for all parties that the girl should be under a good mistress. Both she and Rusha were over sixteen years old; and though it was much improved, the house was hardly fit for so many inhabitants, and both Goody Grace and Dame Blane had told Patience that it would be better, both for the awkward Rusha and the gay Emlyn, if they could have some household training. Mistress Elmwood, at the Hall, had noted the family at church, and observed their perfect cleanliness and orderliness, and it was intimated that at the Ladyday hiring, she would take Rusha among her maidens. Shy Rusha cried a great deal, and wished Emlyn would go instead, but Mrs. Elmwood would not have hired that flighty damsel on any account, and Emlyn was sure it would be but mopish work to live under a starched old Puritan. Mrs. Lightfoot was therefore applied to, to find a service for Emlyn Gaythorn, and she presently discovered one Mistress Sloggett, a haberdasher's wife of wealth and consideration, who wanted a young maidservant. Emlyn was presented to her by the bakester, undertook for everything, and was hired by the twelvemonth, going off in high glee at the variety and diversion she expected to enjoy at the sign of the "Sheep and Shears," though clinging with much tenderness to her friends as they parted. "Remember, Emlyn, this is the home where you will always be welcome," said Stead. "As if I wanted to _remember_ it," said Emlyn, with her sweet smile. "As if I did not know where be kind hearts." The hovel seemed greatly deserted when the two young girls were gone. Patience sorely missed Rusha, her diligent little helper, and latterly her companion too; and the lack of Emlyn's merry tongue made all around seem silent and tedious. Steadfast especially missed the girl. Perhaps it was due to the King's gibes that her absence fully opened to him the fact that he knew not how to do without her. After his usual fashion, he kept the discovery to himself, not even talking to Patience about it, being very shamefaced at the mere thought, which gave a delicious warmth to his heart, though it made him revolve schemes of saving up till he had a sufficient sum, with which to go to the squire and propose to meet him half-way in rebuilding the old house; not such an expensive matter as it would be in these days. There, in full view of all that passed down Elmwood Lane, Emlyn could not complain of solitude, he thought! But there was this difficulty in the way, that Jephthah had never resigned his claims as eldest son, and might come home at any time, and take possession of all the little farm at which Steadfast had worked for seven years. The war was over, and nothing had been heard of Jeph, except the king's apocryphal history, since his visit after the taking of Bristol. Patience had begun to call him "poor Jeph," and thought he must have been killed, but Stead had ascertained that the army had not been disbanded, and believed him still to be employed. At length, one market day, Mrs. Lightfoot told him, "There has been one asking for you, Kenton, Seth Coleman, the loriner's son, that went soldiering when your brother did. He landed last week from Ireland with a wooden leg, and said he, 'Where shall I come to the speech of one Steadfast Kenton? I have a greeting from his brother, the peculiarly favoured,' or some such word, 'Jephthah Kenton, who told me I should hear tidings of him from Mrs. Bakester Lightfoot, at the sign of the "Wheatsheaf."' I told him where you abode, and he said he knew as much from your brother, but he could not be tramping out to Elmwood on a wooden leg. So says I 'I will send Steadfast Kenton to you next market day.' You will find him at the sign at the 'Golden Bridle,' by the Wharf Stairs." Stead had no sooner disposed of his wares than he went in search of the loriner's shop, really one for horse furniture. There was a bench outside, looking out on the wharf and shipping, and on it was seated the returned soldier, with a little party round him, to whom he was expounding what sounded more military than religious: "And so, the fort having been summoned and quarter promised, if so be no resistance were made, always excepting Popish priests, and--Eh! What now? Be you an old neighbour? I don't remember your face." "I have seen you, though. I am Jephthah Kenton's brother, that you asked for." "I mind you were but a stripling in those days, and yet in gross darkness. Yea, I have a letter for thee from my comrade, who is come to high preferment." "Jeph!" "Yea, things have prospered with him. He was a serjeant even before we sailed for Ireland, and there he did such good service in hunting out Popish priests and rebels in their lurking places in the bogs and mountains, that the Lord General hath granted him the land that he took with his sword and his bow, even a meadow land fat and fertile, Ballyshea by name, full of the bulls of Bashan, goodly to look at. And to make all sure, he hath taken to wife the daughter of the former owner of the land a damsel fair to look upon." "Jeph! But sure--the Irish are Papists." "Not the whole of them. There are those that hold to Prelacy and call themselves King's men, following the bloody and blinded Duke of Ormond. Of them was this maid's father, whom we slew at the taking of Clonmel, where I got this wound and left my good right leg. So is the race not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but time and chance happeneth to all. When I could hobble about once more on crutches, I found that the call had come to divide and possess the gate of the enemy, and that the meads of Ballyshea had fallen to Serjeant Kenton. Moreover, in the castle hard by, dwelt the widow and her daughter, who cried to General Lambert for their land, and what doth he say to Jephthah, but 'Make it sure, Kenton. Take the maid to wife, and so none will disturb you in the fair heritage.' Yea, and mine old comrade would have me sojourn with him till I was quite restored, so far as a man with one limb short may be. I tell you 'tis a castle, man." "Our Jeph lord of a castle?" "Aye, even so. Twice as big as Elmwood Hall, if half were not in ruins, and the other half the rats run over like peas out of a bag. While as to the servants, there are dozens of them, mostly barefoot and in rags, who will run at the least beck from the old mistress or the young mistress, though they scowl at the master. But he is taking order with them, and teaching them who is to be obeyed." "Then our Jephthah is a great man?" "You may say that--a bigger man than the squire at Elmwood, or at Leigh I can tell you. Only I would give all that bare mountain and bog, full of wild, Popish, red-haired kernes for twenty yards in a tidy street at Bristol, with decent godly folk around me. Murdering or being murdered, I have marvelled more than once whether the men of Israel were as sick of it in Canaan as I was at Drogheda, but the cry ever was, 'Be not slack in the work.' But I will bring you Jephthah's letter. He could not write when he went off, but he could not be a serjeant without, so we taught him--I and Corporal Faith-Wins." Jephthah's handwriting was of a bold description doing honour to his tutors, but the letter was very brief, though to the purpose-- "Dear Brothers and Sisters, "This is to do you, to wit, that by the grace of Heaven on my poor endeavours I am come to high preferment. A goodly spoil hath fallen unto me, namely, the castle and lands of Ballyshea, and therewith the daughter of the owner, deceased, by name Ellen Roche, whom I have espoused in marriage, and am bringing to the light of truth. I have castle, lands, flocks and herds, men-servants and maid-servants in abundance, and I give thanks to Him who hath rewarded His servant. "Therefore I wholly resign to you, my brethren, Steadfast and Benoni, any rights of heirship that may be mine in respect of the farmstead of Elmwood, and will never, neither I nor my heirs, trouble you about it further. Yet if Ben, or my sisters Patience and Jerusha, be willing to cross over to me in this land of promise they shall be kindly welcome, and I shall find how to bestow them well in marriage. Mine old comrade, Seth Coleman, will tell them how to reach the Castle of Ballyshea, and how to find safe convoy, and tell you more of the estate wherewith it has pleased Heaven to reward my poor services. "And so commending you to His holy keeping, no more from your loving brother, "JEPHTHAH KENTON." The spelling of this was queer, even according to the ways of the time, but it was not hard to understand, and it might well fill Steadfast with amazement. He longed to share the tidings with Emlyn, but he did not feel as if it would be right to let anyone hear before Patience. Only as he went back and called again at Mrs. Lightfoot's for his basket, she asked whether he had found Seth Coleman, and if his brother had come to such preferment as was reported. "Yea," said Steadfast, "he hath a grant of land, and a castle, and a wife." "Eh, now! Lack-a-day! 'Tis alway the most feather-pated that fly highest." Cromwell's Ironsides feather-pated! But that did not trouble Steadfast, who all the way home, as he rode his donkey, was thinking of the difference it made in his prospects, and in what he had to offer Emlyn to be able to feel his tenure so much more secure. Patience and Ben listened in utter amazement ending in a not complimentary laugh on the part of the former. "Our Jeph lord of a castle? I'd like to see him." "Would you? He has a welcome and a husband ready for you and Rusha both?" "D'ye think I would go and leave you for Jeph, if he were lord of ten castles?" And Ben, whose recollections of Jeph were very dim, exclaimed, "Lord of a castle! I shall have a crow over Nick Blane now!" Rusha, who was well content with her service at the hall, had no mind for such a terrible enterprise as a journey "beyond seas" to Ireland, and mayhap Jeph's prospective husband was a less tempting idea, because a certain young groom had shown symptoms of making her his sweetheart. Steadfast thought often of telling the great secret of his heart to his faithful sister Patience, but his extreme shyness and modesty, and the reserve in which he always lived, seemed to make it impossible to him to broach the subject, and there might be a certain consciousness that Emlyn, while his own pet, had been very troublesome to Patience. Stead was two-and-twenty, a sturdy well-grown fellow, but the hard work he had been obliged to do as a growing lad, had rounded his shoulders, and he certainly did not walk like the men who had been drilled for soldiers. His face was healthy and sunburnt, with fair short hair and straightforward grey eyes. At the first glance people would say, "What a heavy-looking, clownish young man," but at the second there was something that made a crying child in the street turn to him for help in distress, and made the marketing dames secure that he told the truth about his wares. Patience was rather startled by seeing him laboriously tying up a posy of wild rose, honeysuckle, and forget-me-not, and told him the Bristol folks would not buy those common wild flowers. "They are for none of them," replied Stead, a little gruffly, and colouring hotly at being caught. "Oh!" said Patience, in her simplicity. "Are they for Emlyn? I do not think her mistress will let you see her." "I shall," said Stead. "She ought to know of our good fortune." "He has forgotten that Emlyn is not our sister after all," said Patience, as she went back to her washing. "She might as well," said Ben, who could not remember the hut without Emlyn. Stead had better luck than Patience foreboded from a household where the servants were kept very strictly, for there was a good deal of curiosity in Bristol about the report that a lad from the neighbourhood had won an Irish heiress and castle, and when Stead presented himself at the door of the house under the overhanging gable, and begged to see Emlyn Gaythorn to give her some tidings, the maid who opened it exclaimed, "Is it anent the castle in Ireland?" Stead awkwardly said "Aye, mistress." And as it became evident that the readiest way of learning the facts would be his admission, he was let into the house into a sort of wainscotted hall, where he found the mistress herself superintending three or four young sempstresses who were making shirts for the gentlemen of the garrison. Emlyn was among them, and sprang up looking as if white seams were not half so congenial as nutting in the gulley, but she looked prettier than ever, as the little dark curls burst out of the prim white cap, she sniffed the flowers with ecstasy, and her eyes danced with delight that did Stead's heart good to see. He needed it, for to stand there hat in hand before so many women all staring at him filled him with utter confusion, so that he could scarcely see, and stumbled along when Mrs. Sloggett called, "Come here, young man. Is it true that it is your brother who has won a castle and a countess in Ireland?" "Not a countess, ma'am," said Stead, gruff with shyness, "but a castle." Mrs. Sloggett put him through a perfect catechism on Jeph and his fortunes, which he answered at first almost monosyllabically, though afterwards he could speak a little more freely, when the questions did not go quite beyond his knowledge. Finally he succeeded in asking permission to take Emlyn and show her his brother's letter. Mrs. Sloggett was gracious to the brother of the lord of a castle, even in Ireland, and moreover Emlyn was viewed in the light of one of the Kenton family. So leave was granted to take Master Kenton (he had never been so called before) out into the garden of pot-herbs behind the house, and Emlyn with her dancing step led the way, by a back door down a few steps into a space where a paved walk led between two beds of vegetables, bordered with a narrow edge of pinks, daisies, and gilliflowers, to a seat under the shade of an old apple tree, looking out, as this was high ground, over the broad river full of shipping. "Stead! Stead, good old Stead," she cried, "to come just as I was half dead with white seam and scolding! Emlyn here! Emlyn there! And she's ready with her fingers too. She boxed mine ears till they sang again yesterday." "The jade," muttered Stead. "What for?" "Only for looking out at window," said Emlyn. "How could I help it, when there were six outlandish sailors coming up the street leading a big black bear. Well, Stead, and are you all going to live with Jeph in his castle, and will you take me?" "He asks me not," said Stead, and began to read the letter, to which Emlyn listened with many little remarks. "So Patience and Rusha wont go. I marvel at them, yet 'tis like sober-sided old Patty! And mayhap among the bogs and hills 'tis lonelier than in the gulley. I mind a trooper who had served in Ireland telling my father it was so desolate he would not banish a dog there. But what did he say about home, Stead, I thought it was all yours?" Stead explained, and also the possibility of endeavouring to rebuild the farmhouse. If he could go to Mr. Elmwood with thirty pounds he thought it might be done. "And then, Emlyn, when that is saved (and I have five pounds already), will you come and make it your home for good and all?" "Stead! oh Stead! You don't mean it--you--Why, that's sweethearting!" "Well, so it is, Emlyn," said Stead, a certain dignity taking the place of his shyness now it had come to the point. "I ask you to be my little sweetheart now, and my wife when I have enough to make our old house such as it was when my good mother was alive." "Stead, Stead, you always were good to me! Will it take long, think you? I would save too, but I have but three crowns the year, and that sour-faced Rachel takes all the fees." "The thing is in the hands of God. It must depend on the crops, but with this hope before me, I will work as never man worked before," said Stead. "And I will be mistress there!" cried Emlyn. "My wife will be mistress wherever I am sweet." "Ah, ha!" she laughed, "now I have something to look to, I shall heed little when the dame flouts me and scolds me, and Joan twits me with her cousin the 'prentice." They had only just time to go through the ceremony of breaking a tester between them before a shrill call of "Emlyn" resounded down the garden. Mrs. Sloggett thought quite time enough had been wasted over the young man, and summoned the girl back to her sewing. Emlyn made a face of disgust, very comical and very joyous, but as the good dame was actually coming in search of her no more could pass. Stead went away overflowing with happiness, and full of plans of raising the means of bringing back this sunshine of his hearth. Perhaps it was well that, though slow of thought, Patience still had wit enough in the long hours of the day to guess that the nosegay boded something. She could not daunt or damp Steadfast's joy--nay, she had affection enough for the pretty little being she had cherished for seven years to think she shared it--but she knew all the time that there would be no place in that new farmhouse for her, and there was a chill over her faithful heart at times. But what would that signify, she thought, provided that Stead was happy?	{ "id": "6006" }
19	PATIENCE.	"I'm the wealthy miller yet." TENNYSON. Most devoted was the diligence with which Steadfast toiled and saved with the hope before him. Since the two young girls were no longer at home, and Ben had grown into a strong lad, Stead held that many little indulgences might be dispensed with, one by one, either because they cost money or prevented it from being acquired. No cheese was bought now, and he wanted to sell all the butter and all the apples that were not defective. Patience contrived that Ben should never be stinted of his usual fare; and she would, not allow that he needed no warm coat for the winter, but she said nothing about the threadbare state of her own petticoat, and she stirred nothing but the thinnest buttermilk into her own porridge, and not even that when the little pigs required it. It was all for Stead. Patience at twenty was not an uncomely maiden so far as kindly blue eyes, fresh healthy cheeks, and perfect neatness could make her agreeable to look at, but there was an air of carefulness, and of having done a great deal of hard work, which had made her seem out of the reach of the young men who loitered and talked with the maidens on the village green, and looked wistfully at the spot where the maypole had once stood. Patience was the more amazed by a visit from the Miller Luck and his son. The son was a fine looking young man of three or four and twenty, who had about three years before married a farmer's daughter, and had lost her at the birth of her second child. There he stood, almost as bashful as Stead himself could have been under the circumstances, while his father paid the astonished Patience the compliment of declaring that they had put their heads together, and made up their minds that there was no wench in those parts so like to be a good mother to the babes, nor so thrifty a housewife as she; and, that, though there were plenty of maids to be had who could bring something in their hands, her ways were better than any portion she could bring. It really was a splendid offer. The position of miller's wife was very prosperous, and the Lucks were highly respected. The old miller was good and kindly, Andrew Luck the steadiest of young men, and though not seen to much advantage as he stood sheepishly moving from leg to leg, he was a very fine, tall, handsome youth, with a certain sweetness and wistfulness in his countenance. Patience had no scruples about previous love and courtship. That was not the point as she answered-- "Thank you, Master Luck, you are very good; but I cannot leave my brothers." "Let the big one get a wife of his own then," and, as Patience shook her head, and glanced at where Ben, shy of strangers, was cutting rushes, "and if you be tender on the young one, there would be work for him about the place. I know you have been a good mother to him, you'd be the same to our little ones. Come, Andrew, can't ye say a word for yourself?" "Come, Patience, do 'ee come!" pleaded poor Andrew, and the tears even sprang to his eyes. "I'd be very good to thee, and I know thou would'st be to my poor babes." Patience's heart really warmed to him, and still more to the babes, but she could only hold out. "You must find another," she said. "Come, you need not be coy, my lass," said the old miller. "You'll not get a better offer, and Andrew has no time nor heart either for running about courting. What he wants is a good wife to cheer him up, and see to the poor little children." It was powerful pleading, and Patience felt it. "Aye, Master Miller," she said, "but you see I'm bound not to leave Steadfast till he is married. He could not get on no ways without me." "Then why--a plague on it--don't he wed and have done with it?" "He cannot," said Patience, "till he has made up enough to build up our old house, but that won't be yet awhile--for years maybe; and he could not do it without me to help him." "And what's to become of you when you've let your best years go by a-toiling for him, and your chance is gone by, and his wife turns you to the door?" said Master Luck, not very delicately. "That God will provide," said Patience, reverently. "Anyway, I must cleave to Steadfast though 'tis very good of you, Master Luck and Master Andrew, and I never could have thought of such a thing, and I am right sorry for the little ones." "If you would only come and see them!" burst out the poor young father. "You never see such a winsome little poppet as Bess. And they be so young now, they'd never know you were not their own mother." "Don't, don't, Master Andrew!" cried Patience, "I tell you I'd come if I could, but you can't wait, and they can't wait; and you must find a good mother at once for them, for I have passed my word to hold by Stead till he is married, and I must keep to it." "Very well, my lass," said the miller, grimly. "There's wenches better portioned and better favoured than you, and I hope you won't have to repent of missing a good offer." Of course he said it as if he hoped she would. Patience cried heartily when they were gone. Ben came up to her and glowered after them, declaring he wouldn't have his Patty go to be only a step-mother to troublesome brats; but Stead, when he came to know of it, looked grave, and said it was very good of Pat; but he wished she could have kept the young fellow in play till she was ready for him. Goody Grace, who was looking after the children till the stepmother could be found, came and expostulated with Patience, telling her she was foolish to miss such a chance, and that she would find out her mistake when Stead married and that little flighty, light-headed wench made the place too hot to hold her. What would she do then? "Come and help you nurse the folk, Goody," said Patience, cheerfully. Her heart would fail her sometimes at the outlook, but she was too busy to think much about it. Only the long evenings had been pleasanter when Stead used to teach Ben to read Dr. Eales's books and tell her bits such as she could understand than now when he grudged a candle big enough to be of any use, and was only plaiting rushes and reckoning up what everything would bring. Ben was a bright little fellow, and could read as well as his brother. He longed for school, for when boys were not obliged to learn, some of them wished to do so. There was a free grammar school about three miles off to which he wanted to go, and Patience, who was proud of his ability, wished to send him, neither of them thinking anything of the walk. Stead, however, could see no use in more learning than he had himself. Neither he nor Jeph had been to school. Why should the child go? He could not be spared just as he was getting old enough to be of some use and save time, which was money. And when the little fellow showed his disappointment, Stead was even surly in telling him "they wanted no upstarts." It was a hard winter, and the frost was followed by a great deal of wet. One of the sheep was swept away by the flood; three or four lambs died; and Stead, for about the first time in his life, caught a severe feverish cold in looking after the flock, and was laid by for a day or two, very cross and fretful at everything going wrong without him. Poor little Ben was more railed at for those few days than ever he had been before, and next he broke down and had to be nursed; and then came Patience's turn. She was ill enough to frighten her brothers; and Goody Grace, who came to see to her, finding how thin her blanket was, and how long it was since she had had any food but porridge, gave Steadfast a thorough good scolding, told him he would be the death of a better sister than he deserved, and set before him how only for his sake Patience might be living on the fat of the land at the mill. To all appearance, Stead listened sulkily enough, but by-and-by Goody found a fowl killed and laid ready for use. It was an old hen, whose death set Patience crying in her weakness. Nevertheless, it was stewed down into broth which heartened her up considerably, and a blanket that came home rolled up on the donkey's back warmed her heart as much as her limbs. Mrs. Elmwood spared Rusha for a week, and it was funny to see how the girl wondered at its having been possible to live in such a den. She absolutely cried when Ben told her how hard they had been living, and said she did not think Stead would ever have used Patience so. "Then why did she make as if she liked it?" said Stead, gruffly. But for all that Stead was too sound-hearted not to be grieved at himself, and to see that his love and impatience had led him into unkindness to those who depended on him; and when Master Woodley preached against love of money he felt pricked at the heart, though it had not been the gain in itself that he aimed at. And when he had to go to the mill, the sight of the comfortable great kitchen, with the open hearth, glowing fire, seats on either side, tall settle, and the flitches of bacon on the rafters, seemed to reproach him additionally. The difficulties there had been staved off by the old miller himself marrying a stout, motherly widow, who had a real delight in the charge of a baby. "For," said Master Luck, "Andrew and I could agree on no one for him." Moreover, Stead ceased to grunt contemptuously when Patience, with Goody Grace to back her, declared that Ben was too young and slight for farm work. The boy was allowed to trudge his daily three miles to school, and there his progress was the wonder and delight of his slower-witted brother and sister.	{ "id": "6006" }
20	EMLYN'S SERVICE.	"Oh, blind mine eye that would not trace, And deaf mine ear that would not heed The mocking smile upon her face, The mocking voice of greed." LEWIS CARROLL. When Lady-day came round, Steadfast found to his delight and surprise a little figure dancing out to meet him from Mrs. Lightfoot's. "There, Master Stead. Are not you glad to see me, or be you too dumbfounded to get out a word, like good old Jenny?" stroking the donkey's cars. "Posies of primroses! How sweet they be! You must spare me one." "As many as you will, sweetheart. They be all for you, whether given or sold. And you've got a holiday for Lady-day." "Have a care! I got my ears boxed for such a Popish word. 'Tis but quarter day, you know, being that, hang, draw, and quarter is more to the present folks' mind than ladies or saints. I have changed my service, you must know, as poor Dick used to sing:-- "Have a new master, be a new man." "You have not heard from your own folk," cried Stead, this being what he most dreaded. "Nay. But I can away no more with Dame Sloggett, and Cross-patch Rachel, white seam and salmon, and plain collars. So I bade her farewell at the end of the year, and I've got a new mistress." Stead stood with open mouth. To change service at the end of a year was barely creditable in those days, and to do so without consultation with home was unkind and alarming. "There now, don't be crooked about it. I had not time to come out and tell you and Patience, the old crones kept me so close, stitching at shirts for a captain that is to sail next week, and I knew you would be coming in." "Where is it?" was all Stead uttered. "What think you of Master Henshaw's, the great merchant, and an honest well-wisher to King and Church to boot?" "Master Henshaw, the West Indian merchant? His is a good, well-ordered household, and he holds with the old ways." "Yes. He was out that Whitsun morning we wot of," said Emlyn. "I wist well you would be pleased." "But I thought his good lady was dead," said Steadfast. "So she is. She that came out to the gully, but there's a new Mistress Henshaw, a sweet young lady, of a loyal house, the Ayliffes of Calfield. And I am to be her own woman." "Own woman," said Mrs. Lightfoot, for they were by this time among the loaves in her stall. "Merchants' wives did not use to have women of their own in my time." For this was the title of a lady's maid, and rules as to household appointments were strictly observed before the rebellion. "Mistress Henshaw is gentlewoman born," returned Emlyn, with a toss of her head. "She ought to have all that is becoming her station in return for being wedded to an old hunks like that! And 'tis very well she should have one like _me_ who has seen what becomes good blood! So commend me to Patience and Rusha, and tell Ben maybe I shall have an orange to send him one of these days. And cheer up, Stead. I shall get five crowns and two gowns a year, and many a fee besides when there is company, so we may build the house the sooner, and I shall not be mewed up, and shall see the more of thee. 'Tis all for you. So never look so gloomy on it, old Sobersides." And she turned her sweet face to him, and coaxed and charmed him into being satisfied that all was well, dwelling on the loyalty and excellence of the master of the house. He found it true that it was much easier to see Emlyn than before. Mrs. Henshaw, a pretty young creature, not much older than Emlyn, was pleased to do her own marketing, and came out attended by Emlyn, and a little black slave boy carrying a basket. She generally bought all that Steadfast had to sell, and then gave smiling thanks when he offered to help carry home her purchases. She would join company with some of her acquaintance, and leave the lovers to walk together, only accompanied by little Diego, or Diggo as they called him, whose English was of the most rudimentary description. Emlyn certainly was very happy in her new quarters. Neither her lady nor herself was arrayed with the rigid plainness exacted by Puritanism, and many disapproving glances were cast upon the fair young pair, mistress and maid, by the sterner matrons. Waiting women could not indulge in much finery, but whatever breast knots and tiny curls beyond her little tight cap could do, Emlyn did without fear of rebuke. Stead tried to believe that the disapproving looks and words, by which Mrs. Lightfoot intimated that she heard reports unfavourable to the household were only due to the general distrust and dislike to the bright and lively Emlyn. Mrs. Lightfoot was no Puritan herself, but her gossips were, and he received her observations with a dull, stony look that vexed her, by intimating that it was no business of hers. Still it was borne in upon him that, good man as Mr. Henshaw certainly was, the household was altered. It had been poverty and distress which had led the Ayliffe family to give their young sister to a man so much her elder, and inferior in position; and perhaps still more a desire to confirm the Royalist footing in the city of Bristol. The lady's brothers were penniless Cavaliers, and one of them made her house his home, and a centre of Royalist plots and intelligences, which excited Emlyn very much by the certainty that something was going on, though what it was, of course, she did not know; and at any rate there was coming and going, and all sorts of people were to be seen at the merchant's hospitable table, all manner of news to be had here, there, and everywhere, with which she delighted to entertain Steadfast, and show her own importance. It was not often good news as regarded the Cavalier cause, for Cromwell was fixing himself in his seat; and every endeavour to hatch a scheme against him was frustrated, and led to the flight or death of those concerned in it. However, so long as Emlyn had something to tell, it made little difference whether the tidings were good or bad, whether they concerned Admiral Blake's fleet, or her mistress's little Italian greyhound. By-and-by however instead of Mrs. Henshaw, there came to market Madam Ayliffe, her mother, a staid, elderly lady, all in black, who might as well, Emlyn said, have been a Puritan. She looked gravely at Stead, and said, "Young man, I am told that you are well approved and trustworthy, and that my daughter suffers you to walk home with this maiden, you being troth plight to her." Stead assented. "I will therefore not forbid it, trusting that if you be, as I hear, a prudent youth, you may bring her to a more discreet and obedient behaviour than hath been hers of late." [Illustration: Stead before the Roundheads] So saying, Mrs. Ayliffe joined company with the old Cavalier Colonel and went on her way as Emlyn made that ugly face that Stead knew of old, clenched her hand and muttered, "Old witch! She is a Puritan at heart, after all! She is turning the house upside down, and my poor mistress has not spirit to say 'tis her own, with the old woman and the old hunks both against her! Why, she threatened to beat me because, forsooth, the major's man was but giving me the time of day on the stairs!" "Was that what she meant?" asked Stead. "Assuredly it was. Trying to set you against me, the spiteful old make-bate, and no one knows how long she will be here, falling on the poor lads if they do but sing a song in the hall after supper, as if she were a very Muggletonian herself. I trow she is no better." "Did you not tell me how she held out her house against the Roundheads, and went to prison for sheltering Cavaliers?" "I only wish they had kept her there. All old women be Puritans at heart. I say Stead, I'll have done with service. Let us be wed at once." Stead could hardly breathe at this proposition. "But I have only nine pounds and two crowns and--" he began. "No matter, there be other ways," she went on. "Get the house built, and I'll come, and we will have curds and whey all the summer, and mistress and all her friends will come out and drink it, and eat strawberries!" "But the Squire will never build the place up unless I bring more in hand." "You 'but' enough to butt down a wall, you dull-pated old Stead," said Emlyn, "you know where to get at more, and so do I." Stead's grey eyes fixed on her in astonishment and bewilderment. "Numskull!" she exclaimed, but still in that good humoured voice of banter that he never had withstood, "you know what I mean, though maybe you would not have me say it in the street, you that have secrets." "How do you know of it?" "Have not I eyes, though some folk have not? Could not I look out at a chink on a fine summer morning, when you thought the children asleep? Could not I climb up to your precious cave as well as yourself; and hear the iron clink under the stone. Ha, ha! and you and Patience thought no one knew but yourselves." "I trust no one else does." "No, no, I'm no gad-about, whatever you may be pleased to think me. They say everything comes of use in seven years, and it must be over that now." "Ten since 'twas hidden, nigh seven since that Whitsuntide. There's never a parson who could come out, is there? Besides, with Peter Woodward nigh, 'tis not safe to meet." "That's what your head is running on. No, no. They will never have it out again that fashion. The old Prayer-book is banished for ever and a day! I heard master and the Captain say that now old Noll has got his will, he will soon call himself king, and there's no hope of churches or parsons coming back; and old madam sat and cried. The Jack Presbyters and the rest of the sectaries have got it all their own way." "Dr. Eales said I had no right to give it to Master Woodley, or any that was not the right sort." "So why should you go on keeping it there rotting for nothing, when it might just hinder us from wearing our very lives out while you are plodding and saving?" Stead stood stock still, as her meaning dawned on him, "Child, you know not what you say," at last he uttered. "Ah well, you are slow to take things in; but you'll do it at last." "I am slow to take in this," said Stead. "Would you have me rob God?" "No, only the owls and the bats," said Emlyn. "If they are the better for the silver and gold under them! What good can it do to let it lie there and rot?" "Gold rots not!" growled Stead. "Tarnishes, spoils then!" said Emlyn pettishly. "Come, what good is't to any mortal soul there?" "It is none of mine." "Not after seven years? Come, look you now, Stead, 'tis not only being tired of service and sharp words, and nips and blows, but I don't like being mocked for having a clown and a lubber for my sweetheart. Oh yes! they do, and there's a skipper and two mates, and a clerk, and a well-to-do locksmith, besides gentlemen's valets and others, I don't account of, who would all cut off their little fingers if I'd only once look at them as I am doing at you, you old block, who don't heed it, and I don't know that I can hold out against them all," she added, looking down with a sudden shyness; "specially the mates. There's Jonah Richards, who has a ship building that he is to have of his own, and he wants to call it the 'Sprightly Emlyn,' and the other sailed with Prince Rupert, and made ever so many prizes, and how am I to stand out when you don't value me the worth of an old silver cup?" "Come, come, Em, that's only to frighten a man." But she knew in his tone that he was frightened. "Not a bit! I should be ever so much better off in a tidy little house where I could see all that came and went than up in your lane with nought to go by but the market folk. 'Tis not everyone that would have kept true to a big country lout like you, like that lady among the salvage men that the King spoke of; and I get nothing by it but wait, wait, wait, when there's stores of silver ready to your hand." "Heaven knows, and you know, Emlyn, 'tis not for want of love." "Heaven may know, but I don't." "I gave my solemn word." "And you have kept it these ten years, and all is changed." Then altering her tone, "There now, I know it takes an hour to beat a notion into that slow brain of yours, and here we be at home, and I shall have madam after me. I'll leave you to see the sense of it, and if I do not hear of something before long, why then I shall know how much you care for poor little Emlyn." With which last words she flitted within the gates, leaving Steadfast still too much stunned to realise all she meant, as he turned homewards; but all grew on him in time, the idea that Emlyn, his Emlyn, his orphan of the battlefield, bereaved for the sake of King and Church, should be striving to make him betray his trust! "The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine," rang in his ears, and yet was it not cruel that when she really loved him best, and sought to return to him as a refuge from the many temptations to her lively spirit, he should be forced to leave her in the midst of them--against her own warning and even entreaty, and not only himself lose her, but lose her to one of those godless riotous sailors who were the dread and bane of the neighbourhood? Was not a human soul worth as much as a consecrated Chalice? These were the debates in Steadfast's much tormented soul. He could think, though he could not clothe his thoughts in words, and day after day, night after night he did think, while Patience wondered at the heavy moodiness that seemed to have come over him. He would not open his lips to ask her counsel, being quite certain of what it would be, and not choosing to hear her censure of Emlyn for what he managed to excuse by the poor child's ignorance and want of training, and by her ardent desire to be under his wing and escape from temptation. He recollected a thousand pleas that he might have used with her, to show it was not want of love but a sacred pledge that withheld him, and market day after market day he went in, priming himself all the way with arguments that were to confirm her constancy, arm her against temptation, and assure her of his unalterable love, though he might not break his vow, nor lay his hand upon sacred things. But whether Emlyn would not, or could not, meet him, he did not know, for a week or two went by before he saw her, and then she was carrying a great fan for her young mistress, who was walking with a Cavalier, as gay as Cavaliers ever ventured to be, and another young lady, whose waiting woman had paired with Emlyn. They were mincing along, gazing about them, and uttering little contemptuous titters, and Stead could only too well guess what kind of remarks Emlyn's companion might make upon him. Near his stand, however, the other lady beckoned her maid to adjust something in her dress; and Stead could approach Emlyn. She looked up with her bright, laughing eyes with a certain wistfulness in them. "Have you made up your mind to cheat the owls?" she asked. "Emlyn, if you would not speak so lightly, I could show cause--" "Oh, that's enough," she answered hastily, turning as the other maid joined her; and Stead caught the shrill, pert voice demanding if that was her swain with clouted shoes. Emlyn's reply he could not hear, but he saw the twist of the shoulders. There are bitter moments in everyone's life, and that was one of the very bitterest of Steadfast Kenton's.	{ "id": "6006" }
21	THE ASSAULT OF THE CAVERN.	"By all description this should be the place. Who's here?" SHAKESPEARE. Harvest was over, and the autumn evenings were darkening. It was later than the usual bed time, but Patience had a piece of spinning which she was anxious to finish for the weaver who took all her yarn, and Stead was reading Dr. Eales's gift of the Morte d'Arthur, which had great fascination for him, though he never knew whether to regard it as truth or fable. He wanted to drive out the memory of what Mrs. Lightfoot had told him about the Henshaw household, where the youngest of the lady's brothers had lately arrived from beyond seas, bringing with him habits of noise and riot, which greatly scandalised the neighbours. Suddenly Growler started up with pricked ears, and emitted a sound like thunder. Patience checked her wheel. There was an unmistakable sound of steps. Stead sprang up. Growler rushed at the door with a furious volley of barking. Stead threw it open, catching up a stout stick as he did so, and the dog dashed out, but was instantly driven back with an oath and a blow. It was a bright moonlight night, and Stead beheld three tall men evidently well armed. "Ho, you fellow there," one called out, "keep back your cur, we don't want to hurt him nor you." "Then what are you doing here?" demanded Stead. "We are come for what you wot of. For the King's service." "Who sent you?" asked Stead, for the moment somewhat dazed. One of them laughed and said, "As if you did not know." There was a sickening perception, but Stead's powers were alert enough for him to exclaim, "Then you have no warrant." "My good fellow, don't stickle about such trifles. For the King's service it is, and that should be enough for all loyal hearts. Hollo, what's that? Silence your dog, I say," as Growler's voice resounded through the gulley, "or it will be the worse for you and him." Stead took hold of the dog's collar, and amidst his choked grumbles, said, "I do nought but on true warrant." "Hark ye, blockhead," said the foremost. "I'm an officer of His Majesty's, with power to make requisitions for his service." "Shew it," said Stead, quite convinced that this was sheer robbery. "You addle-pated, insolent clown, to dispute terms with gentlemen in His Majesty's service. Stand aside. I've done you only too much honour by parleying with you. Out of the way. We don't want to take a stick of your own trumpery, I say." "Sir, it is Church plate." "Ha, ha! Church plate is His Most Sacred Majesty's plate. Don't ye know that, you ass? Here! we'll throw you back something for yourself if you will show us the cave and save us trouble, for we know which it is by the token of the red stone and twisted ash. Ho! take--What's become of the clown? He has run off. Discreet fellow!" For Stead had disappeared in the black darkness behind the hut. He remembered Jephthah's discomfiture by the owl, and it struck him that from within the cavern it would be quite possible to keep the robbers at bay, if they tried without knowing the way to climb up among the bushes. He was not afraid for his brother and sister, as the marauders evidently did not want anything but the plate. Indeed, his whole soul was so concentrated on the defence of his charge that he had no room for anything else. Knowing the place perfectly, Stead had time to swing himself, armed with a stout bludgeon, up into the hermit's cave, and even to drag after him Growler, a very efficient ally. The contrasts of moonlight were all in his favour, the lights almost as bright as in sunshine, the shadows so very dark. He could see through the overhanging ivy and travellers' joy the men peering about with their dark lantern, looking into the caves where the pigs were, among the trees, and he held Growler's mouth together lest the grim murmurs that were rolling in the beast's throat should serve as a guide. Then he heard them shout to Patience to come and guide them since her coward of a brother had made off, and he heard her answer, "Not I, 'tis no business of mine." "We'll see about that. D'ye know how folks are made to speak, my lass?" Then Stead recollected with horror that he had left her to her fate. Would he be obliged to come down to her help? At that moment, however, there was a call from the fellow who bore the lantern. "Here's the red stone. That must be the ash. Now then!" "You first, Nick." Then came a crackling and rustling of boughs, a head appeared, and at that moment Stead loosed Growler and would have dealt a blow with his stick, but that the assault of the dog had sufficed to send the assailant, roaring and cursing, headlong down the crag. Furious threats came up to him and his dog, but he heard them in silence, though Growler's replies were vociferous. Stead gathered that the fall had in some degree hurt the man for he made an exclamation of pain, and the others bade him stay there and keep back the wench. "We'll have you down though we smoke you out like a wasps' nest, you disloyal adder, you," was one of the threats. "Or serve him like the Spaniard at Porto Santo," said another. Presently after numerous threats and warnings that they had firearms and were determined to use them, two of the men began climbing much more cautiously, holding by the trees, so as not to be suddenly overthrown. However the furious attack of such a dog as Growler, springing from utter darkness was a formidable matter, and the man against whom he had launched himself could not but fall in his turn, but the dog went after him, and the companion, being on his guard, was not overthrown. Stead aimed a blow at the fellow with all his might, but the slouching hat warded off the full force of the bludgeon. Then Stead sprang at him and grappled with him. There was the report of a pistol, and both rolled headlong among the bushes, but at that moment a fresh shout was heard--a cry of "Villains, traitors, robbers--what be at?" and a rush of feet, while in the moonlight appeared Peter Pierce with his fowling piece, another man, Ben, and four or five dogs. The robbers never waited to see how small the reinforcement was, and it made noise enough for the whole hue-and-cry of the parish. Off they dashed, through the wood, the new comers after them. But all Patience knew was that Steadfast was lying senseless at the bottom of the cliff, with poor Growler moaning by him, and licking his face, and that her hands were wet with what must be blood. It was too dark to see anything, but she could hardly bear to leave him, as she hurried back to the hut for the lantern. All this had taken but few minutes, so that she had only to catch it up from the table where Stead's book still lay. By the time she came back, he had opened his eyes, and his hand was on Growler's head. "Are they gone?" he asked faintly. "Yes, and Peter after them. Oh! Stead, you are badly hurt." "They have not got it?" "Oh no, no, you saved it." "Thank God. Is Ben safe?" "Yes, after them with Peter. I sent him out while you were talking to call Peter." "Good--" and his eyes closed again. "Good Growler, poor Growl--" he added, fondling the big head, as the dog moaned. "See to him, Pat." "I must see to you first. Oh! Stead, is it very bad?" "I'll try to get in, if you'll help me." He raised himself, but this effort brought a rush of blood to the lips, which greatly terrified Patience. To her great relief, however, Nanny Pierce having satisfied herself that all was quiet round the hut, here called out to ask where Patience was. She was profuse in "Lack-a-daisy!" "Dear heart!" and "Poor soul!" and was quite sure Stead was as good as a dead man; but she had strong arms, and so had Patience, and when they had done what they could to stanch the wound in his side, which however, was not bleeding much externally, they carried him in between them to Patience's bed which had been Emlyn's, and therefore was the least uncomfortable. Poor Growler crept after, bleeding a good deal, and Steadfast would not rest till his faithful comrade was looked to. There was a dagger cut in his chest, which Nanny, used to dog doctoring, bound up, after which the creature came close to his master, and fell asleep under his hand. It was a very faint hand. Movement or speech alike brought blood to the mouth, and Stead's ruddy checks were becoming deadly white. He struggled to say, "You and Ben guard it! Say a prayer, Pat," and then the two women really thought that in the gush that followed all was over, and Nanny marvelled at the stunned calm in which Patience went over the Lord's Prayer, and such Psalms as she could remember. Steps came, and Nanny shrieked. Then she saw it was her husband and the other two men. "Made off to the town," said Peter, gruffly. "How now--hurt?" "O, Peter, they have made an end of the poor lad. Died like a lamb, even now." "No, no," said Peter, as he came close to the bed with his more experienced eye; "he ain't dead. 'Tis but a swoon. Hast any strong waters, Pat? No, I'll be bound. Ho, you now, Bill, run and knock them up at the Elmwood Arms, and bring down a gill." "And call Goody Grace," entreated Patience, "she will know best what to do." On the whole, Peter's military experience was more hopeful, if not more helpful than Goody Grace's. He was the only person who persisted in declaring that such wounds were not always mortal, though he agreed in owning that the inward bleeding was the worst sign. Stead did not attempt to speak again, but lay there deadly white and with a stricken look on his face, which Patience could not bear to see, and she ascribed to the conviction that the wretched little Emlyn must have betrayed his secret. The hut was over-full of volunteers of assistance and enquiry the next day, including the squire and Master Woodley; but nobody seemed to guess at the real object of the robbers' attack, everybody thinking they had come for the savings which Stead was known to be making towards rebuilding the farmhouse. Mr. Elmwood was very indignant and took Pierce, and Blane the constable, into Bristol to see whether the felons could be captured and brought to justice, but they proved to have gone down to the wharf, and to have got on board a vessel which had dropped down the river in the early morning. They were also more than suspected of being no other than buccaneers who plied their trade of piracy in the West Indies. The younger Ayliffe had gone with them, and was by no means above suspicion. Mr. Elmwood also brought out a barber surgeon to see young Kenton, a thing which his sister would not have dared to propose. But there was not much to be done, the doctor decided that the bullet was where the attempt at extraction would be fatal, and that the only hope of even partial recovery was in perfect stillness and silence--and this Patience could promise to ensure as far as in her lay. Instructions on dressing the wound were given to her, and she was to send in to the barber's shop if ointment or other appliances were needed. This was all that she was to expect, and more indeed than she had thought feasible; for folks of their condition were sick and got well, lived or died without the aid of practitioners above the skill of Goody Grace. However, he gave her very little hope, though he would not pronounce that her brother was dying. A few days would decide, and quiet was the only chance. Scarcely however were the visitors gone, and Stead left to what rest pain would allow him after being handled by the surgeon, when a sound of sobbing was heard outside. "Oh! oh! I'm afraid to go in! Ben! Oh! tell me, is he not dead? I'm the most miserable maid in the world if he is." "He's alive, small thanks to you," responded Ben, who had somehow arrived at a knowledge of the facts, while Rusha, who was milking, buried her head in Daisy's side, and would not even look at her. Patience felt in utter despair, and longed to misunderstand Stead's signs to her to open the door. She tried to impress the need of quiet, but Emlyn darted in, her hood pushed back, her hair flying, her dress disordered, looking half wild, and dropping on the floor, she crouched there with clasped hands, crying "Oh! oh! he looks like death. He'll die and I'm the most--" "If you make all that noise and tumult he will," said Patience, who could bear no more. "Are you come here to finish what you have done? Do go away." "Oh! but I must tell you! They said it was for the King, and that he had the right. Yes they did, and they swore that they would hurt no one." Stead looked to a certain extent pleased, but Patience broke out, "As if you did not know he would rather die than give up his trust." "I thought he would never know--" "Robber!" said Patience. "Go! You have done harm enough already." "But I must tell you," persisted Emlyn. "I used to see Dick Glass among Lord Goring's troopers, and he is from our parts, and he has been with Prince Rupert. There was a plot, I know there is, and both the Master Ayliffes are in it, and we were to go and raise Worcestershire, only they wanted money, and Dick was to--to wed me--and set us across the river this morning, when they had got the treasure. 'Twas for the King. And now they are all gone, Master Philip and all, and master says they are flibustiers, and pirates, and robbers; and Mrs. Lightfoot's boy came and said Stead Kenton was shot dead at his house door, and then I was neither to have nor to hold, but I ran off here like one distraught, for I never loved anyone like you Stead." "Pretty love!" said Patience. "Oh! if you think you love him, go and let him be at peace." "I do! I do!" cried the girl, quite unmanageable. "Only it made me mad that he should heed an old chest and a musty parson more than me, and so I took up with Dick, and he over persuaded me with his smooth tongue that we would raise folk for the King." Stead held out his hand. "Oh! Stead, Stead, you are always kinder than Patience! You forgive me, dear old Stead, do not you? And I'll tend you day and night, and you shall not die, and I'll wed you, if you have nought but the shirt to your back." Patience felt nearly distracted at the notion of Emlyn there day and night, but at that instant Goody Grace, who had been to her home in preparation for spending the night in nursing, walked in. "How now, mistress, what are you about here?" "She wants to stay and tend him, and I don't know whether she has come with her mistress's knowledge," sighed Patience. "Fine tendance!" said the old woman. "My lady wants to kill him outright. Nay, nay, my young madam, we want none of your airs and flights here. You can do no good, except by making yourself scarce--you that can't hold your tongue a moment." Stead here whispered, "Her mistress, will she forgive her?" "Oh, yes, no fear but that she will," said Emlyn, who perhaps had revolved in her mind, since her first impulse, what it would be to nurse Stead in that hovel, with two such displeased companions as Goody and Patience. More to pacify Steadfast's uneasy eyes than for her own sake, Patience gave her a drink of milk and a piece of bread, and Peter coming just then to ask if he could help Ben with the cattle, undertook to see her safely on her way, since twilight was coming on. Sobered and awestruck by the silence and evident condemnation of all around, she ended by flinging herself on her knees by the bed, and saying "Stead, Stead, you forgive me, though no one else does?" "Poor child--I do--as I hope--" "The blood again. You've done it now," exclaimed Goody Grace. "Away with you!" Peter fairly dragged her out, while the women attended to Stead. But he let her wait outside till they heard, "Not dead, but not far from it."	{ "id": "6006" }
22	EMLYN'S TROTH.	"Woman's love is writ in water, Woman's faith is traced in sand." AYTOUN. Day after day Steadfast Kenton lingered between life and death, and though the external wound healed, there was little relief to the deeper injury which could not be reached, and which the damps and chills of autumn and winter could only aggravate. He could move little, and speak even less; and suffered much, both from pain and difficulty of breathing, as he lay against sacks and pillows on his bed, or sat up in an elbow chair which Mrs. Elmwood lent him. Everybody was very kind in those days of danger. Mrs. Elmwood let Rusha come on many an afternoon to help her sister, and always bringing some posset, or cordial, or dainty of some sort to tempt the invalid. Goody Grace, Mrs. Blane, Dame Oates, Nanny Pierce vied with each other in offers of sitting up with him; Andrew, the young miller, came out of his way to bring a loaf of white bread, and to fetch the corn to be ground. Peter Pierce, Rusha's lover, and more old comrades than Patience quite desired, offered their services in aiding Ben with the cattle and other necessary labours, but as the first excitement wore off, these volunteers became scantier, and when nothing was to be heard but "just the same," nothing to be seen but a weak, wan figure sitting wrapped by the fire, the interest waned, and the gulley was almost as little frequented as before. Poor Ben's schooling had, of course, to be given up, and it was well that he was nearly as old as Stead had been when they were first left to themselves. Happily his fifteen months of study had not made him outgrow his filial obedience and devotion to the less instructed elder brother and sister, who had taken the place of the parents he had never known. Benoni, child of sorrow, he had been named, and perhaps his sickly babyhood and the mournful times around had tended to make him a quiet boy, without the tearing spirits that would have made him eager to join the village lads in their games. Indeed they laughed at him for his poverty and scholarship, and called him Jack Presbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they could think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames than he, as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books, and obliged to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters, he was as staunch a churchman as his brother, and fairly understood the foundations of his faith. Poor boy, the check to his studies disappointed him, and he spent every leisure moment over his Latin accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life. Stead had fully confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he should be the one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange way, the boy connected the treasure with the Saint Grail, and his brother with the maimed king. So he worked very hard, and Patience was capable of a good deal more than in her earlier days. Stead, helpless as he was, did not require constant attendance, and knew too well how much was on his sister's hands to trouble her when he could possibly help doing so. Thus they rubbed on; though it was a terrible winter, and they often had to break in on the hoard which was to have built the house, sometimes for needments for the patient, sometimes to hire help when there was work beyond the strength of Patience and Ben, who indeed was too slender to do all that Stead had done. Ben did not shine in going to market. He was not big enough to hold his own against rude lads, and once came home crying with his donkey beaten and his eggs broken; moreover, he was apt to linger at stalls of books and broadsheets. As soon as Patience could venture to leave her brother, she was forced to go to market herself; and there was a staidness and sobriety about her demeanour that kept all impertinence at a distance. Poor Patience, she was not at all the laughing rustic beauty that Emlyn would have been at market. She would never have been handsome, and though she was only a few years over twenty, she was beginning to look weather-beaten and careworn, like the market women about her, mothers of half-a-dozen children. Now and then she saw Emlyn in all her young, plump beauty, but looking much quieter, and always coming to her for news of Steadfast. There were even tears in those bright eyes when she heard how much he suffered. The girl had evidently been greatly sobered by the results of her indiscretion, and the treachery into which it had led her. She probably cared more for Steadfast than for anyone else except herself, and was shocked and grieved at his condition; and she had moreover discovered how her credulity had been played upon, and that she had had a narrow escape of being carried off by a buccaneer. Her master too had been called to order by the authorities, fined and threatened for permitting Royalist plots to be hatched in his house. He had been angered by the younger Ayliffe's riotous doings, and his wife had been terrified. There had been a general reformation in which Emlyn had only escaped dismissal through her mistress's favour, pleading her orphanhood, her repentance, and her troth plight to the good young man who had been attacked by those dissolute fellows, though Mrs. Henshaw little knew how accountable was her favourite maid for the attack. So good and discreet was Emlyn, so affectionate her messages to Stead, and so much brightness shone in his face on hearing them; there was so much pleasure when she sent him an orange and he returned the snowdrops he had made Rusha gather, that Patience began to believe that Stead was right--that the shock was all the maiden needed to steady her--and that all would end as he hoped, when he should be able to resume his labours, and add to the sadly reduced hoard. It was not, however, till the March winds were over that Stead made any decided step towards recovery, and began to prefer the sun to the fire, and to move feebly and slowly about the farmyard, visiting the animals, too few in number, for his skilled attention had been missed. As summer came on he was able to do a little more, herd them with Growler's help, and gradually to undertake what required no exertion of strength or speed, and there he stopped short--all the sunny months of summer could do no more for him than make him fit to do such work as an old man of seventy might manage. He was persuaded, much against his will, to ride the white horse into Bristol at a foot-pace to consult once more the barber surgeon. That worthy, who was unusually sagacious for his time and had had experience in the wars, told him that his recovery was a marvel, but that with the bullet where it was lodged, he could scarcely hope to enjoy much more health or comfort than at present. It could not be reached, but it might shift, when either it would prove fatal or become less troublesome; and as a friend and honest man, he counselled the poor youth not to waste his money nor torture himself by having recourse to remedies or doctors who could do no real good. Stead thanked the barber, paid his crown, and slowly made his way to Mrs. Lightfoot's, where he was to rest, dine, and see Emlyn. Kind Mrs. Lightfoot shed tears when she saw the sturdy, ruddy youth grown so thin and pale; and as to Emlyn, she actually stood silent for three minutes. The two were left together in Mrs. Lightfoot's kitchen, for Patience was at market, and their hostess had to mind her trade. Stead presently told Emlyn somewhat of the doctor's opinion, and then, producing his portion of the tester, and with lips that trembled in spite of himself, said that he had come to give Emlyn back her troth plight. "Oh! Stead, Stead," she cried, bursting into tears. "I thought you had forgiven me." "Forgiven you! Yea, truly, poor child, but--" "But only when you were sick! You cast me off now you are whole." "I shall never be whole again, Emlyn." "I don't believe Master Willis. He is nought but a barber," she exclaimed passionately. "I know there are physicians at the Bath who would cure you; or there's the little Jew by the wharf; or the wise man on Durdham Down. But you always are so headstrong; when you have made up your mind no one can move you, and you don't care whose heart you break," she sobbed. "Hearken, little sweet," said Stead. " 'Tis nought but that I wot that it would be ill for you to be bound to a poor frail man that will never be able to keep you as you should be kept. All I had put by is well nigh gone, and I'm not like to make it up again for many a year, even if I were as strong as ever." "And you won't go to the Jew, or the wise man, or the Bath?" "I have not the money." "But I will--I will save it for you!" cried Emlyn, who never had saved in her life. "Or look here. Master Henshaw might give you a place in his office, and then there would be no need to dwell in that nasty, damp gulley, but we could be in the town. I'll ask my mistress to crave it from him." Stead could not but smile at her eagerness, but he shook his head. "It would be bootless, sweetheart, I cannot carry weights." "No, but you can write." "Very scurvily, and I cannot cypher." For Stead, like everyone else at Elmwood, kept his accounts by tally and in his head, and the mysteries of the nine Arabic figures were perfectly unknown to him. However, Emlyn stuck to the hope, and he was so far inspired by it that he ceased to insist on giving up the pledges of the betrothal, and he lay on the settle in quiet enjoyment of Emlyn's castle building, as she sat on a stool by his side, his hand on her shoulder, somewhat as it was wont to lie on Growler's head. And in spite of Master Willis's opinion, he rode home to the gulley a new man, assuring Patience, on the donkey by his side, that there was more staunchness and kindness in little Emlyn than ever they had thought for. Even the ferryman who put them over the river declared that the doctor must have done Master Kenton a power of good, and Stead smiled and did not contradict him. Stead actually consulted Mr. Woodley how to learn cyphering beyond what Ben had acquired at school; and the minister lent him a treatise, over which he pored with a board and a burnt stick for many an hour when he was out on the common with the cattle, or on the darkening evenings in the hut. Ben saw his way into those puzzles with no more difficulty than whetted his appetite, worked out sum after sum, and explained them to his brother, to the admiration of both his elders, till frowns of despair and long sighs from Stead brought Patience to declare he was mazing himself, and insist on putting out the light. Stead had more time for his studies than he could wish, for the cold of winter soon affected the injured lungs; and, moreover, the being no longer able to move about rapidly caused the damp and cold of the ravine to produce rheumatism and attendant ills, of which, in his former healthy, out-of-door life, he had been utterly ignorant, and he had to spend many an hour breathless, or racked with pain in the poor little hovel, sometimes trying to give his mind to the abstruse mysteries of multiplication of money, but generally in vain, and at others whiling away the time with his books, for though there were only seven of them, including Bible and Prayer-book, a very little reading could be the text of so much musing, that these few perfectly sufficed him. And then he was the nurse of any orphaned lamb or sick chicken that Patience was anxious about, and his care certainly saved many of those small lives. The spring, when he came forth again, found him on a lower level, less strong and needing a stick to aid his rheumatic knee. Not much was heard of Emlyn that spring. She did not come to market with her mistress, and Patience was not inclined to go in quest of her, having a secret feeling that no news might be better for Stead than anything she was likely to hear; while as to any chance of their coming together, the Kentons had barely kept themselves through this winter, and Steadfast's arithmetic was not making such progress as would give him a place at a merchant's desk. Patience, however, was considerably startled when, one fine June day, she saw Mrs. Henshaw's servant point her out to two tall soldierly-looking men, apparently father and son. "Good morrow to you, honest woman," said the elder. "I am told it is you who have been at charges for many years for my brother's daughter, Emlyn Gaythorn." Patience assented. "You have been right good to her, I hear; and I thank you for that same, and will bear what we may of the expense," he added, taking out a heavy bag from his pouch. He went on to explain that he and his son having gone abroad with his master had been serving with the Dutch, and had made some prize money. Learning on the peace that a small inheritance in Worcestershire had fallen to the family, they had returned, and found from Lady Blythedale that the brother's daughter was supposed to be alive somewhere near Bristol. She had a right to half, and being honourable men, they had set out in search of her, bringing letters from the lady to Mr. Henshaw, whose house was still a centre of inquiry for persons in the Cavalier interest. There, of course, they had discovered Emlyn; and Master Gaythorn proceeded to say that it had been decided that the estate should not be broken up, but that his son should at once wed her and unite their claims. "But, sir," exclaimed Patience, "she is troth plight to my brother." "So she told me, but likewise that he is a broken man and sickly, and had offered to restore her pledge." Patience could not deny it, though she felt hotly indignant. "She charged me to give it back to you," added the uncle; "and to bid you tell the young man that we are beholden to you both; but that since the young folk are to be wedded to-morrow morn, and then to set forth for Worcestershire, there is no time for leave-takings." "I do not wonder!" exclaimed Patience, "that she has no face to see us. She that has been like a child or a sister to us, to leave us thus! O my brother!" "Come, come, my good woman, best not make a pother." Poor Patience's homely garb and hard-worked looks shewed little of the yeoman class to which she belonged. "You've done your duty by the maid and here's the best I have to make it up." Patience could not bring herself to take the bag, and he dropped it into her basket "I am sorry for the young man, your brother, but he knew better than to think to wed her as he is. And 'tis better for all there should be no women's tears and foolishness over it." "Is she willing?" Patience could not but ask. "Willing?" Both men laughed. "Aye, what lass is not willing to take a fine, strapping husband, and be a landed dame? She gave the token back of her own free will, eh, Humfrey; and what did she bid us say?" "Her loving greetings to--What were their Puritanical names?" said the son contemptuously. "Aye, and that she pitied the poor clown down there, but knew he would be glad of what was best for her." "So farewell, good mistress," said Master Gaythorn, and off they clanked together; and Patience, looking after them, could entirely believe that the handsome buff coat, fringed belt, high boots, and jauntily cocked hat would have driven out the thought of Stead in his best days. And now that he was bent, crippled, weak, helpless,--"and all through her, what hope was then," thought Patience, "yet if she had loved him, or there had been any truth in her, she could have wedded him now, and he would have been at ease through life! A little adder at our hearth! We are well quit of her, if he will but think so, but how shall I ever tell him?" She did not rush in with the tidings but came home slowly, drearily, so that Stead, who was sitting outside by the door, peeling rushes, gathered that something was amiss, and soon wormed it out of her, while her tears dropped fast for him. Still, as ever, he spoke little. He said her uncle was right in sparing tears and farewells, no doubt reserving to himself the belief that it was against her will. And when Patience could not help declaring that the girl might have made him share her prosperity, he said, "I'm past looking after her lands. Her uncle would say so. 'Tis his doing; I am glad of what is best for my darling as was. There's an end of it, Patience--joy and grief. And I thank God that the child is safely cared for at last." He tried to be as usual, but he was very ill that night. Patience found the money in her basket. She hated it and put it aside, and it was only some time after that she was constrained to use it, only then telling Stead whence it came, when he could endure to hear that the uncle had done his best to be just.	{ "id": "6006" }
23	FULFILMENT.	"My spirit heats her mortal bars, As down dark tides the glory glides, And mingles with the stars." TENNYSON. The year 1660 had come, and in the autumn, just as harvest was over, and the trees on the slopes were taking tints of red, yellow, and brown, an elderly clergyman, staff in hand, came slowly up the long lane leading to Elmwood, whence he had been carried, bound to his horse, seventeen years before. He had not suffered as much as some of his fellow priests. After a term of imprisonment in London, he had been transported to the plantations, namely, the American settlements, and had fallen in with friends, who took him to Virginia. This was chiefly colonized by people attached to the Church, who made him welcome, and he had ministered among them till the news arrived of the Restoration of Charles II, and likewise that the lawful incumbents of benefices, who had been driven out, were reinstated by Act of Parliament. Mr. Holworth's Virginian friends would gladly have kept him with them, but he felt that his duty was to his original flock, and set out at once for England, landing at Bristol. There, however, he waited, like the courteous man he was, to hold communication with his people, till he had written to Mr. Elmwood, and made arrangements with him and Master Woodley. They were grieved, but they were both men who had a great respect for law and parliament, so they made no difficulties. Mr. and Mrs. Woodley retired to the hall and left the parsonage vacant, after the minister had preached a farewell sermon in the church which made everyone cry, for he was a good man and had made himself loved, and there were very few in the parish who could understand that difference between the true Church and a body without bishops. Mr. Holworth had in the meantime gone to Wells to see his own Bishop Piers, an old man of eighty-six, and it was from thence that he was now returning. He had not chosen to enter his parish till the intruded minister had resigned the charge, but he had been somewhat disappointed that none of his old flock, not even any Kentons, who had so much in charge, had come in to see him. He now arrived in this quiet way, thinking that it would not be delicate to the feelings of the squire and ex-minister to let the people get up any signs of joy or ring the bells, if they were so inclined. Indeed, he was much afraid from what he had been able to learn that it would be only the rougher sort, who hated Puritan strictness and wanted sport and revelry, who would give him an eager welcome. So he first went quietly up to the church, which he found full of benches and pews, with the Altar table in the middle of the nave, and the squire's comfortable cushioned seat at the east end. He knelt on the step for a long time, then made a brief visit to his own house, where the garden was in beautiful order, but only a room or two were furnished with goods he had bought from the Woodleys, and these were in charge of a servant he had hired at Bristol. Thence the old man went out into the village, and his first halt was at the forge, where Blane, who had grown a great deal stouter and more grizzled, started at sight of his square cap. "Eh! but 'tis the old minister! You have come in quietly, sir! I am afraid your reverence has but a sorry welcome." "I do not wonder you are grieved to part with Master Woodley." "Well, sir, he be a good man and a powerful preacher, though no doubt your reverence has the best right, and for one, I'm right glad to see an old face again. We would have rung the bells if we had known you were coming." "That would have been hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What became of his children?" "That eldest lad went off to the Parliament army, and came swaggering here in his buff coat and boots like my Lord Protector himself, they say he has got a castle and lands in Ireland. Men must be scarce, say I, if they have had to make a gentleman of Jeph Kenton." "And the rest?" "Well, sir, I'm afraid that poor lad, Stead, is in poor plight. You mind, he was always a still, steady, hard-working lad, and when his father was killed, and his house burnt, and his brother ran away, the way he and his sister turned to was just wonderful. They went to live in an old hut in the gulley down there, and they have made the place so tidy as it does your heart good to look at it. They bred up the young ones, and the younger girl is well married to one of the Squire's folks, and everyone respected them. But, as ill-luck would have it, some robbers from Bristol seem to have got scent of their savings. Some said that the Communion Cup was hid somewhere there." Mr. Holworth made an anxious sound of interrogation. "Well, I did see the corporal, when the Parliament soldiers were at Bristol, flog Stead shamefully to know where it was, and never get a word out of him, whether or no; and as he was a boy who would never tell a lie, it stands to reason he knew where they were." "But how did anyone guess at his knowing?" asked Mr. Holworth. "His brother might have thought it likely, poor John being thick with your reverence," said Blane. "After that I thought, myself, that he ought to give them up to Master Woodley, if so be he had them; but I could never get a hint from him. The talk went that old Dr. Eales, you mind him, sir, before he died, came out and held a prelatist service, begging your pardon, sir, and that the things were used. Stead got into trouble with Squire about it." "But the robbers, how was that? You said he was hurt!" "Sore hurt, sir; and he has never got the better of it, though 'tis nigh upon four years ago. There was a slip of a wench he picked up as a child after the fight by Luck's mill, and bred up; a fair lass she grew up to look on, but a light-headed one. She went to service at Bristol, and poor Stead was troth plight to her, hoped to save and build up the house again, never knowing, not he, poor rogue, of her goings on with the sailors and all the roistering lads about her master's house. 'Tis my belief she put those rascals on the track, whether she meant it or not. Stead made what defence he could, stood up like a man against the odds, three to one, and got a shot in the side, so that he was like to die then. Better for him, mayhap, if he had at once, for it has been nought but a lingering ever since, never able to do a day's work, though that wench, Patience, and the young lad, Ben, have fought it out wonderfully. That I will say." Mr. Holworth had tears in his eyes, and trembled with emotion. "The dear lad," he said. "Where is he? I must go and see him." "He bides in the gulley, sir; he has been there ever since the farm-house was burnt." Ere long Mr. Holworth was on his way to the gulley. What had been only a glade reaching from rock to stream, hidden in copsewood, was now an open space trodden by cattle, with the actual straw-yard more in the rear, but with a goat tethered on it and poultry running about. It was a sunny afternoon, and in a wooden chair placed so as to catch the warmth, with feet on a stool, sat, knitting, a figure that Mr. Holworth at first thought was that of an aged man; but as he emerged from the wood, and the big dog sprang up and barked, there was a looking up, an instant silencing of the dog, a rising with manifest effort, a doffing of the broad-brimmed hat, and the clergyman beheld what seemed to him his old Churchwarden's face, only in the deadly pallor of long-continued illness, and with the most intense, unspeakable look of happiness and welcome afterwards irradiating it, a look that in after years always came before Mr. Holworth with the "Nunc dimittis." Dropping the knitting, and holding by the chair, he stood trembling and quivering with gladness, while, summoned by the dog's bark, Patience, pail in hand, appeared on one side, and Ben, tall and slight, with his flail, on the other. "My dear lad," was all Mr. Holworth could say, as he took the thin, blanched hand, put his arm round the shoulders, and reseated Stead, still speechless with joy. Patience, curtseying low, came up anxiously, showing the same honest face as of old, though work and anxiety had traced their lines on the sun-burnt complexion, and Ben stood blushing, and showing his keener, more cultivated face, as the stranger turned to greet them so as to give Steadfast time to recover himself. "Oh! sir, but we are glad to see your reverence," cried Patience. "Will you go in, or sit by Stead? Ben, fetch a chair." "And is this fine strapping fellow, the sickly babe that you were never to rear, Patience?" "God has been very good to us, sir," said Patience. "And this is best of all," said Stead, recovering breath and speech. "I thank Him that I have lived to see this day! It is all safe, sir." "And you, you faithful guardian, you have suffered for it." If it had not been for Blane's partial revelations, Mr. Holworth never would have extracted the full story of how for that sacred trust, Steadfast Kenton had endured threats and pain, and had foregone ease, prosperity, latterly happiness, and how finally it had cost him health, nay life itself, for he was as surely dying of the buccaneer's pistol shot, as though he had been slain on the spot. Long illness, with all the thought and reflection it had brought, had so far changed and refined Stead that his awkward bashfulness and lack of words had passed from him, and when he saw the clergyman overcome with emotion at the thought of all he had undergone he said, "Never heed it, your reverence, it has come to be all joy to me to have had a little to bear for the Master! 'Tis hard on Patience and Ben, but they are very good to me; and being sick gives time for such comforts as God sends me. It is more than all I could have had here." "I am sure of that, my dear boy. I was not grieving that I gave you the trust, but thinking what a blessed thing it is to have kept it thus faithfully." Two Sundays later, the Feast was again meetly spread in Elmwood Church, the Altar restored to its place, and all as reverently arranged as it could yet be among the broken carved work. In some respects it was a mournful service, few there were who after the lapse of seventeen years even remembered the outlines of the old forms; and the younger people knew not when to kneel or stand. There were few who could read, and even for those who could there were only four Prayer-books in the church, the clergyman's, the clerk's, the Kentons', and one discovered by an old Elmwood servant. The Squire's family came not; Goody Grace was dead, and though Rusha tried to instruct her husband and her little girl, she herself was much at a loss. To Mr. Holworth it was almost like that rededication of the Temple when the old men wept at the thought of the glory of the former house, but there were some on whom his eye rested with joy and peace. There were Blane and his wife, good and faithful though ignorant; there were the old miller and his son, who had come all that distance since there had as yet been no restoration in their church, and the goings on of Original-Sin Hopkins and his friends had thoroughly disgusted them, and made the old man yearn towards the church of his youth, and there was the little group of three, the toil-worn but sweet-faced sister, calm and restful, though watchful; the tall youth with thoughtful, earnest, awe-struck face, come for his first Communion, for which through those many years he had been taught to pray and long, and between them the wasted form and wan features lighted up with that wonderful radiance that had come on them with the sense that the trust was fulfilled, only it was brighter, calmer, higher, than even at the greeting of the vicar. Did Steadfast see only the burnished gold of the Chalice and paten he had guarded for seventeen years at the cost of toil, danger, suffering, love, and life itself? Did he not see and feel far beyond those outward visible signs in which others, who had not yet endured to the end, could only as yet put their trust by faith? Mr. Holworth, as he stood over him and saw the upturned eye, was sure it was so. No doubt indeed Ben thought so too, but poor imaginative Ben had somehow fancied it would be with his brother as with the King who guarded that other sacred Cup, and when all was over, was quite disappointed that Stead needed his strong arm as much as ever, nay more, for on coming out into the air and sunshine a faintness and exhaustion came on, and they had to rest him in the porch before he could move. "O Stead, I thought it would have healed you," the lad said. Stead slightly smiled. "Healed? I shall soon be healed altogether, Ben," he said. He had with great difficulty and very slowly walked to church, and Mr. Holworth wished him to come and rest at the Vicarage, but he was very anxious to get home, and after he had taken a little food, Andrew Luck offered to share with Ben and Rusha's husband the carrying him back between them on an elbow chair. This pleased him, and he looked up to Andrew and said, "You are in the same mind as long ago?" "I never found anyone else I could lay my mind to, since my poor Kitty," said Andrew. "She will come to you--soon," said Stead. "She'll have a sore heart, but you will be good to her." "That I will. And little Bess and Kate shall come and tell her how they want her." Stead smiled and his lips moved in thankfulness. "And if Ben would come with her," added Andrew, "I'd be a brother to him." "Parson wants Ben," said Stead. "He says he can make a scholar of him, and maybe a parson, and it will not be so lonesome in the vicarage." "And your farm?" "Rusha and her man take that. They have saved enough to build the house. Yes, all is well. It is great peace and thankfulness." Patience returned with the cushions she had borrowed and they brought Steadfast home, very much exhausted, and not speaking all the way. Perhaps the unusual motion and exertion had made the bullet change its place, for he hardly uttered another word, and that night, as he had said to Ben, he was healed for ever of all his ills. The funeral sermon that Mr. Holworth preached the next Sunday, was on the text so dear to all the loyal hearts who remembered the White King's coronation text-- "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." THE END	{ "id": "6006" }
1	THE SCENE.	The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown--the first fresh smiling days of April had come at last--the days of sunshine and shower, of fitful breezes, the breath of blossoms, and the newly-awakened song of birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her youth, and the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the season. She had come, and her messengers were everywhere, and everywhere busy. The birds bore her gladsome tidings to “Alley green, Dingle or bushy dell of each wild wood, And every bosky bourn from side to side--” nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests left unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside sprang up at her summons. Like some loyal and devoted people, gathered to hail the approach of a long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing might be heard, and far-off murmurs of gratulation, rising from the distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hill-tops, in accents not the lees pleasing because they were the less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every land blossom, and every living thing rejoice, met, in the happy region in which we meet her now, a double tribute of honor and rejoicing. The “dark and bloody ground,” by which mournful epithets Kentucky was originally known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody no longer. The savage had disappeared from its green forests for ever, and no longer profaned with slaughter, and his unholy whoop of death, its broad and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded; and the wilderness, fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had begun to blossom like the rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile borders with a wall of fearless men, and peace slept everywhere in security among its green recesses. Stirring industry--the perpetual conqueror--made the woods resound with the echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages rose in cheerful white, in place of the crumbling and smoky cabins of the hunter. High and becoming purposes of social life and thoughtful enterprise superseded that eating and painful decay, which has terminated in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among every people, must always result from their refusal to exercise, according to the decree of experience, no less than Providence, their limbs and sinews in tasks of well-directed and continual labor. A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth and feebleness, is one of the noblest of human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and hourly changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where the pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened through the dark and hitherto impervious thickets. The city sprang up beside the river, while hamlets, filled with active hope and cheerful industry, crowded upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered among innumerable valleys Grace began to seek out the homes of toil, and taste supplied their decorations. A purer form of religion hallowed the forest-homes of the red-man, while expelling for ever the rude divinities of his worship; and throughout the land, an advent of moral loveliness seemed approaching, not less grateful to the affections and the mind, than was the beauty of the infant April, to the eye and the heart of the wanderer. But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies of nature, in the scene upon which we are about to enter. Though the savage had for ever departed from its limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization were not yet secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky. Its morals were still in that fermenting condition which invariably distinguishes the settlement of every new country by a various and foreign people. At the distant period of which we write, the population of Kentucky had not yet become sufficiently stationary to have made their domestic gods secure, or to have fixed the proper lines and limits regulating social intercourse and attaching precise standards to human conduct. The habits and passions of the first settlers--those fearless pioneers who had struggled foot to foot with the Indian, and lived in a kindred state of barbarity with him, had not yet ceased to have influence over the numerous race which followed them. That moral amalgam which we call society, and which recognises a mutual and perfectly equal condition of dependence, and a common necessity, as the great cementing principles of the human family, had not yet taken place; and it was still too much the custom, in that otherwise lovely region, for the wild man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong man to commit a greater with impunity. The repose of social order was not yet secured to the great mass, covering with its wing, as with a sky that never knew a cloud, the sweet homes and secure possessions of the unwarlike. The fierce robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveler upon the highway, and the wily assassin of reputation, within the limits of the city barrier, not unfrequently plucked the sweetest rose that ever adorned the virgin bosom of innocence, and triumphed, without censure, in the unhallowed spoliation. But sometimes there came an avenger;--and the highway robber fell before the unexpected patriot; and the virgin was avenged by the yet beardless hero, for the wrong of her cruel seducer. The story which we have to tell, is of times and of actions such as these. It is a melancholy narrative--the more melancholy as it is most certainly true. It will not be told in vain, if the crime which it describes in proper colors, and the vengeance by which it was followed, and which it equally records, shall secure the innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient wrongdoer from his base designs.	{ "id": "6012" }
2	THE TRAVELLERS.	Let the traveller stand with us on the top of this rugged eminence, and look down upon the scene below. Around us, the hills gather in groups on every side, a family cluster, each of which wears the same general likeness to that on which we stand, yet there is no monotony in their aspect. The axe has not yet deprived them of a single tree, and they rise up, covered with the honored growth of a thousand summers. But they seem not half so venerable. They wear, in this invigorating season, all the green, fresh features of youth and spring. The leaves cover the rugged Limbs which sustain them, with so much ease and grace, as if for the first time they were so green and glossy, and as if the impression should be made more certain and complete, the gusty wind of March has scattered abroad and borne afar, all the yellow garments of the vanished winter. The wild flowers begin to flaunt their blue and crimson draperies about us, as if conscious that they are borne upon the bosom of undecaying beauty; and the spot so marked and hallowed by each charming variety of bud and blossom, would seem to have been a selected dwelling for the queenly Spring herself. Man, mindful of those tastes and sensibilities which in great part constitute his claim to superiority over the brute, has not been indifferent to the beauties of the place. In the winding hollows of these hills, beginning at our feet, you see the first signs of as lovely a little hamlet as ever promised peace to the weary and the discontent. This is the village of Charlemont. A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in this natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of them, to fill a fitted place--not equally distant from, but equally near each other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature, there is yet no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and none of them distinguished by architectural pretension. They are now quite as flourishing as when first built, and their number has had no increase since the village was first settled. Speculation has not made it populous and prosperous, by destroying its repose, stifling its charities, and abridging the sedate habits and comforts of its people. The houses, though constructed after the fashion of the country, of heavy and ill-squared logs, roughly hewn, and hastily thrown together, perhaps by unpractised hands, are yet made cheerful by that tidy industry which is always sure to make them comfortable also. Trim hedges that run beside slender white palings, surround and separate them from each other. Sometimes, as you see, festoons of graceful flowers, and waving blossoms, distinguish one dwelling from the rest, declaring its possession of some fair tenant, whose hand and fancy have kept equal progress with habitual industry; at the same time, some of them appear entirely without the little garden of flowers and vegetables, which glimmers and glitters in the rear or front of the greater number. Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The garden is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons no longer grace the lowly portals--the white palings are down and blackening in the gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence dwells lonely among the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place. It has no longer a human occupant. “Something ails it now--the spot is cursed.” Why this fate has fallen upon so sweet an abiding place--why the villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful--it does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most probably abandoned--not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil, or the unhealthiness of the climate--for but few places on the bosom of the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or more healthful--but in compliance with that feverish restlessness of mood--that sleepless discontent of temper, which, perhaps, more than any other quality, is the moral failing in the character of the Anglo-American. The roving desires of his ancestor, which brought him across the waters, have been transmitted without diminution--nay, with large increase--to the son. The creatures of a new condition of things, and new necessities, our people will follow out their destiny. The restless energies which distinguish them, are, perhaps, the contemplated characteristics which Providence has assigned them, in order that they may the more effectually and soon, bring into the use and occupation of a yet mightier people, the wilderness of that new world in which their fortunes have been cast. Generation is but the pioneer of generation, and the children of millions, more gigantic and powerful than ourselves, shall yet smile to behold, how feeble was the stroke made by our axe upon the towering trees of their inheritance. It was probably because of this characteristic of our people, that Charlemont came in time to be deserted. The inhabitants were one day surprised with tidings of more attractive regions in yet deeper forests, and grew dissatisfied with their beautiful and secluded valley. Such is the ready access to the American mind, in its excitable state, of novelty and sudden impulse, that there needs but few suggestions to persuade the forester to draw stakes, and remove his tents, where the signs seem to be more numerous of sweeter waters and more prolific fields. For a time, change has the power which nature does not often exercise; and under its freshness, the waters DO seem sweeter, and the stores of the wilderness, the wild-honey and the locust, DO seem more abundant to the lip and eye. Where our cottagers went, and under what delusion, are utterly unknown to us; nor is it important to our narrative that we should inquire. Our knowledge of them is only desirable, while they were in the flourishing condition in which they have been seen. It is our trust that the novelty which seduced them from their homes, did not fail them in its promises--that they may never have found, in all their wanderings, a less lovely abiding-place, than that which they abandoned. But change has its bitter, as well as its sweet, and the fear is strong that the cottagers of Charlemont, in the weary hours, when life's winter is approaching, will still and vainly sigh after the once-despised enjoyments of their deserted hamlet. It was toward the close of one of those bright, tearful days in April, of which we have briefly spoken, when a couple of travellers on horseback, ascended the last hill looking down upon Charlemont. One of these travellers had passed the middle period of life; the other was, perhaps, just about to enter upon its heavy responsibilities, and more active duties. The first wore the countenance of one who had borne many sorrows, and borne them with that resignation, which, while it proves the wisdom of the sufferer, is at the same time, calculated to increase his benevolence. The expression of his eye, was full of kindness and benignity, while that of his mouth, with equal force, was indicative of a melancholy, as constant as it was gentle and unobtrusive. A feeble smile played over his lips while he spoke, that increased the sadness which it softened; as the faint glimmer of the evening sunlight, upon the yellow leaves of autumn, heightens the solemn tones in the rich coloring of the still decaying forest. The face of his companion, in many of its features, was in direct contrast with his own. It was well formed, and, to the casual glance, seemed no less handsome than intellectual. There was much in it to win the regard of the young and superficial. An eye that sparkled with fire, a mouth that glowed with animation--cheeks warmly colored, and a contour full of vivacity, seemed to denote properties of mind and heart equally valuable and attractive. Still, a keen observer would have found something sinister, in the upward glancing of the eye, at intervals, from the half-closed lids; and, at such moments, there was a curling contempt upon the lips, which seemed to denote a cynical and sarcastic turn of mind. A restless movement of the same features seemed equally significant of caprice of character, and a flexibility of moral; while the chin narrowed too suddenly and became too sharp at the extremity, to persuade a thorough physiognomist, that the owner could be either very noble in his aims, or very generous in his sentiments. But as these outward tokens can not well be considered authority in the work of judgment, let events, which speak for themselves, determine the true character of our travellers. They had reached the table land of the heights which looked down upon Charlemont, at a moment when the beauty of the scene could scarcely fail to impress itself upon the most indifferent observer. The elder of the travellers, who happened to be in advance, was immediately arrested by it; and, staying the progress of his horse, with hand lifted above his eye, looked around him with a delight which expressed itself in an abrupt ejaculation, and brought his companion to his side. The sun had just reached that point in his descent, which enabled him to level a shaft of rosy light from the pinnacle of the opposite hill, into the valley below, where it rested among the roofs of two of the cottages, which arose directly in its path. The occupants of these two cottages had come forth, as it were, in answer to the summons; and old and young, to the number of ten or a dozen persons, had met, in the winding pathway between, which led through the valley, and in front of every cottage which it contained. The elder of the cottagers sat upon the huge trunk of a tree, which had been felled beside the road, for the greater convenience of the traveller; and with eyes turned in the direction of the hill on which the sunlight had sunk and appeared to slumber, seemed to enjoy the vision with no less pleasure than our senior traveller. Two tall damsels of sixteen, accompanied by a young man something older, were strolling off in the direction of the woods; while five or six chubby girls and boys were making the echoes leap and dance along the hills, in the clamorous delight which they felt in their innocent but stirring exercises. The whole scene was warmed with the equal brightness of the natural and the human sun. Beauty was in the sky, and its semblance, at least, was on the earth. God was in the heavens, and in his presence could there be other than peace and harmony among men! “How beautiful!” exclaimed the elder of our travellers--“could anything be more so! How pure, how peaceful! See, Warham, how soft, how spirit-like, that light lies along the hill-side, and how distinct, yet how delicate, is the train which glides from it down the valley, even to the white dwellings at its bottom, from which it seems to shrink and tremble as if half conscious of intrusion. And yet the picture below is kindred with it. That, now, is a scene that I delight in--it is a constant picture in my mind. There is peace in that valley, if there be peace anywhere on earth. The old men sit before the door, and contemplate with mingled feelings of pride and pleasure, the vigorous growth of their children. They behold in them their own immortality, even upon earth. The young will preserve their memories, and transmit their names to other children yet unborn; and how must such a reflection reconcile them to their own time of departure, not unfitly shown in the last smiles of that sunlight, which they are so soon about to lose. Like him, they look with benevolence and love upon the world from which they will soon depart.” “Take my word for it, uncle, they will postpone their departure to the last possible moment, and, so far from looking with smiles upon what they are about to leave for ever, they will leave it with very great reluctance, and in monstrous bad humor. As for regarding their children with any such notions as those you dwell upon with such poetical raptures, they will infinitely prefer transmitting for themselves their names and qualities to the very end of the chapter. Ask any one of them the question now, and he will tell you that an immortality, each, in his own wig-wam, and with his weight of years and infirmity upon him, would satisfy all his expectations. If they look at the vigor of their young, it is to recollect that they themselves once were so, and to repine at the recollection. Take my word for it, there is not a dad among them, that does not envy his own son the excellence of his limbs, and the long time of exercise and enjoyment which they seemingly assure him.” “Impossible!” exclaimed the elder of the two travellers. “Impossible! I should be sorry to think as you do. But you, Warham, can not understand these things. You are an habitual unbeliever--the most unfortunate of all mankind.” “The most fortunate, rather. I have but few burdens of credulity to carry. The stars be blessed, my articles of faith are neither very many nor very cumbrous. I should be sorry if my clients were so few.” “I should be sorry, Warham, if I had so little feeling as yourself.” “And I should be still more sorry, uncle, if I had half so much. Why, sir, yours is in such excess, that you continually mistake the joys and sorrows of other people for your own. You laugh and weep with them alternately; and, until all's done and over, you never seem to discover that the business was none of yours;--that you had none of the pleasure which made you laugh, and might have been spared all the unnecessary suffering which moved your tears. 'Pon my soul, sir, you pass a most unprofitable life.” “You mistake, Warham, I have shared both; and my profits have been equally great from both sources. My susceptibility has been an exceeding great gain to me, and has quickened all my senses. There is a joy of grief, you know, according to Ossian.” “Nay, if you quote Ossian, uncle. I give you up. I don't believe in Ossian, and his raving stuff always sickens me.” “I sometimes think, Warham,” said the uncle, good naturedly, “that Providence has denied you some of the more human faculties. Nay, I fear that you are partially deficient in some of the senses. Do you see that sunlight to which I point--there, on the hill-side, a sort of rosy haze, which seems to me eminently beautiful?” “Yes, sir; and, if you will suffer me, I will get out of its reach as quickly as possible. I have been half blinded by it ever since you found it so beautiful. Sunlight is, I think, of very little importance to professional men, unless as a substitute for candles, and then it should come over the left shoulder, if you would not have it endanger the sight. Nay, I will go farther, and confess that it is better than candlelight, and certainly far less expensive. Shall we go forward, sir?” “Warham,” said the uncle, with increasing gravity, “I should be sorry to believe that a habit of speech so irreverential, springs from anything but an ambition for saying smart things, and strange things, which are not always smart. It would give me great pain to think that you were devoid of any of those sensibilities which soften the hearts of other men, and lead them to generous impulses.” “Nay, be not harsh, uncle. You should know me better. I trust my sensibilities, and senses too, may be sufficient for all proper purposes, when the proper time comes for their employment; but I can't flame up at every sunbeam, and grow enthusiastic in the contemplation of Bill Johnson's cottage, and Richard Higgins's hedgerow. A turnip-patch never yet could waken my enthusiasm, and I do believe, sir--I confess it with some shame and a slight misgiving, lest my admissions should give you pain--that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife.” The uncle simply looked upon the speaker, but without answering. He was probably quite too much accustomed to his modes of thought and speech to be so much surprised as annoyed by what he said. Perhaps, too, his own benevolence of spirit interfered to save the nephew from that harsher rebuke which his judgment might yet have very well disposed him to bestow. Following the course of the latter in silence, he descended into the valley, and soon made his way among the sweet little cottages at its foot. An interchange of courtsies between the travellers and the villagers whose presence had given occasion to some portion of the previous dialogue, in which the manner of the younger traveller was civil, and that of the elder kind; and the two continued on their journey, though not without being compelled to refuse sundry invitations, given with true patriarchal hospitality, to remain among the quiet abodes through which they passed. As cottage after cottage unfolded itself to their eyes, along the winding avenue, the proprietors appeared at door and window, and, with the simple freedoms of rural life, welcomed the strangers with a smile, a nod, and sometimes, when sufficiently nigh, a friendly word of salutation, but without having the effect of arresting their onward progress. Yet many a backward glance was sent by the elder of the travellers, whose eyes, beaming with satisfaction, sufficiently declared the delight which he received from the contemplation of so many of the mingled graces of physical and moral nature. His loitering steps drew from his young companion an occasional remark, which, to ears less benevolent and unsuspecting than than those of the senior, might have been deemed a sarcasm; and more than once the lips of the nephew had curled with contemptuous smiles, as he watched the yearning glances of his uncle on each side of the avenue, as they wended slowly through it. At the end of the village, and at the foot of the opposite hills, they encountered a group of young people of both sexes, whose bursts of merriment were suddenly restrained as they emerged unexpectedly into sight. The girls had been sitting upon the grassy mead, with the young men before them; but they started to their feet at the sound of strange steps, and the look of strange faces. Charlemont, it must be remembered, was not in the thoroughfare of common travel. If visited at all by strangers, it was most usually by those only who came with a single purpose. Nothing, therefore could have been more calculated to surprise a community so insulated, than that they should attract, but not arrest the traveller. The natural surprise which the young people felt, when unexpectedly encountered in their rustic sports, was naturally increased by this unusual circumstance, and they looked after the departing forms of the wayfarers with a wonder and curiosity that kept them for some time silent. The elder of the two, meanwhile--one of whose habits of mind was always to give instantaneous utterance to the feeling which was upper-most--dilated, without heeding the sneers of his nephew, upon the apparent happiness which they witnessed. “Here, you see, Warham, is a pleasure which the great city never knows:--the free intercourse of the sexes in all those natural exercises which give health to the body, grace to the movement, and vivacity to the manners.” “The health will do well enough,” replied the skeptic, “but save me from the grace of Hob and Hinney; and as for their manners--did I hear you correctly, uncle, when you spoke of their manners?” “Surely, you did. I have always regarded the natural manners which belong to the life of the forester, as being infinitely more noble, as well as more graceful, than those of the citizen. Where did you ever see a tradesman whose bearing was not mean compared with that of the hunter?” “Ay, but these are no hunters, and scarcely foresters. I see not a single Nimrod among the lads; and as for the lasses, even your eyes, indulgent as they usually are, will scarcely venture to insist that I shall behold one nymph among them worthy to tie the shoe-latchets of Diana. The manners of the hunter are those of an elastic savage; but these lads shear sheep, raise hogs for the slaughter-pen, and seldom perform a nobler feat than felling a bullock. They have none of the elasticity which, coupled with strength, makes the grace of the man; and they walk as if perpetually in the faith that their corn-rows and potatoe-hills were between their legs.” “Did you note the young woman in the crimson body Warham? Was she not majestically made?” “It struck me she would weigh against any two of the company.” “She is rather heavy, I grant you, but her carriage, Warham!” “Would carry weight--nothing more.” “There was one little girl, just rising into womanhood:--you must admit that she had a very lovely face, and her form--” “My dear uncle, what is it that you will not desire me to believe? You are sadly given to proselytism, and take infinite pains to compel me to see with eyes that never do their owner so much wrong, as when they reject the aid of spectacles. How much would Charlemont and its inhabitants differ to your sight, were you only to take your green spectacles from the shagreen case in which they do no duty. But if you are resolved, in order to seem youthful, to let your age go unprovided with the means of seeing as youth would see, at least suffer me to enjoy the natural privileges of twenty-five. When, like you, my hairs whiten, and my eyes grow feeble, ten to one, I shall think with you that every third woodman is an Apollo, and every other peasant-girl is a Venus, whom--” The words of the speaker ceased--cut short by the sudden appearance of a form and face, the beauty and dignity of which silenced the skeptic, and made him doubtful, for the moment, whether he had not in reality reached that period of confused and confounding vision, which, as he alleged to be the case with his uncle, loses all power of discrimination. A maiden stood before him--tall, erect, majestic--beautiful after no ordinary standard of beauty. She was a brunette, with large dark eyes, which, though bright, seemed dark with excess of bright--and had a depth of expression which thrilled instantly through the bosom of the spectator. A single glance did she bestow upon the travellers, while she acknowledged, by a slight courtesy, the respectful bow which they made her. They drew up their horses as with mutual instinct, but she passed them quickly, courtesying a second time as she did so, and, in another moment a turn of the road concealed her from the eyes of the travellers. “What say you to that, Warham?” demanded the senior exultingly. “A Diana, in truth; but, uncle, we find her not among the rest. SHE is none of your cottagers. SHE is of another world and element. She is no Charlemonter.” And, as he spoke, the younger traveller looked back with straining eyes to catch another glance of the vanished object, but in vain. “You deserve never to see a lovely woman again, Warham, for your skepticism.” “But I will have a second look at her, uncle, though the skies fall,” answered the young man, as, wheeling his horse round, he deliberately galloped back to the bend in the avenue, by which she had been hidden from his view. He had scarcely reached the desired point, when he suddenly recoiled to find the object of his pursuit standing motionless just beyond, with eyes averted to the backward path--her glance consequently encountering his own, the very moment when he discovered her. A deep crimson, visible even where he stood, suffused her cheeks when she beheld him; and without acknowledging the second bow which the traveller made, she somewhat haughtily averted her head with a suddenness which shook her long and raven tresses entirely free of the net-work which confined them. “A proud gipsy!” muttered the youth as he rode back to his uncle--“just such a spirit as I should like to tame.” He took especial care, however, that this sentiment did not reach the ears of his senior. “Well?” said the latter, inquiringly, at his approach. “I am right after all, uncle:--the wench is no better than the rest. A heavy bulk that seemed dignified only because she is too fat for levity. She walks like a blind plough-horse in a broken pasture, up and down, over and over; with a gait as rigid and deliberate as if she trod among the hot cinders, and had corns on all her toes. She took us so by surprise that if we had not thought her beautiful we must have thought her ugly, and the chances are equal, that, on a second meeting, we shall both think her so. I shall, I'm certain, and you must, provided you give your eyes the benefit, and your nose the burden of your green specs.” “Impossible! I can scarce believe it, Warham,” replied the senior. “I thought her very beautiful.” “I shall never rely on your judgment again;--nay, uncle, I am almost inclined to suspect your taste.” “Well, let them be beautiful or ugly, still I should think the same of the beauty of this village.” “While the sun shines it may be tolerable; but, uncle, in wet bad weather--it must become a mere pond, it lies so completely in the hollow of the hills.” “There is reason in that, Warham.” “And yet, even as a pond, it would have its advantages--it would be famous for duck-raising.” “Pshaw! you are worse than a Mahometan.” “Something of a just comparison, uncle, though scarcely aimed,” said the other; “like Mahomet, you know, I doubt the possession of souls by women.” “Yet if these of Charlemont have not souls, they have no small share of happiness on earth. I never heard more happy laughter from human lips than from theirs. They must be happy.” “I doubt that also,” was the reply. “See you not, uncle, that to nine or ten women there are but three lads? Where the disproportion is so great among the sexes, and where it is so unfavorable to the weaker, women never can be happy. Their whole lives will be lives of turmoil, jealousy, and pulling of caps. Nay, eyes shall not be secure under such circumstances; and Nan's fingers shall be in Doll's hair, and Doll's claws in Nanny's cheeks, whenever it shall so happen, that Tom Jenkins shall incline to Nan, or John Dobbins to Doll. Such a disparity between the sexes is one of the most fruitful causes of domestic war.” “Warham, where do you think to go when you die?” “Where there shall be no great inequality in the population. Believe me, uncle, though I am sometimes disposed to think with Mahomet, and deny the possession of souls to the sex, I also incline to believe, with other more charitable teachers--however difficult it may be to reconcile the two philosophies--that there will be no lack of them in either world.” “Hush, hush, Warham,” was the mild rebuke of the senior; “you go too far--you are irreverent. As for this maiden, I still think her very beautiful--of a high and noble kind of beauty. My eyes may be bad;--indeed I am willing to admit they are none of the best; but I feel certain that they cannot so far deceive me, when we consider how nigh we were to her.” “The matter deserves inquiry, uncle, if it were only to satisfy your faith;--suppose we ride back, both of us, and see for ourselves--closely, and with the aid of the green spectacles? Not that I care to see farther--not that I have any doubts--but I wish you to be convinced in this case, if only to make you sensible of the frequent injustice to which your indulgence of judgment, subjects the critical fastidiousness of mine. What say you; shall we wheel about?” “Why, you are mad, surely. It is now sunset, and we have a good eight miles before we get to Holme's Station.” “But we can sleep in Charlemont to-night. A night in this earthly Eden--” “And run the risk of losing our company? Oh, no, most worthy nephew. They will start at dawn to-morrow.” “We can soon come up with 'em.” “Perhaps not, and the risk is considerable. Travelling to the Mississippi is no such small matter at any time, and, in these times it is only with a multitude, that there is safety. The murder of old Whiteford, is a sufficient warning not to go alone with more gold than lead in one's pocket. We are two, it is true, but better ten than two. You are a brave fellow enough, Warham, I doubt not; but a shot will dispose of you, and after that I should be an easy victim. I could wink and hold out my iron as well as the best of you, but I prefer to escape the necessity. Let us mend our pace. We are burning daylight.” The nephew, with an air of some impatience, which, however, escaped the eyes of the senior, sent his horse forward by a sharp application of his spur, though looking back the while, with a glance of reluctance, which strongly disagreed with the sentiments which he expressed. Indeed, with both the travellers, the impression made by the little village of Charlemont was such that the subject seemed nowise displeasing to either, and furnished the chief staple of conversation between them, as they rode the remaining eight miles of their journey. The old man's heart had been subdued and won by the sweet air of peace which seemed to overspread and hallow the soft landscape, and the smiling cottages which made it human. The laughing maidens with their bright eyes and cheering accents, gave vivacity to its milder charms. We have heard from the lips of the younger traveller, that these attractions had failed to captivate his fancy. We may believe of this as we please. It is very probable that he had, in considerable part, spoken nothing but the truth. He was too much of a mocker;--one of those worldlings who derive their pleasures from circumstances of higher conventional attraction. He had no feeling for natural romance. His PENCHANT, was decidedly for the artificial existence of city life; and the sneers which he had been heard to express at the humble joys of rustic life, its tastes, and characteristics, were, in truth, only such as he really felt. But, even in his case, there was an evident disposition to know something more of Charlemont. He was really willing to return. He renewed the same subject of conversation, when it happened to flag, with obvious eagerness; and, though his language was still studiedly disparaging, a more deeply penetrating judgment than that of his uncle, would have seen that the little village, slightly as he professed to esteem it, was yet an object of thought and interest in his eyes. Of the sources of this new interest time must inform us. “Well, well, Warham,” at length exclaimed the uncle, in a tone that seemed meant to close the discussion of a topic which his nephew now appeared mischievously bent to thrust upon him, “you will return to Kentucky in the fall. Take Charlemont in your route. Stop a week there. It will do you no harm. Possibly you may procure some clients--may, indeed, include it in your tour of practice--at all events, you will not be unprofitably employed if you come to see the village and the people with MY eyes, which, I doubt not, you will in time.” “In time, perhaps, I may. It is well that you do not insist upon any hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine,” continued the other irreverently, “I should no doubt see with your eyes, and possibly feel with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire a taste for warmingpans and nightcaps--shall look for landscapes rather than lands--shall see nothing but innocence among the young, and resignation and religion among the old; and fancy, in every aged pair of bumpkins that I see, a Darby and Joan, with perpetual peace at their fireside, though they may both happen to lie there drunk on apple-brandy. Between caudle-cups and 'John Anderson, my Jo-John,' it is my hope to pass the evening of my days with a tolerable grace, and leave behind me some comely representatives, who shall take up the burden of the ditty where I leave off. On this head be sure you shall have no cause to complain of me. I shall be no Malthusian, as you certainly have shown yourself. It is the strangest thing to me, uncle, that, with all your SPOKEN rapture for the sex, you should never have thought of securing for yourself at least one among the crowd which you so indiscriminately admire. Surely, a gentleman of your personal attractions--attractions which seem resolute to cling to you to the last--could not have found much difficulty in procuring the damsel he desired! And when, too, your enthusiasm for the sex is known, one would think it only necessary that you should fling your handkerchief, to have it greedily grappled by the fairest of the herd. How is it, uncle--how have you escaped from them--from yourself?” “Pshaw, Warham, you are a fool!” exclaimed the senior, riding forward with increasing speed. The words were spoken good naturedly, but the youth had touched a spot, scarcely yet thoroughly scarred over, in the old man's bosom; and memories, not less painful because they had been bidden so long, were instantly wakened into fresh and cruel activity. It will not diminish the offence of the nephew in the mind of the reader, when he is told that the youth was not ignorant of the particular tenderness of his relative in this respect. The gentle nature of the latter, alone, rescued him from the well-merited reproach of suffering his habitual levity of mood to prevail in reference to one whom even he himself was disposed to honor. But few words passed between the two, ere they reached the place of appointment. The careless reference of the youth had made the thoughts of the senior active at the expense of his observation. His eyes were now turned inward; and the landscape, and the evening sun, which streamed over and hallowed it with a tender beauty to the last, was as completely hidden from his vision, as if a veil had been drawn above his sight. The retrospect, indeed, is ever the old man's landscape; and perhaps, even had he not been so unkindly driven back to its survey, our aged traveller would have been reminded of the past in the momently-deepening shadows which the evening gathered around his path. Twilight is the cherished season for sad memories, even as the midnight is supposed to be that of guilty ghosts; and nothing, surely, can be more fitting than that the shadows of former hopes should revisit us in those hours when the face of nature itself seems darkening into gloom. It was night before the wayfarers reached the appointed baiting place. There they found their company--a sort of little caravan, such as is frequent in the history of western emigration--already assembled, and the supper awaiting them. Let us leave them to its enjoyment, and return once more to the village of Charlemont.	{ "id": "6012" }
3	THE STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.	The young maiden last met by our travellers, and whose appearance had so favorably impressed them, had not been altogether uninfluenced by the encounter. Her spirit was of a musing and perhaps somewhat moody character, and the little adventure related in our last chapter, had awakened in her mind a train of vague and purposeless thought, from which she did not strive to disengage herself. She ceased to pursue the direct path back to Charlemont, the moment she had persuaded herself that the strangers had continued on their way; and turning from the beaten track, she strolled aside, following the route of a brooklet, the windings of which, as it led her forward, were completely hidden from the intrusive glance of any casual wayfarer. The prattle of the little stream as it wound upon its sleepless journey, contributed still more to strengthen the musings of those vagrant fancies that filled the maiden's thoughts. She sat down upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, and surrendered herself for a while to their control. Her thoughts were probably of a kind which, to a certain extent, are commended to every maiden. Among them, perpetually rose an image of the bold and handsome stranger, whose impudence, in turning back in pursuit of her, was somewhat qualified by the complimentary curiosity which such conduct manifested. Predominant even over this image, however, was the conviction of isolation which she felt where she was, and the still more painful conviction, that the future was without promise. Such thoughts and apprehensions may be natural enough to all young persons of active, earnest nature, not permitted to perform; but in the bosom of Margaret Cooper they were particularly so. Her mind was of a masculine and commanding character, and was ill-satisfied with her position and prospect in Charlemont. A quiet, obscure village, such as that we have described, held forth no promise for a spirit so proud, impatient, and ambitious as hers. She knew the whole extent of knowledge which it contained, and all its acquisitions and resources--she had sounded its depths, and traced all its shallows. The young women kept no pace with her own progress--they were good, silly girls enough--a chattering, playful set, whom small sports could easily satisfy, and who seemed to have no care, and scarce a hope, beyond the hilly limits of their homestead; and as for the young men--they were only suited to the girls, such as they were, and could never meet the demand of such an intellect as hers. This lofty self-estimate, which was in some sense just, necessarily gave a tone to her language and a coloring to all her thoughts, such as good sense and amiability should equally strive to suppress and conceal--unless, as in the case of Margaret Cooper, the individual herself was without due consciousness of their presence. It had the effect of discouraging and driving from her side many a good-natured damsel, who would have loved to condole with her, and might have been a pleasant companion. The young women regarded her with some dislike in consequence of her self-imposed isolation--and the young men with some apprehension. Her very knowledge of books, which infinitely surpassed that of all her sex within the limits of Charlemont, was also an object of some alarm. It had been her fortune, whether well or ill may be a question, to inherit from her father a collection, not well chosen, upon which her mind had preyed with an appetite as insatiate as it was undiscriminating. They had taught her many things, but among these neither wisdom nor patience was included;--and one of the worst lessons which she had learned, and which they had contributed in some respects to teach, was discontent with her condition--a discontent which saddened, if it did not embitter, her present life, while it left the aspects of the future painfully doubtful, even to her own eye. She was fatherless, and had been already taught some of those rude lessons which painfully teach dependence; but such lessons, which to most others would have brought submission, only provoked her to resistance. Her natural impetuosity of disposition, strengthened by her mother's idolatrous indulgence, increased the haughtiness of her character; and when, to these influences, we add that her surviving parent was poor, and suffered from privations which were unfelt by many of their neighbors, it may be easily conceived that a temper and mind such as we have described those of Margaret Cooper--ardent, commanding, and impatient, hourly found occasion, even in the secluded village where she dwelt, for the exercise of moods equally adverse to propriety and happiness. Isolated from the world by circumstances, she doubly exiled herself from its social indulgences, by the tyrannical sway of a superior will, strengthened and stimulated by an excitable and ever feverish blood; and, as we find her now, wandering sad and sternly by the brookside, afar from the sports and humbler sources of happiness, which gentler moods left open to the rest, so might she customarily be found, at all hours, when it was not absolutely due to appearances that she should be seen among the crowds. We will not now seek to pursue her musings and trace them out to their conclusions, nor will it be necessary that we should do more than indicate their character. That they were sad and solemn as usual--perhaps humbling--may be gathered from the fact that a big tear might have been seen, long gathering in her eye;--the next moment she brushed off the intruder with an impatience of gesture, that plainly showed how much her proud spirit resented any such intrusion. The tear dispersed the images which had filled her contemplative mood, and rising from her sylvan seat, she prepared to move forward, when a voice calling at some little distance, drew her attention. Giving a hasty glance in the direction of the sound, she beheld a young man making his way through the woods, and approaching her with rapid footsteps. His evident desire to reach her, did not, however, prompt her to any pause in her own progress; but, as if satisfied with the single glance which she gave him, and indifferent utterly to his object, she continued on her way, nor stopped for an instant, nor again looked back, until his salutation, immediately behind her, compelled her attention and answer. “Margaret--Miss Cooper!” said the speaker, who was a young rustic, probably twenty or twenty-one years of age, of tall, good person, a handsome face, which was smooth, though of dark complexion, and lightened by an eye of more than ordinary size and intelligence. His tones were those of one whose sensibilities were fine and active, and it would not have called for much keen observation to have seen that his manner, in approaching and addressing the maiden, was marked with some little trepidation. She, on the contrary, seemed too familiar with his homage, or too well satisfied of his inferiority, to deign much attention to his advances. She answered his salutation coldly, and was preparing to move forward, when his words again called for her reluctant notice. “I have looked for you, Margaret, full an hour. Mother sent me after you to beg that you will come there this evening. Old Jenks has come up from the river, and brought a store of fine things--there's a fiddle for Ned, and Jason Lightner has a flute, and I--I have a small lot of books, Margaret, that I think will please you.” “I thank you, William Hinkley, and thank your mother, but I can not come this evening.” “But why not, Margaret? --your mother's coming--she promised for you too, but I thought you might not get home soon enough to see her, and so I came out to seek you.” “I am very sorry you took so much trouble, William, for I cannot come this evening.” “But why not, Margaret? You have no other promise to go elsewhere have you?” “None,” was the indifferent reply. “Then--but, perhaps, you are not well, Margaret?” “I am quite well, I thank you, William Hinkley, but I don't feel like going out this evening. I am not in the humor.” Already, in the little village of Charlemont, Margaret Cooper was one of the few who were permitted to indulge in humors, and William Hinkley learned the reason assigned for her refusal, with an expression of regret and disappointment, if not of reproach. An estoppel, which would have been so conclusive in the case of a city courtier, was not sufficient, however, to satisfy the more frank and direct rustic, and he proceeded with some new suggestions, in the hope to change her determination. “But you'll be so lonesome at home, Margaret, when your mother's with us. She'll be gone before you can get back, and--” “I'm never lonesome, William, at least I'm never so well content or so happy as when I'm alone,” was the self-satisfactory reply. “But that's so strange, Margaret. It's so strange that you should be different from everybody else. I often wonder at it, Margaret; for I know none of the other girls but love to be where there's a fiddle, and where there's pleasant company. It's so pleasant to be where everybody's pleased; and then, Margaret, where one can talk so well as you, and of so many subjects, it's a greater wonder still that you should not like to be among the rest.” “I do not, however, William,” was the answer in more softened tones. There was something in this speech of her lover, that found its way through the only accessible avenues of her nature. It was a truth, which she often repeated to herself with congratulatory pride, that she had few feelings or desires in common with the crowd. “It is my misfortune,” she continued, “to care very little for the pastimes you speak of; and as for the company, I've no doubt it will be very pleasant for those who go, but to me it will afford very little pleasure. Your mother must therefore excuse me, William:--I should be a very dull person among the rest.” “She will be so very sorry, Margaret--and Ned, whose new fiddle has just come, and Jason Lightner, with his flute. They all spoke of you and look for you above all, to hear them this evening. They will be so disappointed.” William Hinkley spoke nothing of his own disappointment, but it was visible enough in his blank countenance, and sufficiently audible in the undisguised faltering of his accents. “I do not think they will be so much disappointed, William Hinkley. They have no reason to be, as they have no right to look for me in particular. I have very little acquaintance with the young men you speak of.” “Why, Margaret, they live alongside of you--and I'm sure you've met them a thousand times in company,” was the response of the youth, uttered in tones more earnest than any he had yet employed in the dialogue, and with something of surprise in his accents. “Perhaps so; but that makes them no intimates of mine, William Hinkley. They may be very good young men, and, indeed, so far as I know, they really are; but that makes no difference. We find our acquaintances and our intimates among those who are congenial, who somewhat resemble us in spirit, feeling, and understanding.” “Ah, Margaret!” said her rustic companion with a sigh, which amply testified to the humility of his own self-estimate, and of the decline of his hope which came with it--“ah, Margaret, if that be the rule, where are you going to find friends and intimates in Charlemont?” “Where!” was the single word spoken by the haughty maiden, as her eye wandered off to the cold tops of the distant hills along which the latest rays of falling sunlight, faint and failing, as they fell, imparted a hue, which though bright, still as it failed to warm, left an expression of October sadness to the scene, that fitly harmonized with the chilling mood under which she had spoken throughout the interview. “I don't think, Margaret,” continued the lover, finding courage as he continued, “that such a rule is a good one. I know it can't be a good one for happiness. There's many a person that never will meet his or her match in this world, in learning and understanding--and if they won't look on other persons with kindness, because they are not altogether equal to them, why there's a chance that they'll always be solitary and sad. It's a real blessing, I believe, to have great sense, but I don't see, that because one has great sense, that one should not think well and kindly of those who have little, provided they be good, and are willing to be friendly. Now, a good heart seems to be the very best thing that nature can give us; and I know, Margaret, that there's no two better hearts in all Charlemont--perhaps in all the world, though I won't say that--than cousin Ned Hinkley, and Jason Lightner, and--” “I don't deny their merits and their virtues, and their goodness of heart, William Hinkley,” was the answer of the maiden--“I only say that the possession of these qualities gives them no right to claim my sympathies or affection. These claims are only founded upon congeniality of character and mind, and without this congeniality, there can be no proper, no lasting intimacy between persons. They no doubt, will find friends between whom and themselves, this congeniality exists. I, on the other hand, must be permitted to find mine, after my own ideas, and as I best can. But if I do not--the want of them gives me no great concern. I find company enough, and friends enough, even in these woods, to satisfy the desires of my heart at present; I am not anxious to extend my acquaintance or increase the number of my intimates.” William Hinkley, who had become somewhat warmed by the argument, could have pursued the discussion somewhat further; but the tones and manner of his companion, to say nothing of her words, counselled him to forbear. Still, he was not disposed altogether to give up his attempts to secure her presence for the evening party. “But if you don't come for the company, Margaret, recollect the music. Even if Ned Hinkley was a perfect fool, which he is not, and Jason Lightner were no better,--nobody can say that they are not good musicians. Old Squire Bee says there's not in all Kentucky a better violinist than Ned, and Jason's flute is the sweetest sound that ear ever listened to along these hills. If you don't care anything for the players, Margaret, I'm sure you can't be indifferent to their music; and I know they are anything but indifferent to what you may think about it. They will play ten times as well if you are there; and I'm sure, Margaret, I shall be the last”--here the tone of the speaker's voice audibly faltered--“I shall be the very last to think it sweet if you are not there.” But the words and faltering accents of the lover equally failed in subduing the inflexible, perverse mood of the haughty maiden. Her cold denial was repeated; and with looks that did not fail to speak the disappointment of William Hinkley, he attended her back to the village. Their progress was marked by coldness on the one hand, and decided sadness on the other. The conversation was carried on in monosyllables only, on the part of Margaret, while timidity and a painful hesitancy marked the language of her attendant. But a single passage may be remembered of all that was said between the two, ere they separated at the door of the widow Cooper. “Did you see the two strangers, Margaret, that passed through Charlemont this afternoon?” The cheeks of the maiden became instantly flushed, and the rapid utterance of her reply in the affirmative, denoted an emotion which the jealous instincts of the lover readily perceived. A cold chill, on the instant, pervaded the veins of the youth; and that night he did not hear, any more than Margaret Cooper, the music of his friends. He was present all the time and he answered their inquiries as usual; but his thoughts were very far distant, and somehow or other, they perpetually mingled up the image of the young traveller, whom he too had seen, with that of the proud woman, whom he was not yet sure that he unprofitably worshipped.	{ "id": "6012" }
4	SIMPLICITY AND THE SERPENT.	The mirth and music of Charlemont were enjoyed by others, but not by Margaret Cooper. The resolution not to share in the pleasures of the young around her, which she showed to her rustic lover, was a resolution firmly persevered in throughout the long summer which followed. Her wayward mood shut out from her contemplation the only sunshine of the place; and her heart, brooding over the remote, if not the impossible, denied itself those joys which were equally available and nigh. Her lonesome walks became longer in the forests, and later each evening grew the hour of her return to the village. Her solitude daily increased, as the youth, who really loved her with all the ardency of a first passion, and who regarded her at the same time with no little veneration for those superior gifts of mind and education which, it was the general conviction in Charlemont, that she possessed, became, at length, discouraged in a pursuit which hitherto had found nothing but coldness and repulse. Not that he ceased to love--nay, he did not cease entirely to hope. What lover ever did? He fondly ascribed to the object of his affections a waywardness of humor, which he fancied would pass away after a season, and leave her mind to the influence of a more sober and wholesome judgment. Perhaps, too, like many other youth in like circumstances, he did not always see or feel the caprice of which he was the victim. But for this fortunate blindness, many a fair damsel would lose her conquest quite as suddenly as it was made. But the summer passed away, and the forest put on the sere and sombre robes of autumn, and yet no visible change--none at least more favorable to the wishes of William Hinkley--took place in the character and conduct of the maiden. Her mind, on the contrary, seemed to take something of its hue from the cold sad tones of the forest. The serious depth of expression in her dark eyes seemed to deepen yet more, and become yet more concentrated--their glance acquired a yet keener intentness--an inflexibility of direction--which suffered them seldom to turn aside from those moody contemplations, which had made her, for a long time, infinitely prefer to gaze upon the rocks, and woods, and waters, than upon the warm and wooing features of humanity. At distance the youth watched and sometimes followed her, and when, with occasional boldness, he would draw nigh to her secret wanderings, a cold fear filled his heart, and he shrunk back with all the doubt and dread of some guilty trespasser. But his doubt, and we may add, his dread also, was soon to cease entirely, in the complete conviction of his hopelessness. The day and the fate were approaching, in the person of one, to whom a natural instinct had already taught him to look with apprehension, and whose very first appearance had inspired him with antipathy. What a strange prescience, in some respects, has the devoted and watchful heart that loves! William Hinkley, had seen but for a single instant, the face of that young traveller, who has already been introduced to us, and that instant was enough to awaken his dislike--nay, more, his hostility. Yet no villager in Charlemont but would have told you, that, of all the village, William Hinkley was the most gentle, the most generous--the very last to be moved by bad passions, by jealousy or hate. The youth whom we have seen going down with his uncle to the great valley of the Mississippi, was now upon his return. He was now unaccompanied by the benignant senior with whom we first made his acquaintance. He had simply attended the old bachelor, from whom he had considerable expectations, to his plantation, in requital of the spring visit which the latter had paid to his relatives in Kentucky; and having spent the summer in the southwest, was about to resume his residence, and the profession of the law, in that state. We have seen that, however he might have succeeded in disguising his true feelings from his uncle, he was not unmoved by the encounter with Margaret Cooper, on the edge of the village. He now remembered the casual suggestion of the senior, which concluded their discussion on the subject of her beauty; and he resolved to go aside from his direct path, and take Charlemont in the route of his return. Not that he himself needed a second glance to convince him of that loveliness which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied. He was free to acknowledge to himself that Margaret Cooper was one of the noblest and most impressive beauties he had ever seen. The very scorn that spoke in all her features, the imperious fires that kindled in her eyes, were better calculated than any more gentle expressions, to impose upon one who was apt to be skeptical on the subject of ordinary beauties. The confidence and consciousness of superiority, which too plainly spoke out in the features of Margaret, seemed to deny to his mind the privilege of doubting or discussing her charms--a privilege upon which no one could have been more apt to insist than himself. This seeming denial, while it suggested to him ideas of novelty, provoked his curiosity and kindled his pride. The haughty glance with which she encountered his second approach, aroused his vanity, and a latent desire arose in his heart, to overcome one who had shown herself so premature in her defiance. We will not venture to assert that the young traveller had formed any very deliberate designs of conquest, but, it may be said, as well here as elsewhere, that his self-esteem was great; and accustomed to easy conquests among the sex, in the region where he dwelt, it was only necessary to inflame his vanity, to stimulate him to the exercise of all his arts. It was about noon, on one of those bright, balmy days, early in October, when “the bridal of the earth and sky,” in the language of the good old Herbert, is going on--when, the summer heats subdued, there is yet nothing either cold, or repulsive in the atmosphere; and the soft breathing from the southwest has just power enough to stir the flowers and disperse their scents; that our young traveller was joined in his progress towards Charlemont, by a person mounted like himself and pursuing a similar direction. At the first glance the youth distinguished him as one of the homely forest preachers of the methodist persuasion, who are the chief agents and pioneers of religion in most of the western woods. His plain, unstudied garments all of black, rigid and unfashionable; his pale, demure features, and the general humility of his air and gesture, left our young skeptic little reason to doubt of this; and when the other expressed his satisfaction at meeting with a companion at last, after a long and weary ride without one, the tone of his expressions, the use of biblical phraseology, and the monotonous solemnity of his tones, reduced the doubts of the youth to absolute certainty. At first, with the habitual levity of the young and skeptical, he congratulated himself upon an encounter which promised to afford him a good subject for quizzing; but a moment's reflection counselled him to a more worldly policy, and he restrained his natural impulse in order that he might first sound the depths of the preacher, and learn in what respect he might be made subservient to his own purposes. He had already learned from the latter that he was on his way to Charlemont, of which place he seemed to have some knowledge; and the youth, in an instant, conceived the possibility of making him useful in procuring for himself a favorable introduction to the place. With this thought, he assumed the grave aspect and deliberate enunciation of his companion, expressed himself equally gratified to meet with a person who, if he did not much mistake, was a divine, and concluded his address by the utterance of one of those pious commonplaces which are of sufficiently easy acquisition, and which at once secured him the unscrupulous confidence of his companion. “Truly, it gladdens me, sir,” said the holy man in reply, “to meet with one, as a fellow-traveller in these lonesome ways, who hath a knowledge of God's grace and the blessings which he daily sheddeth, even as the falling of the dews, upon a benighted land. It is my lot, and I repine not that such it is, to be for ever a wayfarer, in the desert where there are but few fountains to refresh the spirit. When I say desert, young gentleman, I speak not in the literal language of the world, for truly it were a most sinful denial of God's bounty were I to say, looking round upon the mighty forests through which I pass, and upon the rich soil over which I travel, that my way lies not through a country covered, thrice covered, with the best worldly bounties of the Lord. But it is a moral desert which my speech would signify. The soul of man is here lacking the blessed fountains of the truth--the mind of man here lacketh the holy and joy-shedding lights of the spirit; and it rejoiceth me, therefore, when I meet with one, like thyself, in whose language I find a proof that thou hast neither heard the word with idle ears, nor treasured it in thy memory with unapplying mind. May I ask of thee, my young friend, who thou art, and by what name I shall call thee? --not for the satisfaction of an idle curiosity, to know either thy profession or thy private concerns, but that I may the better speak to thee in our conference hereafter, Thou hast rightly conjectured as to my calling--and my own name, which is one unknown to most even in these forests, is John Cross--I come of a family in North Carolina, which still abide in that state, by the waters of the river Haw. Perhaps, if thou hast ever travelled in those parts, thou hast happened upon some of my kindred, which are very numerous.” “I have never, reverend sir, travelled in those parts,” said the youth, with commendable gravity, “but I have heard of the Cross family, which I believe, as you say, to be very numerous--both male and female.” “Yea, I have brothers and sisters an equal number; I have aunts and uncles a store, and it has been the blessing of God so to multiply and increase every member thereof, that each of my brothers, in turn, hath a goodly flock, in testimony of his favors. I, alone, of all my kindred, have neither wife nor child, and I seem as one set apart for other ties, and other purposes.” “Ah, sir,” returned the other, quickly, and with a slyness of expression which escaped the direct and unsuspecting mind of the preacher, “but if you are denied the blessings which are theirs, you have your part in the great family of the world. If you have neither wife nor child of your own loins, yet, I trust, you have an abiding interest in the wives and children of all other men.” “I were but an unworthy teacher of the blessed word, had I not,” was the simple answer. “Verily, all that I teach are my children; there is not one crying to me for help, to whom I do not hasten with the speed of a father flying to bring succor to his young. I trust in God, that I have not made a difference between them; that I heed not one to the forfeit or suffering of the other; and for this impartial spirit toward the flock intrusted to my charge, do I pray, as well as for the needful strength of body and soul, through which my duties are to be done. But thou hast not yet spoken thy name, or my ears have failed to receive it.” There was some little hesitation on the part of the youth before he answered this second application; and a less unheeding observer than his fellow-traveller, might have noticed an increasing warmth of hue upon his cheek, while he was uttering his reply:-- “I am called Alfred Stevens,” he replied at length, the color increasing upon his cheek even after the words were spoken. But they were spoken. The falsehood was registered against him beyond recall, though, of course, without startling the doubts or suspicions of his companion. “Alfred Stevens; there are many Stevenses: I have known several and sundry. There is a worthy family of that name by the waters of the Dan.” “You will find them, I suspect, from Dan to Beersheba,” responded the youth with a resumption of his former levity. “Truly, it may be so. The name is of good repute. But what is thy calling, Alfred Stevens? Methinks at thy age thou shouldst have one.” “So I have, reverend sir,” replied the other; “my calling heretofore has been that of the law. But it likes me not, and I think soon to give it up.” “Thou wilt take to some other then. What other hast thou chosen; or art thou like those unhappy youths, by far too many in our blessed country, whom fortune hath hurt by her gifts, and beguiled into idleness and sloth?” “Nay, not so, reverend sir; the gifts of fortune have been somewhat sparing in my case, and I am even now conferring with my own thoughts whether or not to take to school-keeping. Nay, perhaps, I should incline to something better, if I could succeed in persuading myself of my own worthiness in a vocation which, more than all others, demands a pure mind with a becoming zeal. The law consorts not with my desires--it teaches selfishness, rather than self-denial; and I have already found that some of its duties demand the blindness and the silence of that best teacher from within, the watchful and unsleeping conscience.” “Thou hast said rightly, Alfred Stevens; I have long thought that the profession of the law hardeneth the heart, and blindeth the conscience. Thou wilt do well to leave it, as a craft that leads to sin, and makes the exercise of sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;--the field is open, and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the hands of men, never fails to be paid, at the very hour of its due, from the unfailing treasury of Heaven. Verily, I rejoice, Alfred Stevens, that I have met with thee to-day. I had feared that the day had been lost to that goodly labor, to which all my days have been given for seventeen years, come the first sabbath in the next November. But what thou hast said, awakens hope in my soul that such will not be the case. Let not my counsels fail thee, Alfred;--let thy zeal warm; let thy spirit work within thee, and thy words kindle, in the service of the Lord. How it will rejoice me to see thee taking up the scrip and the staff and setting forth for the wildernesses of the Mississippi, of Arkansas, and Texas, far beyond;--bringing the wild man of the frontier, and the red savage, into the blessed fold and constant company of the Lord Jesus, to whom all praise!” “It were indeed a glorious service,” responded the young stranger--whom we shall proceed, hereafter, to designate by the name by which he has called himself. He spoke musingly, and with a gravity that was singularly inflexible--“it were indeed a glorious service. Let me see, there were thousands of miles to traverse before one might reach the lower Arkansas; and I reckon, Mr. Cross, the roads are mighty bad after you pass the Mississippi--nay, even in the Mississippi, through a part of which territory I have gone only this last summer, there is a sad want of causeways, and the bridges are exceedingly out of repair. There is one section of near a hundred miles, which lies between the bluffs of Ashibiloxi, and the far creek of Catahoula, that was a shame and reproach to the country and the people thereof. What, then, must be the condition of the Texas territory, beyond? and, if I err not, the Cumanchees are a race rather given to destroy than to build up. The chance is that the traveller in their country might have to swim his horse over most of the watercourses, and where he found a bridge, it were perhaps a perilous risk to cross it. Even then he might ride fifty miles a day, before he should see the smokes which would be a sign of supper that night.” “The greater the glory--the greater the glory, Alfred Stevens. The toil and the peril, the pain and the privation, in a good cause, increase the merit of the performance in the eyes of the Lord. What matters the roads and the bridges, the length of the way, or the sometimes lack of those comforts of the flesh, which are craved only at the expense of the spirit, and to the great delay of our day of conquest. These wants are the infirmities of the human, which dissipate and disappear, the more few they become, and the less pressing in their complaint. Shake thyself loose from them, Alfred Stevens, and thy way henceforth is perfect freedom.” “Alas! this is my very weakness, Mr. Cross:--it was because of these very infirmities, that I had doubt of my own worthiness to take up the better vocation which is yet my desire. I am sadly given to hunger and thirst toward noon and evening; and the travel of a long day makes me so weary at night, that I should say but a hurried grace before meal, and make an even more hurried supper after it. Nay, I have not yet been able to divest myself of a habit which I acquired in my boyhood; and I need at times, throughout the day, a mouthful of something stronger than mere animal food, to sustain the fainting and feeble flesh and keep my frame from utter exhaustion. I dare not go upon the road, even for the brief journey of a single day, without providing myself beforehand with a supply of a certain beverage, such as is even now contained within this vessel, and which is infallible against sinking of the the spirits, faintings of the frame, disordered nerves, and even against flatulence and indigestion. If, at any time, thou shouldst suffer from one or the other of these infirmities, Mr. Cross, be sure there is no better medicine for their cure than this.” The speaker drew from his bosom a little flask, such as is sufficiently well known to most western travellers, which he held on high, and which, to the unsuspecting eyes of the preacher, contained a couple of gills or more of a liquid of very innocent complexion. “Verily, Alfred Stevens, I do myself suffer from some of the weaknesses of which thou hast spoken. The sinking of the spirits, and the faintness of the frame, are but too often the enemies that keep me back from the plough when I would thereto set my hand; and that same flatulence--” “A most frequent disorder in a region where greens and collards form the largest dishes on the tables of the people,” interrupted Stevens, but without changing a muscle of his countenance. “I do believe as thou say'st, Alfred Stevens, that the disorder comes in great part from that cause, though, still, I have my doubts if it be not a sort of wind-melancholy, to which people, who preach aloud are greatly subject. It is in my case almost always associated with a sort of hoarseness, and the nerves of my frame twitch grievously at the same periods. If this medicine of thine be sovereign against so cruel an affliction, I would crave of thee such knowledge as would enable me to get a large supply of it, that I may overcome a weakness, which, as I tell thee, oftentimes impairs my ministry, and sometimes makes me wholly incapable of fervent preaching. Let me smell of it, I pray thee.” “Nay, taste of it, sir--it is just about the time when I find it beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness, and I doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A single draught has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence and colic.” “From colic too, I am also a great sufferer,” said the preacher as he took the flask in his hand, and proceeded to draw the stopper. “That is also the child of collards,” said Stevens, as he watched with a quiet and unmoved countenance the proceedings of his simple companion, who finding some difficulty in drawing the cork, handed it back to the youth. The latter, more practised, was more successful, and now returned the open bottle to the preacher. “Take from it first, the dose which relieves thee, Alfred Stevens, that I may know how much will avail in my own case;” and he watched curiously, while Stevens, applying the flask to his lips, drew from it a draught, which, in western experience of benefits, would have been accounted a very moderate potion. This done, he handed it back to his companion, who, about to follow his example, asked him:-- “And by what name, Alfred Stevens, do they call this medicine, the goodly effect of which thou holdst to be so great?” Stevens did not immediately reply--not until the preacher had applied the bottle to his mouth, and he could see by the distension of his throat, that he had imbibed a taste, at least, of the highly-lauded medicine. The utterance then, of the single word--“Brandy”--was productive of an effect no less ludicrous in the sight of the youth, than it was distressing to the mind of his worthy companion. The descending liquor was ejected with desperate effort from the throat which it had fairly entered--the flask flung from his hands--and with choking and gurgling accents, startling eyes, and reddening visage, John Cross turned full upon his fellow-traveller, vainly trying to repeat, with the accompanying horror of expression which he felt, the single spellword, which had produced an effect so powerful. “Bran--bran--brandy! --Alfred Stevens! --thou hast given me poison--the soul's poison--the devil's liquor--liquor distilled in the vessels of eternal sin. Wherefore hast thou done this? Dost thou not know”-- “Know--know what, Mr. Cross?” replied Stevens, with all the astonishment which he could possibly throw into his air, as he descended from his horse with all haste to recover his flask, and save its remaining contents from loss. “Call me not mister--call me plain John Cross,” replied the preacher--in the midst of a second fit of choking, the result of his vain effort to disgorge that portion of the pernicious liquid which had irretrievably descended into his bowels. With a surprise admirably affected, Stevens approached him. “My dear sir--what troubles you? --what can be the matter? What have I done? What is it you fear?” “That infernal draught--that liquor--I have swallowed of it a mouthful. I feel it in me. The sin be upon thy head, Alfred Stevens--why did you not tell me, before I drank, that it was the soul's poison? --the poison that slays more than the sword or the pestilence;--the liquor of the devil, distilled in the vessels of sin--and sent among men for the destruction of the soul! I feel it now within me, and it burns--it burns like the fires of damnation. Is there no water nigh that I may quench my thirst? --Show me, Alfred Stevens, show me where the cool waters lie, that I may put out these raging flames.” “There is a branch, if I mistake not, just above us on the road--I think I see it glistening among the leaves. Let us ride toward it, sir, and it will relieve you.” “Ah, Alfred Stevens, why have you served me thus? Why did you not tell me?” Repeated groans accompanied this apostrophe, and marked every step in the progress of the preacher to the little rivulet which trickled across the road. John Cross, descended with the rapidity of one whose hope hangs upon a minute, and dreads its loss, as equal to the loss of life. He straddled the stream and thrust his lips into the water, drawing up a quantity sufficient, in the estimation of Stevens, to have effectually neutralized the entire contents of his flask. “Blessed water! Blessed water! Holiest beverage! Thou art the creation of the Lord, and, next to the waters of eternal life, his best gift to undiscerning man. I drink of thee, and I am faint no longer. I rise up, strong and refreshed! Ah, my young friend, Alfred Stevens, I trust thou didst not mean me harm in giving me that poisonous liquor?” “Far from it, sir, I rather thought to do you a great benefit.” “How couldst thou think to do me benefit by proffering such poison to my lips? nay, wherefore dost thou thyself carry it with thee, and why dost thou drink of it, as if it were something not hurtful as well to the body as the soul? Take my counsel, I pray thee, Alfred Stevens, and cast it behind thee for ever. Look not after it when thou dost so, with an eye of regret lest thou forfeit the merit of thy self-denial. If thou wouldst pursue the higher vocation of the brethren, thou must seek for the needful strength from a better and purer spirit. But what unhappy teacher could have persuaded thee to an indulgence which the good men of all the churches agree to regard as so deadly?” “Nay, Mr. Cross--” “John Cross, I pray thee; do I not call thee Alfred Stevens? --Mr. is a speech of worldly fashion, and becomes not one who should put the world and its fashions behind him.” Stevens found it more difficult to comply with this one requisition of the preacher, than to pursue a long game of artful and complex scheming. He evaded the difficulty by dropping the name entirely. “You are too severe upon brandy, and upon those who use it. Nay, I am not sure, but you do injustice to those who make it. So far from its manufacturers being such as you call them, we have unquestionable proof that they are very worthy people of a distant but a Christian country; and surely you will not deny that we should find a medicine for our hurts, and a remedy for our complaints, in a liquor which, perhaps, it might be sinful to use as an ordinary beverage. Doctors, who have the care of human life, and whose business and desire it is to preserve it, nevertheless do sometimes administer poisons to their patients, which poisons, though deadly at other times, will, in certain diseases and certain conditions of disease, prove of only and great good.” “Impossible! I believe it not! I believe not in the good of brandy. It is hurtful--it is deadly. It has slain its thousands and its tens of thousands--it is worse than the sword and the summer pestilence. Many a man have I known to perish from strong drink. In my own parts, upon the river Haw, in North Carolina state, I have known many. Nay, wherefore should I spare the truth, Alfred Stevens? --the very father of my own life, Ezekiel Cross, perished miserably from this burning water of sin. I will not hear thee speak of it again; and if thou wouldst have me think of thee with favor, as one hopeful of the service of the brethren, cast the accursed beverage of Satan from thy hands.” The youth, without a word, deliberately emptied the contents of his vessel upon the sands, and the garrulous lips of the preacher poured forth as great a flood of speech in congratulation, as he had hitherto bestowed in homily. The good, unsuspecting man, did not perceive that the liquor thus thrown away, was very small in quantity, and that his companion, when the flask was emptied, quietly restored it to his bosom. John Cross had obtained a seeming victory, and did not care to examine its details.	{ "id": "6012" }
5	THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN.	The concession made by Stevens, and which had produced an effect so gratifying upon his companion, was one that involved no sacrifices. The animal appetite of the young lawyer was, in truth, comparatively speaking, indifferent to the commodity which he discarded; and even had it been otherwise, still he was one of those selfish, cool and calculating persons, who seem by nature to be perfectly able to subdue the claims of the blood, with great ease, whenever any human or social policy would appear to render it advisable. The greatest concession which he made in the transaction, was in his so readily subscribing to that false logic of the day, which reasons against the use of the gifts of Providence, because a diseased moral, and a failing education, among men, sometimes result in their abuse. The imperfections of a mode of reasoning so utterly illogical, were as obvious to the mind of the young lawyer as to anybody else; and the compliance which he exhibited to a requisition which his own sense readily assured him was as foolish as it was presumptuous, was as degrading to his moral character from the hypocrisy which it declared, as it was happy in reference to the small policy by which he had been governed. The unsuspecting preacher did not perceive the scornful sneer which curled his lips and flashed his eyes, by which his own vanity still asserted itself through the whole proceeding; or he would not have been so sure that the mantle of grace which he deemed to have surely fallen upon the shoulders of his companion, was sufficiently large and sound, to cover the multitude of sins which it yet enabled the wearer, so far, to conceal. Regarding him with all the favor which one is apt to feel for the person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no great effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not only of all its own secrets and secret hopes--for these were of but small value in the eyes of the worldling--but of all those matters which belonged to the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives of every dweller in that happy community. With all the adroit and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand--Stevens now propounded his direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by which he drew from the preacher as much as he cared to know of the rustic lads and lasses of Charlemont. It does not concern our narrative to render the details thus unfolded to the stranger. And we will content ourselves, as did the younger of the travellers, who placed himself with hearty good will at the disposal of the holy man. “You shall find for me a place of lodging, Mr. Cross, while it shall suit me to stay in Charlemont. You have a knowledge of the people, and of the world, which I possess not; and it will be better that I should give myself up to your guidance. I know that you will not bring me to the dwelling of persons not in good repute; and, perhaps, I need not remind you that my worldly means are small--I must be at little charge wherever I stop.” “Ah, Brother Stevens, worldly goods and worldly wealth are no more needed in Charlemont, than they are necessary to the service of the blessed Redeemer. With an empty scrip is thy service blest;--God sees the pure heart through the threadbare garment. I have friends in Charlemont who will be too happy to receive thee in the name of the Lord, without money and without price.” The pride of Stevens, which had not shrunk from hypocrisy and falsehood, yet recoiled at a suggestion which involved the idea of his pecuniary dependence upon strangers, and he replied accordingly; though he still disguised his objections under the precious appearance of a becoming moral scruple. “It will not become me, Mr. Cross, to burden the brethren of the church for that hospitality which is only due to brethren.” “But thou art in the way of grace--the light is shining upon thee--the door is open, and already the voice of the Bridegroom is calling from within. Thou wilt become a burning and a shining light--and the brethren of the church will rejoice to hail thee among its chosen. Shall they hold back their hand when thou art even on the threshold?” “But, Mr. Cross--” “Call me not Mr., I pray thee. Call me plain John Cross, if it please thee not yet to apply to me that sweeter term of loving kindness which the flock of God are happy to use in speech one to another. If thou wilt call me Brother Cross, my heart shall acknowledge the bonds between us, and my tongue shall make answer to thine, in like fashion. Oh, Alfred Stevens, may the light shine soon upon thine eyes, that thou may'st know for a truth how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in the peace of of the Lord, and according to his law. I will, with God's grace, bring thee to this perfect knowledge, for I see the way clear because of the humility which thou hast already shown, and thy yielding to the counsels of the teacher. As for what thou sayest about charges to the brethren, let that give thee no concern. Thou shalt lodge with old Brother Hinkley, who is the pattern of good things and of, holiness in Charlemont. His house is more like unto the tent of the patriarch pitched upon the plain, than the house of the dweller among the cities. No lock fastens its doors against the stranger; and the heart of the aged man is even more open than the doorway of his dwelling. He standeth in the entrance like one looking out for him that cometh, and his first word to the messenger of God, is 'welcome!' Thou shalt soon see the truth of what I say to thee, for even now do we look down upon his house in the very midst of the village.” If the scruples of Stevens still continued to urge him against accepting the hospitality of the old patriarch of whom he had received a description at once just and agreeable, the recollection of the village-maiden whom he had gone aside from his direct path of travel, and made some even greater departures from the truth, to see, determined him at length to waive them; particularly when he ascertained from his fellow-traveller that he knew of nobody in Charlemont who accommodated strangers for money. Stevens was one of those persons who watch the progress of events, and he resolved, with a mental reservation--that seems strange enough in the case of one who had shown so little reluctance to say and do the thing which he could not maintain or defend--to avail himself of some means for requiting, to the uttermost farthing, the landlord, to whose hospitality he might be indebted during his stay in Charlemont. Such are the contradictions of character which hourly detect and describe the mere worldling--the man lacking in all principle, but that which is subservient to his selfish policy. To accept money or money's worth from a stranger, seemed mean and humbling to one, who did not hesitate, in the promotion of a scheme, which, had treachery for its object, to clothe himself in the garments of deception, and to make his appearance with a lie festering upon his lips. That evening, Alfred Stevens became, with his worthier companion, an inmate of the happy dwelling of William Hinkley, the elder--a venerable, white-headed father, whose whole life had made him worthy of a far higher eulogium than that which John Cross had pronounced upon him. The delight of the family to see their reverend teacher was heartfelt and unreserved. A vigorous gripe of the hand, by the elder dragged him into the house, and a sentence of unusual length, from his better half, assured him of that welcome which the blunter action of her venerable husband had already sufficiently declared. Nor was the young adventurer who accompanied the preacher, suffered to remain long unconsidered. When John Cross had told them who he was, or rather when he had declared his spiritual hopes in him--which he did with wonderful unction, in a breath--the reception of old Hinkley, which had been hospitable enough before, became warm and benignant; and Brother Stevens already became the word of salutation, whenever the old people desired to distinguish their younger guest. Brother Stevens, it may be said here, found no difficulty in maintaining the character he had assumed. He had, in high degree, the great art of the selfish man, and could, when his game required it, subdue with little effort, those emotions and impulses, which the frank and ardent spirit must speak out or die. He went into the house of the hospitable old man, and into the village of Charlemont, as if he had gone into the camp of an enemy. He was, indeed, a spy, seeking to discover, not the poverty, but the richness of the land. His mind, therefore, was like one who has clothed himself in armor, placed himself in waiting for the foe, and set all his sentinels on the watch. His caution measured every word ere it was spoken, every look ere it was shown, every movement ere he suffered his limbs to make it. The muscles of his face, were each put under curb and chain--the smiles of the lip and the glances of the eyes, were all subdued to precision, and permitted to go forth, only under special guard and restriction. In tone, look, and manner, he strove as nearly as he might to resemble the worthy but simple-minded man, who had so readily found a worthy adherent and pupil in him; and his efforts at deception might be held to be sufficiently successful, if the frank confiding faith of the aged heads of the Hinkley family be the fitting test of his experiment. With them he was soon perfectly at home--his own carriage seemed to them wondrously becoming, and the approbation of John Cross was of itself conclusive. The preacher was the oracle of the family, all of whom were only too happy of his favor not to make large efforts to be pleased with those he brought; and in a little while, sitting about the friendly fireside, the whole party had become as sociable as if they had been “hail fellow! well met,” a thousand years. Two young girls, children of a relative, and nieces of the venerable elder, had already perched themselves upon the knee of the stranger, and strove at moments over his neck and shoulder, without heeding the occasional sugary reproof of Dame Hinkley, which bade them “let Brother Stevens be;” and, already had Brother Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws from the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory, which not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the mind of the brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself. All things promised a long duration to a friendship suddenly begun; when William Hinkley, the younger, a youth already introduced to the reader, made his appearance within the happy circle. He wore a different aspect from all the rest as he recognised in the person of Brother Stevens, the handsome stranger, his antipathy to whom, at a first glance, months before, seemed almost to have the character of a warning instinct. A nearer glance did not serve to lessen his hostility. Our traveller was to the eye of a lover, one, indeed, who promised dangerous rivalship, and an intrepid air of confidence which, even his assumed character could not enable him to disguise from the searching eyes of jealousy, contributed to strengthen the dislike of the youth for a person who seemed so perfectly sure of his ground. Still, William Hinkley behaved as a civil and well-bred youth might be expected to behave. He did not suffer his antipathy to put on the aspect of rudeness; he was grave and cold, but respectful; and though he did not “be-brother” the stranger, he yet studiously subdued his tones to mildness, when it became necessary, in the course of the evening meal, that he should address him. Few words, however, were exchanged between the parties. If Hinkley beheld an enemy to his heart's hopes in Stevens, the latter was sufficiently well-read in the human heart to discover quite as soon, that the rustic was prepared to see in himself any character but that of a friend. The unwillingness with which Hinkley heard his suggestions--the absence of all freedom and ease in his deportment, toward himself, so different from the manner of the youth when speaking or listening to all other persons; the occasional gleam of jealous inquiry and doubt within his eye, and the utter lack of all enthusiasm and warmth in his tones while he spoke to him, satisfied Stevens, that he, of all the household of his hospitable entertainers, if not actually suspicious of his true character, was the one whose suspicions were those most easily to be awakened, and who of all others, needed most to be guarded against. It will not increase our estimate of the wisdom of the stranger, to learn that, with this conviction, he should yet arrogate to himself a tone of superiority, while speaking in hearing of the youth. This was shown in a manner that was particularly galling to a high-spirited youth, and one whose prejudices were already awakened against the speaker. It was that of a paternal and patronizing senior, whose very gentleness and benignity of look and accent, seem to arise from a full conviction of the vast difference which exists between himself and his hearer. An indignity like this, which can not be resented, is one which the young mind feels always most anxious to resent. The very difficulties in the way of doing so, stimulates the desire. Such was the feeling of William Hinkley. With such a feeling it may be conjectured that opportunity was not long wanting, or might soon be made, for giving utterance to the suppressed fires of anger which were struggling in his heart. Days and weeks may elapse, but the antipathy will declare itself at last. It would be easier to lock up the mountain torrent after the breath of the tornado has torn away its rocky seals, than to stifle in the heart that hates, because of its love, the fierce fury which these united passions enkindle within it. In the first hour of their first interview, William Hinkley and Alfred Stevens felt that they were mutual foes. In that little space of time, the former had but one thought, which, though it changed its aspect with each progressive moment, never for an instant changed its character. He panted with the hope of redressing himself for wrongs which he could not name; for injuries and indignities which he knew not how to describe. Stevens had neither done nor said anything which might be construed into an offence. And yet, nobody knew better than Stevens that he had been offensive. The worthy John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly favored of Heaven, in falling upon a youth, as a pupil, of such unctuous moral delivery. “Surely,” he mused internally, “this is a becoming instrument which I have found, for the prosecution of the good work. He will bear the word like one sent forth to conquer. He will bind and loose with a strong hand. He will work wondrous things!” Not unlike these were the calculations of old Hinkley, as he hearkened to the reverend reasonings and the solemn commonplaces of the stranger. Stevens, like most recent converts, was the most uncompromising enemy of those sins from which he professed to have achieved with difficulty his own narrow escape; and finding, from the attentive ear of his audience, that he had made a favorable impression, he proceeded to manufacture for them his religious experience; an art which his general information, and knowledge of the world enabled him to perform without much difficulty. But the puritan declamation which pleased all the rest, disgusted young Hinkley, and increased his dislike for the declaimer. There was too much of the worldling in the looks, dress, air, and manner of Stevens, to satisfy the rustic of his sincerity. Something of his doubts had their source, without question, in the antipathy which he had formed against him; but William Hinkley was not without keen, quick, observing, and justly discriminating faculties, and much of his conclusions were the due consequence of a correct estimate of the peculiarities which we have named. Stevens, he perceived, declared his experiences of religion, with the air of one who expects the congratulations of his audience. The humility which thinks only of the acquisition itself, as the very perfection of human conquest, was wanting equally to his language and deportment. The very details which he gave, were ostentatious; and the gracious smiles which covered his lips as he concluded, were those of the self-complacent person, who feels that he has just been saying those good things, which, of necessity, must command the applause of his hearers. A decent pause of half an hour after the supper was finished, which was spent by the jealous youth in utter silence, and he then rose abruptly and hurried from the apartment, leaving the field entirely to his opponent. He proceeded to the house of his neighbor and cousin, Ned Hinkley, but without any hope of receiving comfort from his communion. Ned was a lively, thoughtless, light-hearted son of the soil, who was very slow to understand sorrows of any kind; and least of all, those which lie in the fancy of a dreaming and a doubtful lover. At this moment, when the possession of a new violin absorbed all his thoughts, his mind was particularly obtuse on the subject of sentimental grievances, and the almost voluptuous delight which filled his eyes when William entered his chamber, entirely prevented him from seeing the heavy shadow which overhung the brows of the latter. “What, back again, William? Why, you're as changeable as the last suit of a green lizard. When I asked you to stop, and hear me play 'Cross-possum,' and 'Criss-cross,' off you went without giving me a civil answer. I've a mind now to put up the fiddle and send your ears to bed supperless. How would you like that, old fellow? but I'll be good-natured. You shall have it, though you don't deserve it; she's in prime tune, and the tones--only hear that, Bill--there. Isn't she delicious?” And as the inconsiderate cousin poured out his warmest eulogy of the favorite instrument, his right hand flourished the bow in air, in a style that would have cheered the heart of Jean Crapaud himself, and then brought it over the cat-gut in a grand crash, that sounded as harshly in the ears of his morbid visitor, as if the two worlds had suddenly come together with steam-engine velocity. He clapped his hands upon the invaded organs, and with something like horror in his voice, cried out his expostulations. “For heaven's sake, Ned, don't stun a body with your noise.” “Noise! Did you say noise, Bill Hinkley--noise?” “Yes, noise,” answered the other with some peevishness in his accents. The violinist looked at him incredulously, while he suffered the point of the fiddle-bow to sink on a line with the floor; then, after a moment's pause, he approached his companion, wearing in his face the while, an appearance of the most grave inquiry, and when sufficiently nigh, he suddenly brought the bow over the strings of the instrument, immediately in William's ears, with a sharp and emphatic movement, producing an effect to which the former annoying crash, might well have been thought a very gentle effusion. This was followed by an uncontrollable burst of laughter from the merry lips of the musician. “There--that's what I call a noise, Bill. Sweet Sall CAN make a noise when I worry her into it; she's just like other women in that respect; she'll be sure to squall out if you don't touch her just in the right quarter. But the first time she did NOT go amiss, and as for stunning you--but what's the matter? Where's the wind now?” “Nothing--only I don't want to be deafened with such a clatter.” “Something's wrong, Bill, I know it. You look now for all the world like a bottle of sour son, with the cork out, and ready to boil over. As for Sall making a noise the first time, that's all a notion, and a very strange one. She was as sweet-spoken then as she was when you left me before supper. The last time, I confess, I made her squall out on purpose. But what of that? you are not the man to get angry with a little fun!” “No, I'm not angry with you, Ned--I am not angry with anybody; but just now, I would rather not hear the fiddle. Put it up.” “There!” said the other good-naturedly, as he placed the favorite instrument in its immemorial case in the corner. “There; and now Bill, untie the pack, and let's see the sort of wolf-cubs you've got to carry; for there's no two horns to a wild bull, if something hasn't gored you to-night.” “You're mistaken, Ned--quite mistaken--quite!” “Deuse a bit! I know you too well, Bill Hinkley, so it's no use to hush up now. Out with it, and don't be sparing, and if there's any harm to come, I'm here, just as ready to risk a cracked crown for you, as if the trouble was my own. I'd rather fiddle than fight, it's true; but when there's any need for it, you know I can do one just as well as the other; and can go to it with just as much good humor. So show us the quarrel.” “There's no quarrel. Ned,” said the other, softened by the frank and ready feeling which his companion showed; “but I'm very foolish in some things, and don't know how it is. I'm not apt to take dislikes, but there's a man come to our house with John Cross, this evening, that I somehow dislike very much.” “A man! What's he like? Anything like Joe Richards? That was a fellow that I hated mightily. I never longed to lick any man but Joe Richards, and him I longed to lick three times, though you know I never got at him more than twice. It's a great pity he got drowned, for I owe him a third licking, and don't feel altogether right, since I know no sort of way to pay it. But if this man's anything like Joe, it may be just the same if I give it to HIM. Now--” “He's nothing like Richards,” said the other. “He's a taller and better-looking man.” “If he's nothing like Joe, what do you want to lick him for?” said the single-minded musician, with a surprise in his manner, which was mingled with something like rebuke. “I have expressed no such wish, Ned; you are too hasty; and if I did wish to whip him, I don't think I should trouble you or any man to help me. If I could not do it myself, I should give it up as a bad job, without calling in assistants.” “Oh, you're a spunky follow--a real colt for hard riding,” retorted the other with a good-natured mock in his tones and looks; “but if you don't want to lick the fellow, how comes it you dislike him? It seems to me if a chap behaved so as to make me dislike him, it wouldn't be an easy matter to keep my hands off him. I'd teach him how to put me into a bad humor, or I'd never touch violin again.” “This man's a parson, I believe.” “A parson--that's a difficulty. It is not altogether right to lick parsons, because they're not counted fighting people. But there's a mighty many on 'em that licking would help. No wonder you dislike the fellow, though if he comes with John Cross, he shouldn't be altogether so bad. Now, John Cross IS a good man. He's good, and he's good-humored. He don't try to set people's teeth on edge against all the pleasant things of this world, and he can laugh, and talk, and sing, like other people. Many's the time he's asked me, of his own mouth, to play the violin; and I've seen his little eyes caper again, when sweet Sall talked out her funniest. If it was not so late, I'd go over now and give him a reel or two, and then I could take a look at this strange chap, that's set your grinders against each other.” The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his features plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation which his friends coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William Hinkley saw the looks of his cousin, and divined the cause. “You shall play for me, Ned,” he remarked; “you shall give me that old highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will put me out of my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly. I've come to sleep with you to-night.” “You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it long, if Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's the very thing to drive away bad humors, though there's another that I learnt from John Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me the merriest and comicalest thing in the world. It goes--,” and here the fiddle was put in requisition to produce the required sounds: and having got carte blanche, our enthusiastic performer, without weariness, went through his whole collection, without once perceiving that his comical and merry tunes had entirely failed to change the grave, and even gloomy expression which still mantled the face of his companion. It was only when in his exhaustion he set down the instrument, that he became conscious of William Hinkley's continued discomposure. “Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought for. What words did you have with the preacher?” “None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he was trying to become one.” “What, you hadn't any difference--no quarrel?” “None.” “And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?” A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard this question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering accents, that he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse which he had of the same stranger several months before, on that occasion, when, in the emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to a similar question, he first felt the incipient seed of jealousy planted within his bosom. But this latter incident he forbore to reveal to the inquirer; and Ned Hinkley, though certainly endowed by nature with sufficient skill to draw forth the very soul of music from the instrument on which he played, had no similar power upon the secret soul of the person whom he partially examined. “But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've seen so little; though I have heard before this of people taking dislikes at other people the first moment they set eyes on 'em. Now, I'm not a person of that sort, unless it was in the case of Joe Richards; and him I took a sort of grudge at from the first beginning. But even then there was a sort of reason for it; for, at the beginning, when Joe came down upon us here in Charlemont, he was for riding over people's necks, without so much as asking, 'by your leave.' He had a way about him that vexed me, though we did not change a word.” “And it's that very way that this person has that I don't like,” said William Hinkley. “He talks as if he made you, and when you talk, he smiles as if he thought you were the very worst work that ever went out of his hands. Then, if he has to say anything, be it ever so trifling, he says it just as if he was telling you that the world was to come to an end the day after to-morrow.” “Just the same with Joe Richards. I never could get at him but twice; though I give him then a mighty smart hammering; and if he hadn't got under the broadhorn and got drowned;--but this fellow?” “You'll see him at church to-morrow. I shouldn't wonder if he preaches; for John Cross was at him about it before I came away. What's worse, the old man's been asking him to live with us.” “What, here in Charlemont?” “Yes.” “I'll be sure to lick him then, if he's anything like Joe Richards. But what's to make him live in Charlemont? Is he to be a preacher for us?” “Perhaps so, but I couldn't understand all, for I came in while they were at it, and left home before they were done. I'm sure if he stays there I shall not. I shall leave home, for I really dislike to meet him.” “You shall stay with me, Bill, and we'll have Sall at all hours,” was the hearty speech of the cousin, as he threw his arms around the neck of his morose companion, and dragged him gently toward the adjoining apartment, which formed his chamber. “To-morrow,” he continued, “as you say, we'll see this chap, and if he's anything like Joe Richards--” The doubled fist of the speaker, and his threatening visage, completed the sentence with which this present conference and chapter may very well conclude.	{ "id": "6012" }
6	THE TOAD ON THE ALTAR.	The next day was the sabbath. John Cross had timed his arrival at the village with a due reference to his duties, and after a minute calculation of days and distances, so that his spiritual manna might be distributed in equal proportions among his hungering flock. His arrival made itself felt accordingly, not simply in Charlemont, but throughout the surrounding country for a circuit of ten miles or more. There was a large and hopeful gathering of all sorts and sexes, white and black, old and young. Charlemont had a very pretty little church of its own; but one, and that, with more true Christianity than is found commonly in this world of pretence and little tolerance, was open to preachers of all denominations. The word of God, among these simple folks, was quite too important to make them scruple at receiving it from the lips of either Geneva, Rome, or Canterbury. The church stood out among the hills at a little distance from, but in sight of the village; a small, neat Grecian-like temple, glimmering white and saintlike through solemn visaged groves, and gaudy green foliage. The old trees about it were all kept neatly trimmed, the brush pruned away and cleared up, and a smooth sweet sward, lawn-like, surrounded it, such as children love to skip and scramble over, and older children rest at length upon, in pairs, talking over their sweet silly affections. Surrounded by an admiring crowd, each of whom had his respectful salutation, we see our friend John Cross toward noon approaching the sacred dwelling. Truly he was the most simple, fraternal of all God's creatures. He had a good word for this, an affectionate inquiry for that, a benevolent smile, and a kind pressure of the hand for all. He was a man to do good, for everybody saw that he thought for others before himself, and sincerity and earnestness constitute, with the necessary degree of talent, the grand secrets for making successful teachers in every department. Though a simple, unsophisticated, unsuspecting creature, John Cross was a man of very excellent natural endowments. He chose for his text a passage of the Scriptures which admitted of a direct practical application to the concerns of the people, their daily wants, their pressing interests, moral, human, and social. He was thus enabled to preach a discourse which sent home many of his congregation much wiser than they came, if only in reference to their homely duties of farmstead and family. John Cross was none of those sorry and self-constituted representatives of our eternal interests, who deluge us with a vain, worthless declamation, proving that virtue is a very good thing, religion a very commendable virtue, and a liberal contribution to the church-box at the close of the sermon one of the most decided proofs that we have this virtue in perfection. Nay, it is somewhat doubtful, indeed, if he ever once alluded to the state of his own scrip and the treasury of the church. His faith, sincere, spontaneous, ardent, left him in very little doubt that the Lord will provide, for is he not called “Jehovah-Jireh?” --and his faith was strengthened and confirmed by the experience of his whole life. But then John Cross had few wants--few, almost none! In this respect he resembled the first apostles. The necessities of life once cared for, never was mortal man more thoroughly independent of the world. He was not one of those fine preachers who, dealing out counsels of self-denial, in grave saws and solemn maxims, with wondrous grim visage and a most slow, lugubrious shaking of the head--are yet always religiously careful to secure the warmest seat by the fireside, and the best buttered bun on table. He taught no doctrine which he did not practise; and as for consideration--that test at once of the religionist and the gentleman--he was as humbly solicitous of the claims and feelings of others, as the lovely and lowly child to whom reverence has been well taught as the true beginning, equally of politeness and religion. Before going into church he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent to share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was still some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute in refusing to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant to commit himself to a degree which might increase very much the hazards of detection. He feared, indeed, the restraints which the unequivocal adoption of the profession would impose upon him, fettering somewhat the freedom of his intercourse with the young of both sexes, and, consequently, opposing an almost insurmountable barrier to the prevailing object which had brought him to the village. Whatever may have been the feelings or motives which governed him, they, at least, saved him from an act which would have grievously aggravated his already large offence against truth and propriety. He declined, in language of the old hypocrisy. He did not feel justified in taking up the cross--he felt that he was not yet worthy; and, among the members of a church, which takes largely into account the momentary impulses and impressions of the professor, the plea was considered a sufficiently legitimate one. But though Stevens forbore to commit himself openly in the cause which he professed a desire to espouse, he was yet sufficiently heedful to maintain all those externals of devotion which a serious believer would be apt to exhibit. He could be a good actor of a part, and in this lay his best talent. He had that saving wisdom of the worldling, which is too often estimated beyond its worth, called cunning; and the frequent successes of which produces that worst of all the diseases that ever impaired the value of true greatness--conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied that he could do everything, and this fancy produced in him the appearance of a courage which his moral nature never possessed. He had the audacity which results from presumption, not the wholesome strength which comes from the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a truce to our metaphysics. Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He knelt with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his face became visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so that the spectator could behold little more in their orbs than a sea of white. “Oh! what a blessed young man!” said Mrs. Quackenbosh. “How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day,” responded that gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined every church in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse in either. “How handsome he is!” simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast with such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly soused in holy water. “Handsome is that handsome does!” was the commentary of a venerable cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special and accepted agent of heaven. “I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if he believes in the new-light doctrine?” purred one of the ancient tabbies of the conventicle. “The new light is but the old darkness, Sister Widgeon,” responded an old farmer of sixty four, who had divided his time so equally between the plough and the prayer-book, that his body had grown as crooked as the one, while his mind was bewildered with as many doctrines as ever worried all sense out of the other. We shall not suffer these to divert us, any more than Stevens permitted their speculations upon his person and religion to affect his devotion. He looked neither to the right nor to the left while entering the church, or engaging in the ceremonies. No errant glances were permitted to betray to the audience a mind wandering from the obvious duties before it; and yet Alfred Stevens knew just as well that every eye in the congregation was fixed upon him, as that he was himself there; and among those eyes, his own keen glance had already discovered those of that one for whom all these labors of hypocrisy were undertaken. Margaret Cooper sat on the opposite side of the church, but the line of vision was uninterrupted between them, and when--though very unfrequently--Stevens suffered his gaze to rest upon her form, it was with a sudden look of pleased abstraction, as if, in spite of himself, his mind was irresistibly drawn away from all recollection, of its immediate duties. If a word is sufficient for the wise, a look answers an equal purpose with the vain. Margaret Cooper left the church that morning with a pleased conviction that the handsome stranger had already paid his devotion to her charms. There was yet another passion to be gratified. The restless ambition of her foolish heart whispered to her momently, that if her person had done so much, what might she not hope to achieve when the treasures of her mind were known. She had long since made the comparison of her own intellect with that of every other maiden in the village, and she flattered herself that before many days, the young stranger should make it too. Her vain heart was rapidly preparing to smooth the path of the enemy and make his conquests easy. But it was not the women only, by whom the deportment of Alfred Stevens was so closely watched. The eyes of suspicion and jealousy were upon him. The two young men whose interview formed the conclusion of our last chapter, scanned his conduct and carriage with sufficient keenness of scrutiny. “I'll tell you what, Bill Hinkley,” said his cousin, “this fellow, to my thinking, is a very great rascal.” “What makes you think so?” demanded the former, with slow, dissatisfied accents; “he seems to pray very earnestly.” “That's the very reason I think him a rascal. His praying seems to me very unnatural. Here, he's a perfect stranger in the place, yet he never shows any curiosity to see the people. He never once looks around him. He walks to the church with his eye cast upon the ground, and sometimes he squints to this side and sometimes to that, but he seems to do it slyly, and seems to take pains that nobody should see him doing, it. All this might answer for an old man, who--believes that everything is vanity--as, indeed, everything must seem to old people; but to a young fellow, full of blood, who eats well, drinks well, sleeps well, and should naturally have a hankering after a young girl, all this is against nature. Now, what's against nature is wrong, and there's wrong at the bottom of it. Youth is the time to laugh, dance, sing, play on the violin, and always have a sweetheart when it can find one. If you can't get a beauty take a brown; and if Mary won't smile, Susan will. But always have a sweetheart; always be ready for fun and frolic; that's the way for the young, and when they don't take these ways, it's unnatural--there's something wrong about it, and I'm suspicious of THAT person. Now, I just have this notion of the young stranger. He's after no good. I reckon he's like a hundred others; too lazy to go to work, he goes to preaching, and learns in the first sermon to beg hard for the missionaries. I'll lick him, Bill, to a certainty, if he gives me the littlest end of an opportunity.” “Pshaw, Ned, don't think of such a thing. You are quite too fond of licking people.” “Deuse a bit. It does 'em good. Look you, this chap is monstrous like Joe Richards. I'll have to lick him on that account.” “You're mad, Ned; talk of whipping a preacher.” “He's no preacher yet,” said the other, “but if I lick him he may become one.” “No matter, he's never offended you.” “Ay, but he will. I see it in the fellow's looks. I never was mistaken in a fellow's looks in all my life.” “Wait till he does offend you then.” “Well, I'm willing to do that, for I know the time will come. I'm always sure, when I first see a man, to know whether I'll have to flog him or not. There's a something that tells me so. Isn't that very singular, Bill?” “No! you form a prejudice against a man, fancy that you ought to whip him, and then never rest till you've done so. You'll find your match some day.” “What! you think some other chap will fancy he ought to whip me? Well--maybe so. But this ain't the fellow to do that.” “He's a stout man, and I reckon strong. Besides, Ned, he's very handsome.” “Handsome! Lord, Bill, what a taste you have? How can a man be called handsome that never altogether opens his eyes, except when he turns up the whites until you'd think he'd never be able to get the balls back to their proper place? Then, what a chin he has--as sharp as a pitchfork, and who but a girl child would fancy a man with his hair combed sleek like a woman's on each side of his ears, with big whiskers at the same time that looks for all the world like the brush of a seven years running fox, Handsome! If my pup 'Dragon' was only half so much like a beast, I'd plump him into the horsepond!” It is probable that Ned Hinkley did not altogether think of the stranger as he expressed himself. But he saw how deep a hold his appearance had taken, in an adverse way, upon the mind and feelings of his relative and friend, and his rude, but well-meant endeavors were intended to console his companion, after his own fashion, by the exhibition of a certain degree of sympathy. His efforts, however well intended, did not produce any serious effect. William Hinkley, though he forbore the subject, and every expression which might indicate either soreness or apprehension, was still the victim of that presentiment which had touched him on the very first appearance of the stranger. He felt more than ever apprehensive on the score of his misplaced affections. While his cousin had been watching the stranger, HIS eyes had been fixed upon those of Margaret Cooper, and his fears were increased and strengthened, as he perceived that she was quite too much absorbed in other thoughts and objects to behold for an instant the close espionage which he maintained upon her person. His heart sunk within him, as he beheld how bold was her look, and how undisguised the admiration which it expressed for the handsome stranger. “You will go home with me, William?” said the cousin, The other hesitated. “I think,” said he, after a moment's pause, “I should rather go to my own home. It is a sort of weakness to let a stranger drive a man off from his own family, and though I somehow dislike this person's looks, and am very sorry that John Cross brought him to our house, yet I shouldn't let a prejudice which seems to have no good foundation take such possession of my mind. I will go home, Ned, and see--perhaps I may come to like the stranger more when I know him better.” “You'll never like him. I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as you please about going nome. You're right in one thing--never to give up your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a fair fling with your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the chap's after. I don't see why he should come here to learn to preach. We can't support a preacher. We don't want one. He could just as well have learned his business, where he came from.” With these words the cousins separated. “Now,” said Ned Hinkley as he took his own way homeward, in a deeper fit of abstraction than was altogether usual with him, “now will Bill Hinkley beat about the bush without bouncing through it, until it's too late to do anything. He's mealy-mouthed with the woman, and mealy-mouthed with the man, and mealy-mouthed with everybody. --quite too soft-hearted and too easy to get on. Here's a stranger nobody knows, just like some crow from another corn-field, that'll pick up his provisions from under his very nose, and he doing nothing to hinder until there's no use in trying. If I don't push in and help him, he'll not help himself. As for Margaret Cooper, dang it, I'll court her for him myself. If he's afraid to pop the question, I ain't; though I'll have to be mighty careful about the words I use, or she'll be thinking I come on my own hook; and that would be a mighty scary sort of business all round the house. Then this stranger. If anybody can look through a stranger here in Charlemont, I reckon I'm that man. I suspect him already. I think he's after no good with his great religioning; and I'll tie such a pair of eyes to his heels, that his understanding will never be entirely out of my sight. I'll find him out if anybody can. But I won't lick him till I do. That wouldn't be altogether right, considering he's to be a parson, though I doubt he'll never make one.” And thus, with a head filled with cares of a fashion altogether new, the sturdy young Kentuckian moved homeward with a degree of abstraction in his countenance which was not among the smallest wonders of the day and place in the estimation of his friends and neighbors. Meanwhile, the work of mischief was in full progress. Everybody knows the degree of familiarity which exists among all classes in a country-village, particularly when the parties are brought together under the social and stimulating influences of religion. It was natural that the pastor, long known and well beloved, should be surrounded by his flock as he descended from the pulpit. The old ladies always have a saving interest in his presence, and they pave the way for the young ones. Alfred Stevens, as the protege of John Cross, naturally attended his footsteps, and was introduced by him to the little congregation, which had mostly remained to do honor to the preacher. Of these, not last, nor least, was the widow Cooper; and, unreluctant by her side, though in silence, and not without a degree of emotion, which she yet was able to conceal, stood her fair but proud-hearted daughter. Margaret, alas! Margaret stood there with a heart more proud, yet more humble, than ever. Proud in the consciousness of a new conquest--humble in the feeling that this conquest had not been made, but at the expense of some portion of her own independence. Hitherto, her suitors had awakened no other feeling in her heart but vanity. Now, she felt no longer able to sail on, “imperial arbitress,” smiling at woes which she could inflict, but never share. That instinct, which, in the heart of young Hinkley had produced fear, if not antipathy, had been as active in her case, though with a very different result. The first glimpse which she had of the handsome stranger, months before, had impressed her with a singular emotion; and now that he was returned, she could not divest herself of the thought that his return was a consequence of that one glimpse. With a keener judgment than belonged to her neighbors, she too had some suspicions that religion was scarcely the prevailing motive which had brought the youth back to their little village; for how could she reconcile with his present demure gravity and devout profession, the daring which he had shown in riding back to behold her a second time? That such had been his motive she divined by her own feeling of curiosity, and the instincts of vanity were prompt enough to believe that this was motive sufficient to bring him back once more, and under the guise of a character, which would the readiest secure an easy entrance to society. Pleased with the fancy that she herself was the object sought, she did not perceive how enormous was the sort of deception which the stranger had employed to attain the end desired. With all her intellect she had not the wisdom to suspect that he who could so readily practise so bold an hypocrisy, was capable of the worst performances; and when their names were mentioned, and his eyes were permitted to meet and mingle their glances with hers, she was conscious of nothing farther than a fluttering sentiment of pleasure, which was amply declared to the stranger, in the flash of animation which spoke openly in her countenance; eye speaking to lip and cheek, and these, in turn, responding with a kindred sentiment to the already tell-tale eye. William Hinkley, from a little distance, beheld this meeting. He had lingered with the curiosity which belongs to the natural apprehension of the lover. He saw them approach--nay, fancied he beheld the mutual expression of their sympathizing eyes, and he turned away, and hurried homeward, with the feeling of a heart already overborne, and defrauded in all its hopes and expectations. The flowers were threatened with blight in his Eden: but he did not conjecture, poor fellow, that a serpent had indeed entered it!	{ "id": "6012" }
7	THE GOOD YOUNG MAN IN MEDITATION.	Perhaps, it may be assumed, with tolerable safety, that no first villany is ever entirely deliberate. There is something in events to give it direction--something to egg it on--to point out time, place, and opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the actor is one, in the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What we simply mean to affirm is, that the particular, single act, is, in few instances, deliberately meditated from the beginning. We very much incline to think that some one event, which we ordinarily refer to the chapter of accidents, has first set the mind to work upon schemes, which would otherwise, perhaps, never be thought of at all. Thus, we find persons who continue very good people, as the world goes, until middle age, or even seniority; then, suddenly breaking out into some enormous offence against decency and society, which startles the whole pious neighborhood. Folks start up, with outstretched hands and staring eyes, and cry aloud:-- “Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so bad!” He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so, and it was quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his neighbors may have had some share in making him so. Pious persons are very frequently reduced to these straits by having the temptation forced too much upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand the provocation of earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a tolerably stout one; and of the inadequacy of the mind, always to contend with the inclinations of the flesh, have we not a caution in that injunction of Holy Book which warns us to fly from temptation? But lame people can not fly, and he is most certainly lame who halts upon mere feet of circumstances. Such people are always in danger. Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some theological seminary, would have been--though in moral respects pretty much the same person--yet in the eye of the world a far less criminal man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more innocent, but they would have taken a different direction. Instead of the recklessness of course, such as seems to have distinguished the conduct of our present subject--instead of his loose indulgences--his smart, licentious speeches--the sheep's-eye glances, right and left, which he was but too prone to bestow, without prudence or precaution, whenever he walked among the fair sisters--he, the said Alfred, would have taken counsel of a more worldly policy, which is yet popularly considered a more pious one. He would have kept his eyes from wandering to and fro; he would have held his blood in subjection. Patient as a fox on a long scent in autumn, he would have kept himself lean and circumspect, until, through the help of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could have beguiled into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock--not always fair--whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full atonement for all those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we find usually so well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this pious temper. It is evident, from his present course, that he had some inkling of the MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell short of that saving wisdom which would have defrauded the social world of one of its moral earthquakes, and possibly deprived the survivors of the present moral story--for moral it is, though our hero is not exactly so. It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we were to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself, when he borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with the worthy John Cross in the language of theology, and with the tongue of a hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was all--as he had really been impressed by the commanding figure and noble expression of beauty of that young damsel whom he had encountered by the roadside. Even this impression, however, would have been suffered to escape from his mind, had it not been so perfectly convenient to revisit the spot, on his return to his usual place of residence. During the summer, Charlemont and its rustic attractions had been the frequent subject of a conversation, running into discussion, between himself and the amiable old man, his uncle. The latter repeatedly urged upon his nephew to make the visit; fondly conceiving that a nearer acquaintance with the pleasant spot which had so won upon his own affections, would be productive of a like effect upon his nephew. Alas, how little did he know the mischief he was doing! In the very idleness of mood--with just that degree of curiosity which prompts one to turn about and look a second time--Alfred Stevens resumed the route which included Charlemont. But the devil had, by this time, found his way into the meditations of the youth, and lay lurking, unknown to himself, perhaps, at the bottom of this same curiosity. The look of pride and defiance which Margaret Cooper had betrayed, when the bold youth rode back to steal a second glance at her matchless person, was equivalent to an equally bold challenge; and his vanity hastily picked up the gauntlet which hers had thrown down. He wished to see the damsel again--to see if she WAS so beautiful--if she did, indeed, possess that intellectual strength and vivacity which flashed out so suddenly and with so much splendor from beneath her long, dark eye-lashes! In this mood he met with John Cross; and the simplicity of that worthy creature offered another challenge, not less provoking than the former, to the levity and love of mischief which also actively predominated in the bosom of the youth. Fond of a malicious sort of fun, and ever on the look-out for subjects of quizzing, it was in compliance with a purely habitual movement of his mind that he conjured up that false, glozing story of his religious inclinations, which had so easily imposed upon the unsuspecting preacher. Never was proceeding less premeditated, or so completely the result of an after-thought, than this; and now that it had proved so perfectly successful--now that he found himself admitted into the very heart of the little village, and into the bosoms of the people--he began, for the first time, to feel the awkwardness of the situation in which he had placed himself, and the responsibilities, if not dangers, to which it subjected him. To play the part of a mere preacher--to talk glibly, and with proper unction, in the stereotype phraseology of the profession--was no difficult matter to a clever young lawyer of the West, having a due share of the gift of gab, and almost as profoundly familiar with scripture quotation as Henry Clay himself. But there was something awkward in the idea of detection, and he was not unaware of those summary dangers which are likely to follow, in those wild frontier regions, from the discovery of so doubtful a personage as “Bro' Wolf” in the clothing of a more innocent animal. Chief-Justice Lynch is a sacred authority in those parts; and, in such a case as his, Alfred Stevens did not doubt that the church itself would feel it only becoming to provide another sort of garment for the offender, which, whether pleasant or not, would at least be likely to stick more closely, and prove less comfortably warm. But, once in, there was no help but to play out the game as it had been begun. Villagers are seldom very sagacious people, and elegant strangers are quite too much esteemed among them to make them very particular in knowing the whys and wherefores about them--whence they come, what they do, and whither they propose to go. Stevens had only to preserve his countenance and a due degree of caution, and the rest was easy. He had no reason to suppose himself an object of suspicion to anybody; and should he become so, nothing was more easy than to take his departure with sufficient promptness, and without unnecessarily soliciting the prayers of the church in behalf of the hurried traveller! At all events, he could lose nothing by the visit: perhaps something might be gained. What was that something? Behold him in his chamber, preparing to ask and to answer this question for himself. The sabbath-day is finally over. He has been almost the lion of the day. We say almost, for the worthy John Cross could not easily be deprived, by any rivalry, of the loyal regards of his old parishioners. But, though the latter had most friends, the stranger, Alfred Stevens, had had most followers. All were anxious to know him--the young, in particular, maidens and men; and the grave old dames would have given their last remaining teeth, bone or waxen, to have heard him discourse. There was so much sense and solemnity in his profound, devout looks! he has been made known to them all; he has shaken hands with many. But he has exchanged the speech of sympathy and feeling with but one only--and that one! -- Of her he thinks in his chamber--his quiet, snug, little chamber--a mere closet, looking out upon a long garden-slip, in which he sees, without much heeding them, long lanes of culinary cabbage, and tracts of other growing and decaying vegetation, in which his interest is quite too small to make it needful that he should even ask its separate names. His chin rests upon his hands with an air of meditation; and gradually his thoughts rise up in soliloquy, which is suffered to invade no ear but ours:-- “Well! who'd have thought it? a parson! --devilish good indeed! How it will tell at Murkey's! What a metamorphose! if it don't stagger 'em, nothing will! It's the best thing I've done yet! I shall have to do it over a hundred times, and must get up a sermon or two beforehand, and swear that I preached them--and, egad! I may have to do it yet before I'm done--ha! ha! ha!” The laughter was a quiet chuckle, not to be heard by vulgar ears; it subsided in the gorges of his throat. The idea of really getting up a sermon tickled him. He muttered over texts, all that he could remember; and proceeded to turn over the phrases for an introduction, such as, unctuous with good things in high degree, he fancied would be particularly commendable to his unsuspecting hearers. Alfred Stevens had no small talent for imitation, he derived a quiet sort of pleasure, on the present occasion, from its indulgence. “I should have made a famous parson, and, if all trades fail, may yet. But, now that I am here, what's to come of it? It's not so hard to put on a long face, and prose in scripture dialect; but, cui bono? Let me see--hem! The girl is pretty, devilish pretty--with such an eye, and looks so! There's soul in the wench--life--and a passion that speaks out in every glance and movement. A very Cressid, with a cross of Corinne! Should she be like her of Troy? At all events, it can do no harm to see what she's made of! “But I must manage warily. I have something to lose in the business. Frankfort is but fifty miles from Charlemont--fifty miles--and there's Ellisland, but fourteen. Fourteen! --an easy afternoon ride. That way it must be done. Ellisland shall be my post-town. I can gallop there in an afternoon, drop and receive my letters, and be back by a round-about which shall effectually baffle inquiry. A week or two will be enough. I shall see, by that time, what can be done with her; though still, cautiously, Parson Stevens! --cautiously.” The farther cogitations of Stevens were subordinate to these, but of the same family complexion. They were such as to keep him wakeful. The Bible which had been placed upon his table, by the considerate providence of his hostess, lay there unopened; though, more than once, he lifted the cover of the sacred volume, letting it fall again suddenly, as if with a shrinking consciousness that such thoughts as at that moment filled his mind were scarcely consistent with the employment, in any degree, of such a companion. Finally, he undressed and went to bed. The hour had become very late. “Good young man,” muttered worthy Mrs. Hinkley to her drowsy spouse, in the apartment below, as she heard the movements of her guest-“good young man, he's just now going to bed. He's been studying all this while. I reckon Brother Cross has been sound this hour.” The light from Stevens's window glimmered out over the cabbage-garden, and was seen by many an ancient dame as she prepared for her own slumbers. “Good young man,” said they all with one accord. “I reckon he's at the Bible now. Oh! he'll be a blessed laborer in the vineyard, I promise you, when Brother Cross is taken.” “If it were not for the cursed bore of keeping up the farce beyond the possibility of keeping up the fun, such a rig as this would be incomparably pleasant; but”--yawning--“that's the devil! I get monstrous tired of a joke that needs dry nursing!” Such were the last muttered words of Parson Stevens before he yielded himself up to his slumbers. Good young man--charitable old ladies--gullible enough, if not charitable! But the professions need such people, and we must not quarrel with them!	{ "id": "6012" }
8	PAROCHIAL PERFORMANCES.	The poor, conceited blackguards of this ungracious earth have a fancy that there must be huge confusion and a mighty bobbery in nature, corresponding with that which is for ever going on in their own little spheres. If we have a toothache, we look for a change of weather; our rheumatism is a sure sign that God has made his arrangements to give us a slapping rain; and, should the white bull or the brown heifer die, look out for hail, or thunderstorm, at least, as a forerunner of the event. Nothing less can possibly console or satisfy us for such a most unaccountable, not to say unnatural and unwarrantable, a dispensation. The poets have ministered largely to this vanity on the part of mankind. Shakspere is constantly at it, and Ben Jonson, and all the dramatists. Not a butcher, in the whole long line of the butchering Caesars, from Augustus down, but, according to them, died in a sort of gloom glory, resulting from the explosion of innumerable stars and rockets, and the apparitions of as many comets! “Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,” invariably announce the coming stroke of fate; and five or seven moons of a night have suddenly arisen to warn some miserable sublunarian that orders had been issued that there should be no moon for him that quarter, or, in military and more precise phrase, that he should have no “quarters” during that moon. Even our venerable and stern old puritan saint, Milton--he who was blessed with the blindness of his earthly eye, that he should be more perfectly enabled to contemplate the Deity within--has given way to this superstition when he subjects universal nature to an earthquake because Adam's wife followed the counsels of the snake. A pretty condition of things it would be, if stars, suns, and systems, were to shoot madly from their spheres on such occasions! Well might the devil laugh if such were the case! How he would chuckle to behold globes and seas, and empires, fall into such irreverend antics because some poor earthling, be he kingling or common sodling, goes into desuetude, either by the operation of natural laws, or the sharp application of steel or shot! Verily, it makes precious little difference to the Great Reaper, by what process we finally become harvested. He is sure of us, though no graves gape, no stars fall, no comets rush out, like young colts from their stables, flinging their tails into the faces of the more sober and pacific brotherhood of lights. But, denied the satisfaction of chuckling at such sights as these, his satanic majesty chuckles not the less at the human vanity which looks for them. Nay, he himself is very likely to suggest this vanity. It is one of his forms of temptation--one of his manoeuvres; and we take leave, by way of warning, to hint to those worthy people, who judge of to-morrow's providence by the corns of their great toe, or their periodical lumbago, or the shooting of their warts, or the pricking of their palms, that it is in truth the devil which is at the bottom of all this, and that the Deity has nothing to do in the business. It is the devil instilling his vanities into the human heart, in that form which he thinks least likely to prove offensive, or rouse suspicion. The devil is most active in your affairs, Mrs. Thompson, the moment you imagine that there must be a revolution on your account in the universal laws of nature. At such a moment your best policy will be to have blood let, take physic, and go with all diligence to your prayers. There was no sort of warning on the part of the natural to the moral world, on the day when Alfred Stevens set forth with the worthy John Cross, to visit the flock of the latter. There was not a lovelier morning in the whole calendar. The sun was alone in heaven, without a cloud; and on earth, the people in and about Charlemont, having been to church only the day before, necessarily made their appearance everywhere with petticoats and pantaloons tolerably clean and unrumpled. Cabbages had not yet been frost-bitten. Autumn had dressed up her children in the garments of beauty, preparatory to their funeral. There was a good crop of grain that year, and hogs were brisk, and cattle lively, and all “looking-up,” in the language of the prices current. This was long before the time when Mr. M---- made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and the serpent entered Charlemont, and made his way among the people thereof, without any signs of combustion, or overthrow, or earthquake. Everybody has some tolerable idea of what the visitation of a parson is, to the members of his flock. In the big cities he comes one day, and the quarterly collector the next. He sits down with the “gude wife” in a corner to themselves, and he speaks to her in precisely the same low tones which cunning lovers are apt to use. If he knows any one art better than another, it is that of finding his way to the affections of the female part of his flock. A subdued tone of voice betrays a certain deference for the party addressed. The lady is pleased with such a preliminary. She is flattered again by the pains he takes in behalf of her eternal interests; she is pretty sure he takes no such pains with any of her neighbors. It is a sign that he thinks her soul the most becoming little soul in the flock, and when he goes away, she looks after him and sighs, and thinks him the most blessed soul of a parson. The next week she is the first to get up a subscription which she heads with her own name in connection with a sum realized by stinting her son of his gingerbread money, in order to make this excellent parson a life-member of the “Zion African Bible and Missionary Society, for disseminating the Word among the Heathen.” The same fifty dollars so appropriated, would have provided fuel for a month to the starving poor of her own parish. But Brother Cross gets no such windfalls. It is probable that he never heard of such a thing, and that if he did, he would unhesitatingly cry out, “Humbug,” at the first intimation of it. Besides, his voice was not capable of that modulation which a young lover, or a city parson can give it. Accustomed to cry aloud and spare not, he usually spoke as if there were some marrow in his bones, and some vigor in his wind-bags. When he came to see the good wife of his congregation, he gave her a hearty shake of the hand, congratulated her as he found her at her spinning-wheel; spoke with a hearty approbation, if he saw that her children were civil and cleanly; if otherwise, he blazed out with proper boldness, by telling her that all her praying and groaning, would avail nothing for her soul's safety, so long as Jackey's breeches were unclean; and that the mother of a rude and dirty child, was as sure of damnation, as if she never prayed at all. He had no scruples about speaking the truth. He never looked about him for the gentle, easy phrases, by which to distinguish the conduct which he was compelled to condemn. He knew not only that the truth must be spoken, and be spoken by him, if by anybody, but that there is no language too strong--perhaps none quite strong enough--for the utterance of the truth. But it must not be supposed, that John Cross was in any respect an intolerant, or sour man. He was no hypocrite, and did not, therefore, need to clothe his features in the vinegar costume of that numerous class. His limbs were put into no such rigid fetters as too often denote the unnatural restraints which such persons have imposed upon their inner minds. He could laugh and sing with the merriest, and though he did not absolutely shake a leg himself, yet none rejoiced more than he, when Ned Hinkley's fiddle summoned the village to this primitive exercise. “Now, Alfred Stevens,” said he, the breakfast being over, “what say'st thou to a visit with me among my people. Some of them know thee already; they will all be rejoiced to see thee. I will show thee how they live, and if thou shouldst continue to feel within thee, the growing of that good seed whose quickening thou hast declared to me, it will be well that thou shouldst begin early to practise the calling which may so shortly become thine own. Here mightest thou live a space, toiling in thy spiritual studies, until the brethren should deem thee ripe for thy office; meanwhile, thy knowledge of the people with whom thou livest, and their knowledge of thee, would be matter of equal comfort and consolation, I trust, to thee as to them.” Alfred Stevens expressed himself pleased with the arrangement. Indeed, he desired nothing else. “But shall we see all of them?” he demanded. The arch-hypocrite began to fear that his curiosity would be compelled to pay a heavy penalty to dullness. “The flock is small,” said John Cross. “A day will suffice, but I shall remain three days in Charlemont, and some I will see to-day, and some to-morrow, and some on the day after, which is Wednesday.” “Taken in moderate doses,” murmured Stevens to himself, “one may stand it.” He declared himself in readiness, and the twain set forth. The outward behavior of Stevens was very exemplary. He had that morning contrived to alter his costume in some respects to suit the situation of affairs. For example, he had adopted that slavish affectation which seems to insist that a preacher of God should always wear a white cravat, so constructed and worn as to hide the tips of his shirt collar. If they wore none, they would look infinitely more noble, and we may add, never suffer from bronchitis. In his deportment, Stevens was quite as sanctified as heart could wish. He spoke always deliberately, and with great unction. If he had to say “cheese and mousetrap,” he would look very solemn, shake his head with great gravity and slowness, and then deliberately and equally emphasizing every syllable, would roll forth the enormous sentence with all the conscious dignity of an ancient oracle. That “cheese and mousetrap,” so spoken, acquired in the ears of the hearer, a degree of importance and signification, which it confounded them to think they had never perceived before in the same felicitous collocation of syllables. John Cross was not without his vanities. Who is? Vanity is quite as natural as any other of our endowments. It is a guaranty for amiability. A vain man is always a conciliatory one. He is kind to others, because the approbation of others is a strong desire in his mind. Accordingly, even vanity is not wholly evil. It has its uses. John Cross had his share, and Alfred Stevens soon discovered that he ministered to it in no small degree. The good old preacher took to himself the credit of having effected his conversion, so far as it had gone. It was his hand that had plucked the brand from the burning. He spoke freely of his protege, as well before his face as behind his back. In his presence he dwelt upon the holy importance of his calling; to others he dilated upon the importance of securing for the church a young man of so much talent, yet of so much devotion: qualities not always united, it would seem, among the churchlings of modern times. Alfred Stevens seemed to promise great honor to his teacher. That cunning which is the wisdom of the worldling, and which he possessed in a very surprising degree, enabled him to adopt a course of conduct, look, and remark, which amply satisfied the exactions of the scrupulous, and secured the unhesitating confidence of those who were of a more yielding nature. He soon caught the phraseology of his companion, and avoiding his intensity, was less likely to offend his hearers. His manner was better subdued to the social tone of ordinary life, his voice lacked the sharp twang of the backwoods man; and, unlike John Cross, he was able to modulate it to those undertones, which, as we have before intimated, are so agreeable from the lips of young lovers and fashionable preachers. At all events, John Cross himself, was something more than satisfied with his pupil, and took considerable pains to show him off. He was a sort of living and speaking monument of the good man's religious prowess. It does not need that we should follow the two into all the abodes which they were compelled to visit. The reader would scarcely conceal his yawns though Stevens did. Enough, that a very unctuous business was made of it that morning. Many an old lady was refreshed with the spiritual beverage bestowed in sufficient quantity to last for another quarter; while many a young one rejoiced in the countenance of so promising a shepherd as appeared under the name of Alfred Stevens. But the latter thought of the one damsel only. He said many pleasant things to those whom he did see; but his mind ran only upon one. He began to apprehend that she might be among the flock who were destined to wait for the second or last day's visitation; when, to his great relief, John Cross called his attention to the dwelling of the widow Cooper, to whom they were fast approaching. Stevens remarked that the dwelling had very much the appearance of poverty--he did not fail to perceive that it lacked the flower-garden in front which distinguished the greater number of the cottages in Charlemont; and there was an appearance of coldness and loneliness about its externals which impressed itself very strongly upon his thoughts, and seemed to speak unfavorably for the taste of the inmates. One is apt to associate the love of flowers with sweetness and gentleness of disposition, and such a passion would seem as natural, as it certainly would be becoming, to a young lady of taste and sensibility. But the sign is a very doubtful one. Taste and gentleness may satisfy themselves with other objects. A passion for books is very apt to exclude a very active passion for flowers, and it will be found, I suspect, that these persons who are most remarkable for the cultivation of flowers are least sensible to the charms of letters. It seems monstrous, indeed, that a human being should expend hours and days in the nursing and tendance of such stupid beauties as plants and flowers, when earth is filled with so many lovelier objects that come to us commended by the superior sympathies which belong to humanity. Our cities are filled with the sweetest orphans--flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that might be angels in spirit--that must be, whether for good or evil--whom we never cultivate--whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want. The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish in a high degree. But Alfred Stevens had very little time for further reflection. They were at the door of the cottage. Never did the widow Cooper receive her parson in more tidy trim, and with an expression of less qualified delight. She brought forth the best chair, brushed the deerskin-seat with her apron, and having adjusted the old man to her own satisfaction as well as his, she prepared to do a like office for the young one. Having seated them fairly, and smoothed her apron, and gone through the usual preliminaries, and placed herself a little aloof, on a third seat, and rubbed her hands, and struggled into a brief pause in her brisk action, she allowed her tongue to do the office for which her whole soul was impatient. “Oh, Brother Cross, what a searching sermon you gave us yesterday. You stirred the hearts of everybody, I warrant you, as you stirred up mine. We've been a needing it for a precious long time, I tell you; and there's no knowing what more's a wanting to make us sensible to the evil that's in us. I know from myself what it is, and I guess from the doings of others. We're none of us perfect, that's certain; but it's no harm to say that some's more and some's not so perfect as others. There's a difference in sin, Brother Cross, I'm a thinking, and I'd like you to explain why, and what's the difference. One won't have so much, and one will have more; one will take a longer spell of preaching, and half the quantity will be a dose to work another out clean, entire. I'm not boastful for myself, Brother Cross, but I do say, I'd give up in despair if I thought it took half so much to do me, as it would take for a person like that Mrs. Thackeray.” “Sister Cooper,” said brother Cross, rebukingly, “beware of the temptation to vain-glory. Be not like the Pharisee, disdainful of the publican. To be too well pleased with one's self is to be displeasing to the Lord.” “Oh, Brother Cross, don't be thinking that I'm over and above satisfied with the goodness that's in me. I know I'm not so good. I have a great deal of evil; but then it seems to me there's a difference in good and a difference in evil. One has most of one and one has most of another. None of us have much good, and all of us have a great deal of sin. God help me, for I need his help--I have my own share; but as for that Mrs. Thackeray, she's as full of wickedness as an an egg's full of meat.” “It is not the part of Christianity, Sister Cooper,” said John Cross mildly, “to look into our neighbors' accounts and make comparisons between their doings and our own. We can only do so at great risk of making a false reckoning. Besides, Sister Cooper, it is business enough on our hands, if we see to our own short-comings. As for Mrs. Thackeray, I have no doubt she's no better than the rest of us, and we are all, as you said before, children of suffering, and prone to sin as certain as that the sparks fly upward. We must only watch and pray without ceasing, particularly that we may not deceive ourselves with the most dangerous sin of being too sure of our own works. The good deeds that we boast of so much in our earthly day will shrivel and shrink up at the last account to so small a size that the best of us, through shame and confusion, will be only too ready to call upon the rocks and hills to cover us. We are very weak and foolish all, Sister Cooper. We can't believe ourselves too weak, or too mean, or too sinful. To believe this with all our hearts, and to try to be better with all our strength, is the true labor of religion. God send it to us, in all its sweetness and perfection, so that we may fight the good fight without ceasing.” “But if you could only hear of the doings of Mrs. Thackeray, Brother Cross, you'd see how needful it would be to put forth all your strength to bring her back to the right path.” “The Lord will know. None of us can hide our evil from the eyes of the Lord. I will strive with our sister, when I seek her, which will be this very noon, but it is of yourself, Sister Cooper, and your daughter Margaret, that I would speak. Where is she that I see her not?” This was the question that made our quasi hierophant look up with a far greater degree of interest than he had felt in the long and random twattle to which he had been compelled to listen. Where was she--that fair daughter? He was impatient for the answer. But he was not long detained in suspense. Next to her neighbors there was no subject of whom the mother so loved to speak as the daughter, and the daughter's excellences. “Ah! she is up-stairs, at her books, as usual. She does so love them books, Brother Cross, I'm afraid it'll do harm to her health. She cares for nothing half so well. Morning, noon, and night, all the same, you find her poring over them; and even when she goes out to ramble, she must have a book, and she wants no other company. For my part I can't see what she finds in them to love so; for except to put a body to sleep I never could see the use they were to any person yet.” “Books are of two kinds,” said Brother Cross gravely. “They are useful or hurtful. The useful kinds are good, the hurtful kinds are bad. The Holy Bible is the first book, and the only book, as I reckon it will be the book that'll live longest. The 'Life of Whitefield' is a good book, and I can recommend the sermons of that good man, Brother Peter Cummins, that preached when I was a lad, all along through the back parts of North Carolina, into South Carolina and Georgia. I can't say that he came as far back into the west as these parts; but he was a most faithful shepherd. There was a book of his sermons printed for the benefit of his widow and children. He died, like that blessed man, John Rogers, that we see in the primer-books, leaving a wife with eleven children and one at the breast. His sermons are very precious reading. One of them in particular, on the Grace of God, is a very falling of manna in the wilderness. It freshens the soul, and throws light upon the dark places in the wilderness. Ah! if only such books are printed, what a precious world for poor souls it would be. But they print a great many bad books now-a-days.” The natural love of mischief which prevailed in the bosom of Alfred Stevens now prompted him to take part in the conversation at this happy moment. The opportunity was a tempting one. “The printers,” said he, “are generally very bad men. They call themselves devils, and take young lads and bring them up to their business under that name!” The old lady threw up her hands, and John Cross, to whom this intelligence was wholly new, inquired with a sort of awe-struck gravity-- “Can this be true, Alfred Stevens? Is this possible?” “The fact, sir. They go by no other name among themselves; and you may suppose, if they are not ashamed of the name, they are not unwilling to perform the doings of the devil. Indeed, they are busy doing his business from morning to night--and night to morning. They don't stop for the sabbath. They work on Sunday the same as any other day, and if they take any rest at all it is on Saturday, which would show them to be a kind of Jews.” “Good Lord deliver us!” ejaculated the widow. “Where, O! where?” exclaimed the Brother Cross with similar earnestness. The game was too pleasant for Alfred Stevens. He pursued it. “In such cities,” he continued, “as New York and Philadelphia, thousands of these persons are kept in constant employ sending forth those books of falsehood and folly which fill the hearts of the young with vain imaginings, and mislead the footsteps of the unwary. In one of these establishments, four persons preside, who are considered brothers; but they are brothers in sin only, and are by some supposed to be no other. They have called themselves after the names of saints and holy men; even the names of the thrice blessed apostles, John and James, have been in this fashion abused; but if it be true that the spirits of evil may even in our day as of old embody themselves in mortal shape for the better enthralling and destruction of mankind, then should I prefer to believe that these persons were no other than the evil demons who ruled in Ashdod and Assyria. Such is their perseverance in evil--such their busy industry, which keeps a thousand authors (which is but another name for priests and prophets) constantly at work to frame cunning falsehoods and curious devices, and winning fancies, which when printed and made into books, turn the heads of the young and unwary, and blind the soul to the wrath which is to come.” The uplifted hands of the widow Cooper still attested her wonder. “Lord save us!” she exclaimed, “I should not think it strange if Sister Thackeray had some of these very books. Do ask, Brother Cross, when you go to see her. She speaks much of books, and I see her reading them whenever I look in at the back window.” John Cross did not seem to give any heed to the remark of the old woman. There was a theological point involved in one of the remarks of Alfred Stevens which he evidently regarded as of the first importance. “What you say, Alfred Stevens, is very new and very strange to me, and I should think from what I already know of the evil which is sometimes put in printed books, that there was indeed a spirit of malice at work in this way, to help the progress and the conquests of Satan among our blind and feeble race. But I am not prepared to believe that God has left it to Satan to devise so fearful a scheme for prosecuting his evil designs as that of making the demons of Ashdod and Assyria take the names of mortal men, while teeming to follow mortal occupations. It would be fearful tidings for our poor race were this so. But if so, is it not seen that there is a difference in the shapes of these persons. If either of these brothers who blasphemously call themselves John and James, after the manner of the apostles, shall be in very truth and certainty that Dagon of the Philistines whom Jehovah smote before his altar, will he not be made fishlike from the waist downward, and will this not be seen by his followers and some of the thousands whom he daily perverts to his evil purposes and so leads to eternal destruction?” “It may be that it is permitted to such a demon to put on what shape he thinks proper,” replied Stevens; “but even if it is not, yet this would not be the subject of any difference--it would scarcely prevent the prosecution of this evil purpose. You are to remember, Mr. Cross--” “John Cross--plain John Cross, Alfred Stevens,” was the interruption of the preacher. “You are to remember,” Stevens resumed, “that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of blindness. The people who believe in these evil beings are incapable of seeing their deformities.” “That is true--a sad truth.” “And, again,” continued Stevens, “there are devices of mere mortal art, by which the deformities and defects of an individual may be concealed. One of these brothers, I am told, is never to be seen except seated in one position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as to hide his lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to prosecute his nefarious work.” “It's clear enough, Brother Cross,” exclaimed the widow Cooper, now thoroughly convinced--“it's clear enough that there's something that he wants to hide. Lord help us! but these things are terrible.” “To the weak and the wicked, Sister Cooper, they are, as you say, terrible, and hence the need that we should have our lamps trimmed and lighted, for the same light which brings us to the sight of the Holy of Holies, shows us the shape of hatefuless, the black and crouching form of Satan, with nothing to conceal his deformity. Brother Stevens has well said that when the heart is full of sin, the eyes are full of blindness; and so we may say that when the heart is full of godliness, the eyes are full of seeing. You can not blind them with devilish arts. You can not delude them as to the true forms of Satan, let him take any shape The eye of godliness sees clean through the mask of sin, as the light of the sun pierces the thickest cloud, and brings day after the darkest night.” “Oh! what a blessed thing to hear you say so.” “More blessed to believe, Sister Cooper, and believing, to pray with all your heart for this same eye of godliness. But we should not only pray but work. Working for God is the best sort of prayer. We must do something in his behalf: and this reminds me, Sister Cooper, that if there is so much evil spread abroad in these books, we should look heedfully into the character of such as fall into the hands of the young and the unmindful of our flock.” “That is very true; that is just what I was thinking of, Brother Cross. You can not look too close, I'm thinking into such books as you'll find at the house of Widow Thackeray. I can give a pretty 'cute guess where she gets all that sort of talk, that seems so natural at the end of her tongue.” “Verily, I will speak with Sister Thackeray on this subject,” responded the pastor--“but your own books, Sister Cooper, and those of your daughter Margaret--if it is convenient, I should prefer to examine them now while I am here.” “What! Margaret's books! examine Margaret's books!” “Even so, while I am present and while Brother Stevens is here, also, to give me his helping counsel in the way of judgment.” “Why, bless us, Brother Cross, you don't suppose that my daughter Margaret would keep any but the properest books? she's too sensible, I can tell you, for that. She's no books but the best; none, I'll warrant you, like them you'll find at Widow Thackeray's. She's not to be put off with bad books. She goes through 'em with a glance of the eye. Ah! she's too smart to be caught by the contrivances of those devils, though in place of four brothers there was four thousand of 'em. No, no! let her alone for that--she's a match for the best of 'em.” “But as Brother Stevens said,” continued John Cross, “where sin gets into the heart, the eye is blinded to the truth. Now--” “Her eye's not blinded, Brother Cross, I can tell you. They can't cheat her with their books. She has none but the very best. I'll answer for them. None of them ever did me any harm; and I reckon none of them'll ever hurt her. But I'm mistaken, if you don't have a real burning when you get to Mrs. Thackeray's.” “But, Sister Cooper--” commenced the preacher. “Yes, Brother Cross,” replied the dame. “Books, as I said before, are of two kinds.” “Yes, I know--good and bad--I only wonder there's no indifferent ones among 'em,” replied the lady. “They should be examined for the benefit of the young and ignorant.” “Oh, yes, and for more besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books--why, Brother Cross, you surely know Margaret?” The preacher answered meekly, but negatively. “Ain't she about the smartest girl you ever met with?” continued the mother. “God has certainly blessed her with many gifts,” was the reply, “but where the trust is great, the responsibility is great also.” “Don't she know it?” “I trust she does, Sister Cooper.” “You may trust every bit of it. She's got the smartness, the same as it is in books--” “But the gift of talents, Sister Cooper, is a dangerous gift.” “I don't see, Brother Cross, how good things that come from God can be dangerous things.” “If I could see the books, Sister Cooper;--I say not that they are evil--” John Cross began in tones that denoted something like despair; certainly dissatisfaction was in them, when Alfred Stevens, who had long since tired of what was going on, heard a light footfall behind him. He turned his eyes and beheld the fair maiden, herself, the propriety of whose reading was under discussion, standing in the doorway. It appeared that she had gathered from what had reached her ears, some knowledge of what was going on, for a smile of ineffable scorn curled her classic and nobly-chiselled mouth, while her brow was the index to a very haughty volume. In turning, Alfred Stevens betrayed to her the playful smile upon his own lips--their eyes met, and that single glance established a certain understanding between them. Her coming did not avail to stifle the subject of discussion. John Cross was too resolute in the prosecution of his supposed duty, to give up the cause he had once undertaken. He had all the inveteracy of the stout old puritan. The usual introduction over and he resumed, though he now addressed himself to the daughter rather than the mother. She scarcely heard him to the end. “The books were my father's, Mr. Cross; they are valuable to me on that account. They are dear to me on their own. They are almost my only companions, and though I believe you would find nothing in them which might be held detrimental, yet I must confess, if there were, I should be sorry to be made acquainted with the fact. I have not yet discovered it myself, and should be loath to have it shown by another.” “But you will let me see them, Margaret?” “Yes, sir, whenever you please. I can have no objection to that, but if by seeing them you only desire an opportunity to say what I shall read and what not, I can only tell you that your labor will be taken in vain. Indeed, the evil is already done. I have not a volume which I have not read repeatedly.” It is needless to add that Brother Cross was compelled to forego his book examination at the widow Cooper's, though strongly recommended there to press it at Widow Thackeray's. Alfred Stevens was a mute observer during the interview, which did not last very long after the appearance of Margaret. He was confirmed in all his previous impressions of her beauty, nor did the brevity of the conference prevent him from perceiving her intense self-esteem, which under certain influences of temperament is only another name for vanity. Besides they had exchanged glances which were volumes, rendering unnecessary much future explanation. She had seen that he was secretly laughing at the simple preacher, and that was a source of sympathy between them. She was very much in the habit of doing the same thing. He, on the other hand, was very well satisfied that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse and vain; and he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so accessible to the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words had passed between them, but those were expressive, and they both parted, with the firm conviction that they must necessarily meet again.	{ "id": "6012" }
9	HOW THE TOAD GRINS UPON THE ALTAR.	Shall we go the rounds with our pastor? Shall we look in upon him at Mrs. Thackeray's, while, obeying the suggestion of the widow Cooper, he purges her library of twenty volumes, casting out the devils and setting up the true gods? It is scarcely necessary. Enough to know that, under his expurgatorial finger, our beloved and bosom friend, William Shakspere, was the first to suffer. Plays! The one word was enough. Some lying histories were permitted to escape. The name of history saved them! Robinson Crusoe was preserved as a true narrative; and Swift's Tale of a Tub escaped, as it was assumed (there being no time to read any of the books, and in this respect John Cross showed himself much more of a professional critic than he conjectured) to be a treatise on one branch of the cooperage business, and so, important to domestic mechanics in a new country. The reader will remember the manner in which the library of the knight of La Mancha was disposed of. He would err, however, if he supposed that John Cross dismissed the books from the window, or did anything farther than simply to open the eyes of Mrs. Thackeray to the bad quality of some of the company she kept. That sagacious lady did not think it worth while to dispute the ipse dixit of a teacher so single-minded, if not sagacious. She bowed respectfully to all his suggestions, promised no longer to bestow her smiles on the undeserving--a promise of no small importance when it is remembered that, at thirty-three, Mrs. Thackeray was for the first time a widow--and that night she might have been seen laughing heartily with Mesdames Ford and Quickly at the amorous pertinacity of the baffled knight of Eastcheap. Under the paternal wing of John Cross, Alfred Stevens obtained the desired entree into the bosom of the flock. He was everywhere admitted with gladness--everywhere welcomed as to a home; and the unsophisticated old teacher by whose agency this was effected, congratulated his congregation and himself, on leaving the village, that he had left in it a person so full of grace, and one who, with the blessing of God, was so likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega--it was the essential whole. It would be well to read other books if they could be had--Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of--but they could be done without. The word of God was in the one volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and suffice the hungering and thirsting soul. “If you could lay hands upon the book of sermons written by Brother Peter Cummins, which his wife had printed, I'm thinking it would serve, next to God's own blessed word, to put you in the right way. It's been a great helping to me, Alfred Stevens, that same book of sermons; and, I reckon it's because it's so good a book that it's not printed now. I don't see it much about. But I'll get you one if I can, and bring or send it to you, soon enough to help you to the wisdom that you're a seeking after. If it only wakes the spirit in you as it did in me--if it only stirs you up with the spirit of divine love--you'll find it easy enough to understand the teachings of the holy volume. All things become clear in that blessed light. By its help you read, and by its working you inwardly digest all the needful learning. The Lord be with you, Alfred Stevens, and bring to perfect ripening your present undertaking.” “Amen!” was the solemn response of the hypocrite, but we need not say what an irreverent and unholy thought lay at the bottom of his mind in making this ejaculation. Before the departure of John Cross, the latter had made terms with Squire Hinkley for the board and lodging of Brother Stevens and his horse. Hinkley would have preferred taking nothing, considering the praiseworthy purpose of the supposed theological student; but Stevens shrunk from receiving such an obligation with a feeling of pride, which yet had no scruples at practising so wretched an imposture. He insisted upon making compensation, or upon leaving the house; and, not to incur this risk, Hinkley consented to receive a weekly sum in payment; but the charge was considerably smaller, as we may suppose, than it would have been had the lodger simply appeared as an inoffensive traveller, practising no fraud and making no professions of religion. Having effected all these arrangements, to his own satisfaction and seemingly that of all others, John Cross departed once more into the wilderness on his single-hearted ministry of love. A sturdy and an honest worker was he in the tabernacle, with a right mind if not a very wise one; and doing more good in his generation, and after the fashion of his strength, than is often permitted to the stall-fed doctors of his vocation. The reader will suppose that the old man has been already gone some seven days. Meanwhile, the young student has fairly made himself at home in Charlemont. He has a snug room, entirely to himself, at Squire Hinkley's, and, by the excellent care of the worthy dame, it is provided with the best bedding and the finest furniture. Her own hands sweep it clean, morning and night, for the incipient parson; she makes up the bed, and, in customary phrase, puts it in all respects to rights. His wants are anticipated, his slightest suggestion met with the most prompt consideration; and John Cross himself, humble and unexacting as he was, might have felt some little twinges of mortal envy could he have known that his protege promised to become a much greater favorite than himself. This, indeed, seemed very likely to be the case. A good young man in the sight of the ladies is always a more attractive person than a good old man. Dame Hinkley, though no longer young herself, remembered that she had been so, and preserved all her sympathies, in consequence, for young people. She thought Alfred Stevens so handsome, and he smiled so sweetly, and he spoke so genty, and, in short, so great had been his progress in the affections of his hostess in the brief space of a single week, that we are constrained to confess ourselves rejoiced that she herself was an old woman, as well on her own account as on that of her worthy spouse. Her good man was very well satisfied, whether from confidence or indifference, that such should be the case. Her attentions to the young stranger probably diverted them from himself. But not so with William Hinkley--the son. We have already had some glimpses of the character of this young man. We may now add that the short week's residence of Stevens in Charlemont had increased the soreness at his heart. In that week he had seen fairly established that intimacy between his rival and the lady of his love which seemed to give the death-blow to any pretensions of his. He had seen them meet; had seen them go forth together; beheld their mutual eyes, and, turning his own inward, saw how deeply his heart was concerned in the probable sympathies of theirs. Then, to turn to his own habitation, and to behold THAT, mother and all, devoted to the same absolute stranger; to pass unheeded in the presence of those whom he best loved--over whom natural ties gave him inalienable rights; to feel himself put aside for one only known of yesterday; to look with yearning, and meet eyes only of disregard and indifference! Such being the suggestions of his jealous and suffering nature, it is surely no matter of wonder that the youth grew melancholy and abstracted. Our adventurer was snugly seated in the little but select chamber which had been given him in the house of Squire Hinkley. A table, neatly spread with a cotton cover, stood before him: a travelling-portfolio was opened beneath his hand, with a broad sheet of paper, already well written over, and waiting nothing but his signature, and perhaps the postscript. He was absorbed unusually in his cogitations, and nibbled into bits the feathery end of the gray goosequill of which he had been making such excellent use. While he meditates, unseeing, we will use the liberty of an old acquaintance to scan the letter--for such it is--which he has been writing. Perhaps we shall gather from it some matters which it may concern us yet to know:-- “Dear Barnabas: The strangest adventure--positively the very strangest--that ever happened to a son of Murkey's, will keep me from the embraces of the brethren a few weeks longer. I am benighted, bewildered, taken with art-magic, transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, not myself nor yet another, but, as they say in Mississippi, 'a sort of betweenity.' Fancy me suddenly become a convert to the bluest presbyterianism, as our late excellent brother Woodford became, when he found that he could not get Moll Parkinson on any other terms--and your guess will not be very far from the true one. I am suddenly touched with conviction. I have seen a light on my way from Tarsus. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I have seen the wickedness of my ways, and yours too, you dog; and, having resolved on my own repentance, I am taking lessons which shall enable me to effect yours. Precious deal of salt will it need for that! Salt river will fall, while its value rises. But the glory of the thing--think of that, my boy! What a triumph it will be to revolutionize Murkey's! --to turnout the drinkers and smokers, and money-changers; to say, 'Hem! my brethren, let us pay no more taxes to sin in this place!' There shall be no more cakes and ale. Ginger shall have no heat i' the mouth there; and, in place of smoking meats and tobacco, give you nothing but smoking methodism! Won't that be a sight and a triumph which shall stir the dry bones in our valley--ay, and bones not so dry? There shall be a quaking of the flesh in sundry places. Flam will perish in the first fit of consternation; and if Joe Burke's sides do not run into sop and jelly, through the mere humor of the thing, then prophecy is out of its element quite. “Seriously, you dog, I have become a theological student! Don't you see proofs of my progress in my unctuous phraseology. I was taken suddenly upon the highway--a brand plucked from the burning--and to be stuck up on high, still lighted, however, as a sort of lantern and lighthouse to other wayfarers--wandering rogues like yourself, who need some better lights than your own if it only be to show you how to sin decently. I am professedly a convert to the true faith, though which that is, I think, has not well been determined among you at Murkey's, or, indeed, anywhere else. I believe the vox populi, vox Dei, still comprises the only wholesome decision which has yet been made on the subject. The popular vote here declares it to be methodism; with you it is baptism or presbyterianism--which? I am a flexible student, however, and when I meet you again at Murkey's, shall be prepared to concur with the majority. “But, in sober fact, I am a professor--actually recognised by my neighbors as one of the elect--set apart to be and do mighty things. How I came so, will call for a long story, which I defer to another occasion. Enough to tell you that an accidental rencontre with a silly old preacher (whose gullet I filled with raw brandy, which I recommended to him, under another name, as a sovereign remedy against flatulence, and which nearly strangled him he took such a premeditated swallow), brought me into one of the loveliest little villages in all this western country, and there I saw many things--among others--a woman! -- “A woman! --that one word, you dog, will explain the mystery--will show you why I am thus transmuted, TRANSMOGRIFIED, and in 'a state of betweenity.' Nothing less, I assure you, could make me disguise myself after the present fashion; wear the sanctimonious and sour phiz which the common law of modern religion prescribes, and keep me much longer from the pleasanter communion of such glorious imps, as I suppose, are, even now, beginning to gather in the dingy smoke-room of our sovereign Murkey. But this woman, you will ask. Ay, ay, but you shall have no answer yet. It shall be enough for you that she is a queen of Sheba, after her own fashion. A proud, imperious, passionate creature--tall, really beautiful--and so majestic! You should see the flashing of her eyes to know what sort of a thing is moral lightning. Her face kindles up in an instant. She is an intensifier, and like most such, cursedly smart. Young too--scarce eighteen, I think; queer too--almost tyrannical at times--but full of blood, of unregulated passions, moody, capricious, and, of course, easy game, if the sportsman knows anything of the habits of the bird. She is a country-girl, but no hoyden. Her intensity of character, her pride and great self-esteem, have made her a solitary. Unsophisticated in some respects, she is yet not to be surprised. In solitude, and a taste for it, she has acquired a sort of moral composure which makes her secure against surprise. I am really taken with the girl, and COULD love her, I tell you--nay, do love her--so long as love can keep himself--out of a state of bondage! I do not think, at this moment, that I shall violate any of the laws of the conventicle, like small-witted Brother Woodford; though, so far as the woman is concerned, I should leave it without argument to the free vote of all the Lads of Fancy that ever gather round Murkey's round table, if my justification for turning traitor, would not prove immeasurably more complete than his. “So! so! There are bones enough for you to crunch, you professional bandog. I had not meant to tell you half so much. There is some danger that one may lose his game altogether, if he suffers his nose to point unnecessarily to the cover where it lies. I know what keen scents are in the club, some of which would be on my track in no time if they knew where to find me; but I shall baffle you, you villains. My post-town is fifty miles from the place where I pursue my theological studies; you are too wise to attempt a wild-goose chase. You may smack your chaps, Barney, with envy; bite them too if you please, and it will only whet my own sense of pleasure to fancy your confusion, and your hopeless denunciations in the club. I shall be back in time for term--meanwhile get the papers in readiness. Write to me at the post-town of Ellisland, and remember to address me as Alfred Stevens--nay, perhaps, you may even say, 'Rev. Alfred Stevens,' it will grace the externals of the document with a more unctuous aspect, and secure the recipient a more wholesome degree of respect. Send all my letters to this town under envelope with this direction. I wrote you twice from Somerville. Did I tell you that old Hunks has been deused liberal? I can laugh at the small terms, yet go to Murkey's and shine through the smoke with the best of you. I solicit the prayers of the Round Table. “Faithfully, yours, &c.” So far our profligate had written to his brother profligate, when a tap was heard at the entrance of his chamber. Thrusting the written papers into his portfolio, he rose, and opening the door discovered his hostess at the entrance. “I came, Brother Stevens,” said the old lady, “if you not too busy in your studies, to have a little talk with you, and to get your counsel upon a subject that a little distresses me. But you look as if you were busy now--” “Not too busy, Mrs. Hinkley, to oblige you in this or in any other respect,” replied the guest with suitable suavity of expression--“shall I attend you down stairs.” “Oh! no! it won't need,” said she. “I'll take a seat with you awhile. We shall be less liable to interruption here.” Stevens scarcely repressed his smile, but the seniority of the old lady made her proceedings very innocent, however much they might have been adverse to the rules. He threw wide the door, and without more hesitation she followed him at once into the chamber.	{ "id": "6012" }
10	THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.	The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in few words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady. But the long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible form, related to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his account. The lad was a decided melancholic. His appetite was bad; his looks were thin and unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he lacked his own usual spirit. What was the cause of the change which had come over him so suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for the remedy. She had consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he departed; but that good man, after a brief examination of the patient, had freely admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him, and what was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude himself, he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a recommendation to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah. It appears that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with exemplary fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the questions asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering; and expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts and feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the subdued tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest. Whenever he was approached on the subject, as the good old lady assured her guest, he shook off his questioners with no little haste, and took to the woods for the rest of the day. “That day,” said she, “you needn't look for William Hinkley to his dinner.” Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which had seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied, characterized by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was surprised therefore to learn from the old lady that the lad was remarkable for his gentleness. “How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?” he asked with some curiosity. “Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on him for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months since I first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have spoken to him. Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week. My old man don't seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a great change in him now from what there used to be. A mother's eye sees a great way farther into the hearts of her children, Brother Stevens, than any other persons; and I can see plainly that William is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing like it--that he once was. Why, once, he was all life, and good humor; could dance and sing with the merriest among them; and was always so good and kind, and loved to do whatever would please a body; and was always with somebody, or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest sports. Now, he don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you 'most always see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll be going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming to care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at the books that he used to be so fond of.” “He has been fond of books, then--had he many?” “Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides from the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives about half a mile from the village, and has a world of books. But now he neither gets books from other people nor reads what he's got. I'm dubious, Brother Stevens, that he's read too much for his own good. Something's not right here, I'm a thinking.” The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this manner indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease. Stevens answered her encouragingly. “I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad. The young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place in the mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect. He's probably tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business? It's high time that such a youth should have made a choice.” “That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes, and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business that would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming about the country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept pretty much at home, going over his books and studying, now one and now another, just as Mr. Calvert gave them to him.” “What studies did he pursue?” “Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he wants to be a lawyer;--” “A lawyer!” “Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books pretty hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I said before, about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing thin, and that he had put down the books altogether, and had the change come over him just as I told you. You see how thin he is now. You'd scarce believe him to be the same person if you'd seen him then. Why his cheeks were as full and as red as roses, and his eye was always shining and laughing, and he had the liveliest step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin, what with flute and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar, and we were all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the sound of the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances, and he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always so sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look upon him. Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's the matter, and tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed kindness, and I'd never forget it, or forget you, to my dying day.” “Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see and speak with your son.” “Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him and advise him it will do him good.” “Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please you. Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such changes are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too. But what may be your son's age.” “Nineteen last April.” “Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley.” “Isn't he?” “He will do you credit yet.” “Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens? You'll try and bring all to rights?” “Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best.” “Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you.” “Do not speak of it, my dear madam,” said Stevens, bowing with profound deference as the old lady took her departure. She went off with light heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy man, and an equal faith in his sincerity. “What a bore!” he muttered as he closed the door behind her. “This is one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my privileges. I shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners, and look into the petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and boor's brat for ten miles round. See why boys reject their mush, and why the girls dislike to listen to the exhortations of a mamma, who requires them to leave undone what she has done herself--and with sufficient reason too, if her own experience be not wholly profitless. Well, I must submit. There are advantages, however; I shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall go hard with me if all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so various.” The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make his toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for the well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless of their externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be disposed by a fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which the necessities of travel limited Brother Stevens were not various, they were yet select. The good young man had an affection for his person, which was such certainly as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than usually particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat. For this he substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig of lilac, on a ground of the most delicate lemon color. He consulted complexions, and his mirror determined him in favor of this pattern. Brother Stevens would not have worn it had he been summoned, in his new vocation, to preach or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have dreamed of anything but a black stock had his business been to address the democracy from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such necessities, would have been made to correspond with the principles with which such a situation more distinctly called for. But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He was thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel a visit. His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable when we are told that his present visit was one of previous arrangement. They were about to go forth on a ramble together--the woods were so wild and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont were so very picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of basin in the bosom of the hills at a little distance, which she was to show him; and there was the sweetest stream in the world, that meandered in the neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the picturesque--lakes embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through unbroken forests, and all so much the more devotedly, when he had such a companion as Margaret Cooper. And Margaret Cooper! --she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his books. The glowing passages which she loved to repeat, were also the favorite passages in his memory. Over the burning and thrilling strains of Byron, the tender and spiritual of Shelley, the graceful and soft of Campbell, she loved to linger. They filled her thoughts. They made her thoughts. She felt that her true utterance lay in their language; and this language, until now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the dull ears of her companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and festivity to her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or stream, when she had to depress her speech to the base levels of their unimaginative souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented by the glowing hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when challenged to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing, the fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes of beauty seemed prostituted in their glance. We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves. We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of sympathy; and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other respects, fails to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference. That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read in the volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper needed no long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities and tastes which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she believed in his enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she found equally soon that HIS were like her own. After this discovery, she gave him credit for other and more important possessions; and little dreamed that, while he responded to her glowing sentiments with others equally glowing--avowed the same love for the same authors, and concurred with her in the preference of the same passages--his feelings were as little susceptible of sympathy with hers as would have been those of the cold demon Mephistopheles! While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her breast heaving with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to whom her beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible to HER beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts from which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her, foreign as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature, might well be considered frigid--regarded as the result of deliberate artifice--the true offspring of an habitual and base indulgence. It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding girl, that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his costume. He felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity of making the most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that such a woman as Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to regard the mere garment in which a congenial nature is arrayed, yet he also well knew that the costume is not less indicative of the tastes than the wealth of the wearer. You will see thousands of persons, men and women, richly dressed, and but one will be WELL dressed: that one, most generally, will be the individual who is perhaps of all others possessed of the least resources for dress, other than those which dwell in the well-arranged mind, the well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning fancy. His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing to go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed his hand upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his hostess, on the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son. He was about to forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had retired, when, remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking it would show that zest in her service which he really could not entertain, he determined at once to to join the young man, and begin with him that certain degree of intimacy without which it could scarcely be supposed that he could broach the subject of his personal affairs. He felt somewhat the awkwardness of this assumed duty, but then he recollected his vocation; he knew the paramount influence of the clergy upon all classes of persons in the West, and, with the conscious superiority derived from greater years and better education, he felt himself fortified in undertaking the paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had confided to his hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he joined the two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on the outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to withdraw. “If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley,” said Stevens, “I will join you. You seem to be about to go my way.” The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed into assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron giving a glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which her son did not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence which evidently conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to his already-irritated ears.	{ "id": "6012" }
11	WRESTLING.	Alfred Stevens, as he walked behind his young companion, observed him with a more deliberate survey than he had yet taken. Hitherto, the young man had challenged but little of his scrutiny. He had simply noted him for a tall youth, yet in the green, who appeared of a sulky, retiring nature, and whose looks had seemed to him on one or more occasions to manifest something like distaste for himself. The complacency of Stevens, however, was too well grounded to be much disturbed by such an exhibition. Perhaps, indeed, he would have derived a malicious sort of satisfaction in making a presumptuous lad feel his inferiority. He had just that smallness of spirit which would find its triumph in the success of such a performance. He now observed that the youth was well formed, tall, not ungraceful--with features of singular intelligence, though subdued to the verge of sadness. His face was pale and thin, his eyes were a little sunken, and his air, expression, and general outside, denoted a youth of keen sensibilities, who had suffered some disappointment. In making this examination, Alfred Stevens was not awakened to any generous purposes. He designed, in reality, nothing more than to acquit himself of the duty he had undertaken with the smallest possible exertion. His own mind was one of that mediocre character which the heart never informs. His scrutiny, therefore, though it enabled him to perceive that the young man had qualities of worth, was not such as to prompt any real curiosity to examine further. A really superior mind would have been moved to look into these resources; and, without other motive than that of bringing a young, laboring, and ardent soul out of the meshes of a new and bewildering thought or situation, would have addressed himself to the task with that degree of solicitous earnestness which disarms prejudice and invites and wins confidence. But, with his first impression, that the whole business was a “bore,” our benevolent young teacher determined on getting through with it with the least possible effort. He saw that the youth carried a book under his arm, the externals of which, so uniform and discouraging as they appear in every legal library, could not well be questioned as belonging to some such venerable receptacle of barbarous phrase and rigid authority. The circumstance afforded him an occasion to begin a conversation, the opening of which, with all his coolness, was a subject of some awkwardness. “You seem a student like myself, Mr. Hinkley, and, if I mistake not from the appearance of your book, you are taking up the profession which I am about to lay down.” “This is a law-book, sir,” said Hinkley, in accents which were rather meek than cold; “it is Blackstone.” “Ah! I thought as much. Have you been long a student?” “I may scarcely consider myself one yet. I have read, sir, rather than studied.” “A good distinction, not often made. But, do you incline to law seriously?” “Yes, sir--I know no occupation to which I so much incline.” “The law is a very arduous profession. It requires a rare union of industry, talent, and knowledge of mankind to be a good lawyer.” “I should think so, sir.” “Few succeed where thousands fail. Young men are very apt to mistake inclination for ability; and to be a poor lawyer--” “Is to be worse than poor--is to be despicable!” replied Hinkley with a half-smile, as he interrupted a speech which might have been construed into a very contemptuous commentary on his own pretensions. It would seem that the young man had so understood it. He continued thus:-- “It may be so with me, sir. It is not improbable that I deceive myself, and confound inclination with ability.” “Oh, pardon me, my dear young friend,” said Stevens patronizingly; “but I do not say so. I utter a mere generality. Of course, I can know nothing on the subject of your abilities. I should be glad to know. I should like to converse with you. But the law is very arduous, very exacting. It requires a good mind, and it requires the whole of it. There is no such thing as being a good lawyer from merely reading law. You can't bolt it as we do food in this country. We must chew upon it. It must be well digested. You seem to have the right notion on this subject. I should judge so from two things: the distinction which you made between the reader and the student; and the fact that your appearance is that of the student. I am afraid, my young friend, that you overwork yourself. You look thin, and pale, and unhappy. You should be careful that your passion for study is not indulged in at the peril of your health.” The frame of the young man seemed to be suddenly agitated. His face was flushed, and a keen, quick, flash of anger seemed to lighten in his eyes as he looked up to the paternal counsellor and replied:-- “I thank you, sir, for your interest, but it is premature. I am not conscious that my health suffers from this or any other cause.” “Nay, my young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able to see what others do and can endure. In a little country village like this, one can not easily determine; and the difficulty may be increased somewhat by one's own conviction, of the immense deal that one has to learn. If you were to spend a year in some tolerably large community. Perhaps you meditate some such plan?” . “I do not, sir,” was the cold reply. “Indeed; and have you no desire that way?” “None!” “Very strange! at your time of life the natural desire is to go into the great world. Even the student fancies he can learn better there than he can anywhere else--and so he can.” “Indeed, sir: if I may be so bold to ask, why, with this opinion, have you left the great city to bury yourself in a miserable village like Charlemont?” The question was so quickly put, and with so much apparent keenness, that Stevens found the tables suddenly reversed. But he was in nowise discomposed. He answered promptly. “You forget,” he said, “that I was speaking of very young men, of an ambitious temper, who were seeking to become lawyers. The student of divinity may very well be supposed to be one who would withdraw himself from the scene of ambition, strifes, vanities, and tumultuous passions.” “You speak, sir, as if there were a material difference in our years?” said Hinkley inquiringly. “Perhaps it is less than in our experience, my young friend,” was the answer of the other, betraying that quiet sense of superiority which would have been felt more gallingly by Hinkley had he been of a less modest nature. Still, it had the effect of arousing some of the animal in his blood, and he responded in a sentence which was not entirely without its sneer, though it probably passed without penetrating such a buff of self-esteem as guarded the sensibilities of our adventurer. “You are fortunate sir, if, at your time of life, you have succeeded in withdrawing your thoughts and feelings, with your person, from such scenes of ambition as you speak of. But I fancy the passions dwell with us in the country as well as with the wiser people in the town; and I am not sure that there is any pursuit much more free from their intrusion than that of the law.” “Your remark exhibits penetration, Mr. Hinkley. I should not be surprised if you have chosen your profession properly. Still, I should counsel you not to overwork yourself. Bear with me, sir; I feel an interest in your behalf, and I must think you do so. Allow me to be something of a judge in this matter. You are aware, sir, that I too have been a lawyer.” The youth bowed stiffly. “If I can lend you any assistance in your studies, I will do so. Let me arrange them for you, and portion out your time. I know something about that, and will save you from injuring your health. On this point you evidently need instruction. You are doing yourself hurt. Your appearance is matter of distress and apprehension to your parents.” “To my parents, sir?” “Your mother, I mean! She spoke to me about you this very morning. She is distressed at some unaccountable changes which have taken place in your manners, your health, your personal appearance. Of course I can say nothing on the subject of the past, or of these changes; but I may be permitted to say that your present looks do not betoken health, and I have supposed this to be on account of your studies. I promised your good mother to confer with you, and counsel you, and if I can be of any help--“' “You are very good, sir!” The young man spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not easy to suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation which he felt at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she had employed. Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was rising in vigor in due degree with the pressure put upon it. “You are very good, sir, and I am very much obliged to you. I could have wished, however, that my mother had not given you this trouble, sir. She certainly must have been thinking of Mr. John Cross. She could scarcely have hoped that any good could have resulted to me, from the counsel of one who is so little older than myself.” This speech made our adventurer elevate his eyebrows. He absolutely stopped short to look upon the speaker. William Hinkley stopped short also. His eye encountered that of Stevens with an expression as full of defiance as firmness. His cheeks glowed with the generous indignation which filled his veins. “This fellow has something in him after all,” was the involuntary reflection that rose to the other's mind. The effect was, however, not very beneficial to his own manner. Instead of having the effect of impressing upon Stevens the necessity of working cautiously, the show of defiance which he saw tended to provoke and annoy him. The youth had displayed so much propriety in his anger, had been so moderate as well as firm, and had uttered his answer with so much dignity and correctness, that he felt himself rebuked. To be encountered by an unsophisticated boy, and foiled, though but for an instant--slightly estimated, though but by a youth, and him too, a mere rustic--was mortifying to the self-esteem that rather precipitately hurried to resent it. “You take it seriously, Mr. Hinkley. But surely an offer of service need not be mistaken. As for the trifling difference which may be in our years, that is perhaps nothing to the difference which may be in our experience, our knowledge of the world, our opportunities and studies.” “Surely, sir; all these MAY be, but at all events we are not bound to assume their existence until it is shown.” “Oh, you are likely to prove an adept in the law, Mr. Hinkley.” “I trust, sir, that your progress may be as great in the church.” “Ha! --do I understand you? There is war between us then?” said Stevens, watching the animated and speaking countenance of William Hinkley with increasing curiosity. “Ay, sir--there is!” was the spirited reply of the youth. “Let it be war; I am the better pleased, sir, that you are the first to proclaim it.” “Very good,” said Stevens, “be it so, if you will. At all events you can have no objection to say why it should be so.” “Do you ask, sir?” “Surely; for I can not guess.” “You are less sagacious, then, than I had fancied you. You, scarce older than myself--a stranger among us--come to me in the language of a father, or a master, and without asking what I have of feeling, or what I lack of sense, undertake deliberately to wound the one, while insolently presuming to inform the other.” “At the request of your own mother!” “Pshaw! what man of sense or honesty would urge such a plea. Years, and long intimacy, and wisdom admitted to be superior, could alone justify the presumption.” The cheeks of Stevens became scalding hot. “Young man!” he exclaimed, “there is something more than this!” “What! would it need more were our positions reversed?” demanded Hinkley with a promptness that surprised himself. “Perhaps not! would you provoke me to personal violence?” “Ha! might I hope for that? surely you forget that you are a churchman?” Stevens paused awhile before he answered. His eyes looked vacantly around him. By this time they had left the more thickly-settled parts of the village considerably behind them. But a few more dwellings lay along the path on which they were approaching. On the left, a gorge opened in the hills by which the valley was dotted, which seemed a pathway, and did indeed lead to one or more dwellings which were out of sight in the opposite valley. The region to which this pathway led was very secluded, and the eye of Stevens surveyed it for a few moments in silence. The words of Hinkley unquestionably conveyed a challenge. According to the practice of the country, AS A LAWYER, he would have been bound to have taken it as such. A moment was required for reflection. His former and present position caused a conflict in his mind. The last sentence of Hinkley, and a sudden glimpse which he just then caught of the residence of Margaret Cooper, determined his answer. “I thank you, young man, for reminding me of my duties. You had nearly provoked the old passions and old practices into revival. I forgive you--you misunderstand me clearly. I know not how I have offended you, for my only purpose was to serve your mother and yourself. I may have done this unwisely. I will not attempt to prove that I have not. At all events, assured of my own motives, I leave you to yourself. You will probably ere long feel the injustice you have done me!” He continued on his way, leaving William Hinkley almost rooted to the spot. The poor youth was actually stunned, not by what was said to him, but by the sudden consciousness of his own vehemence. He had expressed himself with a boldness and an energy of which neither himself nor his friend, until now, would have thought him capable. A moment's pause in the provocation, and the feelings which had goaded him on were taken with a revulsion quite as sudden. As he knew not well what he had said, so he fancied he had said everything precisely as the passionate thought had suggested it in his own mind. Already he began to blame himself--to feel that he had done wrong--that there had been nothing in the conduct or manner of Stevens, however unpleasant, to justify his own violence; and that the true secret of his anger was to be found in that instinctive hostility which he had felt for his rival from the first. The more he mused, the more he became humbled by his thoughts; and when he recollected the avowed profession of Stevens his shame increased. He felt how shocking it was to intimate to a sworn non-combatant the idea of a personal conflict. To what point of self-abasement his thoughts would have carried him, may only be conjectured; he might have hurried forward to overtake his antagonist with the distinct purpose of making the most ample apology; nay, more, such was the distinct thought which was now pressing upon his mind, when he was saved from this humiliation by perceiving that Stevens had already reached, and was about to enter the dwelling of Margaret Cooper. With this sight, every thought and feeling gave place to that of baffled love, and disappointed affection. With a bitter groan he turned up the gorge, and soon shut himself from sight of the now hateful habitation.	{ "id": "6012" }
12	THE MASTER AND HIS PUPILS.	The course of the young rustic was pursued for half a mile further till he came to a little cottage of which the eye could take no cognizance from any part of the village. It was embowelled in a glen of its own--a mere cup of the slightly-rising hills, and so encircled by foliage that it needed a very near approach of the stranger before he became aware of its existence. The structure was very small, a sort of square box with a cap upon it, and consisted of two rooms only on a ground floor, with a little lean-to or shed-room in the rear, intended for a kitchen. As you drew nigh and passed through the thick fringe of wood by which its approach was guarded, the space opened before you, and you found yourself in a sort of amphitheatre, of which the cottage was the centre. A few trees dotted this area, large and massive trees, and seemingly preserved for purposes of shade only. It was the quietest spot in the world, and inspired just that sort of feeling in the contemplative stranger which would be awakened by a ramble among the roofless ruins of the ancient abbey. It was a home for contemplation--in which one might easily forget the busy world without, and deliver himself up, without an effort, to the sweetly sad musings of the anchorite. The place was occupied, however. A human heart beat within the humble shed, and there was a spirit, sheltered by its quiet, that mused many high thoughts, and dreamed in equal congratulation and self-reproach, of that busy world from which it was an exile. The visit of William Hinkley was not paid to the solitude. A venerable man, of large frame, and benignant aspect, sat beneath an aged tree, paternal in its appearance like himself. This person might be between fifty and sixty years of age. His hair, though very thick and vigorous, was as white as driven snow. But there were few wrinkles on his face, and his complexion was the clear red and white of a healthy and sanguine temperament. His brow was large and lofty. It had many more wrinkles than his face. There were two large horizontal seams upon it that denoted the exercise of a very busy thought. But the expression of his eye was that of the most unembarrassed benevolence and peace. It was subdued and sometimes sad, but then it had the sweetest, playfullest twinkle in the world. His mouth, which was small and beautifully formed, wore a similar expression. In short he was what we would call a handsome old gentleman, whose appearance did not offend taste, and whose kind looks invited confidence. Nor would we mistake his character. This person was the Mr. Calvert, the schoolmaster of the village, of whom Mrs. Hinkley spoke to Alfred Stevens in discussing the condition of her son. His tasks were over for the day. The light-hearted rabble whom he taught, released from his dominion which was not severe, were, by this time, scampering over the hills, as far from their usual place of restraint as the moderate strength of their legs could carry them. Though let loose, boys are not apt to feel their liberty in its prime and freshness, immediately in the neighborhood of the schoolhouse. The old gentleman left to himself, sat out in the open air, beneath a massive oak, the paternal stretching of whose venerable arms not unfrequently led to the employment of the shade below for carrying on the operations of the schoolhouse. There, squat on their haunches, the sturdy boys--germs of the finest peasantry in the world--surrounded their teacher in a group quite as pleasing as picturesque. The sway of the old man was paternal. His rod was rather a figurative than a real existence; and when driven to the use of the birch, the good man, consulting more tastes than one, employed the switch from the peach or some other odorous tree or shrub, in order to reconcile the lad, as well as he could, to the extraordinary application. He was one of those considerate persons, who disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled, as a judge, to hang a gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk should carry out the painful requisitions of the laws. Seated beneath his tree, in nearly the same spot and position in which he had dismissed his pupils, William Calvert pored over the pages of a volume as huge of size as it was musty of appearance. It was that pleasant book--quite as much romance as history--the “Knights of Malta,” by our venerable father, Monsieur L'Abbe Vertot. Its dull, dim, yellow-looking pages--how yellow, dim, and dull-looking in comparison with more youthful works--had yet a life and soul which it is not easy to find in many of these latter. Its high wrought and elaborate pictures of strife, and toil, and bloodshed, grew vividly before the old man's eyes; and then, to help the illusion, were there not the portraits--mark me--the veritable portraits, engraved on copper, with all their titles, badges, and insignia, done to the life, of all those brave, grand, and famous masters of the order, by whom the deeds were enacted which he read, and who stared out upon his eyes, at every epoch, in full confirmation of the veracious narrative? No wonder that the old man became heedless of external objects. No wonder he forgot the noise of the retiring urchins, and the toils of the day, as, for the twentieth time, he glowed in the brave recital of the famous siege--the baffled fury of the Turk--the unshaken constancy and unremitted valor of the few but fearless defenders. The blood in his cheek might be seen hastening to and fro in accordance with the events of which he read. His eye was glowing--his pulse beating, and he half started from his seat, as, hearing a slight footstep, he turned to encounter the respectful homage of his former pupil, still his friend, our young acquaintance, William Hinkley. The old man laid down his book upon the grass, extended his hand to his visiter, and leaning back against the tree, surrendered himself to a quiet chuckle in which there was the hesitancy of a little shame. “You surprised me, William,” he said; “when I read old Vertot, and such books, I feel myself a boy again. You must have seen my emotion. I really had got so warm, that I was about to start up and look for the weapons of war; and had you but come a moment later, you might have suffered an assault. As it was, I took you for a Turk--Solyman himself--and was beginning to ask myself whether I should attack you tooth and nail, having no other weapons, or propose terms of peace. Considering the severe losses which you--I mean his Turkish highness--had sustained, I fancied that you would not be disinclined to an arrangement just at this moment. But this very notion, at the same time, led me to the conclusion that I might end the struggle for ever by another blow. A moment later, my boy, and you might have been compelled to endure it for the Turk.” The youth smiled sadly as he replied: “I must borrow that book from you, sir, some of these days. I have often thought to do so, but I am afraid.” “Afraid of what, William?” “That it will turn my head, sir, and make me dislike more difficult studies.” “It is a reasonable fear, my son; but there is no danger of this sort, if we will only take heed of one rule, and that is, to take such books as we take sweetmeats--in very small quantities at a time, and never to interfere with the main repast. I suspect that light reading--or reading which we usually call light, but which, as it concerns the fate of man in his most serious relations, his hopes, his affections, his heart, nay, his very people and nation--is scarcely less important than any other. I suspect that this sort of reading would be of great service to the student, by relieving the solemnity of more tedious and exacting studies, if taken sparingly and at allotted hours. The student usually finds a recreation of some kind. I would make books of this description his recreation. Many a thick-headed and sour parent has forced his son into a beer-shop, into the tastes for tobacco and consequently brandy, simply from denying him amusements which equally warm the blood and elevate the imagination. Studies which merely inform the head are very apt to endanger the heart. This is the reproach usually urged against the class of persons whom we call thorough lawyers. Their intense devotion to that narrow sphere of law which leaves out jury-pleading, is very apt to endanger the existence of feeling and imagination. The mere analysis of external principles begets a degree of moral indifference to all things else, which really impairs the intellect by depriving it of its highest sources of stimulus. Mathematicians suffer in the same way--become mere machines, and forfeit, in their concern for figures, all the social and most of the human characteristics. The mind is always enfeebled by any pursuit so single and absorbing in its aims as to leave out of exercise any of the moral faculties. That course of study is the only one to make a truly great man, which compels the mind to do all things of which it is capable.” “But how do you reconcile this, sir, with the opinion, so generally entertained, that no one man can serve two masters? Law, like the muse, is a jealous mistress. She is said to suffer no lachesse to escape with impunity.” “You mistake me. While I counsel one to go out of his profession for relief and recreation, I still counsel but the one pursuit. Men fail in their professions, not because they daily assign an hour to amusement, but because they halt in a perpetual struggle between some two leading objects. For example, nothing is more frequent in our country than to combine law and politics. Nothing is more apt to ruin the lawyer.” “Very true, sir. I now understand you. But I should think the great difficulty would be, in resorting to such pleasant books as this of Vertot for relief and recreation, that you could not cast him off when you please. The intoxication would continue even after the draught has been swallowed, and would thus interfere with the hours devoted to other employments.” “There is reason in that, William, and that, indeed, is the grand difficulty. But to show that a good scheme has its difficulties is not an argument for abandoning it.” “By no means, sir.” “The same individual whom Vertot might intoxicate, would most probably be intoxicated by more dangerous stimulants. Everything, however, depends upon the habits of self-control which a man has acquired in his boyhood. The habit of self-control is the only habit which makes mental power truly effective. The man who can not compel himself to do or to forbear, can never be much of a student. Students, if you observe, are generally dogged men--inflexible, plodding, persevering--among lawyers, those men whom you always find at their offices, and seldom see anywhere else. They own that mental habit which we call self-control, which supplies the deficiency in numerous instances of real talent. It is a power, and a mighty power, particularly in this country, where children are seldom taught it, and consequently grow up to be a sort of moral vanes that move with every change of wind, and never fix until they do so with their own rust. He who learns this power in boyhood will be very sure to master all his companions.” The darker expression of sadness passed over the countenance of the ingenuous youth. “I am afraid,” said he, “that I shall never acquire this habit.” “Why so? In your very fear I see a hope.” “Alas! sir, I feel my own instability of character. I feel myself the victim of a thousand plans and purposes, which change as soon and as often as they are made. I am afraid, sir, I shall be nothing!” “Do not despond, my son,” said the old man sympathizingly. “Your fear is natural to your age and temperament. Most young men at your time of life feel numerous yearnings--the struggle of various qualities of mind, each striving in newly-born activity, and striving adversely. Your unhappiness arises from the refusal of these qualities to act together. When they learn to co-operate, all will be easy. Your strifes will be subdued; there will be a calm like that upon the sea when the storms subside.” “Ah! but when will that be? A long time yet. It seems to me that the storm rather increases than subsides.” “It may seem so to you now, and yet, when the strife is greatest, the favorable change is at hand. It needs but one thing to make all the conflicting qualities of one's mind cooperate.” “What is that one thing, sir?” “An object! As yet, you have none.” “None, sir!” “None--or rather many--which is pretty much the same thing as having none.” “I am not sure, sir--but it seems to me, sir, that I have an object.” “Indeed, William! are you sure?” “I think so, sir.” “Well, name it.” “I have ambition, sir.” “Ah! that is a passion, not an object. Does your ambition point in one direction? Unless it does, it is objectless.” The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:-- “I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer sign of feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never performings of a mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn. Is it not very childish to talk of having ambition, without knowing what to do with it? If we have ambition, it is given to us to work with. You come to me, and declare this ambition! We confer together. Your ambition seeks for utterance. You ask, 'What sort of utterance will suit an ambition such as mine?' To answer this question, we ask, 'What are your qualities?' Did you think, William, that I disparaged yours when I recommended the law to you as a profession?” “No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so--I think so.” “No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you would suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language.” “I can not think--I am too miserable to think!” exclaimed the youth in a burst of passion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with a serious anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:-- “Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all that time I have not seen you.” A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately answer. “Ask ME!” exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both instantly recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress. He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betrayed sufficiently the object of his present pursuit. “Ask me!” said he. “I can tell you what he's been about better than anybody else.” “Well, Ned,” said the old man, “what has it been? I am afraid it is your fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone.” “My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks out, he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and say whether it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean as a March pickerel in the short space of three months. Only look at him, I say.” “Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says, you do look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might make you thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?” The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him. “He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last.” “Shot?” “Yes, shot! --He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my thinking, that a few months more will cure.” “You have some joke at bottom, Edward,” said the old man gravely. “Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean one in a single season.” “What do you mean?” “I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons I got from you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom by applications of smartness to a very different place--among the books we sometimes read from was one of Master Ovid.” “Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So you think that the blind boy has hit William, eh?” “A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his heart. I'm sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will follow.” “Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?” “Margaret Cooper.” “Ah! indeed!” said the old man gravely. “Do not heed him,” exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon his cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language. “I would rather not heed him, William. The passions of persons so young as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions which win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough for this, ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational.” “Ah, lud! --wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal in the doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in love myself.” “You!” “Yes! I! --I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach us Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of thing that we never heard about before. Love was never expected to be rational. He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since I was knee-high to the great picture of your Cupid that you showed us in your famous Dutch edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried men feel that it's irrational; the old married people tell us so in a grunt that proves the truth of what they say. But that don't alter the case. It's a sort of natural madness that makes one attack in every person's lifetime. I don't believe in repeated attacks. Some are bit worse than others; and some think themselves bit, and are mistaken. That's the case with William, and it's that that keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That makes him thin. He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none of him; and love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I don't believe it.” William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the speaker. “Well, well!” said the impetuous cousin, “I don't want to make you vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with you. What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's what I come for.” “It's too cool,” said the old man. “Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do something--something better than talking about love, and law, where nobody's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley can't stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a reconciliation. Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper to-night, and you must go and see me do it.” “On one condition only, Ned.” “What's that, gran'pa?” “That you both sup with me.” “Done for myself. What say you, Bill?” The youth gave a sad assent, and the rattling youth proceeded:-- “The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief. Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish is better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and you need never again believe me.” And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to the hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.	{ "id": "6012" }
13	THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.	The route, which conducted them--over a range of gently-ascending hills, through groves tolerably thick, an uncleared woodland tract comprising every variety of pleasant foliage, at length brought them to a lonely tarn or lake, about a mile in circumference, nestled and crouching in the hollow of the hills, which, in some places sloped gently down to its margin, at others hung abruptly over its deep and pensive waters. A thick fringe of shrubs, water-grasses, and wild flowers, girdled its edges, and gave a dark and mysterious expression to its face. There were many beaten tracks, narrow paths for individual wayfarers on foot, which conducted down to favorite fishing-spots. These were found chiefly on those sides of the lake where the rocks were precipitous. Perched on a jutting eminence, and half shrouded in the bushes which clothed it, the silent fisherman took his place, while his fly was made to kiss the water in capricious evolutions, such as the experienced angler knows how to employ to beguile the wary victim from close cove, or gloomy hollow, or from beneath those decaying trunks of overthrown trees which have given his brood a shelter from immemorial time. To one of these selected spots, Ned Hinkley proceeded, leaving his companions above, where, in shade themselves, and lying at ease upon the smooth turf, they could watch his successes, and at the same time enjoy the coup d'oeil, which was singularly beautiful, afforded by the whole surrounding expanse. The tarn, like the dark mysterious dwelling of an Undine, was spread out before them with the smoothness of glass, though untransparent, and shining beneath their eyes like a vast basin of the richest jet. A thousand pretty changes along the upland slopes, or abrupt hills which hemmed it in, gave it a singular aspect of variety which is seldom afforded by any scene very remarkable for its stillness and seclusion. Opposite to the rock on which Ned Hinkley was already crouching, the hill-slope to the lake was singularly unbroken, and so gradual was the ascent from the margin, that one was scarcely conscious of his upward movement, until looking behind him, he saw how far below lay the waters which he had lately left. The pathway, which had been often trodden, was very distinctly marked to the eyes of our two friends on the opposite elevation, and they could also perceive where the same footpath extended on either hand a few yards from the lake, so as to enable the wanderer to prolong his rambles, on either side, until reaching the foot of the abrupt masses of rock which distinguished the opposite margin of the basin. To ascend these, on that side, was a work of toil, which none but the lover of the picturesque is often found willing to encounter. Above, even to the eyes of our friends, though they occupied an eminence, the skies seemed circumscribed to the circumference of the lake and the hills by which it was surrounded; and the appearance of the whole region, therefore, was that of a complete amphitheatre, the lake being the floor, the hills the mighty pillars, and the roof, the blue, bright, fretted canopy of heaven. “I have missed you, my son, for some time past, and the beauty of the picture reminds me of what your seeming neglect has made me lose. When I was a young man I would have preferred to visit such a spot as this alone. But the sense of desolation presses heavily upon an old man under any circumstances; and he seeks for the company of the young, as if to freshen, with sympathy and memory, the cheerlessness and decay which attends all his own thoughts and fancies. To come alone into the woods, even though the scene I look on be as fair as this, makes me moody and awakens gloomy imaginations; and since you have been so long absent, I have taken to my books again, and given up the woods. Ah! books, alone, never desert us; never prove unfaithful; never chide us; never mock us, as even these woods do, with the memory of baffled hopes, and dreams of youth, gone, never to return again. “I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but my heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the spirit for it. I felt that I should not be any company for you, and feared that I would only affect you with some of my own dullness.” “Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should know that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies of age, provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune of age that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the pulse, if not violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man. But these sorrows of yours, my son--do you not call them by too strong a name? I suspect they are nothing more than the discontents, the vague yearnings of the young and ardent nature, such as prompt enterprise and lead to nobleness. If you had them not, you would think of little else than how to squat with your cousin there, seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much--you would think only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the fish, and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself. This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow. It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO something--for this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do what it requires.” “I know not what it requires.” “Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what that is.” “Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can DO” “Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy. Your wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved you only too much.” “Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything.” “Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not alter the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents prefer this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have undergone a very sudden change of character. They have always treated you tenderly--too tenderly.” “Too tenderly, sir?” “Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate your doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is because they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which constitutes their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it is because he is a stranger.” “Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question and to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?” “Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of this which I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your parents employ a stranger to counsel you, it proves that something in your conduct leads them to think that you need counsel.” “That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a person of whom nobody knows anything?” “I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you have some dislike to this stranger. “No, sir--” was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he stopped short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread his cheek, and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to perceive the momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed it, proceeded in his commentary. “There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel, spoken even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be not good, if the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it may not receive our adoption.” “I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions of one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than myself.” “It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem, when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual years than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living, days and weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is the crowding events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the living actively and well--that supply us with the materials for knowing and teaching. In comparison with millions of your own age, who have lived among men, and shared in their strifes and troubles, you would find yourself as feeble a child as ever yet needed the helping hand of counsel and guardianship; and this brings me back to what I said before. Your parents have treated you too tenderly. They have done everything for you. You have done nothing for yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints, nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance.” “Courage and perseverance!” was the surprised exclamation of the youth. “Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge to you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own.” “Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?” “Exactly so!” “Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked on with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of Drummond's horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces? There was surely no lack of courage there!” “No! in that sense, my son, I labor under no deficiency. But this sort of courage is of the meanest kind. It is the courage of impulse, not of steadfastness. Hear me, William. You have more than once allowed the expression of a wonder to escape you, why a man, having such a passion for books and study, and with the appearance of mental resources, such as I am supposed to possess, should be content, retiring from the great city, to set up his habitation in this remote and obscure region. My chosen profession was the law; I was no unfaithful student. True, I had no parents to lament my wanderings and failures; but I did not wander. I studied closely, with a degree of diligence which seemed to surprise all my companions. I was ambitious--intensely ambitious. My head ran upon the strifes of the forum, its exciting contests of mind and soul--its troubles, its triumphs. This was my leading thought--it was my only passion. The boy-frenzies for women, which are prompted less by sentiment or judgment, than by feverish blood, troubled me little. Law was my mistress--took up all my time--absorbed all my devotion. I believe that I was a good lawyer--no pettifogger--the merely drilled creature who toils for his license, and toils for ever after solely for his petty gains, in the miserably petty arts of making gains for others, and eluding the snares set for his own feet by kindred spirits. As far as the teaching of this country could afford me the means and opportunity, I endeavored to procure a knowledge of universal law--its sources--its true objects--its just principles--its legitimate dicta. Mere authorities never satisfied me, unless, passing behind the black gowns, I could follow up the reasoning to the first fountains--the small original truths, the nicely discriminated requisitions of immutable justice--the clearly-defined and inevitable wants of a superior and prosperous society. Everything that could illustrate law as well as fortify it; every collateral aid, in the shape of history or moral truth, I gathered together, even as the dragoon whose chief agent is his sabre, yet takes care to provide himself with pistols, that may finish what the other weapon has begun. Nor did I content myself with the mere acquisition of the necessary knowledge. Knowing how much depends upon voice, manner and fluency, in obtaining success before a jury, I addressed myself to these particulars with equal industry. My voice, even now, has a compass which your unexercised lungs, though quite as good originally as mine, would fail entirely to contend with. I do not deceive myself, as I certainly do not seek to deceive you, when I say, that I acquired the happiest mastery over my person.” “Ah! sir--we see that now--that must have been the case!” said the youth interrupting him. The other continued, sadly smiling as he heard the eulogy which the youth meant to speak, the utterance of which was obviously from the heart. “My voice was taught by various exercises to be slow or rapid, soft or strong, harsh or musical, by the most sudden, yet unnoticeable transitions. I practised all the arts, which are recommended by elocutionists for this purpose, I rumbled my eloquence standing on the seashore, up to my middle in the breakers. I ran, roaring up steep hills--I stretched myself at length by the side of meandering brooks, or in slumberous forests of pine, and sought, by the merest whispers, to express myself with distinctness and melody. But there was something yet more requisite than these, and this was language. My labors to obtain all the arts of utterance did not seem less successful. I could dilate with singular fluency, with classical propriety, and great natural vigor of expression. I studied directness of expression by a frequent intercourse with men of business, and examined, with the nicest urgency, the particular characteristics of those of my own profession who were most remarkable for their plain, forcible speaking. I say nothing of my studies of such great masters in discourse and philosophy, as Milton, Shakspere, Homer, Lord Bacon, and the great English divines. As a model of pure English the Bible was a daily study of two hours; and from this noble well of vernacular eloquence, I gathered--so I fancied--no small portion of its quaint expressive vigor, its stern emphasis, its golden and choice phrases of illustration. Never did a young lawyer go into the forum more thoroughly clad in proof, or with a better armory as well for defence as attack.” “You did not fail, sir?” exclaimed the youth with a painful expression of eager anxiety upon his countenance. “I did fail--fail altogether! In the first effort to speak, I fainted, and was carried lifeless from the court-room.” The old man covered his face with his hands, for a few moments, to conceal the expression of pain and mortification which memory continued to renew in utter despite of time. The young man's hand rested affectionately on his shoulder. A few moments sufficed to enable the former to renew his narrative. “I was stunned but not crushed by this event. I knew my own resources. I recollected a similar anecdote of Sheridan; of his first attempt and wretched failure. I, too, felt that 'I had it in me,' and though I did not express, I made the same resolution, that 'I would bring it out.' But Sheridan and myself failed from different causes, though I did not understand this at that time. He had a degree of hardihood which I had not; and he utterly lacked my sensibilities. The very intenseness of my ambition; the extent of my expectation; the elevated estimate which I had made of my own profession; of its exactions; and, again, of what was expected from me; were all so many obstacles to my success. I did not so esteem them, then; and after renewing my studies in private, my exercises of expression and manner, and going through a harder course of drilling, I repeated the attempt to suffer a repetition of the failure. I did not again faint, but I was speechless. I not only lost the power of utterance, but I lost the corresponding faculty of sight. My eyes were completely dazed and confounded. The objects of sight around me were as crowded and confused as the far, dim ranges of figures, tribes upon tribes, and legions upon legions, which struggle in obscurity and distance, in any one of the begrimed and blurred pictures of Martin's Pandemonium. My second failure was a more enfeebling disaster than the first. The first procured me the sympathy of my audience, the last exposed me to its ridicule.” Again the old man paused. By this time, the youth had got one of his arms about the neck of the speaker, and had taken one of his hands within his grasp. “Yours is a generous nature, William,” said Mr. Calvert, “and I have not said to you, until to-day, how grateful your boyish sympathies have been to me from the first day when you became my pupil. It is my knowledge of these sympathies, and a desire to reward them, that prompts me to tell a story which still brings its pains to memory, and which would be given to no other ears than your own. I see that you are eager for the rest--for the wretched sequel.” “Oh, no! sir--do not tell me any more of it if it brings you pain. I confess I should like to know all, but--” “You shall have it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered unless I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very possibly, the moral which I could not. You will comprehend something better, the woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage of the brain; between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and the steady valor of the soul--that valor, which, though it trembles, marches forward to the attack--recovers from its fainting, to retrieve its defeat; and glows with self-indignation because it has suffered the moment of victory to pass, without employing itself to secure the boon! -- “Shame, and a natural desire to retrieve myself, operated to make me renew my efforts. I need not go through the processes by which I endeavored to acquire the necessary degree of hardihood. In vain did I recall the fact that my competitors were notoriously persons far inferior to me in knowledge of the topics; far inferior in the capacity to analyze them; rude and coarse in expression; unfamiliar with the language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism. But it was myself that I feared. I had mistaken the true censor. It was my own standards of judgment that distressed and made me tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what I thought should be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in terror from the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the point which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases, produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which it had arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly and for ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave up the contest, yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved, though inferior, and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my voice, my manner; my resources of study, thought, and utterance, fled from sight--fled here--to bury myself in the wilderness, and descend to the less ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of schooling--I trust, to better uses--the minds of others. I had done nothing with my own.” “Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department of human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost none of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the gifts of eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought.” “But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these possessions to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable miser, with the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to ourselves only--useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning, like love, like money, derives its true value from its circulation.” “And you circulate yours, my dear sir. What do we not owe you in Charlemont? What do I not owe you, over all?” “Love, my son--love only. Pay me that. Do not desert me in my old age. Do not leave me utterly alone!” “I will not, sir--I never thought to do so.” “But,” said the old man, “to resume. Why did I fail is still the question. Because I had not been taught those lessons of steady endurance in my youth which would have strengthened me against failure, and enable me finally to triumph. There is a rich significance in what we hear of the Spartan boy, who never betrayed his uneasiness or agony though the fox was tearing out his bowels. There is a sort of moral roughening which boys should be made to endure from the beginning, if the hope is ever entertained, to mature their minds to intellectual manhood. Our American Indians prescribe the same laws, and in their practice, very much resemble the ancient Spartans. To bear fatigue, and starvation, and injury--exposure, wet, privation, blows--but never to complain. Nothing betrays so decidedly the lack of moral courage as the voice of complaint. It is properly the language of woman. It must not be your language. Do you understand me, William?” “In part, sir, but I do not see how I could have helped being what I am.” “Perhaps not, because few have control of their own education. Your parents have been too tender of you. They have not lessoned you in that proper hardihood which leads to performance. That task is before yourself, and you have shrunk from the first lessons.” “How, sir?” “Instead of clinging to your Blackstone, you have allowed yourself to be seduced from its pages, by such attractions as usually delude boys. The eye and lip of a pretty woman--a bright eye and a rosy cheek, have diverted you from your duties.” “But do our duties deny us the indulgence of proper sensibilities?” “Certainly not--PROPER sensibilities, on the contrary, prescribe our duties.” “But love, sir--is not love a proper sensibility?” “In its place, it is. But you are a boy only. Do you suppose that it was ever intended that you should entertain this passion before you had learned the art of providing your own food? Not so; and the proof of this is to be found in the fact that the loves of boyhood are never of a permanent character. No such passion can promote happiness if it is indulged before the character of the parties is formed. I now tell you that in five years from this time you will probably forget Miss Cooper.” “Never! never!” “Well, well--I go farther in my prophecy. Allow me to suppose you successful in your suit, which I fancy can never be the case--” “Why, sir, why?” “Because she is not the girl for you; or rather, she does not think you the man for her!” “But why do you think so, sir?” “Because I know you both. There are circumstances of discrepancy between you which will prevent it, and even were you to be successful in your suit, which I am very sure will never be the case, you would be the most miserably-matched couple under the sun.” “Oh, sir, do not say so--do not. I can not think so, sir.” “You WILL not think so, I am certain. I am equally certain from what I know of you both, that you are secure from any such danger. It is not my object to pursue this reference, but let me ask you, William, looking at things in the most favorable light, has Margaret Cooper ever given you any encouragement?” “I can not say that she has, sir, but--” “Nay, has she not positively discouraged you? Does she not avoid you--treat you coldly when you meet--say little, and that little of a kind to denote--I will not say dislike--but pride, rather than love?” The young man said nothing. The old one proceeded:-- “You are silent, and I am answered. I have long watched your intercourse with this damsel, and loving you as my own son, I have watched it with pain. She is not for you, William. She loves you not. I am sure of it. I can not mistake the signs. She seeks other qualities than such as you possess. She seeks meretricious qualities, and yours are substantial. She seeks the pomps of mind, rather than its subdued performances. She sees not, and can not see, your worth; and whenever you propose to her, your suit will be rejected. You have not done so yet?” “No, sir--but I had hoped--” “I am no enemy, believe me, William, when I implore you to discard your hope in that quarter. It will do you no hurt. Your heart will suffer no detriment, but be as whole and vigorous a few years hence--perhaps months--as if it had never suffered any disappointment.” “I wish I could think so, sir.” “And you would not wish that you could think so, if you were not already persuaded that your first wish is hopeless.” “But I am not hopeless, sir.” “Your cause is. But, promise me that you will not press your suit at present.” The young man was silent. “You hesitate.” “I dare not promise.” “Ah, you are a foolish boy. Do you not see the rock on which you are about to split. You have never learned how to submit. This lesson of submission was that which made the Spartan boy famous. Here, you persist in your purpose, though your own secret convictions, as well as your friend's counsel, tell you that you strive against hope. You could not patiently submit to the counsel of this stranger, though he came directly from your parents, armed with authority to examine and to counsel.” “Submit to him! I would sooner perish!” exclaimed the indignant youth. “You will perish unless you learn this one lesson. But where now is your ambition, and what does it aim at?” The youth was silent. “The idea of an ambitious youth, at twenty, giving up book and candle, leaving his studies, and abandoning himself to despair, because his sweetheart won't be his sweetheart any longer, gives us a very queer idea of the sort of ambition which works in his breast.” “Don't, sir, don't, I pray you, speak any more in this manner.” “Nay, but, William, ask yourself. Is it not a queer idea?” “Spare me, sir, if you love me.” “I do love you, and to show you that I do, I now recommend to you to propose to Margaret Cooper.” “What, sir, you do not think it utterly hopeless then?” “Yes, I do.” “And you would have me expose myself to rejection?” “Exactly so!” “Really, sir, I do not understand you.” “Well, I will explain. Nothing short of rejection will possibly cure you of this malady; and it is of the last importance to your future career, that you should be freed as soon as possible from this sickly condition of thought and feeling--a condition in which your mind will do nothing, and in which your best days will be wasted. Blackstone can only hope to be taken up when you have done with her.” “Stay, sir--that is she below.” “Who?” “Margaret----” “Who is with her?” “The stranger--this man, Stevens.” “Ha! your counsellor, that would be? Ah! William, you did not tell me all.”	{ "id": "6012" }

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