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OUR acts our angels are, or good or ill, The fatal shadows that walk by us still. --JOHN FLETCHER. THE next morning came; the carriage was at the door of Maltravers, to bear him away he cared not whither. Where could he fly from memory? He had just despatched the letter to Evelyn,--a letter studiously written for the object of destroying all the affection to which he had so fondly looked as the last charm of life. He was now only waiting for Vargrave, to whom he had sent, and who hastened to obey the summons. When Lumley arrived, he was shocked at the alteration which a single night had effected in the appearance of Maltravers; but he was surprised and relieved to find him calm and self-possessed. "Vargrave," said Maltravers, "whatever our past coldness, henceforth I owe to you an eternal gratitude; and henceforth this awful secret makes between us an indissoluble bond. If I have understood you rightly, neither Alice nor other living being than yourself know that in me, Ernest Maltravers, stands the guilty object of Alice's first love. Let that secret still be kept; relieve Alice's mind from the apprehension of learning that the man who betrayed her yet lives: he will not live long! I leave time and method of explanation to your own judgment and acuteness. Now for Evelyn." Here Maltravers stated generally the tone of the letter he had written. Vargrave listened thoughtfully. "Maltravers," said he, "it is right to try first the effect of your letter. But if it fail, if it only serve to inflame the imagination and excite the interest, if Evelyn still continue to love you, if that love preys upon her, if it should undermine health and spirit, if it should destroy her?" Maltravers groaned. Lumley proceeded: "I say this not to wound you, but to provide against all circumstances. I too have spent the night in revolving what is best to be done in such a case; and this is the plan I have formed. Let us, if need be, tell the truth to Evelyn, robbing the truth only of its shame. Nay, nay, listen. Why not say that under a borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice (though in innocence and honour)? Your tender age, the difference of rank, forbade your union. Her father, discovering your clandestine correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all clew for your inquiries. You lost sight of each other,--each was taught to believe the other dead. Alice was compelled by her father to marry Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only child induced her to accept my uncle. You have now learned all,--have learned that Evelyn is the daughter of your first love, the daughter of one who adores you still, and whose life your remembrance has for so many years embittered. Evelyn herself will at once comprehend all the scruples of a delicate mind; Evelyn herself will recoil from the thought of making the child the rival to the mother. She will understand why you have flown from her; she will sympathize with your struggles; she will recall the constant melancholy of Alice; she will hope that the ancient love may be renewed, and efface all grief; Generosity and Duty alike will urge her to conquer her own affection! And hereafter, when time has restored you both, father and child may meet with such sentiments as father and child may own!" Maltravers was silent for some minutes; at length he said abruptly, "And you really loved her, Vargrave,--you love her still? Your dearest care must be her welfare." "It is! indeed, it is!" "Then I must trust to your discretion; I can have no other confidant; I myself am not fit to judge. My mind is darkened--you may be right--I think so." "One word more,--she may discredit my tale, if unsupported. Will you write one line to me to say that I am authorized to reveal the secret, and that it is known only to me? I will not use it unless I should think it absolutely required." Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to the effect of what Lumley had suggested. "I will inform you," he said to Vargrave as he gave him the paper, "of whatever spot may become my asylum; and you can communicate to me all that I dread and long to hear; but let no man know the refuge of despair!" There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye,--the only tear that had glistened there for many years; he paused irresolute, then advanced, again halted, muttered to himself, and turned aside. "As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your engagement has been public,--some public account of its breach must be invented. You have always been considered a proud man; we will say that it was low birth on the side of both mother and father (the last only just discovered) that broke off the alliance!" Vargrave was talking to the deaf; what cared Maltravers for the world? He hastened from the room, threw himself into his carriage, and Vargrave was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire.

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QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber . . . Mala gramina pastus. *--VIRGIL. Pars minima est ipsa puella sui. **--OVID. * "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious pastures." ** "The girl is the least part of himself." IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey. He was right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letter of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she should share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight. Vargrave therefore very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers. He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of the world; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate. "The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent attachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who (his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about the country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed name of Butler. By him she was most ardently beloved in return. Her father, perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honour being compromised. He was a strange man, that father! and I know not his real character and motives; but he suddenly withdrew his daughter from the suit and search of her lover,--they saw each other no more; her lover mourned her as one dead. In process of time your mother was constrained by her father to marry Mr. Cameron, and was left a widow with an only child,--yourself: she was poor;--very poor! and her love and anxiety for you at last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle; for your sake she married again; again death dissolved the tie! But still, unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, the memory of which darkened and embittered all her life, and still she lived upon the hope to meet with the lost again. At last, and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection lived,--was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of your mother in Ernest Maltravers! It devolved on me (an invidious--a reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering, patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again. You know Maltravers,--his high-wrought, sensitive, noble character; he recoiled in terror from the thought of making his love to the daughter the last and bitterest affliction to the mother he had so loved; knowing too how completely that mother had entwined herself round your affections, he shuddered at the pain and self-reproach that would be yours when you should discover to whom you had been the rival, and whose the fond hopes and dreams that your fatal beauty had destroyed. Tortured, despairing, and half beside himself, he has fled from this ill-omened passion, and in solitude he now seeks to subdue that passion. Touched by the woe, the grief, of the Alice of his youth, it is his intention, as soon as he can know you restored to happiness and content, to hasten to your mother, and offer his future devotion as the fulfilment of former vows. On you, and you alone, it depends to restore Maltravers to the world,--on you alone it depends to bless the remaining years of the mother who so dearly loves you!" It may be easily conceived with what sensations of wonder, compassion, and dismay, Evelyn listened to this tale, the progress of which her exclamations, her sobs, often interrupted. She would write instantly to her mother, to Maltravers. Oh, how gladly she would relinquish his suit: How cheerfully promise to rejoice in that desertion which brought happiness to the mother she had so loved! "Nay," said Vargrave, "your mother must not know, till the intelligence can be breathed by his lips, and softened by his protestations of returning affection, that the mysterious object of her early romance is that Maltravers whose vows have been so lately offered to her own child. Would not such intelligence shock all pride, and destroy all hope? How could she then consent to the sacrifice which Maltravers is prepared to make? No! not till you are another's--not (to use the words of Maltravers) till you are a happy and beloved wife--must your mother receive the returning homage of Maltravers; not till then can she know where that homage has been recently rendered; not till then can Maltravers feel justified in the atonement he meditates. He is willing to sacrifice himself; he trembles at the thought of sacrificing you! Say nothing to your mother, till from her own lips she tells you that she has learned all." Could Evelyn hesitate; could Evelyn doubt? To allay the fears, to fulfil the prayers of the man whose conduct appeared so generous, to restore him to peace and the world; above all, to pluck from the heart of that beloved and gentle mother the rankling dart, to shed happiness over her fate, to reunite her with the loved and lost,--what sacrifice too great for this? Ah, why was Legard absent? Why did she believe him capricious, light, and false? Why had she shut her softest thoughts from her soul? But he--the true lover--was afar, and his true love unknown! and Vargrave, the watchful serpent, was at hand. In a fatal hour, and in the transport of that enthusiasm which inspires alike our more rash and our more sublime deeds, which makes us alike dupes and martyrs,--the enthusiasm that tramples upon self, that forfeits all things to a high-wrought zeal for others, Evelyn consented to become the wife of Vargrave! Nor was she at first sensible of the sacrifice,--sensible of anything but the glow of a noble spirit and an approving conscience. Yes, thus, and thus alone, did she obey both duties,--that, which she had well-nigh abandoned, to her dead benefactor, and that to the living mother. Afterwards came a dread reaction; and then, at last, that passive and sleep-like resignation, which is Despair under a milder name. Yes,--such a lot had been predestined from the first; in vain had she sought to fly it: Fate had overtaken her, and she must submit to the decree! She was most anxious that the intelligence of the new bond might be transmitted instantly to Maltravers. Vargrave promised, but took care not to perform. He was too acute not to know that in so sudden a step Evelyn's motives would be apparent, and his own suit indelicate and ungenerous. He was desirous that Maltravers should learn nothing till the vows had been spoken, and the indissoluble chain forged. Afraid to leave Evelyn, even for a day, afraid to trust her in England to an interview with her mother,--he remained at Paris, and hurried on all the requisite preparations. He sent to Douce, who came in person, with the deeds necessary for the transfer of the money for the purchase of Lisle Court, which was now to be immediately completed. The money was to be lodged in Mr. Douce's bank till the lawyers had completed their operations; and in a few weeks, when Evelyn had attained the allotted age, Vargrave trusted to see himself lord alike of the betrothed bride, and the hereditary lands of the crushed Maltravers. He refrained from stating to Evelyn who was the present proprietor of the estate to become hers; he foresaw all the objections she would form;--and, indeed, she was unable to think, to talk, of such matters. One favour she had asked, and it had been granted,--that she was to be left unmolested to her solitude till the fatal day. Shut up in her lonely room, condemned not to confide her thoughts, to seek for sympathy even in her mother,--the poor girl in vain endeavoured to keep up to the tenor of her first enthusiasm, and reconcile herself to a step, which, however, she was heroine enough not to retract or to repent, even while she recoiled from its contemplation. Lady Doltimore, amazed at what had passed,--at the flight of Maltravers, the success of Lumley,--unable to account for it, to extort explanation from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was distracted by the fear of some villanous deceit which she could not fathom. To escape herself she plunged yet more eagerly into the gay vortex. Vargrave, suspicious, and fearful of trusting to what she might say in her nervous and excited temper if removed from his watchful eye, deemed himself compelled to hover round her. His manner, his conduct, were most guarded; but Caroline herself, jealous, irritated, unsettled, evinced at times a right both to familiarity and anger, which drew upon her and himself the sly vigilance of slander. Meanwhile Lord Doltimore, though too cold and proud openly to notice what passed around him, seemed disturbed and anxious. His manner to Vargrave was distant; he shunned all _tete-a-tetes_ with his wife. Little, however, of this did Lumley heed. A few weeks more, and all would be well and safe. Vargrave did not publish his engagement with Evelyn: he sought carefully to conceal it till the very day was near at hand; but it was whispered abroad; some laughed, some believed. Evelyn herself was seen nowhere. De Montaigne had, at first, been indignantly incredulous at the report that Maltravers had broken off a connection he had so desired from a motive so weak and unworthy as that of mere family pride. A letter from Maltravers, who confided to him and Vargrave alone the secret of his retreat, reluctantly convinced him that the wise are but pompous fools; he was angry and disgusted; and still more so when Valerie and Teresa (for female friends stand by us right or wrong) hinted at excuses, or surmised that other causes lurked behind the one alleged. But his thoughts were much drawn from this subject by increasing anxiety for Cesarini, whose abode and fate still remained an alarming mystery. It so happened that Lord Doltimore, who had always had a taste for the antique, and who was greatly displeased with his own family-seat because it was comfortable and modern, fell, from _ennui_, into a habit, fashionable enough in Paris, of buying curiosities and cabinets,-- high-back chairs and oak-carvings; and with this habit returned the desire and the affection for Burleigh. Understanding from Lumley that Maltravers had probably left his native land forever, he imagined it extremely probable that the latter would now consent to the sale, and he begged Vargrave to forward a letter from him to that effect. Vargrave made some excuse, for he felt that nothing could be more indelicate than such an application forwarded through his hands at such a time; and Doltimore, who had accidentally heard De Montaigne confess that he knew the address of Maltravers, quietly sent his letter to the Frenchman, and, without mentioning its contents, begged him to forward it. De Montaigne did so. Now it is very strange how slight men and slight incidents bear on the great events of life; but that simple letter was instrumental to a new revolution in the strange history of Maltravers.

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QUID frustra simulacra fugacia captas? -- Quod petis est nusquam. *--OVID: _Met. _ iii. 432. * "Why, in vain, do you catch at fleeting shadows? That which you seek is nowhere." TO no clime dedicated to the indulgence of majestic griefs or to the soft melancholy of regret--not to thy glaciers, or thy dark-blue lakes, beautiful Switzerland, mother of many exiles; nor to thy fairer earth and gentler heaven, sweet Italy,--fled the agonized Maltravers. Once, in his wanderings, he had chanced to pass by a landscape so steeped in sullen and desolate gloom, that it had made a powerful and uneffaced impression upon his mind: it was amidst those swamps and morasses that formerly surrounded the castle of Gil de Retz, the ambitious Lord, the dreaded Necromancer, who perished at the stake, after a career of such power and splendour as seemed almost to justify the dark belief in his preternatural agencies. * * See, for description of this scenery, and the fate of De Retz, the high-wrought and glowing romance by Mr. Ritchie called "The Magician." Here, in a lonely and wretched inn, remote from other habitations, Maltravers fixed himself. In gentler griefs there is a sort of luxury in bodily discomfort; in his inexorable and unmitigated anguish, bodily discomfort was not felt. There is a kind of magnetism in extreme woe, by which the body itself seems laid asleep, and knows no distinction between the bed of Damiens and the rose-couch of the Sybarite. He left his carriage and servants at a post-house some miles distant. He came to this dreary abode alone; and in that wintry season, and that most disconsolate scene, his gloomy soul found something congenial, something that did not mock him, in the frowns of the haggard and dismal Nature. Vain would it be to describe what he then felt, what he then endured. Suffice it that, through all, the diviner strength of man was not wholly crushed, and that daily, nightly, hourly, he prayed to the Great Comforter to assist him in wrestling against a guilty love. No man struggles so honestly, so ardently as he did, utterly in vain; for in us all, if we would but cherish it, there is a spirit that must rise at last--a crowned, if bleeding conqueror--over Fate and all the Demons! One day after a prolonged silence from Vargrave, whose letters all breathed comfort and assurance in Evelyn's progressive recovery of spirit and hope, his messenger returned from the post-town with a letter in the hand of De Montaigne. It contained, in a blank envelope (De Montaigne's silence told him how much he had lost in the esteem of his friend), the communication of Lord Doltimore. It ran thus:-- MY DEAR SIR,--As I hear that your plans are likely to make you a long resident on the Continent, may I again inquire if you would be induced to dispose of Burleigh? I am willing to give more than its real value, and would raise a mortgage on my own property sufficient to pay off, at once, the whole purchase-money. Perhaps you may be the more induced to the sale from the circumstance of having an example in the head of your family, Colonel Maltravers, as I learn through Lord Vargrave, having resolved to dispose of Lisle Court. Waiting your answer, I am, dear Sir, truly yours, DOLTIMORE. "Ay," said Maltravers, bitterly, crushing the letter in his hand, "let our name be blotted out from the land, and our hearths pass to the stranger. How could I ever visit the place where I first saw _her_?" He resolved at once,--he would write to England, and place the matter in the hands of agents. This was but a short-lived diversion to his thoughts, and their cloudy darkness soon gathered round him again. What I am now about to relate may appear, to a hasty criticism, to savour of the Supernatural; but it is easily accounted for by ordinary agencies, and it is strictly to the letter of the truth. In his sleep that night a dream appeared to Maltravers. He thought he was alone in the old library at Burleigh, and gazing on the portrait of his mother; as he so gazed, he fancied that a cold and awful tremor seized upon him, that he in vain endeavoured to withdraw his eyes from the canvas--his sight was chained there by an irresistible spell. Then it seemed to him that the portrait gradually changed,--the features the same, but the bloom vanished into a white and ghastly hue; the colours of the dress faded, their fashion grew more large and flowing, but heavy and rigid as if cut in stone,--the robes of the grave. But on the face there was a soft and melancholy smile, that took from its livid aspect the natural horror; the lips moved, and, it seemed as if without a sound, the released soul spoke to that which the earth yet owned. "Return," it said, "to thy native land, and thine own home. Leave not the last relic of her who bore and yet watches over thee to stranger hands. Thy good Angel shall meet thee at thy hearth!" The voice ceased. With a violent effort Maltravers broke the spell that had forbidden his utterance. He called aloud, and the dream vanished: he was broad awake, his hair erect, the cold dews on his brow. The pallet, rather than bed on which he lay, was opposite to the window, and the wintry moonlight streamed wan and spectral into the cheerless room. But between himself and the light there seemed to stand a shape, a shadow, that into which the portrait had changed in his dream,--that which had accosted and chilled his soul. He sprang forward, "My mother! even in the grave canst thou bless thy wretched son! Oh, leave me not--say that thou--" The delusion vanished, and Maltravers fell back insensible. It was long in vain, when, in the healthful light of day, he revolved this memorable dream, that Maltravers sought to convince himself that dreams need no ministers from heaven or hell to bring the gliding falsehoods along the paths of sleep; that the effect of that dream itself, on his shattered nerves, his excited fancy, was the real and sole raiser of the spectre he had thought to behold on waking. Long was it before his judgment could gain the victory, and reason disown the empire of a turbulent imagination; and even when at length reluctantly convinced, the dream still haunted him, and he could not shake it from his breast. He longed anxiously for the next night; it came, but it brought neither dreams nor sleep, and the rain beat, and the winds howled, against the casement. Another night, and the moon was again bright; and he fell into a deep sleep; no vision disturbed or hallowed it. He woke ashamed of his own expectation. But the event, such as it was, by giving a new turn to his thoughts, had roused and relieved his spirit, and misery sat upon him with a lighter load. Perhaps, too, to that still haunting recollection was mainly owing a change in his former purpose. He would still sell the old Hall; but he would first return, and remove that holy portrait, with pious hands; he would garner up and save all that had belonged to her whose death had been his birth. Ah, never had she known for what trials the infant had been reserved!

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THE weary hours steal on And flaky darkness breaks. --_Richard III. _ ONCE more, suddenly and unlooked for, the lord of Burleigh appeared at the gates of his deserted hall! and again the old housekeeper and her satellites were thrown into dismay and consternation. Amidst blank and welcomeless faces, Maltravers passed into his study: and as soon as the logs burned and the bustle was over, and he was left alone, he took up the light and passed into the adjoining library. It was then about nine o'clock in the evening; the air of the room felt damp and chill, and the light but faintly struggled against the mournful gloom of the dark book-lined walls and sombre tapestry. He placed the candle on the table, and drawing aside the curtain that veiled the portrait, gazed with deep emotion, not unmixed with awe, upon the beautiful face whose eyes seemed fixed upon him with mournful sweetness. There is something mystical about those painted ghosts of ourselves, that survive our very dust! Who, gazing upon them long and wistfully, does not half fancy that they seem not insensible to his gaze, as if we looked our own life into them, and the eyes that followed us where we moved were animated by a stranger art than the mere trick of the limner's colours? With folded arms, rapt and motionless, Maltravers contemplated the form that, by the upward rays of the flickering light, seemed to bend down towards the desolate son. How had he ever loved the memory of his mother! how often in his childish years had he stolen away, and shed wild tears for the loss of that dearest of earthly ties, never to be compensated, never to be replaced! How had he respected, how sympathized with the very repugnance which his father had at first testified towards him, as the innocent cause of her untimely death! He had never seen her,--never felt her passionate kiss; and yet it seemed to him, as he gazed, as if he had known her for years. That strange kind of inner and spiritual memory which often recalls to us places and persons we have never seen before, and which Platonists would resolve to the unquenched and struggling consciousness of a former life, stirred within him, and seemed to whisper, "You were united in the old time." "Yes!" he said, half aloud, "we will never part again. Blessed be the delusion of the dream that recalled to my heart the remembrance of thee, which, at least, I can cherish without a sin. 'My good angel shall meet me at my hearth!' so didst thou say in the solemn vision. Ah, does thy soul watch over me still? How long shall it be before the barrier is broken! how long before we meet, but not in dreams!" The door opened, the housekeeper looked in. "I beg pardon, sir, but I thought your honour would excuse the liberty, though I know it is very bold to--" "What is the matter? What do you want?" "Why, sir, poor Mrs. Elton is dying,--they say she cannot get over the night; and as the carriage drove by the cottage window, the nurse told her that the squire was returned; and she has sent up the nurse to entreat to see your honour before she dies. I am sure I was most loth to disturb you, sir, with such a message; and says I, the squire has only just come off a journey--" "Who is Mrs. Elton?" "Don't your honour remember the poor woman that was run over, and you were so good to, and brought into the house the day Miss Cameron--" "I remember,--say I will be with her in a few minutes. About to die!" muttered Maltravers; "she is to be envied,--the prisoner is let loose, the bark leaves the desert isle!" He took his hat and walked across the park, dimly lighted by the stars, to the cottage of the sufferer. He reached her bedside, and took her hand kindly. She seemed to rally at the sight of him; the nurse was dismissed, they were left alone. Before morning, the spirit had left that humble clay; and the mists of dawn were heavy on the grass as Maltravers returned home. There were then on his countenance the traces of recent and strong emotion, and his step was elastic, and his cheek flushed. Hope once more broke within him, but mingled with doubt, and faintly combated by reason. In another hour Maltravers was on his way to Brook-Green. Impatient, restless, fevered, he urged on the horses, he sowed the road with gold; and at length the wheels stopped before the door of the village inn. He descended, asked the way to the curate's house; and crossing the burial-ground, and passing under the shadow of the old yew-tree, entered Aubrey's garden. The curate was at home, and the conference that ensued was of deep and breathless interest to the visitor. It is now time to place before the reader, in due order and connection, the incidents of that story, the knowledge of which, at that period, broke in detached and fragmentary portions on Maltravers.

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I CANNA chuse, but ever will Be luving to thy father still, Whaireir he gae, whaireir he ryde, My luve with him maun still abyde; In weil or wae, whaireir he gae, Mine heart can neir depart him frae. Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament. IT may be remembered that in the earlier part of this continuation of the history of Maltravers it was stated that Aubrey had in early life met with the common lot of a disappointed affection. Eleanor Westbrook, a young woman of his own humble rank, had won, and seemed to return, his love; but of that love she was not worthy. Vain, volatile, and ambitious, she forsook the poor student for a more brilliant marriage. She accepted the hand of a merchant, who was caught by her beauty, and who had the reputation of great wealth. They settled in London, and Aubrey lost all traces of her. She gave birth to an only daughter: and when that child had attained her fourteenth year, her husband suddenly, and seemingly without cause, put an end to his existence. The cause, however, was apparent before he was laid in his grave. He was involved far beyond his fortune,--he had died to escape beggary and a jail. A small annuity, not exceeding one hundred pounds, had been secured on the widow. On this income she retired with her child into the country; and chance, the vicinity of some distant connections, and the cheapness of the place, concurred to fix her residence in the outskirts of the town of C-----. Characters that in youth have been most volatile and most worldly, often when bowed down and dejected by the adversity which they are not fitted to encounter, become the most morbidly devout; they ever require an excitement, and when earth denies, they seek it impatiently from heaven. This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook; and this new turn of mind brought her naturally into contact with the principal saint of the neighbourhood, Mr. Richard Templeton. We have seen that that gentleman was not happy in his first marriage; death had not then annulled the bond. He was of an ardent and sensual temperament, and quietly, under the broad cloak of his doctrines, he indulged his constitutional tendencies. Perhaps in this respect he was not worse than nine men out of ten. But then he professed to be better than nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a million! To a fault of temperament was added the craft of hypocrisy, and the vulgar error became a dangerous vice. Upon Mary Westbrook, the widow's daughter, he gazed with eyes that were far from being the eyes of the spirit. Even at the age of fourteen she charmed him; but when, after watching her ripening beauty expand, three years were added to that age, Mr. Templeton was most deeply in love. Mary was indeed lovely,--her disposition naturally good and gentle, but her education worse than neglected. To the frivolities and meannesses of a second-rate fashion, inculcated into her till her father's death, had now succeeded the quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant bigotries, of a transcendental superstition. In a change so abrupt and violent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles unsettled, vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble intellect, she clung to the first plank held out to her in "that wide sea of wax" in which "she halted." Early taught to place the most implicit faith in the dictates of Mr. Templeton, fastening her belief round him as the vine winds its tendrils round the oak, yielding to his ascendency, and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner, no confessor in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village virtue than Richard Templeton (who deemed himself the archetype of the only pure Protestantism) to the morals and heart of Mary Westbrook. Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely broken by long participation in the excesses of London dissipation and by the reverse of fortune which still preyed upon a spirit it had rather soured than humbled, died when Mary was eighteen. Templeton became the sole friend, comforter, and supporter of the daughter. In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany),--an hour when the heart of one was softened by grief and gratitude, and the conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, the virtue of Mary Westbrook was betrayed. Her sorrow and remorse, his own fears of detection and awakened self-reproach, occasioned Templeton the most anxious and poignant regret. There had been a young woman in Mrs. Westbrook's service, who had left it a short time before the widow died, in consequence of her marriage. Her husband ill-used her; and glad to escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's daughter, of whom she had been extremely fond, she had returned to Miss Westbrook after the funeral of her mother. The name of this woman was Sarah Miles. Templeton saw that Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary; it was necessary to make a confidant,--he selected her. Miss Westbrook was removed to a distant part of the country, and Templeton visited her cautiously and rarely. Four months afterwards, Mrs. Templeton died, and the husband was free to repair his wrong. Oh, how he then repented of what had passed! but four months' delay, and all this sin and sorrow might have been saved! He was now racked with perplexity and doubt: his unfortunate victim was advanced in her pregnancy. It was necessary, if he wished his child to be legitimate--still more if he wished to preserve the honour of its mother--that he should not hesitate long in the reparation to which duty and conscience urged him. But on the other hand, he, the saint, the oracle, the immaculate example for all forms, proprieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and premature a hymen-- "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in his galled eyes, To marry." No! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips, the triumph of his foes, the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and rash a folly. But still Mary pined so, he feared for her health--for his own unborn offspring. There was a middle path,--a compromise between duty and the world; he grasped at it as most men similarly situated would have done,--they were married, but privately, and under feigned names: the secret was kept close. Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with the real condition and names of the parties. Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits, Templeton formed the most sanguine hopes. He resolved, as soon as the confinement was over, to go abroad; Mary should follow; in a foreign land they should be publicly married; they would remain some years on the Continent; when he returned, his child's age could be put back a year. Oh, nothing could be more clear and easy! Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards. Templeton at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters. He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas. But now he had a child,--a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a first-born child,--the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and hope of advancing years! On this child he doted with all that paternal passion which the hardest and coldest men often feel the most for their own flesh and blood--for fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of self-love from one fund to another. Yet this child--this darling that he longed to show to the whole world--it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he should conceal and disown. It had happened that Sarah's husband died of his own excesses a few weeks before the birth of Templeton's child, she having herself just recovered from her confinement; Sarah was therefore free forever from her husband's vigilance and control. To her care the destined heiress was committed, and her own child put out to nurse. And this was the woman and this the child who had excited so much benevolent curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and the three old maids of C-----. * Alarmed at Sarah's account of the scrutiny of the parson, and at his own rencontre with that hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no time in changing the abode of the nurse; and to her new residence had the banker bent his way, with rod and angle, on that evening which witnessed his adventure with Luke Darvil. ** When Mr. Templeton first met Alice, his own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months old,--but little older than Alice's. If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's _protege_ first excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness, her anxious care for her little one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart. It connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy. Templeton had felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks. The dearest desire at his heart was to have his daughter under his roof,--to fondle, to play with her, to watch her growth, to win her affection. This, at present, seemed impossible. But if he were to marry,--marry a widow, to whom he might confide all, or a portion, of the truth; if that child could be passed off as hers--ah, that was the best plan! And Templeton wanted a wife! Years were creeping on him, and the day would come when a wife would be useful as a nurse. But Alice was supposed to be a widow; and Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly. If she could be induced to remove from C-----, either part with her own child or call it her niece,--and adopt his. Such, from time to time, were Templeton's thoughts, as he visited Alice, and found, with every visit, fresh evidence of her tender and beautiful disposition; such the objects which, in the First Part of this work, we intimated were different from those of mere admiration for her beauty. *** But again, worldly doubts and fears--the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance, the worse than lowness of Alice's origin, the dread of discovery for her early error--held him back, wavering and irresolute. To say truth, too, her innocence and purity of thought kept him at a certain distance. He was acute enough to see that he--even he, the great Richard Templeton--might be refused by the faithful Alice. * See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 164. ** "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 181. *** "Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral feelings than even by her physical beauty. Her love for her child, for instance, impressed him powerfully," etc. "His feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained towards her, were of a very complicated nature, and it will be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly comprehend them." --See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 178. At last Darvil was dead; he breathed more freely, he revolved more seriously his projects; and at this time, Sarah, wooed by her first lover, wished to marry again; his secret would pass from her breast to her second husband's, and thence how far would it travel? Added to this, Sarah's conscience grew uneasy; the brand ought to be effaced from the memory of the dead mother, the legitimacy of the child proclaimed; she became importunate, she wearied and she alarmed the pious man. He therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his marriage whose testimony he had cause to fear,--of the presence of the only one acquainted with his sin and the real name of the husband of Mary Westbrook. He consented to Sarah's marriage with William Elton, and offered a liberal dowry on the condition that she should yield to the wish of Elton himself, an adventurous young man, who desired to try his fortunes in the New World. His daughter he must remove elsewhere. While this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and drooping, became seriously ill. Symptoms of decline appeared; the physician recommended a milder air, and Devonshire was suggested. Nothing could equal the generous, the fatherly kindness which Templeton evinced on this most painful occasion. He insisted on providing Alice with the means to undertake the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice, with a heart heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's sake to all he offered. Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes were in good train. He foresaw that the child of Alice was doomed! --that was one obstacle out of the way. Alice herself was to be removed from the sphere of her humble calling. In a distant county she might appear of better station, and under another name. Conformably to these views, he suggested to her that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and respectability of patients, did doctors attend to their complaints. He proposed that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off; that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a servant; that he would do this for her as for a relation, and that she should take that relation's name. To this, Alice rapt in her child, and submissive to all that might be for the child's benefit, passively consented. It was arranged then as proposed, and under the name of Cameron, which, as at once a common yet a well-sounding name, occurred to his invention, Alice departed with her sick charge and a female attendant (who knew nothing of her previous calling or story), on the road to Devonshire. Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in a few days; and it was fixed that they should meet at Exeter. It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that memorable day when Alice once more beheld Maltravers; and, as she believed, uttering the vows of love to another. * The indisposition of her child had delayed her some hours at the inn: the poor sufferer had fallen asleep; and Alice had stolen from its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on the father. Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early love! And when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, and believed herself forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of the mother rather than of the mistress that supported her. She, meek creature, felt not the injury to herself; but _his_ child,--the sufferer, perhaps the dying one,--_there_, _there_ was the wrong! No! she would not hazard the chance of a cold--great Heaven! perchance an _incredulous_--look upon the hushed, pale face above. But little time was left for thought, for explanation, for discovery. She saw him--unconscious of the ties so near, and thus lost--depart as a stranger from the spot; and henceforth was gone the sweet hope of living for the future. Nothing was left her but the pledge of that which had been. Mournful, despondent, half broken-hearted, she resumed her journey. At Exeter she was joined, as agreed, by Mr. Templeton; and with him came a fair, a blooming, and healthful girl to contrast her own drooping charge. Though but a few weeks older, you would have supposed the little stranger by a year the senior of Alice's child: the one was so well grown, so advanced; the other so backward, so nipped in the sickly bud. * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221. "You can repay me for all, for more than I have done; more than I ever can do for you and yours," said Templeton, "by taking this young stranger also under your care. It is the child of one dear, most dear to me; an orphan; I know not with whom else to place it. Let it for the present be supposed your own,--the elder child." Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor; but her heart did not open at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks mocked the languid looks and faded hues of her own darling. But the sufferer seemed to hail a playmate; it smiled, it put forth its poor, thin hands; it uttered its inarticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst into tears, and clasped them _both_ to her heart. Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof with her he now seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the seaside, and visited her daily. Her infant rallied; it was tenacious of the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is! And now it was that Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover, learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion, and pressed his suit. Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude; in her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her benefactor. But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_, her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal throne. In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit. But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the infant by her marriage with him. He would cherish, rear, provide for it as his own. This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail. He had recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his history with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings she could afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and restoring his daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's roof. At this Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute. She had long seen how inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her care; how he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he chafed at the very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now said to him simply,-- "Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life? Is it with her, and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?" "It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as much so as is compatible with my affection for you." "And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that your secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her be fulfilled?" "Only so." "And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget what I have been, and seek my hand? Well, if that were all, I owe you too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment. Ah, one's child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing! But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object; to be as a mother to your child; but wife only in name to you! I am not so lost as to despise myself. I know now, though I knew it not at first, that I have been guilty; nothing can excuse that guilt but fidelity to _him_! Oh, yes! I never, never can be unfaithful to my babe's father! As for all else, dispose of me as you will." And Alice, who from very innocence had uttered all this without a blush, now clasped her hands passionately, and left Templeton speechless with mortification and surprise. When he recovered himself, he affected not to understand her; but Alice was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased. He began slowly, and at last, and after repeated conferences and urgings, to comprehend how strange and stubborn in some points was the humble creature whom his proposals so highly honoured. Though his daughter was indeed his first object in life; though for her he was willing to make a _mesalliance_, the extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to conceal,--yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sentiment that he was not disposed to conquer. He was quite willing to make promises, and talk generously; but when it came to an oath,--a solemn, a binding oath--and this Alice rigidly exacted,--he was startled, and drew back. Though hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a most sincere believer. He might creep through a promise with unbruised conscience; but he was not one who could have dared to violate an oath, and lay the load of perjury on his soul. Perhaps, after all, the union never would have taken place, but Templeton fell ill; that soft and relaxing air did not agree with him; a low but dangerous fever seized him, and the worldly man trembled at the aspect of Death. It was in this illness that Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care; and when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kindness, softened by illness, afraid of the approach of solitary age,--and feeling more than ever his duties to his motherless child, he threw himself at Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all that she required. It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially during his illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr. Aubrey. The good clergyman prayed with him by his sick-bed; and when Templeton's danger was at its height, he sought to relieve his conscience by a confession of his wrongs to Mary Westbrook. The name startled Aubrey; and when he learned that the lovely child who had so often sat on his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter of his first and only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, a new reason to urge Templeton to reparation, a new motive to desire to procure for the infant years of Eleanor's grandchild the gentle care of the young mother, whose own bereavement he sorrowfully foretold. Perhaps the advice and exhortations of Aubrey went far towards assisting the conscience of Mr. Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he made to his affection for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married Alice, and Aubrey solemnized and blessed the chill and barren union. But now came a new and inexpressible affliction; the child of Alice had rallied but for a time. The dread disease had but dallied with its prey; it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the mother was bereft and childless! The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural shock of sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker. Now _his_ child would be Alice's sole care; now there could be no gossip, no suspicion why, in life and after death, he should prefer one child, supposed not his own, to the other. He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction. He dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her on her journey; he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, as we have seen, at a villa in its vicinity. And there, more and more, day by day, centred his love upon the supposed daughter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his heiress, the beautiful Evelyn Cameron. For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming disposition to escape from the oath he had imposed upon himself; but on the slightest hint there was a sternness in the wife, in all else so respectful, so submissive, that repressed and awed him. She even threatened--and at one time was with difficulty prevented carrying the threat into effect--to leave his roof forever, if there were the slightest question of the sanctity of his vow. Templeton trembled; such a separation would excite gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the world, public talk, possible discovery. Besides, Alice was necessary to Evelyn, necessary to his own comfort; something to scold in health, something to rely upon in illness. Gradually then, but sullenly, he reconciled himself to his lot; and as years and infirmities grew upon him, he was contented at least to have secured a faithful friend and an anxious nurse. Still a marriage of this sort was not blessed: Templeton's vanity was wounded; his temper, always harsh, was soured; he avenged his affront by a thousand petty tyrannies; and, without a murmur, Alice perhaps in those years of rank and opulence suffered more than in all her wanderings, with love at her heart and her infant in her arms. Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker. But the _title_ of the new peer! --if he could unite wealth and title, and set the coronet on that young brow! This had led him to seek the alliance with Lumley. And on his death-bed, it was not the secret of Alice, but that of Mary Westbrook and his daughter, which he had revealed to his dismayed and astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust alienation of his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had sought. While her husband, if husband he might be called, lived, Alice had seemed to bury in her bosom her regret--deep, mighty, passionate, as it was--for her lost child, the child of the unforgotten lover, to whom, through such trials, and amid such new ties, she had been faithful from first to last. But when once more free, her heart flew back to the far and lowly grave. Hence her yearly visits to Brook-Green; hence her purchase of the cottage, hallowed by memories of the dead. There, on that lawn, had she borne forth the fragile form, to breathe the soft noontide air; there, in that chamber, had she watched and hoped, and prayed and despaired; there, in that quiet burial-ground, rested the beloved dust! But Alice, even in her holiest feelings, was not selfish: she forbore to gratify the first wish of her heart till Evelyn's education was sufficiently advanced to enable her to quit the neighbourhood; and then, to the delight of Aubrey (who saw in Evelyn a fairer, and nobler, and purer Eleanor), she came to the solitary spot, which, in all the earth, was the _least_ solitary to her! And now the image of the lover of her youth--which during her marriage she had _sought_, at least, to banish--returned to her, and at times inspired her with the only hopes that the grave had not yet transferred to heaven! In relating her tale to Aubrey or in conversing with Mrs. Leslie, whose friendship she still maintained, she found that both concurred in thinking that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled in an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of mediocre or perhaps humble station. Ah! now that she was free and rich, if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he would believe in _her_ strange and constant truth; now, _his_ infidelity could be forgiven,--forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow! And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in your way? She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that voice; and you shall tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his child!" And would he not have forgotten her; would he not have formed new ties? --could he read the loveliness of unchangeable affection in that pale and pensive face! Alas, when we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there is no love in return! The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, the sole confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's mother. By a singular fatality, it was the selfish and characteristic recklessness of Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at Burleigh, ministered to the revelation of his own villanous deceit. On returning to England she had inquired for Mr. Templeton; she had learned that he had married again, had been raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was gathered to his fathers. She had no claim on his widow or his family. But the unfortunate child who should have inherited his property, she could only suppose her dead. When she first saw Evelyn, she was startled by her likeness to her unfortunate mother. But the unfamiliar name of Cameron, the intelligence received from Maltravers that Evelyn's mother still lived, dispelled her suspicions; and though at times the resemblance haunted her, she doubted and inquired no more. In fact, her own infirmities grew upon her, and pain usurped her thoughts. Now it so happened that the news of the engagement of Maltravers to Miss Cameron became known to the county but a little time before he arrived,--for news travels slow from the Continent to our provinces,--and, of course, excited all the comment of the villagers. Her nurse repeated the tale to Mrs. Elton, who instantly remembered the name, and recalled the resemblance of Miss Cameron to the unfortunate Mary Westbrook. "And," said the gossiping nurse, "she was engaged, they say, to a great lord, and gave him up for the squire,--a great lord in the court, who had been staying at Parson Merton's, Lord Vargrave!" "Lord Vargrave!" exclaimed Mrs. Elton, remembering the title to which Mr. Templeton had been raised. "Yes; they do say as how the late lord left Miss Cameron all his money--such a heap of it--though she was not his child, over the head of his nevy, the present lord, on the understanding like that they were to be married when she came of age. But she would not take to him after she had seen the squire. And, to be sure, the squire is the finest-looking gentleman in the county." "Stop! stop!" said Mrs. Elton, feebly; "the late lord left all his fortune to Miss Cameron,--not his child! I guess the riddle! I understand it all! my foster-child!" she murmured, turning away; "how could I have mistaken that likeness?" The agitation of the discovery she supposed she had made, her joy at the thought that the child she had loved as her own was alive and possessed of its rights, expedited the progress of Mrs. Elton's disease; and Maltravers arrived just in time to learn her confession (which she naturally wished to make to one who was at once her benefactor, and supposed to be the destined husband of her foster-child), and to be agitated with hope, with joy, at her solemn conviction of the truth of her surmises. If Evelyn were not his daughter--even if not to be his bride--what a weight from his soul! He hastened to Brook-Green; and dreading to rush at once to the presence of Alice, he recalled Aubrey to his recollection. In the interview he sought, all, or at least much, was cleared up. He saw at once the premeditated and well-planned villany of Vargrave. And Alice, her tale--her sufferings--her indomitable love! --how should he meet _her_?

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YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more, Ye myrtles! --LYCIDAS. WHILE Maltravers was yet agitated and excited by the disclosures of the curate, to whom, as a matter of course, he had divulged his own identity with the mysterious Butler, Aubrey, turning his eyes to the casement, saw the form of Lady Vargrave slowly approaching towards the house. "Will you withdraw to the inner room?" said he; "she is coming; you are not yet prepared to meet her! --nay, would it be well?" "Yes, yes; I am prepared. We must be alone. I will await her here." "But--" "Nay, I implore you!" The curate, without another word, retired into the inner apartment, and Maltravers sinking in a chair breathlessly awaited the entrance of Lady Vargrave. He soon heard the light step without; the door, which opened at once on the old-fashioned parlour, was gently unclosed, and Lady Vargrave was in the room! In the position he had taken, only the outline of Ernest's form was seen by Alice, and the daylight came dim through the cottage casement; and seeing some one seated in the curate's accustomed chair, she could but believe that it was Aubrey himself. "Do not let me interrupt you," said that sweet, low voice, whose music had been dumb for so many years to Maltravers, "but I have a letter from France, from a stranger. It alarms me so; it is about Evelyn;" and, as if to imply that she meditated a longer visit than ordinary, Lady Vargrave removed her bonnet, and placed it on the table. Surprised that the curate had not answered, had not come forward to welcome her, she then approached; Maltravers rose, and they stood before each other face to face. And how lovely still was Alice! lovelier he thought even than of old! And those eyes, so divinely blue, so dovelike and soft, yet with some spiritual and unfathomable mystery in their clear depth, were once more fixed upon him. Alice seemed turned to stone; she moved not, she spoke not, she scarcely breathed; she gazed spellbound, as if her senses--as if life itself--had deserted her. "Alice!" murmured Maltravers,--"Alice, we meet at last!" His voice restored memory, consciousness, youth, at once to her! She uttered a loud cry of unspeakable joy, of rapture! She sprang forward--reserve, fear, time, change, all forgotten; she threw herself into his arms, she clasped him to her heart again and again! --the faithful dog that has found its master expresses not his transport more uncontrollably, more wildly. It was something fearful--the excess of her ecstasy! She kissed his hands, his clothes; she laughed, she wept; and at last, as words came, she laid her head on his breast, and said passionately, "I have been true to thee! I have been true to thee! --or this hour would have killed me!" Then, as if alarmed by his silence, she looked up into his face, and as his burning tears fell upon her cheek, she said again and with more hurried vehemence, "I _have_ been faithful,--do you not believe me?" "I do, I do, noble, unequalled Alice! Why, why were you so long lost to me? Why now does your love so shame my own?" At these words, Alice appeared to awaken from her first oblivion of all that had chanced since they met; she blushed deeply, and drew herself gently and bashfully from his embrace. "Ah," she said, in altered and humbled accents, "you have loved another! Perhaps you have no love left for me! Is it so; is it? No, no; those eyes--you love me--you love me still!" And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe all things, and death to doubt. Then, after a pause, she drew him gently with both her hands towards the light, and gazed upon him fondly, proudly, as if to trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers. "Changed, changed," she muttered; "but still the same,--still beautiful, still divine!" She stopped. A sudden thought struck her: his garments were worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected, no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men. "You are not rich," she exclaimed eagerly,--"say you are not rich! I am rich enough for both; it is all yours,--all yours; I did not betray you for it; there is no shame in it. Oh, we shall be so happy! Thou art come back to thy poor Alice! thou knowest how she loved thee!" There was in Alice's manner, her wild joy, something so different from her ordinary self, that none who could have seen her--quiet, pensive, subdued--would have fancied her the same being. All that Society and its woes had taught were gone; and Nature once more claimed her fairest child. The very years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she looked scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the moonlight by the violet banks far away. Suddenly, her colour faded; the smile passed from the dimpled lips; a sad and solemn aspect succeeded to that expression of passionate joy. "Come," she said, in a whisper, "come, follow;" and still clasping his hand, she drew him to the door. Silent and wonderingly he followed her across the lawn, through the moss-grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground. She moved on with a noiseless and gliding step,--so pale, so hushed, so breathless, that even in the noonday you might have half fancied the fair shape was not owned by earth. She paused where the yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow; and the small and tombless mound, separated from the rest, was before them. She pointed to it, and falling on her knees beside it, murmured, "Hush, it sleeps below,--thy child!" She covered her face with both her hands, and her form shook convulsively. Beside that form and before that grave knelt Maltravers. There vanished the last remnant of his stoic pride; and there--Evelyn herself forgotten--there did he pray to Heaven for pardon to himself, and blessings on the heart he had betrayed. There solemnly did he vow, the remainder of his years, to guard from all future ill the faithful and childless mother.

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WILL Fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? _Henry IV. _ Part ii. I PASS over those explanations, that record of Alice's eventful history, which Maltravers learned from her own lips, to confirm and add to the narrative of the curate, the purport of which is already known to the reader. It was many hours before Alice was sufficiently composed to remember the object for which she had sought the curate. But she had laid the letter which she had brought, and which explained all, on the table at the vicarage; and when Maltravers, having at last induced Alice, who seemed afraid to lose sight of him for an instant, to retire to her room, and seek some short repose, returned towards the vicarage, he met Aubrey in the garden. The old man had taken the friend's acknowledged license to read the letter evidently meant for his eye; and, alarmed and anxious, he now eagerly sought a consultation with Maltravers. The letter, written in English, as familiar to the writer as her own tongue, was from Madame de Ventadour. It had been evidently dictated by the kindest feelings. After apologizing briefly for her interference, she stated that Lord Vargrave's marriage with Miss Cameron was now a matter of public notoriety; that it would take place in a few days; that it was observed with suspicion that Miss Cameron appeared nowhere; that she seemed almost a prisoner in her room; that certain expressions which had dropped from Lady Doltimore had alarmed her greatly. According to these expressions, it would seem that Lady Vargrave was not apprised of the approaching event; that, considering Miss Cameron's recent engagement to Mr. Maltravers suddenly (and, as Valerie thought, unaccountably) broken off on the arrival of Lord Vargrave; considering her extreme youth, her brilliant fortune; and, Madame de Ventadour delicately hinted, considering also Lord Vargrave's character for unscrupulous determination in the furtherance of any object on which he was bent,--considering all this, Madame de Ventadour had ventured to address Miss Cameron's mother, and to guard her against the possibility of design or deceit. Her best apology for her intrusion must be her deep interest in Miss Cameron, and her long friendship for one to whom Miss Cameron had been so lately betrothed. If Lady Vargrave were aware of the new engagement, and had sanctioned it, of course her intrusion was unseasonable and superfluous; but if ascribed to its real motive, would not be the less forgiven. It was easy for Maltravers to see in this letter how generous and zealous had been that friendship for himself which could have induced the woman of the world to undertake so officious a task. But of this he thought not, as he hurried over the lines, and shuddered at Evelyn's urgent danger. "This intelligence," said Aubrey, "must be, indeed, a surprise to Lady Vargrave. For we have not heard a word from Evelyn or Lord Vargrave to announce such a marriage; and she (and myself till this day) believed that the engagement between Evelyn and Mr. -----, I mean," said Aubrey with confusion,--"I mean yourself, was still in force. Lord Vargrave's villany is apparent; we must act immediately. What is to be done?" "I will return to Paris to-morrow; I will defeat his machination, expose his falsehood!" "You may need a proxy for Lady Vargrave, an authority for Evelyn; one whom Lord Vargrave knows to possess the secret of her birth, her rights: I will go with you. We must speak to Lady Vargrave." Maltravers turned sharply round. "And Alice knows not who I am; that I--I am, or was, a few weeks ago, the suitor of another; and that other the child she has reared as her own! Unhappy Alice! in the very hour of her joy at my return, is she to writhe beneath this new affliction?" "Shall I break it to her?" said Aubrey, pityingly. "No, no; these lips must inflict the last wrong!" Maltravers walked away, and the curate saw him no more till night. In the interval, and late in the evening, Maltravers rejoined Alice. The fire burned clear on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, the pleasant but simple drawing-room of the cottage smiled its welcome as Maltravers entered, and Alice sprang up to greet him! It was as if the old days of the music-lesson and the meerschaum had come back. "This is yours," said Alice, tenderly, as he looked round the apartment. "Now--now I know what a blessed thing riches are! Ah, you are looking on that picture; it is of her who supplied your daughter's place,--she is so beautiful, so good, you will love her as a daughter. Oh, that letter--that--that letter--I forgot it till now--it is at the vicarage--I must go there immediately, and you will come too,--you will advise us." "Alice, I have read the letter,--I know all. Alice, sit down and hear me,--it is you who have to learn from me. In our young days I was accustomed to tell you stories in winter nights like these,--stories of love like our own, of sorrows which, at that time, we only knew by hearsay. I have one now for your ear, truer and sadder than they were. Two children, for they were then little more--children in ignorance of the world, children in freshness of heart, children almost in years--were thrown together by strange vicissitudes, more than eighteen years ago. They were of different sexes,--they loved and they erred. But the error was solely with the boy; for what was innocence in her was but passion in him. He loved her dearly; but at that age her qualities were half developed. He knew her beautiful, simple, tender; but he knew not all the virtue, the faith, and the nobleness that Heaven had planted in her soul. They parted,--they knew not each other's fate. He sought her anxiously, but in vain; and sorrow and remorse long consumed him, and her memory threw a shadow over his existence. But again--for his love had not the exalted holiness of hers (_she_ was true!) --he sought to renew in others the charm he had lost with her. In vain,--long, long in vain. Alice, you know to whom the tale refers. Nay, listen yet. I have heard from the old man yonder that you were witness to a scene many years ago which deceived you into the belief that you beheld a rival. It was not so: that lady yet lives,--then, as now, a friend to me; nothing more. I grant that, at one time, my fancy allured me to her, but my heart was still true to thee." "Bless you for those words!" murmured Alice; and she crept more closely to him. He went on. "Circumstances, which at some calmer occasion you shall hear, again nearly connected my fate by marriage to another. I had then seen you at a distance, unseen by you,--seen you apparently surrounded by respectability and opulence; and I blessed Heaven that your lot, at least, was not that of penury and want." (Here Maltravers related where he had caught that brief glimpse of Alice,*--how he had sought for her again and again in vain.) "From that hour," he continued, "seeing you in circumstances of which I could not have dared to dream, I felt more reconciled to the past; yet, when on the verge of marriage with another--beautiful, gifted, generous as she was--a thought, a memory half acknowledged, dimly traced, chained back my sentiments; and admiration, esteem, and gratitude were not love! Death--a death melancholy and tragic--forbade this union; and I went forth in the world, a pilgrim and a wanderer. Years rolled away, and I thought I had conquered the desire for love,--a desire that had haunted me since I lost thee. But, suddenly and recently, a being, beautiful as yourself--sweet, guileless, and young as you were when we met--woke in me a new and a strange sentiment. I will not conceal it from you: Alice, at last I loved another! Yet, singular as it may seem to you, it was a certain resemblance to yourself, not in feature, but in the tones of the voice, the nameless grace of gesture and manner, the very music of your once happy laugh,--those traits of resemblance which I can now account for, and which children catch not from their parents only, but from those they most see, and, loving most, most imitate in their tender years,--all these, I say, made perhaps a chief attraction, that drew me towards--Alice, are you prepared for it? --drew me towards Evelyn Cameron. Know me in my real character, by my true name: I am that Maltravers to whom the hand of Evelyn was a few weeks ago betrothed!" * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 228. He paused, and ventured to look up at Alice; she was exceedingly pale, and her hands were tightly clasped together, but she neither wept nor spoke. The worst was over; he continued more rapidly, and with less constrained an effort: "By the art, the duplicity, the falsehood of Lord Vargrave, I was taught in a sudden hour to believe that Evelyn was our daughter, that you recoiled from the prospect of beholding once more the author of so many miseries. I need not tell you, Alice, of the horror that succeeded to love. I pass over the tortures I endured. By a train of incidents to be related to you hereafter, I was led to suspect the truth of Vargrave's tale. I came hither; I have learned all from Aubrey. I regret no more the falsehood that so racked me for the time; I regret no more the rupture of my bond with Evelyn; I regret nothing that brings me at last free and unshackled to thy feet, and acquaints me with thy sublime faith and ineffable love. Here then--here beneath your own roof--here he, at once your earliest friend and foe, kneels to you for pardon and for hope! He woos you as his wife, his companion to the grave! Forget all his errors, and be to him, under a holier name, all that you were to him of old!" "And you are then Evelyn's suitor,--you are he whom she loves? I see it all--all!" Alice rose, and, before he was even aware of her purpose, or conscious of what she felt, she had vanished from the room. Long, and with the bitterest feelings, he awaited her return; she came not. At last he wrote a hurried note, imploring her to join him again, to relieve his suspense; to believe his sincerity; to accept his vows. He sent it to her own room, to which she had hastened to bury her emotions. In a few minutes there came to him this answer, written in pencil, blotted with tears. "I thank you, I understand your heart; but forgive me--I cannot see you yet. She is so beautiful and good, she is worthy of you. I shall soon be reconciled. God bless you,--bless you both!" The door of the vicarage was opened abruptly, and Maltravers entered with a hasty but heavy tread. "Go to her, go to that angel; go, I beseech you! Tell her that she wrongs me, if she thinks I can ever wed another, ever have an object in life, but to atone to, to merit her. Go, plead for me." Aubrey, who soon gathered from Maltravers what had passed, departed to the cottage. It was near midnight before he returned. Maltravers met him in the churchyard, beside the yew-tree. "Well, well, what message do you bring?" "She wishes that we should both set off for Paris to-morrow. Not a day is to be lost,--we must save Evelyn from this snare." "Evelyn! Yes, Evelyn shall be saved; but the rest--the rest--why do you turn away?" " 'You are not the poor artist, the wandering adventurer; you are the high-born, the wealthy, the renowned Maltravers: Alice has nothing to confer on you. You have won the love of Evelyn,--Alice cannot doom the child confided to her care to hopeless affection; you love Evelyn,--Alice cannot compare herself to the young and educated and beautiful creature, whose love is a priceless treasure. Alice prays you not to grieve for her; she will soon be content and happy in your happiness.' This is the message." "And what said you,--did you not tell her such words would break my heart?" "No matter what I said; I mistrust myself when I advise her. Her feelings are truer than all our wisdom!" Maltravers made no answer, and the curate saw him gliding rapidly away by the starlit graves towards the village.

7

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THINK you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness? --_Measure for Measure_. THEY were on the road to Dover. Maltravers leaned back in the corner of the carriage with his hat over his brows, though the morning was yet too dark for the curate to perceive more than the outline of his features. Milestone after milestone glided by the wheels, and neither of the travellers broke the silence. It was a cold, raw morning, and the mists rose sullenly from the dank hedges and comfortless fields. Stern and self-accusing was the scrutiny of Maltravers into the recesses of his conscience, and the blotted pages of the Past. That pale and solitary mother, mourning over the grave of her--of his own--child, rose again before his eyes, and seemed silently to ask him for an account of the heart he had made barren, and of the youth to which his love had brought the joylessness of age. With the image of Alice,--afar, alone, whether in her wanderings, a beggar and an outcast, or in that hollow prosperity, in which the very ease of the frame allowed more leisure to the pinings of the heart,--with that image, pure, sorrowing, and faithful from first to last, he compared his own wild and wasted youth, his resort to fancy and to passion for excitement. He contrasted with her patient resignation his own arrogant rebellion against the trials, the bitterness of which his proud spirit had exaggerated; his contempt for the pursuits and aims of others; the imperious indolence of his later life, and his forgetfulness of the duties which Providence had fitted him to discharge. His mind, once so rudely hurled from that complacent pedestal, from which it had so long looked down on men, and said, "I am wiser and better than you," became even too acutely sensitive to its own infirmities; and that desire for Virtue, which he had ever deeply entertained, made itself more distinctly and loudly heard amidst the ruins and the silence of his pride. From the contemplation of the Past, he roused himself to face the Future. Alice had refused his hand, Alice herself had ratified and blessed his union with another! Evelyn, so madly loved,--Evelyn might still be his! No law--from the violation of which, even in thought, Human Nature recoils appalled and horror-stricken--forbade him to reclaim her hand, to snatch her from the grasp of Vargrave, to woo again, and again to win her! But did Maltravers welcome, did he embrace that thought? Let us do him justice: he did not. He felt that Alice's resolution, in the first hour of mortified affection, was not to be considered final; and even if it were so, he felt yet more deeply that her love--the love that had withstood so many trials--never could be subdued. Was he to make her nobleness a curse? Was he to say, "Thou hast passed away in thy generation, and I leave thee again to thy solitude for her whom thou hast cherished as a child?" He started in dismay from the thought of this new and last blow upon the shattered spirit; and then fresh and equally sacred obstacles between Evelyn and himself broke slowly on his view. Could Templeton rise from his grave, with what resentment, with what just repugnance, would he have regarded in the betrayer of his wife (even though wife but in name) the suitor to his child! These thoughts came in fast and fearful force upon Maltravers, and served to strengthen his honour and his conscience. He felt that though, in law, there was no shadow of connection between Evelyn and himself, yet his tie with Alice had been of a nature that ought to separate him from one who had regarded Alice as a mother. The load of horror, the agony of shame, were indeed gone; but still a voice whispered as before, "Evelyn is lost to thee forever!" But so shaken had already been her image in the late storms and convulsion of his soul, that this thought was preferable to the thought of sacrificing Alice. If _that_ were all--but Evelyn might still love him; and justice to Alice might be misery to her! He started from his revery with a vehement gesture, and groaned audibly. The curate turned to address to him some words of inquiry and surprise; but the words were unheard, and he perceived, by the advancing daylight, that the countenance of Maltravers was that of a man utterly rapt and absorbed by some mastering and irresistible thought. Wisely, therefore, he left his companion in peace, and returned to his own anxious and engrossing meditations. The travellers did not rest till they arrived at Dover. The vessel started early the following morning, and Aubrey, who was much fatigued, retired to rest. Maltravers glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece; it was the hour of nine. For him there was no hope of sleep; and the prospect of the slow night was that of dreary suspense and torturing self-commune. As he turned restlessly in his seat, the waiter entered to say that there was a gentleman who had caught a glimpse of him below on his arrival, and who was anxious to speak with him. Before Maltravers could answer, the gentleman himself entered, and Maltravers recognized Legard. "I beg your pardon," said the latter, in a tone of great agitation, "but I was most anxious to see you for a few moments. I have just returned to England--all places alike hateful to me! I read in the papers--an--an announcement--which--which occasions me the greatest--I know not what I would say,--but is it true? Read this paragraph;" and Legard placed "The Courier" before Maltravers. The passage was as follows: "It is whispered that Lord Vargrave, who is now at Paris, is to be married in a few days to the beautiful and wealthy Miss Cameron, to whom he has been long engaged." "Is it possible?" exclaimed Legard, following the eyes of Maltravers, as he glanced over the paragraph. "Were not _you_ the lover,--the accepted, the happy lover of Miss Cameron? Speak, tell me, I implore you! --that it was for you, who saved my life and redeemed my honour, and not for that cold schemer, that I renounced all my hopes of earthly happiness, and surrendered the dream of winning the heart and hand of the only woman I ever loved!" A deep shade fell over the features of Maltravers. He gazed earnestly and long upon the working countenance of Legard, and said, after a pause,-- "You, too, loved her, then? I never knew it,--never guessed it; or, if once I suspected, it was but for a moment; and--" "Yes," interrupted Legard, passionately, "Heaven is my witness how fervently and truly I did love--I do still love Evelyn Cameron! But when you confessed to me your affection--your hopes--I felt all that I owed you; I felt that I never ought to become your rival. I left Paris abruptly. What I have suffered I will not say; but it was some comfort to think that I had acted as became one who owed you a debt never to be cancelled nor repaid. I travelled from place to place, each equally hateful and wearisome; at last, I scarce know why, I returned to England. I have arrived this day; and now--but tell me, is it true?" "I believe it true," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, "that Evelyn is at this moment engaged to Lord Vargrave. I believe it equally true that that engagement, founded upon false impressions, never will be fulfilled. With that hope and that belief, I am on my road to Paris." "And she will be yours, still?" said Legard, turning away his face: "well, that I can bear. May you be happy, sir!" "Stay, Legard," said Maltravers, in a voice of great feeling: "let us understand each other better; you have renounced your passion to your sense of honour." Maltravers paused thoughtfully. "It was noble in you, it was more than just to me; I thank you and respect you. But, Legard, was there aught in the manner, the bearing of Evelyn Cameron, that could lead you to suppose that she would have returned your affection? True, had we started on equal terms, I am not vain enough to be blind to your advantages of youth and person; but I believed that the affections of Evelyn were already mine, before we met at Paris." "It might be so," said Legard, gloomily; "nor is it for me to say that a heart so pure and generous as Evelyn's could deceive yourself or me. Yet I _had_ fancied, I _had_ hoped, while you stood aloof, that the partiality with which she regarded you was that of admiration more than love; that you had dazzled her imagination rather than won her heart. I had hoped that I should win, that I was winning, my way to her affection! But let this pass; I drop the subject forever--only, Maltravers, only do me justice. You are a proud man, and your pride has often irritated and stung me, in spite of my gratitude. Be more lenient to me than you have been; think that, though I have my errors and my follies, I am still capable of some conquests over myself. And most sincerely do I now wish that Evelyn's love may be to you that blessing it would have been to me!" This was, indeed, a new triumph over the pride of Maltravers,--a new humiliation. He had looked with a cold contempt on this man, because he affected not to be above the herd; and this man had preceded him in the very sacrifice he himself meditated. "Legard," said Maltravers, and a faint blush overspread his face, "you rebuke me justly. I acknowledge my fault, and I ask you to forgive it. From this night, whatever happens, I shall hold it an honour to be admitted to your friendship; from this night, George Legard never shall find in me the offences of arrogance and harshness." Legard wrung the hand held out to him warmly, but made no answer; his heart was full, and he would not trust himself to speak. "You think, then," resumed Maltravers, in a more thoughtful tone,--"you think that Evelyn could have loved you, had my pretensions not crossed your own? And you think, also--pardon me, dear Legard--that you could have acquired the steadiness of character, the firmness of purpose, which one so fair, so young, so inexperienced and susceptible, so surrounded by a thousand temptations, would need in a guardian and protector?" "Oh, do not judge of me by what I have been. I feel that Evelyn could have reformed errors worse than mine; that her love would have elevated dispositions yet more light and commonplace. You do not know what miracles love works! But now, what is there left for me? What matters it how frivolous and poor the occupations which can distract my thoughts, and bring me forgetfulness? Forgive me; I have no right to obtrude all this egotism on you." "Do not despond, Legard," said Maltravers, kindly; "there may be better fortunes in store for you than you yet anticipate. I cannot say more now; but will you remain at Dover a few days longer? Within a week you shall hear from me. I will not raise hopes that it may not be mine to realize. But if it be as you think it was, why little, indeed, would rest with me. Nay, look not on me so wistfully," added Maltravers, with a mournful smile; "and let the subject close for the present. You will stay at Dover?" "I will; but--" "No buts, Legard; it is so settled."

1

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"The French Are in the Valley!" It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable, and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause! If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the mist and darkness of nearly threescore years. Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to the story: * * * * * I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground. The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust, not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps. I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies, mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just after rains. Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown, sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I hated them. The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe, snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that I held my breath. It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears): "The French are in the Valley!" I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply, and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more. Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections. I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp, which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept. How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to my negro friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings. When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying gravely from within the door: "It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed." Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the Valley. These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart. If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse, I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr. Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects, while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was content to return to his sleep. I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have dreamed at all.

2

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Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us. When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr. Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I could sop my bread. During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room, which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed any other large matter, I would have valued. Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him. He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which, themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could look up and down the Valley. It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood through the cold night. To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which, being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder still by contrast. Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness, and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then. It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash, men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself, than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age, I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing, I trust there can be no doubt. While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down the hill. As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the westward of us, and growing louder momentarily. After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are." All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of the commotion. Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on, also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering, yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what we saw on the highway. What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley, or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them. Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the others had become calm. As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly: "Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!" To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper. With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house! He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square in the face, and laughed again. All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword, puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse with the negro was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him, some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others. The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said: "When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us embrace." The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like the rending of an ice-gorge. "Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch my breath. It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to the house. The negro followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade, and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being despatched onward to the fort. While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses, and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned (from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand. The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind. I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round, full-colored, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a warrior should be. It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship, and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness, as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure. For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did not get into my favor after we came inside. Under this Master Philip's commands the negro squatted on his haunches and unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps between three and four years of age. This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long, tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure. She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the negro smiling upon us both. I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone. "Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude behavior and at his words. "I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child. He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him, clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But I had the girl. "What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing, Douw, and what child is this?" "It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions, and red with color. The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one might feel the heat, and said nothing. "Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven." The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously: "She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When Bellêtre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered? --the infant was in some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we bundled her in." "There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye. "Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?" "Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed. "Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly. "You are Tom Lynch, and your grandfather was a king----" "No more," interposed Mr. Stewart, frowning and lifting his finger. "That folly is dead and in its grave. Not even so fair a youth as you must give it resurrection." "Here, Bob," said the Major, with sudden alacrity. "Go outside with these children, and help them to some games."

3

None

Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly. My protector and chief friend was at this time, as near as may be, fifty years of age; yet he bore these years so sturdily that, if one should see him side by side with his gossip and neighbor, Sir William Johnson, there would be great doubt which was the elder--and the Baronet was not above forty-two. Mr. Stewart was not tall, and seemed of somewhat slight frame, yet he had not only grace of movement, but prodigious strength of wrist and shoulders. For walking he was not much, but he rode like a knight. He was of strictest neatness and method concerning his clothes; not so much, let me explain, as to their original texture, for they were always plain, ordinary garments, but regarding their cleanliness and order. He had a swift and ready temper, and could not brook to be disputed by his equals, much less by his inferiors, yet had a most perfect and winning politeness when agreed with. All these, I had come to know, were traits of a soldier, yet he had many other qualities which puzzled me, not being observable in other troopers. He swore very rarely, he was abstemious with wines and spirits, and he loved books better than food itself. Of not even Sir William, great warrior and excellent scholar though he was, could all these things be said. Mr. Stewart had often related to me, during the long winter days and evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he, so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen the profession of arms. A ray of light was thrown upon the question this very day by the forward prattle of the boy Philip. In after years the full illumination came, and I understood it all. It is as well, perhaps, to outline the story here, although at the time I was in ignorance of it. In Ireland, nearly eighty years before, that is to say in 1679, there had been born a boy to whom was given the name of James Lynch. His mother was the smooth-faced, light-hearted daughter of a broken Irish gentleman, who loved her boy after a gusty fashion, and bore a fierce life of scorn and sneers on his behalf. His father was--who? There were no proofs in court, of course, but it seems never to have been doubted by any one that the father was no other than the same worthless prince to wear whose titles the two chief towns of my State were despoiled of their honest Dutch names--I mean the Duke of York and Albany. Little James Lynch, unlike so many of his luckier brothers and cousins, got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now, and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him a sword and a company, and he went with the French through all the wars of Marlborough, gaining distinction, and, what is more, a fat purse. With his money he returned to Ireland, wedded a maid of whom he had dreamed during all his exile, and settled down there to beggar himself in a life of bibulous ease, gaming, fox-hunting, and wastefulness generally. After some years the wife died, and James Lynch drifted naturally into the conspiracy which led to the first rising for the Pretender, involving himself as deeply as possible, and at its collapse flying once more to France, never to return. He bore with him this time a son of eight years--my Mr. Stewart. This boy, called Thomas, was reared on the skirts of the vicious French court, now in a Jesuit school, now a poor relation in a palace, always reflecting in the vicissitudes of his condition the phases of his sire's vagrant existence. Sometimes this father would be moneyed and prodigal, anon destitute and mean, but always selfish to the core, and merrily regardless alike of canons and of consequences. He died, did this adventurous gentleman, in the very year which took off the first George in Hanover, and left his son a very little money, a mountain of debts, and an injunction of loyalty to the Stewarts. Young Thomas, then nearly twenty, thought much for a time of becoming a priest, and was always a favorite with the British Jesuits about Versailles, but this in the end came to nothing. He abandoned the religious vocation, though not the scholar's tastes, and became a soldier, for the sake of a beautiful face which he saw once when on a secret visit to England. He fell greatly in love, and ventured to believe that the emotion was reciprocated. As Jacob served Laban for his daughter, so did Tom Lynch serve the Pretender's cause for the hope of some day returning, honored and powerful, to ask the hand of that sweet daughter of the Jacobite gentleman. One day there came to him at Paris, to offer his sword to the Stewarts, a young Irish gentleman who had been Tom's playmate in childhood--Anthony Cross. This gallant, fresh-faced, handsome youth was all ablaze with ardor; he burned to achieve impossible deeds, to attain glory at a stroke. He confessed to Tom over their dinner, or the wine afterward perhaps, that his needs were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the daughter of an English Jacobite--yet she would marry none but one who had gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from the table, sick at heart, and went away in silence. Cross never knew of the hopes and joys he had unwittingly crushed. The two young men became friends, intimates, brothers, serving in half the lands of Europe side by side. The maiden, an orphan now, and of substance and degree, came over at last to France, and Lynch stood by, calm-faced, and saw her married to his friend. She only pleasantly remembered him; he never forgot her till his death. Finally, in 1745, when both men were nearing middle age, the time for striking the great blow was thought to have arrived. The memory of Lynch's lineage was much stronger with the romantic young Pretender of his generation than had been the rightfully closer tie between their more selfish fathers, and princely favor gave him a prominent position among those who arranged that brilliant melodrama of Glenfinnan and Edinburgh and Preston Pans, which was to be so swiftly succeeded by the tragedy of Culloden. The two friends were together through it all--in its triumph, its disaster, its rout--but they became separated afterward in the Highlands, when they were hiding for their lives. Cross, it seems, was able to lie secure until his wife's relatives, through some Whig influence, I know not what, obtained for him amnesty first, then leave to live in England, and finally a commission under the very sovereign he had fought. His comrade, less fortunate, at least contrived to make way to Ireland and then to France. There, angered and chagrined at unjust and peevish rebukes offered him, he renounced the bad cause, took the name of Stewart, and set sail to the New World. This was my patron's story, as I gathered it in later years, and which perhaps I have erred in bringing forward here among my childish recollections. But, it seems to belong in truth much more to this day on which, for the first and last time I beheld Major Cross, than to the succeeding period when his son became an actor in the drama of my life. * * * * * The sun was now well up in the sky, and the snow was melting. While I still moodily eyed my young enemy and wondered how I should go about to acquit myself of the task laid upon me--to play with him--he solved the question by kicking into the moist snow with his boots and calling out: "Aha! we can build a fort with this, and have a fine attack. Bob, make me a fort!" Seeing that he bore no malice, my temper softened toward him a little, and I set to helping the negro in his work. There was a great pile of logs in the clearing close to the house, and on the sunny side near this the little girl was placed, in a warm, dry spot; and here we two, with sticks and balls of snow, soon reared a mock block-house. The English boy did no work, but stood by and directed us with enthusiasm. When the structure was to his mind, he said: "Now we will make up some snowballs, and have an attack I will be the Englishman and defend the fort; you must be the Frenchman and come to drive me out. You can have Bob with you for a savage, if you like; only he must throw no balls, but stop back in the woods and whoop. But first we must have some hard balls made, so that I may hit you good when you come up. --Bob, help this boy make some balls for me!" Thus outlined, the game did not attract me. I did not so much mind doing his work for him, since he was company, so to speak, but it did go against my grain to have to manufacture the missiles for my own hurt. "Why should I be the Frenchman?" I said, grumblingly. "I am no more a Frenchman than you are yourself." "You're a Dutchman, then, and it's quite the same," he replied. "All foreigners are the same." "It is you who are the foreigner," I retorted with heat. "How can I be a foreigner in my own country, here where I was born?" He did not take umbrage at this, but replied with argument: "Why, of course you're a foreigner. You wear an apron, and you are not able to even speak English properly." This reflection upon my speech pained even more than it nettled me. Mr. Stewart had been at great pains to teach me English, and I had begun to hope that he felt rewarded by my proficiency. Years afterward he was wont to laughingly tell me that I never would live long enough to use English correctly, and that as a boy I spoke it abominably, which I dare say was true enough. But just then my childish pride was grievously piqued by Philip's criticism. "Very well, I'll be on the outside, then," I said. "I won't be a Frenchman, but I'll come all the same, and do you look out for yourself when I _do_ come," or words to that purport. We had a good, long contest over the snow wall. I seem to remember it all better than I remember any other struggle of my life, although there were some to come in which existence itself was at stake, but boys' mimic fights are not subjects upon which a writer may profitably dwell. It is enough to say that he defended himself very stoutly, hurling the balls which Bob had made for him with great swiftness and accuracy, so that my head was sore for a week. But my blood was up, and at last over the wall I forced my way, pushing a good deal of it down as I went, and, grappling him by the waist, wrestled with and finally threw him. We were both down, with our faces in the snow, and I held him tight. I expected that he would be angry, and hot to turn the play into a real fight; but he said instead, mumbling with his mouth full of snow: "Now you must pretend to scalp me, you know." My aunt called us at this, and we all trooped into the house again. The little girl had crowed and clapped her hands during our struggle, all unconscious of the dreadful event of which it was a juvenile travesty. We two boys admired her as she was borne in on the negro's shoulder, and Philip said: "I am going to take her to England, for a playmate. Papa has said I may. My brother Digby has no sport in him, and he is much bigger than me, besides. So I shall have her all for my own. Only I wish she weren't Dutch." When we entered the house the two gentlemen were seated at the table, eating their dinner, and my aunt had spread for us, in the chimney-corner, a like repast. She took the little girl off to her own room, the kitchen, and we fell like famished wolves upon the smoking venison and onions. The talk of our elders was mainly about a personage of whom I could not know anything then, but whom I now see to have been the Young Pretender. They spoke of him as "he," and as leading a painfully worthless and disreputable life. This Mr. Stewart, who was twelve years the Chevalier's senior, and, as I learned later, had been greatly attached to his person, deplored with affectionate regret. But Major Cross, who related incidents of debauchery and selfishness which, being in Europe, had come to his knowledge about the prince, did not seem particularly cast down. "It's but what might have been looked for," he said, lightly, in answer to some sad words of my patron's. "Five generations of honest men have trusted to their sorrow in the breed, and given their heads or their estates or their peace for not so much as a single promise kept, or a single smile without speculation in it. Let them rot out, I say, and be damned to them!" "But he was such a goodly lad, Tony. Think of him as we knew him--and now!" "No, I'll _not_ think, Tom," broke in the officer, "for, when I do, then I too get soft-hearted. And I'll waste no more feeling or faith on any of 'em--on any of 'em, save the only true man of the lot, who's had the wit to put the ocean 'twixt him and them. And you're content here, Tom?" "Oh, ay! Why not?" said Mr. Stewart. "It is a rude life in some ways, no doubt, but it's free and it's honest. I have my own roof, such as it is, and no one to gainsay me under it. I hunt, I fish, I work, I study, I dream--precisely what pleases me best." "Ay, but the loneliness of it!" "Why, no! I see much of Johnson, and there are others round about to talk with, when I'm driven to it. And then there's my young Dutchman--Douw, yonder--who bears me company, and fits me so well that he's like a second self." The Major looked over toward my corner with a benevolent glance, but without comment. Presently he said, while he took more meat upon his plate: "You've no thought of marrying, I suppose?" "None!" said my patron, gravely and with emphasis. The Major nodded his handsome head meditatively. "Well, there's a deal to be said on that side," he remarked. "Still, children about the hearth help one to grow old pleasantly. And you always had a weakness for brats." Mr. Stewart said again: "I have my young Dutchman." Once more the soldier looked at me, and, I'll be bound, saw me blushing furiously. He smiled and said: "He seems an honest chap. He has something of your mouth, methinks." My patron pushed his dish back with a gesture of vexation. "No!" he said, sharply. "There's none of that. His father was a dominie over the river; his mother, a good, hard-working lady, left a widow, struggles to put bread in a dozen mouths by teaching a little home-school for infants. I have the boy here because I like him--because I want him. We shall live together--he and I. As he gets older this hut will doubtless grow into a house fit for gentlemen. Indeed, already I have the logs cut out in part for an addition, on the other side of the chimney." The Major rose at this, smiling again, and frankly put out his hand. "I meant no harm, you know, Tom, by my barracks jest. Faith! I envy the lad the privilege of living here with you. The happiest days of my life, dear friend, were those we spent together while I was waiting for my bride." Mr. Stewart returned his smile rather sadly, and took his hand. The time for parting had come. The two men stood hand in hand, with moistened eyes and slow-coming words, meeting for perhaps the last time in this life; for the Major was to stop but an hour at Fort Johnson, and thence hasten on to New York and to England, bearing with him weighty despatches. While they still stood, and the negro was tying Master Philip's hat over his ears, my aunt entered the room, bearing in her arms the poor little waif from the massacre. The child had been washed and warmed, and wore over her dress and feet a sort of mantle, which the good woman had hastily and somewhat rudely fashioned meantime. "Oh, we came near forgetting her!" cried Philip. "Wrap her snug and warm, Bob, for the journey." The Major looked blank at sight of the child, who nestled in my aunt's arms. "What am I to do with her?" he said to my patron. "Why, papa, you know she is going to England with us," said the boy. "Tut, lad!" spoke the Major, peremptorily; then, to Mr. Stewart: "Could Sir William place her, think you, or does that half-breed swarm of his fill the house? It seemed right enough to bring her out from the Palatine country, but now that she's out, damme! I almost wish she was back again. What a fool not to leave her at Herkimer's!" I do not know if I had any clear idea of what was springing up in Mr. Stewart's mind, but it seems to me that I must have looked at him pleadingly and with great hope in my eyes, during the moment of silence which followed. Mr. Stewart in turn regarded the child attentively. "Would it please you to keep her here, Dame Kronk?" he asked at last. As my aunt made glad assent, I could scarcely refrain from dancing. I walked over to the little girl and took her hand in mine, filled with deep joy. "You render me very grateful, Tom," said Major Cross, heartily. "It's a load off my mind. --Come, Philip, make your farewells. We must be off." "And isn't the child to be mine--to go with us?" the boy asked, vehemently. "Why be childish, Philip?" demanded the Major. "Of course it's out of the question." The English lad, muffled up now for the ride, with his large flat hat pressed down comically at the sides by the great knitted comforter which Bob had tied under his chin, scowled in a savage fashion, bit his lips, and started for the door, too angry to say good-by. When he passed me, red-faced and wrathful, I could not keep from smiling, but truly rather at his swaddled appearance than at his discomfiture. He had sneered at my apron, besides. With a cry of rage he whirled around and struck me full in the face, knocking me head over heels into the ashes on the hearth. Then he burst into a fit of violent weeping, or rather convulsions more befitting a wild-cat than a human being, stamping furiously with his feet, and screaming that he _would_ have the child. I picked myself out of the ashes, where my hair had been singed a trifle by the embers, in time to see the Major soundly cuff his offspring, and then lead him by the arm, still screaming, out of the door. There Bob enveloped him in his arms, struggling and kicking, and put him on the horse. Major Cross, returning for a final farewell word, gave me a shilling as a salve for my hurts, physical and mental, and said: "I am sorry to have so ill-tempered a son. He cannot brook denial, when once he fixes his heart on a thing. However, he'll get that beaten out of him before he's done with the world. And so, Tom, dear, dear old comrade, a last good-by. God bless you, Tom! Farewell." "God bless you--and yours, _mon frère_!" We stood, Mr. Stewart and I, at the outer gate, and watched them down the river road, until the jutting headland intervened. As we walked slowly back toward the house, my guardian said, as if talking partly to himself: "There is nothing clearer in natural law than that sons inherit from their mothers. I know of only two cases in all history where an able man had a father superior in brain and energy to the mother--Martin Luther and the present King of Prussia. Perhaps it was all for the best." To this I of course offered no answer, but trudged along through the melting snow by his side. Presently, as we reached the house, he stopped and looked the log structure critically over. "You heard what I said, Douw, upon your belonging henceforth to this house--to me?" "Yes, Mr. Stewart." "And now, lo and behold, I have a daughter as well! To-morrow we must plan out still another room for our abode." Thus ended the day on which my story properly and prophetically begins--the day when I first met Master Philip Cross.

4

None

In Which I Become the Son of the House. The French, for some reason or other, did not follow up their advantage and descend upon the lower Valley; but had they done so there could scarcely have been a greater panic among the Palatines. All during the year there had been seen at times, darkly flitting through the woods near the sparse settlements, little bands of hostile Indians. It was said that their purpose was to seize and abduct Sir William; failing in this, they did what other mischief they could, so that the whole Valley was kept in constant alarm. No household knew, on going to bed, that they would not be roused before morning by savage war-cries. No man ventured out of sight of his home without entertaining the idea that he might never get back alive. Hence, when the long-expected blow was really struck, and the town on the German Flatts devastated, everybody was in an agony of fear. To make matters worse, Sir William was at his home ill in bed, and there was some trouble between him and the English commanders, which stood in the way of troops being sent to our aid. Those few days following the dreadful news of the attack above us seem still like a nightmare. The settlers up the river began sending their household goods down to Albany; women and children, too, passed us in great parties, to take refuge in Fort Hunter or at Schenectady. The river suddenly became covered with boats once more, but this time representing the affrighted flight of whole communities instead of a peaceful commerce. During this season of terror I was, as may be conceived, indeed unhappy. I had no stomach even for play with the new addition to our household, yet scarcely dared to show my nose outside the stockade. Mr. Stewart spent his days abroad, either with Sir William, or up at Caughnawaga concerting means of defence with our friends the Fondas. He did, however, find time to cross the river and reassure my mother, who trembled with apprehension for her great brood of young, but was brave as a lion for herself. Weeks afterward, when I visited her once more, I saw baskets of lime in the attic which this devoted woman had stored there, to throw with water on the Indians when they came. This device she had learned from the family traditions of her ancestors' doings, when the Spaniards were in Holland. Gradually the alarm wore away. The French and Indians, after killing fifty Palatines and taking thrice that number prisoners, turned tail and marched back to the Lake again, with some of Honikol Herkimer's lead in their miserable bodies. The Valley was rarely to be cursed with their presence again. It was as if a long fever had come to its climax in a tremendous convulsion, and then gone off altogether. We regained confidence, and faced the long winter of '57 with content. Before the next snowfall succeeded to that first November flurry, and the season closed in in earnest, Mr. Stewart was able, by the aid of a number of neighbors, to build and roof over two additions to his house. The structure was still all of logs, but with its new wings became almost as large, if not as imposing, as any frame-house round about. One of these wings was set aside for Dame Kronk and the little girl. The other, much to my surprise, was given to me. At the same time my benefactor formally presented me with my little black playmate, Tulp. He had heretofore been my friend; henceforth he was my slave, yet, let me add, none the less my friend. All this was equivalent to my formal adoption as Mr. Stewart's son. It was the custom in those days, when a slave child came of a certain age, to present it to the child of the family who should be of the same age and sex. The presentation was made at New Year's, ordinarily, and the white child acknowledged it by giving the little black a piece of money and a pair of shoes. My mother rather illogically shed some tears at this token that I was to belong henceforth to Mr. Stewart; but she gave me a bright Spanish dollar out of her small hoard, for Tulp, and she had old William Dietz, the itinerant cobbler of Schoharie, construct for him a very notable pair of shoes, which did him no good since his father promptly sold them over at Fort Hunter for rum. The old rascal would have made away with the coin as well, no doubt, but that Mr. Stewart threatened him with a hiding, and so Tulp wore it on a leather string about his neck. I did not change my name, but continued to be Douw Mauverensen. This was at the wish of both Mr. Stewart and my mother, for the name I bore was an honorable one. My father had been for years a clergyman in the Valley, preaching now in Dutch, now in German, according to the nationality of the people, and leading a life of much hardship, travelling up and down among them. It is not my business to insist that he was a great man, but it is certain that through all my younger years I received kindnesses from many people because I was my father's son. For my own part I but faintly remember him, he having been killed by a fractious horse when I was a very small boy. As he had had no fixed charge during life, but had ministered to half a dozen communities, so it was nobody's business in particular to care for his family after his death. The owner of the horse did send my mother a bushel of apples, and the congregation at Stone Arabia took up a little money for her. But they were all poor people in those days, wresting a scanty livelihood from the wilderness, and besides, I have never noticed that to be free with their money is in the nature of either the Dutch or the Palatines. The new dominie, too, who came up from Albany to take my father's place, was of the opinion that there was quite little enough coming in for the living pastor, without shearing it, as he said, to keep alive dead folk's memories. Thus sadly a prospect of great destitution opened before my mother. But she was, if I say it myself, a superior woman. Her father, Captain Baltus Van Hoorn, had been a burgher of substance in old Dorp, until the knavery of a sea-captain who turned pirate with a ship owned by my grandfather drove the old gentleman into poverty and idleness. For years his younger daughter, my mother, kept watch over him, contrived by hook or by crook to collect his old credits outstanding, and maintained at least enough of his business to ward the wolf from the door. It was only after his death, and after her older sister Margaret had gone to Coeymans with her husband, Kronk, that my mother married the elderly Dominie Mauverensen. When he was so untowardly killed, fifteen years later, she was left with eight children, of whom I, a toddling urchin, was among the youngest. She had no money save the pittance from Stone Arabia, no means of livelihood, nor even a roof of her own over her head, since the new dominie made harsh remarks about her keeping him out of his own every time he visited our village. To add to the wretchedness of her plight, at this very time her sister Margaret came back in destitution and weakness to her, having been both widowed and sorely shaken in wits by the small-pox. It was then that Mr. Stewart, who had known my father, came to our relief. He first lent my mother a small sum of money--she would take no more, and was afterward very proud to repay him penny for penny. He further interested Sir William Johnson, Mr. Douw Fonda, Mr. John Butler, and others in the project of aiding her to establish a small school at Fort Hunter, where little children might be taught pure Dutch. This language, which I have lived to see almost entirely fade from use, was even then thought to be most probably the tongue of the future in the colony, and there was the more need to teach it correctly, since, by the barbarous commingling of Rhenish peasant dialects, Irish and Scotch perversions of English, Indian phrases, the lingo of the slaves, and the curious expressions of the Yankees from the East, the most villanous jargon ever heard was commonly spoken in our Valley. My mother knew the noble language of her fathers in all its strength and sweetness, and her teaching was so highly prized that soon the school became a source of steady support to us all. Old "Uncle" Conrad--or Coonrod as we used to call him--the high-shouldered old pedagogue who was at once teacher, tithing-man, herb-doctor, and fiddler for our section, grumbled a little at the start; but either he had not the heart to take the bread from our mouths, or his own lips were soon silenced by the persuasion of our patrons. It was out of respect for one of these, good old Douw Fonda, who came from Schenectady to live at Caughnawaga when I was two years old, that I had been named. But even more we all owed to the quiet, lonely man who had built the log house opposite Aries Creek, and who used so often to come over on Sunday afternoons in the warm weather and pay us a friendly visit. My earliest recollections are of this Mr. Stewart, out of whom my boyish fancy created a beneficent sort of St. Nicholas, who could be good all the year round instead of only at New Year's. As I grew older his visits seemed more and more to be connected with me, for he paid little attention to my sisters, and rarely missed taking me on his knee, or, later on, leading me out for a walk. Finally I was asked to go over and stay with him for a week, and this practically was the last of my life with my mother. Soon afterward my aunt was engaged as his housekeeper, and I tacitly became a part of the household as well. Last of all, on my eighth birthday, in this same November of '57, I was formally installed as son of the house. It was a memorable day, as I have said, in that Tulp was given me for my own. But I think that at the time I was even more affected by the fact that I was presented with a coat, and allowed to forever lay aside my odious aprons. These garments, made by my mother's own hands, had long been the bane of my existence. To all my entreaties to be dressed as the other boys of my age were, like Matthew Wormuth or Walter Butler instead of like a Dutch infant, she was accustomed to retort that young Peter Hansenius, the son of the dominie at Schenectady, had worn aprons until he was twelve. I had never seen Peter Hansenius, nor has it ever since been my fortune so to do, but I hated him bitterly as the cause of my humiliation. Yet when I had got my coat, and wore it, along with breeches of the same pearl-gray color, dark woollen stockings, copper buckles on my shoes, and plain lace at my wrists and neck and on my new hat, I somehow did not feel any more like the other boys than before. It was my bringing up, I fancy, which made me a solitary lad. Continual contact with Mr. Stewart had made me older than my years. I knew the history of Holland almost as well, I imagine, as any grown man in the neighborhood, and I had read many valuable books on the history of other countries and the lives of famous men, which were in Mr. Stewart's possession. Sir William also loaned me numerous books, including the _Gentleman's Magazine,_ which I studied with delight. I had also from him _Roderick Random_, which I did not at all enjoy, nor do I even now understand how it, or for that matter any of its rowdy fellows, found favor with sensible people. My reading was all very serious--strangely so, no doubt, for a little boy--but in truth reading of any sort would have served to make me an odd sheep among my comrades. I wonder still at the unlettered condition of the boys about me. John Johnson, though seven years my senior, was so ignorant as scarcely to be able to tell the difference between the Dutch and the Germans, and whence they respectively came. He told me once, some years after this, when I was bringing an armful of volumes from his father's mansion, that a boy was a fool to pore over books when he could ride and fish and hunt instead. Young Butler was of a better sort mentally, but he too never cared to read much. Both he and the Groats, the Nellises, the Cosselmans, young Wormuth--in fact, all the boys of good families I knew in the Valley--derided education, and preferred instead to go into the woods with a negro, and hunt squirrels while he chopped, or to play with their traps. Perhaps they were not to be blamed much, for the attractions of the rough out-of-door life which they saw men leading all about them might very easily outweigh the quiet pleasures of a book. But it was a misfortune none the less in after-years to some of them, when they allowed uninformed prejudices to lead them into a terrible course of crime against their country and their neighbors, and paid their estates or their lives as the penalty for their ignorance and folly. Fortunately, things are better ordered for the youth of the land in these days.

5

None

How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened. It was on the morrow after my birthday that we became finally convinced of the French retreat. Mr. Stewart had returned from his journeys, contented, and sat now, after his hot supper, smoking by the fire. I lay at his feet on a bear-skin, I remember, reading by the light of the flames, when my aunt brought the baby-girl in. During the week that she had been with us, I had been too much terrified by the menace of invasion to take much interest in her, and Mr. Stewart had scarcely seen her. He smiled now, and held out his hands to her. She went to him very freely, and looked him over with a wise, wondering expression when he took her on his knee. It could be seen that she was very pretty. Her little white rows of teeth were as regular and pearly as the upper kernels on an ear of fresh sweet corn. She had a ribbon in her long, glossy hair, and her face shone pleasantly with soap. My aunt had made her some shoes out of deer-hide, which Mr. Stewart chuckled over. "What a people the Dutch are!" he said, with a smile. "The child is polished like the barrel of a gun. What's your name, little one?" The girl made no answer, from timidity I suppose. "Has she no name? I should think she would have one," said I. It was the first time I had ever spoken to Mr. Stewart without having been addressed. But my new position in the house seemed to entitle me to this much liberty, for once. "No," he replied, "your aunt is not able to discover that she has a name--except that she calls herself Pulkey, or something like that." "That is not a good name to the ear," I said, in comment. "No; doubtless it is a nickname. I have thought," he added, musingly, "of calling her Desideria." I sat bolt upright at this. It did not become me to protest, but I could not keep the dismay from my face, evidently, for Mr. Stewart laughed aloud. "What is it, Douw? Is it not to your liking?" "Y-e-s, sir--but she is such a very little girl!" "And the name is so great, eh? She'll grow to it, lad, she'll grow to it. And what kind of a Dutchman are you, sir, who are unwilling to do honor to the greatest of all Dutchmen? The Dr. Erasmus upon whose letters you are to try your Latin this winter--his name was Desiderius. Can you tell what it means? It signifies 'desired,' as of a mother's heart, and he took a form of the Greek verb _erao_, meaning about the same thing, instead. It's a goodly famous name, you see. We mean to make our little girl the truest lady, and love her the best, of all the women in the Valley. And so we'll give her a name--a fair-sounding, gracious, classical name--which no other woman bears, and one that shall always suggest home love--eh, boy?" "But if it be so good a name, sir," I said, gingerly being conscious of presumption, "why did Dr. Erasmus not keep it himself instead of turning it into Greek?" My patron laughed heartily at this. "A Dutchman for obstinacy!" he said, and leaned over to rub the top of my head, which he did when I specially pleased him. Late that night, as I lay awake in my new room, listening to the whistling of the wind in the snow-laden branches outside, an idea came to me which I determined to put into action. So next evening, when the little girl was brought in after our supper, I begged that she might be put down on the fur before the fire, to play with me, and I watched my opportunity. Mr. Stewart was reading by the candles on the table. Save for the singing of the kettle on the crane--for the mixing of his night-drink later on--and the click of my aunt's knitting-needles, there was perfect silence. I mustered my bravery, and called my wee playmate "Daisy." I dared not look at the master, and could not tell if he had heard or not. Presently I spoke the name again, and this time ventured to steal an apprehensive glance at him, and fancied I saw the workings of a smile repressed in the deep lines about his mouth. "A Dutchman for obstinacy" truly, since two days afterward Mr. Stewart himself called the girl "Daisy"--and there was an end of it. Until confirmation time, when she played a queenly part at the head of the little class of farmers' and villagers' daughters whom Dominie Romeyn baptized into full communion, the ponderous Latin name was never heard of again. Then it indeed emerged for but a single day, to dignify a state occasion, and disappeared forever. Except alone on the confirmation register of the Stone Church at Caughnawaga, she was Daisy thenceforth for all time and to all men. The winter of 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to get food. I do not remember that our household stood in any such need, but occasionally some Indian who had been across the hills carrying venison would come in and rest, begging for a drink of raw rum, and giving forth a strong smell like that of a tame bear as he toasted himself by the fire. Mr. Stewart was often amused by these fellows, and delighted to talk with them as far as their knowledge of language and inclination to use it went, but I never could abide them. It has become the fashion now to be sentimental about the red man, and young people who never knew what he really was like find it easy to extol his virtues, and to create for him a chivalrous character. No doubt there were some honest creatures among them; even in Sodom and Gomorrah a few just people were found. It is true that in later life I once had occasion to depend greatly upon the fidelity of two Oneidas, and they did not fail me. But as a whole the race was a bad one--full of laziness and lies and cowardly ferocity. From earliest childhood I saw a good deal of them, and I know what I say. Probably there was no place on the whole continent where these Indians could be better studied than in the Mohawk Valley, near to Sir William's place. They came to him in great numbers, not only from the Six Nations, but often from far-distant tribes living beyond the Lakes and north of the St. Lawrence. They were on their best behavior with him, and no doubt had an affection for him in their way, but it was because he flattered their egregious vanity by acting and dressing in Indian fashion, and made it worth their while by constantly giving them presents and rum. Their liking seemed always to me to be that of the selfish, treacherous cat, rather than of the honest dog. Their teeth and claws were always ready for your flesh, if you did not give them enough, and if they dared to strike. And they were cowards, too, for all their boasting. Not even Sir William could get them to face any enemy in the open. Their notion of war was midnight skulking and shooting from behind safe cover. Even in battle they were murderers, not warriors. In peace they were next to useless. There was a little colony of them in our orchard one summer which I watched with much interest. The men never did one stroke of honest work all the season long, except to trot on errands when they felt like it, and occasionally salt and smoke fish which they caught in the river. But the wretched squaws--my word but _they_ worked enough for both! These women, wrinkled, dirty, sore-eyed from the smoke in their miserable huts, toiled on patiently, ceaselessly, making a great variety of wooden utensils and things of deer-hide like snow-shoes, moccasins, and shirts, which they bartered with the whites for milk and vegetables and rum. Even the little girls among them had to gather berries and mandrake, and, in the fall, the sumach blows which the Indians used for savoring their food. And if these poor creatures obtained in their bartering too much bread and milk and too little rum and tobacco, they were beaten by their men as no white man would beat the meanest animal. Doubtless much of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp, that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, who herded together in a shanty at the edge of the clearing back of us, had their faults, no doubt; but they would work when they were bid, and they were grateful to those who fed and clothed and cared for them. These were reasons for their being despised by the Indians--and they seemed also reasons why I should like them, as I always did. There were other reasons why I should be very fond of Tulp. He was a queer, droll little darky as a boy, full of curious fancies and comical sayings, and I never can remember a time when he would not, I veritably believe, have laid down his life for me. We were always together, indoors or out. He was exceedingly proud of his name, which was in a way a badge of ancient descent--having been borne by a long line of slaves, his ancestors, since that far-back time when the Dutch went crazy over collecting tulip-bulbs. His father had started in life with this name, too, but, passing into the possession of an unromantic Yankee at Albany, had been re-christened Eli--a name which he loathed yet perforce retained when Mr. Stewart bought him. He was a drunken, larcenous old rascal, but as sweet-tempered as the day is long, and many's the time I've heard him vow, with maudlin tears in his eyes, that all his evil habits came upon him as the result of changing his name. If he had continued to be Tulp, he argued, he would have had some incentive to an honorable life; but what self-respecting nigger could have so low-down a name as Eli, and be good for anything? All this warranted my boy in being proud of his name, and, so to speak, living up to it. I have gossiped along without telling much of the long winter of 1757. In truth, there is little to tell. I happen to remember that it was a season of cruel hardship to many of our neighbors. But it was a happy time for me. What mattered it that the snow was piled outside high above my head; that food in the forest was so scarce that the wolves crept yelping close to our stockade; that we had to eat cranberries to keep off the scurvy, until I grew for all time to hate their very color; or that for five long months I never saw my mother and sisters, or went to church? It was very pleasant inside. I seem still to see the square, home-like central room of the old house, with Mr. Stewart's bed in one corner, covered with a great robe of pieced panther skins. The smoky rafters above were hung with strings of onions, red-peppers, and long ears of Indian corn, the gold of which shone through pale parted husks and glowed in the firelight. The rude home-made table, chairs, and stools stood in those days upon a rough floor of hewn planks, on projecting corners of which an unlucky toe was often stubbed. There were various skins spread on this floor, and others on the log walls, hung up to dry. Over the great stone mantel were suspended Mr. Stewart's guns, along with his sword and pistols. Back in the corners of the fireplace were hung traps, nets, and the like, while on the opposite side of the room was the master's bookcase, well filled with volumes in English, Latin, and other tongues. Three doors, low and unpanelled, opened from this room to the other chambers of the house--leading respectively to the kitchen, to my room, and to the room now set apart for my aunt and little Daisy. No doubt it was a poor abode, and scantily enough furnished, judged by present standards, but we were very comfortable in it, none the less. I worked pretty hard that winter on my Latin, conning Cæsar for labor and Dr. Erasmus for play, and kept up my other studies as well, reading for the first time, I remember, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. For the rest, I busied myself learning to make snow-shoes, to twist cords out of flax, to mould bullets, and to write legibly, or else played with Daisy and Tulp. To confess how simply we amused ourselves, we three little ones, would be to speak in an unknown tongue, I fear, to modern children. Our stock of playthings was very limited. We had, as the basis of everything, the wooden works of the old clock, which served now for a gristmill like that of the Groats, now for a fort, again for a church. Then there were the spindles of a discarded spinning-wheel, and a small army of spools which my aunt used for winding linen thread. These we dressed in odd rags for dolls--soldiers, Indians, and fine ladies, and knights of old. To our contented fancy, there was endless interest in the lives and doings of these poor puppets. I made them illustrate the things I read, and the slave boy and tiny orphan girl assisted and followed on with equal enthusiasm, whether the play was of Alexander of Macedon, or Captain Kidd, or only a war-council of Delaware Indians, based upon Mr. Colden's book. Sometimes, when it was warm enough to leave the hearth, and Mr. Stewart desired not to be disturbed, we would transport ourselves and our games to my aunt's room. This would be a dingy enough place, I suppose, even to my eyes now, but it had a great charm then. Here from the rafters hung the dried, odoriferous herbs--sage, summer-savory, and mother-wort; bottles of cucumber ointment and of a liniment made from angle-worms--famous for cuts and bruises; strings of dried apples and pumpkins; black beans in their withered pods; sweet clover for the linen--and I know not what else besides. On the wall were two Dutch engravings of the killing of Jan and Cornelis de Wit by the citizens of The Hague, which, despite their hideous fidelity to details, had a great fascination for me. My childhood comes back vividly indeed to me as I recall the good old woman, in her white cap and short gown (which she had to lift to get at the pocket tied over her petticoat by a string to her waist), walking up and down with the yarn taut from the huge, buzzing wheel, crooning Dutch hymns to herself the while, and thinking about our dinner.

6

None

Within Sound of the Shouting Waters. If I relied upon my memory, I could not tell when the French war ended. It had practically terminated, so far as our Valley was concerned, with the episode already related. Sir William Johnson was away much of the time with the army, and several of the boys older than myself--John Johnson, John Frey, and Adam Fonda among them--went with him. We heard vague news of battles at distant places, at Niagara, at Quebec, and elsewhere. Once, indeed, a band of Roman Catholic Indians appeared at Fort Herkimer and did bloody work before they were driven off, but this time there was no panic in the lower settlements. Large troops of soldiers continually passed up and down on the river in the open seasons, some of them in very handsome clothes. I remember one body of Highlanders in particular whose dress and mien impressed me greatly. Mr. Stewart, too, was much excited by the memories this noble uniform evoked, and had the officers into the house to eat and drink with him. I watched and listened to these tall, fierce, bare-kneed warriors in awe, from a distance. He brought out bottles from his rare stock of Madeira, and they drank it amid exclamations which, if I mistake not, were highly treasonable. This was almost the last occasion on which I heard references made to his descent, and he did his best to discourage them then. Most of these fine red-haired men, I learned afterward laid their bones on the bloody plateau overlooking Quebec. Far fresher in my recollection than these rumors of war is the fact that my Tulp caught the small-pox, in the spring of '60, the malady having been spread by a Yankee who came up the Valley selling sap-spouts that were turned with a lathe instead of being whittled. The poor little chap was carried off to a sheep-shed on the meadow clearing, a long walk from our house, and he had to remain there by himself for six weeks. At my urgent request, I was allowed to take his food to him daily, leaving it on a stone outside and then discreetly retiring. He would come out and get it, and then we would shout to each other across the creek. I took up some of our dolls to him, but he did not get much comfort out of them, being unable to remember any of the stories which I illustrated with them, or to invent any for himself. At his suggestion I brought him instead a piece of tanned calf-skin, with a sailor's needle and some twine, and the little fellow made out of this a lot of wallets for his friends, which had to be buried a long time before they could be safely used. I have one of these yet--mildewed with age, and most rudely stitched, but still a very precious possession. Tulp came out finally, scarred and twisted so that he was ever afterward repellent to the eye, and as crooked as Richard the Third. I fear that Daisy never altogether liked him after this. To me he was dearer than ever, not because my heart was tenderer than hers, of course, but because women are more delicately made, and must perforce shudder at ugliness. How happily the years went by! The pictures in my memory, save those of the snug winter rooms already referred to, are all of a beautiful Valley, embowered in green, radiant with sunshine--each day live-long with delight. There was first of all in the spring, when the chorus of returning song-birds began, the gathering of maple-sap, still sacred to boyhood. The sheep were to be washed and sheared, too, and the awkward, weak-kneed calves to be fed. While the spring floods ran high, ducks and geese covered the water, and muskrats came out, driven from their holes. Then appeared great flocks of pigeons, well fattened from their winter's sojourn in the South, and everybody, young and old, gave himself up to their slaughter; while this lasted, the crack! crack! of guns was heard all the forenoon long, particularly if the day was cloudy and the birds were flying low--and ah! the buttered pigeon pies my aunt made, too. As the floods went down, and the snow-water disappeared, the fishing began, first with the big, silly suckers, then with wiser and more valued fish. The woods became dry, and then in long, joyous rambles we set traps and snares, hunted for nests among the low branches and in the marsh-grass, smoked woodchucks out of their holes, gathered wild flowers, winter-green, and dye-plants, or built great fires of the dead leaves and pithless, scattered branches, as boys to the end of time will delight to do. When autumn came, there were mushrooms, and beech-nuts, butter-nuts, hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk by my aunt. Ah, they were happy times indeed! Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high, uncompromising back made all my bones ache. Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads. When at last I could escape without discredit, and get across the river again, it was with the consoling thought that the next Sunday would be Mr. Stewart's Sunday. This meant a good long walk with my patron. Sometimes we would go down to Mount Johnson, if Sir William was at home, or to Mr. Butler's, or some other English-speaking house, where I would hear much profitable conversation, and then be encouraged to talk about it during our leisurely homeward stroll. But more often, if the day were fine, we would leave roads and civilization behind us, and climb the gradual elevation to the north of the house, through the woodland to an old Indian trail which led to our favorite haunt--a wonderful ravine. The place has still a local fame, and picnic parties go there to play at forestry, but it gives scarcely a suggestion now of its ancient wildness. As my boyish eyes saw it, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring. The creek, then a powerful stream, had cut a deep gorge in its exultant leap over the limestone barrier. On the cliffs above, giant hemlocks seemed to brush the very sky with their black, tufted boughs. Away below, on the shadowed bottomland, which could be reached only by feet trained to difficult descents, strange plants grew rank in the moisture of the waterfall, and misshapen rocks wrapped their nakedness in heavy folds of unknown mosses and nameless fern-growths. Above all was the ceaseless shout of the tumbling waters, which had in my ears ever a barbaric message from the Spirit of the Wilderness. The older Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here, for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain, for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown. Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this council place. Even the trail, winding its tortuous way from the Valley over the hills toward the Adirondack fastnesses, had been deserted for another long before--so long, in fact, that the young brave who chanced to follow the lounging tracks of the black bear down the creek to the gorge, or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part of his ancestral history. Mr. Stewart told me that when he first settled in the Valley, a disappointed and angry man, this gulf had much the satisfaction for him that men in great grief or wrath find in breasting a sharp storm. There was something congenial to his ugly unrest in this place, with its violent clamor, its swift dashing of waters, its dismal shadows, and damp chilliness of depths. But we were fallen now upon calmer, brighter days. He was no longer the discouraged, sullen misanthropist, but had come to be instead a pacific, contented, even happy, gentleman. And lo! the meaning of the wild gorge changed to reflect his mood. There was no stain of savagery upon the delight we had in coming to this spot. As he said, once listened rightly to, the music of the falling waters gave suggestions which, if they were sobering, were still not sad. This place was all our own, and hither we most frequently bent our steps on Sundays, after the snow-water had left the creek, and the danger of lurking colds had been coaxed from the earth by the May sun. Here he would sit for hours on one of the stones in the great Druid-like circle which some dead generation of savages had toiled to construct. Sometimes I would scour the steep sides of the ravine and the moist bottom for curious plants to fetch to him, and he would tell me of their structure and design. More often I would sit at his feet, and he, between whiffs at his pipe, would discourse to me of the differences between his Old World and this new one, into which I providentially had been born. He talked of his past, of my future, and together with this was put forth an indescribable wealth of reminiscence, reflection, and helpful anecdote. On this spot, with the gaunt outlines of mammoth primeval trunks and twisted boughs above us, with the sacred memorials of extinct rites about us, and with the waters crashing down through the solitude beneath us on their way to turn Sir William's mill-wheel, one could get broad, comprehensive ideas of what things really meant. One could see wherein the age of Pitt differed from and advanced upon the age of Colbert, on this new continent, and could as in prophecy dream of the age of Jefferson yet to come. Did I as a lad feel these things? Truly it seems to me that I did. Half a century before, the medicine-man's fire had blazed in this circle, its smoky incense crackling upward in offering to the gods of the pagan tribe. Here, too, upon this charred, barren spot, had been heaped the blazing fagots about the limbs of the captive brave, and the victim bound to the stake had nerved himself to show the encircling brutes that not even the horrors of this death could shake his will, or wring a groan from his heaving breast. Here, too, above the unending din of the waterfall and the whisper of these hemlocks overhead, had often risen some such shrill-voiced, defiant deathsong, from the smoke and anguish of the stake, as that chant of the Algonquin son of Alknomuk which my grandchildren still sing at their school. This dead and horrible past of heathendom I saw as in a mirror, looking upon these council-stones. The children's children of these savages were still in the Valley. Their council fires were still lighted, no further distant than the Salt Springs. In their hearts burned all the old lust for torture and massacre, and the awful joys of rending enemies limb by limb. But the spell of Europe was upon them, and, in good part or otherwise, they bowed under it. So much had been gained, and two peaceful white people could come and talk in perfect safety on the ancient site of their sacrifices and cruelties. Yet this spell of Europe, accomplishing so much, left much to be desired. It was still possible to burn a slave to death by legal process, here in our Valley; and it was still within the power of careless, greedy noblemen in London, who did not know the Mohawk from the Mississippi, to sign away great patents of our land, robbing honest settlers of their all. There was to come the spell of America, which should remedy these things. I cannot get it out of my head that I learned to foresee this, to feel and to look for its coming, there in the gorge as a boy. But there are other reasons why I should remember the place--to be told later on. The part little Daisy played in all these childhood enjoyments of mine is hardly to be described in words, much less portrayed in incidents. I can recall next to nothing to relate. Her presence as my sister, my comrade, and my pupil seems only an indefinable part of the sunshine which gilds these old memories. We were happy together--that is all. I taught her to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs. For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I learned in turn to be merciful to helpless creatures, and to be honest and cleanly in my thoughts and talk. She would help me to seek for birds' nests with genuine enthusiasm, but it was her pity which prevented their being plundered afterward. Her pretty love for all living things, her delight in innocent, simple amusements, her innate repugnance to coarse and cruel actions--all served to make me different from the rough boys about me. Thus we grew up together, glad in each other's constant company, and holding our common benefactor, Mr. Stewart, in the greatest love and veneration.

7

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Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate. As we two children became slowly transformed into youths, the Valley with no less steadiness developed in activity, population, and wealth. Good roads were built; new settlements sprang up; the sense of being in the hollow of the hand of savagery wore off. Primitive conditions lapsed, disappeared one by one. We came to smile at the uncouth dress and unshaven faces of the "bush-bauer" Palatines--once so familiar, now well nigh outlandish. Families from Connecticut and the Providence Plantations began to come in numbers, and their English tongue grew more and more to be the common language. People spoke now of the Winchester bushel, instead of the Schoharie spint and skipple. The bounty on wolves' heads went up to a pound sterling. The number of gentlemen who shaved every day, wore ruffles, and even wigs or powder on great occasions, and maintained hunting with hounds and horse-racing, increased yearly--so much so that some innocent people thought England itself could not offer more attractions. There was much envy when John Johnson, now twenty-three years old, was sent on a visit to England, to learn how still better to play the gentleman--and even more when he came back a knight, with splendid London clothes, and stories of what the King and the princes had said to him. The Johnsons were a great family now, receiving visits from notable people all over the colony at their new hall, which Sir William had built on the hills back of his new Scotch settlement. Nothing could have better shown how powerful Sir William had become, and how much his favor was to be courted, than the fact that ladies of quality and strict propriety, who fancied themselves very fine folk indeed, the De Lanceys and Phillipses and the like, would come visiting the widower baronet in his hall, and close their eyes to the presence there of Miss Molly and her half-breed children. Sir William's neighbors, indeed, overlooked this from their love for the man, and their reliance in his sense and strength. But the others, the aristocrats, held their tongues from fear of his wrath, and of his influence in London. They never liked him entirely; he in turn had so little regard for them and their pretensions that, when they came, he would suffer none of them to markedly avoid or affront the Brant squaw, whom indeed they had often to meet as an associate and equal. Yet this bold, independent, really great man, so shrewdly strong in his own attitude toward these gilded water-flies, was weak enough to rear his own son to be one of them, to value the baubles they valued, to view men and things through their painted spectacles--and thus to come to grief. Two years after Johnson Hall was built, Mr. Stewart all at once decided that he too would have a new house; and before snow flew the handsome, spacious "Cedars," as it was called, proudly fronted the Valley highway. Of course it was not, in size, a rival of the Hall at Johnstown, but it none the less was among the half-dozen best houses in the Mohawk Valley, and continued so to be until John Johnson burned it to the ground fifteen years later. It stood in front of our old log structure, now turned over to the slaves. It was of two stories, with lofty and spacious rooms, and from the road it presented a noble appearance, now that the old stockade had given place to a wall of low, regular masonry. With this new residence came a prodigious change in our way of life. Daisy was barely twelve years old, but we already thought of her as the lady of the house, for whom nothing was too good. The walls were plastered, and stiff paper from Antwerp with great sprawling arabesques, and figures of nymphs and fauns chasing one another up and down with ceaseless, fruitless persistency, was hung upon them, at least in the larger rooms. The floors were laid smoothly, each board lapping into the next by a then novel joiner's trick. On the floor in Daisy's room there was a carpet, too, a rare and remarkable thing in those days, and also from the Netherlands. In this same chamber, as well, were set up a bed of mahogany, cunningly carved and decorated, and a tall foreign cabinet of some rich dark wood, for linen, frocks, and the like. Here, likewise, were two gilt cages from Paris, in which a heart-breaking succession of native birds drooped and died, until four Dublin finches were at last imported for Daisy's special delight; and a case with glass doors and a lock, made in Boston, wherein to store her books; and, best of all, a piano--or was it a harpsichord? --standing on its own legs, which Mr. Stewart heard of as for sale in New York and bought at a pretty high figure. This last was indeed a rickety, jangling old box, but Daisy learned in a way to play upon it, and we men-folk, sitting in her room in the candle-light, and listening to her voice cooing to its shrill tinkle of accompaniment, thought the music as sweet as that of the cherubim. Mr. Stewart and I lived in far less splendor. There was no foreign furniture to speak of in our portions of the house; we slept on beds the cords of which creaked through honest American maple posts; we walked on floors which offered gritty sand to the tread instead of carpet-stuffs. But there were two great stands laden with good books in our living-room; we had servants now within sound of a bell; we habitually wore garments befitting men of refinement and substance; we rode our own horses, and we could have given Daisy a chaise had the condition of our roads made it desirable. I say "we" because I had come to be a responsible factor in the control of the property. Mr. Stewart had never been poor; he was now close upon being wealthy. Upon me little by little had devolved the superintendence of affairs. I directed the burning over and clearing of land, which every year added scores of tillable acres to our credit; saw to the planting, care, and harvesting of crops; bought, bred, and sold the stock; watched prices, dickered with travelling traders, provisioned the house--in a word, grew to be the manager of all, and this when I was barely twenty. Mr. Stewart bore his years with great strength, physically, but he readily gave over to me, as fast as I could assume them, the details of out-door work. The taste for sitting indoors or in the garden, and reading, or talking with Daisy--the charm of simply living in a home made beautiful by a good and clever young girl--gained yearly upon him. Side by side with this sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second growth of old-world, mediæval notions--a sort of aristocratic aftermath. It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to dwell upon this change, or rather upon its results, at this stage of the story. Social position was now a matter for consideration. With improved means of intercourse and traffic, each year found some family thrifty enough to thrust its head above the rude level of settlers' equality, and take on the airs of superiority. Twenty years before, it had been Colonel Johnson first, and nobody else second. Now the Baronet-General was still preeminently first; but every little community in the Valley chain had its two or three families holding themselves only a trifle lower than the Johnsons. Five or six nationalities were represented. Of the Germans, there were the Herkimers up above the Falls, the Lawyers at Schoharie, the Freys (who were commonly thus classed, though they came originally from Switzerland), and many others. Of important Dutch families, there were the Fondas at Caughnawaga, the Mabies and Groats at Rotterdam, below us, and the Quackenbosses to the west of us, across the river. The Johnsons and Butlers were Irish. Over at Cherry Valley the Campbells and Clydes were Scotch--the former being, indeed, close blood relatives of the great Argyll house. Colonel Isaac Paris, a prominent merchant near Stone Arabia, came from Strasbourg, and accounted himself a Frenchman, though he spoke German better than French, and attended the Dutch Calvinistic church. There were also English families of quality. I mention them all to show how curious was the admixture of races in our Valley. One cannot understand the terrible trouble which came upon us later without some knowledge of these race divisions. Mr. Stewart held a place in social estimation rather apart from any of these cliques. He was both Scotch and Irish by ancestry; he was French by education; he had lived and served in the Netherlands and sundry German states. Thus he could be all things to all men--yet he would not. He indeed became more solitary as he grew older, for the reasons I have already mentioned. He once had been friendly with all his intelligent neighbors, no matter what their nationality. Gradually he came to be intimate with only the Johnsons and Butlers on the theory that they were alone well born. Hours upon hours he talked with them of the Warrens and the Ormund-Butlers in Ireland, from whom they claimed descent, and of the assurance of Dutch and German cobblers and tinkers, in setting up for gentlemen. Sir William, in truth, had too much sense to often join or sympathize with these notions. But young Sir John and the Butlers, father and son, adopted them with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for the friendship, of their critics. But let me defer these painful matters as long as possible. There are still the joys of youth to recall. I had grown now into a tall, strong young man, and I was in the way of meeting no one who did not treat me as an equal. It seems to me now that I was not particularly popular among my fellows, but I was conscious of no loneliness then. I had many things to occupy my mind, besides my regular tasks. Both natural history and botany interested me greatly, and I was privileged also to assist Sir William's investigations in the noble paths of astronomy. He had both large information and many fine thoughts on the subject, and used laughingly to say that if he were not too lazy he would write a book thereon. This was his way of saying that he had more labor to get through than any other man in the Colony. It was his idea that some time I should write the work instead; upon the Sacondaga hills, he said, we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of planets. Alas! I also was too indolent--truly, not figuratively; the book was never written. In those days there was royal sport for rod and gun, but books also had a solid worth. We did not visit other houses much--Daisy and I--but held ourselves to a degree apart. The British people were, as a whole, nearer our station than the others, and had more ideas in common with us; but they were not of our blood, and we were not drawn toward many of them. As they looked down upon the Dutch, so the Dutch, in turn, were supercilious toward the Germans. I was Dutch, Daisy was German: but by a sort of tacit consent we identified ourselves with neither race, and this aided our isolation. There was also the question of religion. Mr. Stewart had been bred a Papist, and at the time of which I write, after the French war, Jesuit priests of that nation several times visited him to renew old European friendships. But he never went to mass, and never allowed them or anybody else to speak with him on the subject, no matter how deftly they approached it. This was prudent, from a worldly point of view, because the Valley, and for that matter the whole upper Colony, was bitterly opposed to Romish pretensions, and the first Scotch Highlanders who brought the mass into the Valley above Johnstown were openly denounced as idolaters. But it was certainly not caution which induced Mr. Stewart's backsliding. He was not the man to defer in that way to the prejudices of others. The truth was that he had no religious beliefs or faith whatever. But his scepticism was that of the French noble of the time, that of Voltaire and Mirabeau, rather than of the English plebeian and democrat, Thomas Paine. Naturally Daisy and I were not reared as theologians. We nominally belonged to the Calvinistic church, but not being obliged to attend its services, rarely did so. This tended to further separate us from our neighbors, who were mainly prodigious church-goers. But, more than all else, we lived by ourselves because, by constant contact with refined associations, we had grown to shrink from the coarseness which ruled outside. All about us marriages were made between mere children, each boy setting up for himself and taking a wife as soon as he had made a voyage to the Lakes and obtained a start in fur-trading. There was precious little sentiment or delicacy in these early courtships and matches, or in the state of society which they reflected--uncultured, sordid, rough, unsympathetic, with all its elementary instincts bluntly exposed and expressed. This was of course a subject not to be discussed by us. Up to the spring of 1772, when I was twenty-three years of age and Daisy was eighteen, no word of all the countless words which young men and women have from the dawn of language spoken on this great engrossing topic had ever been exchanged between us. In earlier years, when we were on the threshold of our teens, Mr. Stewart had more than once thought aloud in our hearing upon the time when we should inherit his home and fortune as a married couple. Nothing of that talk, though, had been heard for a long while. I had not entirely forgotten it; but I carried the idea along in the attic of my mind, as a thing not to be thrown away, yet of no present use or value or interest. Occasionally, indeed, I did recall it for the moment, and cast a diffident conjecture as to whether Daisy also remembered. Who shall say? I have been young and now am old, yet have I not learned the trick of reading a woman's mind. Very far indeed was I from it in those callow days. And now, after what I fear has been a tiresome enough prologue, my story awaits.

8

None

Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross. It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times, there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations. I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight. I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise. We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together, from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of himself and of the beautiful girl behind him. And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun. She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought, as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my head a little, too. It would have been strange otherwise, for the day and the scene must have stirred the coldest pulse. We moved through a pale velvety panorama of green--woodland and roadside and river reflections and shadows, all of living yet young and softening green; the birds all about us filled the warm air with song; the tapping of the woodpeckers and the shrill chatter of squirrels came from every thicket; there was nothing which did not reflect our joyous, buoyant delight that spring had come again. And I rode by Daisy's side, and thought more of her, I'm bound, than I did of the flood-dismantled dike on the river-bend at home which I had left unrestored for the day. Over the heads of the negroes, who, spying us, came headlong to take our horses, we saw Sir William standing in the garden with an unknown lady. The baronet himself, walking a little heavily with his cane, approached us with hearty salutations, helped Daisy to unmount, and presented us to this stranger--Lady Berenicia Cross. I am not so sure that people can fall in love at first sight. But never doubt their ability to dislike from the beginning! I know that I felt indignantly intolerant of this woman even before, hat in hand, I had finished my bow to her. Yet it might well have been that I was over-harsh in my judgment. She had been a pretty woman in her time, and still might be thought well-favored. At least _she_ must have thought so, for she wore more paint and ribbons, and fal-lals generally, than ever I saw on another woman, before or since. Her face was high, narrow, and very regular; oddly enough, it was in outline, with its thin, pursed-up mouth, straight nose, and full eyelids and brows, very like a face one would expect to see in a nun's hood. Yet so little in the character of the cloister did this countenance keep, that it was plastered thick with chalk and rouge, and sprinkled with ridiculous black patches, and bore, as it rose from the low courtesy before me, an unnatural smile half-way between a leer and a grin. I may say that I was a wholesome-enough looking young fellow, very tall and broad-shouldered, with a long, dark face, which was ugly in childhood, but had grown now into something like comeliness. I am not parading special innocence either, but no woman had ever looked into my eyes with so bold, I might say impudent, an expression as this fine lady put on to greet me. And she was old enough to be my mother, almost, into the bargain. But even more than her free glances, which, after all, meant no harm, but only reflected London manners, her dress grated upon me. We were not unaccustomed to good raiment in the Valley. Johnson Hall, which reared its broad bulk through the trees on the knoll above us, had many a time sported richer and costlier toilets in its chambers than this before us. But on my lady the gay stuffs seemed painfully out of place--like her feather fan, and smelling-salts, and dainty netted purse. The mountains and girdling forests were real; the strong-faced, burly, handsome baronet, whose words spoken here in the back-woods were law to British king and Parliament, was real; we ourselves, suitably and decently clad, and knowing our position, were also genuine parts of the scene. The English lady was pinchbeck by contrast with all about her. "Will you give the ladies an arm, Douw?" said Sir William. "We were walking to see the lilacs I planted a year ago. We old fellows, with so much to say to each other, will lead the way." Nothing occurred to me to say to the new acquaintance, who further annoyed me by clinging to my arm with a zeal unpleasantly different from Daisy's soft touch on the other side. I walked silent, and more or less sulky, between them down the gravelled path. Lady Berenicia chattered steadily. "And so this is the dear little Mistress Daisy of whom Sir William talks so much. How happy one must be to be such a favorite everywhere! And you content to live here, too, leading this simple, pastoral life! How sweet! And you never weary of it--never sigh when it is time to return to it from New York?" "I never have been to New York, nor Albany either," Daisy made answer. Lady Berenicia held up her fan in pretended astonishment. "Never to New York! nor even to Albany! _Une vraie belle sauvage! _ How you amaze me, poor child!" "Oh, I crave no pity, madam," our dear girl answered, cheerily. "My father and brother are so good to me--just like a true father and brother--that if I but hinted a wish to visit the moon, they would at once set about to arrange the voyage. I do not always stay at home. Twice I have been on a visit to Mr. Campbell, at Cherry Valley, over the hills yonder. And then once we made a grand excursion up the river, way to Fort Herkimer, and beyond to the place where my poor parents lost their lives." As we stood regarding the lilac bushes, planted in a circle on the slope, and I was congratulating myself that my elbows were free again, two gentlemen approached us from the direction of the Hall. Daisy was telling the story of her parents' death, which relation Lady Berenicia had urgently pressed, but now interrupted by saying: "There, that is my husband, with young Mr. Butler." Mr. Jonathan Cross seemed a very honest and sensible gentleman when we came to converse with him; somewhat austere, in the presence of his rattle-headed spouse at least, but polite and well-informed. He spoke pleasantly with me, saying that he was on his way to the farther Lake country on business, and that his wife was to remain, until his return, at Johnson Hall. His companion was Walter Butler, and of him I ought to speak more closely, since long generations after this tale is forgotten his name will remain written, blood-red, in the Valley's chronicles. I walked away from the lilacs with him, I recall, discussing some unremembered subject. I always liked Walter: even now, despite everything, there continues a soft spot in my memory for him. He was about my own age, and, oh! such a handsome youth, with features cut as in a cameo, and pale-brown smooth skin, and large deep eyes, that look upon me still sometimes in dreams with ineffable melancholy. He was somewhat beneath my stature, but formed with perfect delicacy. In those old days of breeches and long hose, a man's leg went for a good deal. I have often thought that there must be a much closer connection between trousers and democracy than has ever been publicly traced. A man like myself, with heavy knee-joints and a thick ankle, was almost always a Whig in the Revolutionary time--as if by natural prejudice against the would-be aristocrats, who liked to sport a straight-sinking knee-cap and dapper calf. When the Whigs, after the peace, became masters of their own country, and divided into parties again on their own account, it was still largely a matter of lower limbs. The faction which stood nearest Old-World ideas and monarchical tastes are said to have had great delight in the symmetry of Mr. Adams's underpinning, so daintily displayed in satin and silk. And when the plainer majority finally triumphed with the induction of Mr. Jefferson, some fifteen years since, was it not truly a victory of republican trousers--a popular decree that henceforth all men should be equal as to legs? To return. Walter Butler was most perfectly built--a living picture of grace. He dressed, too, with remarkable taste, contriving always to appear the gentleman, yet not out of place in the wilderness. He wore his own black hair, carelessly tied or flowing, and with no thought of powder. We had always liked each other, doubtless in that we were both of a solemn and meditative nature. We had not much else in common, it is true, for he was filled to the nostrils with pride about the Ormond-Butlers, whom he held to be his ancestors, and took it rather hard that I should not also be able to revere them for upholding a false-tongued king against the rights of his people. For my own part, I did not pin much faith upon his descent, being able to remember his grandfather, the old lieutenant, who seemed a peasant to the marrow of his bones. Nor could I see any special value in the fact of descent, even were it unquestioned. Walter, it seemed to me, would do much better to work at the law, to which he was bred, and make a name for himself by his own exertions. Alas, he did make a name! But though our paths would presently diverge we still were good friends, and as we walked he told me what he had heard that day of Lady Berenicia Cross. It was not much. She had been the daughter of a penniless, disreputable Irish earl, and had wedded early in life to escape the wretchedness of her paternal home. She had played quite a splendid part for a time in the vanities of London court-life, after her husband gained his wealth, but had latterly found her hold upon fashion's favor loosened. Why she had accompanied her serious spouse on this rough and wearisome journey was not clear. It might be that she came because he did not care for her company. It might be that he thought it wisest not to leave her in London to her own devices. In any case, here she indubitably was, and Walter was disposed to think her rather a fine woman for her years, which he took to be about twoscore. * * * * * We strolled back again to the lilacs, where the two women were seated on a bench, with Mr. Cross and Colonel Claus--the brighter and better of Sir William's two sons-in-law--standing over them. Lady Berenicia beckoned to my companion with her fan. "Pray come and amuse us, Mr. Butler," she said, in her high, mincing tones. "Were it not for the fear of ministering to your vanity, I might confess we two have been languishing for an hour for your company. Mistress Daisy and I venerate these cavaliers of ours vastly--we hold their grave wisdom in high regard--but our frivolous palates need lighter things than East India Companies and political quarrels in Boston. I command you to discourse nonsense, Mr. Butler--pure, giddy nonsense." Walter bowed, and with a tinge of irony acknowledged the compliment, but all pleasantly enough. I glanced at our Daisy, expecting to discover my own distaste for this silly speech mirrored on her face. It vexed me a little to see that she seemed instead to be pleased with the London lady. "What shall it be, my lady?" smiled Walter; "what shall be the shuttlecock--the May races, the ball, the Klock scandal, the--" If it was rude, it is too late to be helped now. I interrupted the foolish talk by asking Colonel Claus what the news from Boston was, for the post-boy had brought papers to the Hall that morning. "The anniversary speech is reported. Some apothecary, named Warren, held forth this year, and his seems the boldest tongue yet. If his talk stinks not of treason in every line, why then I have no smelling sense. They are talking of it in the library now; but I am no statesman, and it suits me better out here in the sun." "But," I replied, "I have heard of this Dr. Warren, and he is not reputed to be a rash or thoughtless speaker." Young Butler burst into the conversation with eager bitterness: "Thoughtless! Rash! No--the dogs know better! There'll be no word that can be laid hold upon--all circumspect outside, with hell itself underneath. Do we not know the canters? Oh, but I'd smash through letter and seal of the law alike to get at them, were I in power! There'll be no peace till some strong hand does do it." Walter's deep eyes flashed and glowed as he spoke, and his face was shadowed with grave intensity of feeling. There was a moment's silence--broken by the thin voice of the London lady: "_Bravo_! admirable! Always be in a rage, Mr. Butler, it suits you so much. --Isn't he handsome, Daisy, with his feathers all on end?" While our girl, unused to such bold talk, looked blushingly at the young grass, Mr. Cross spoke: "Doubtless you gentry of New York have your own good reasons for disliking Boston men, as I find you do. But why rasp your nerves and spoil your digestion by so fuming over their politics? I am an Englishman: if I can keep calm on the subject, you who are only collaterally aggrieved, as it were, should surely be able to do so. My word for it, young men, life brings vexations enough to one's very door, without setting out in quest of them." "Pray, Mr. Cross," languidly sneered my lady, "what is there in the heavens or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, which could stir your blood by one added beat an hour, save indigo and spices?" There was so distinct a menace of domestic discord in this iced query that Butler hastened to take up the talk: "Ah, yes, _you_ can keep cool! There are thousands of miles of water between you English and the nest where this treason is hatched. It's close to us. Do you think you can fence in a sentiment as you can cattle? No: it will spread. Soon what is shouted in Boston will be spoken in Albany, whispered in Philadelphia, winked and nodded in Williamsburg, thought in Charleston. And how will it be here, with us? Let me tell you, Mr. Cross, we are really in an alien country here. The high Germans above us, like that Herkimer you saw here Tuesday, do you think they care a pistareen for the King? And these damned sour-faced Dutch traders below, have they forgotten that this province was their grandfathers'? The moment it becomes clear to their niggard souls that there's no money to be lost by treason, will they not delight to help on any trouble the Yankees contrive to make for England? I tell you, sir, if you knew these Dutch as I know them--their silent treachery, their jealousy of us, their greed--" This seemed to have gone far enough. "Come, you forget that I am a Dutchman," I said, putting my hand on Butler's shoulder. Quivering with the excitement into which he had worked himself, he shook off my touch, and took a backward step, eying me angrily. I returned his gaze, and I dare say it was about as wrathful as his own. Lady Berenicia made a diversion. "It grows cool," she said. "Come inside with me, Mistress Daisy, and I will show you all my chests and boxes. Mr. Cross made a great to-do about bringing them, but--" As the ladies rose, Walter came to me with outstretched hand. "I was at fault, Douw," said he, frankly. "Don't think more about it." I took his hand, though I was not altogether sure about forgetting his words. Lady Berenicia looked at us over her shoulder, as she moved away, with disappointment mantling through the chalk on her cheeks. "My word! I protest they're not going to fight after all," she said.

9

None

I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire. In the library room of the Hall, across from the dining-chamber, and at the foot of the great staircase, on the bannister of which you may still see the marks of Joseph Brant's hatchet, we men had a long talk in the afternoon. I recall but indifferently the lesser topics of conversation. There was, of course, some political debate, in which Sir William and I were alone on the side of the Colonist feeling, and Mr. Stewart, the two Butlers, and Sir John Johnson were all for choking discontent with the rope. Nothing very much to the point was said, on our part at least; for the growing discord pained Sir William too deeply to allow him pleasure in its discussion, and I shrank from appearing to oppose Mr. Stewart, hateful as his notions seemed. Young Sir John stood by the window, I remember, sulkily drumming on the diapered panes, and purposely making his interjections as disagreeable to me as he could; at least, I thought so. So, apparently, did his father think, for several times I caught the wise old baronet glancing at his son in reproof, with a look in his grave gray eyes as of dawning doubt about the future of his heir. Young Johnson was now a man of thirty, blond, aquiline-faced, with cold blue eyes and thin, tight lips, which pouted more readily than they smiled. His hair was the pale color of bleached hay, a legacy from his low born German mother, and his complexion was growing evenly florid from too much Madeira wine. We were not friends, and we both knew it. There was other talk--about the recent creation of our part into a county by itself to be named after the Governor; about the behavior of the French traders at Oswego and Detroit, and a report from Europe in the latest gazettes that the "Young" Pretender, now a broken old rake, was at last to be married. This last was a subject upon which Mr. Stewart spoke most entertainingly, but with more willingness to let it be known that he had a kinsman's interest in the matter than he would formerly have shown. He was getting old, in fact, and an almost childish pride in his equivocal ancestry was growing upon him. Still his talk and reminiscences were extremely interesting. They fade in my recollection, however, before the fact that it was at this little gathering, this afternoon, that my career was settled for me. There had been some talk about me while I remained alone outside to confer with Sir William's head farmer, and Mr. Cross had agreed with Mr. Stewart and Sir William that I was to accompany him on his trip to the far Western region the following week. My patron had explained that I needed some added knowledge of the world and its affairs, yet was of too serious a turn to gather this in the guise of amusement, as Mr. John Butler advised I should, by being sent on a holiday to New York. Mr. Cross had been good enough to say that he liked what he had seen of me, and should be glad of my company. Of all this I knew nothing when I entered the library. The air was heavy with tobacco-smoke, and the table bore more bottles and glasses than books. "Find a chair, Douw," said Sir William. "I have sent for my man, Enoch Wade, who is to go westward with Mr, Cross next week. If he's drunk enough there'll be some sport." There entered the room a middle-aged man, tall, erect, well-knit in frame, with a thin, Yankeeish face, deeply browned, and shrewd hazel eyes. He bowed to nobody, but stood straight, looking like an Indian in his clothes of deer-hide. "This is Enoch Wade, gentlemen," said the baronet, indicating the new-comer with a wave of his glass, and stretching out his legs to enjoy the scene the more. "He is my land-sailor. Between his last sale at Albany, and his first foot westward from here, he professes all the vices and draws never a sober breath. Yet when he is in the woods he is abstemious, amiable, wise, resourceful, virtuous as a statue--a paragon of trappers. You can see him for yourselves. Yet, I warn you, appearances are deceitful; he is always drunker than he looks. He was, I know, most sinfully tipsy last night." "It was in excellent good company, General," said the hunter, drawling his words and no whit abashed. "He has no manners to speak of," continued the baronet, evidently with much satisfaction to himself; "he can outlie a Frontenac half-breed, he is more greedy of gain than a Kinderhook Dutchman, he can drink all the Mohawks of both castles under the bench, and my niggers are veritable Josephs in comparison with him--wait a moment, Enoch! --this is while he is in contact with civilization. Yet once on the trail, so to speak, he is probity personified. I know this, since he has twice accompanied me to Detroit." "Oh, in the woods, you know, some one of the party must remain sober," said Enoch, readily, still stiffly erect, but with a faint grin twitching on the saturnine corners of his mouth. This time Sir William laughed aloud, and pointed to a decanter and glass, from which the trapper helped himself with dignity. "Look you, rogue," said the host, "there is a young gentleman to be added to your party next week, and doubtless he will of needs have a nigger with him. See to it that the boat and provision arrangements are altered to meet this, and to-morrow be sober enough to advise him as to his outfit. For to-night, soak as deep as you like." Enoch poured out for himself a second tumbler of rum, but not showing the first signs of unsteadiness in gait or gesture. "This young gentleman"--he said, gravely smacking his lips--"about him; is he a temperate person, one of the sort who can turn a steadfast back upon the bottle?" A burst of Homeric laughter was Sir William's reply--laughter in which all were fain to join. "It's all right, General," said Enoch, as he turned to go; "don't mind my asking. One never can tell, you know, what kind of company he is like to pick up with here at the Hall." * * * * * My surprise and delight when I learned that I was the young gentleman in question, and that I was really to go to the Lakes and beyond, may be imagined. I seemed to walk on air, so great was my elation. You will not marvel now that I fail to recall very distinctly the general talk which followed. Conversation finally lagged, as the promptings of hunger, not less than the Ethiopian shouting and scolding from the kitchen below, warned us of approaching dinner. The drinking moderated somewhat, and the pipes were one by one laid aside, in tacit preparation for the meal. The Butlers rose to go, and were persuaded to remain. Mr. Stewart, who had an Old-World prejudice against tippling during the day, was induced by the baronet to taste a thimble of hollands, for appetite's sake. So we waited, with only a decent pretence of interest in the fitful talk. There came a sharp double knock on the door, which a second later was pushed partly open. Some of us rose, pulling our ruffles into place, and ready to start at once, for there were famous appetites in the wild Valley of those days. But the voice from behind the door was not a servant's, nor did it convey the intelligence we all awaited. It was, instead, the sharp, surface voice of Lady Berenicia, and it said: "We are weary of waiting for you in civilized quarters of the Hall. May we come in here, or are you too much ashamed of your vices to court inspection?" Walter Butler hastened to open the door, bowing low as he did so, and delivering himself of some gallant nonsense or other. The London lady entered the room with a mincing, kittenish affectation of carriage, casting bold smirks about her, like an Italian dancer. If her morning attire had seemed over-splendid, what shall I say of her appearance now? I looked in amazement upon her imposing tower of whitened hair, upon the great fluffs of lace, the brocaded stomacher and train, the shining satin petticoat front, the dazzling, creamy surfaces of throat and shoulders and forearms, all rather freely set forth. If the effect was bewildering, it was not unpleasant. The smoke-laden air of the dim old room seemed suddenly clarified, made radiant. A movement of chairs and of their occupants ran through the chamber, like a murmur of applause, as we rose to greet the resplendent apparition. But there came a veritable outburst of admiration when my lady's companion appeared in view. It was our Daisy, robed like a princess, who dawned upon our vision. She was blushing as much from embarrassment as from novel pride, yet managed to keep her pretty head up, smiling at us all, and to bear herself with grace. Lady Berenicia, from the wealth of finery in those bulky chests which honest Mr. Cross in vain had protested against bringing over the ocean and up to this savage outpost, had tricked out the girl in wondrous fashion. Her gown was not satin, like the other, but of a soft, lustreless stuff, whose delicate lavender folds fell into the sweetest of violet shadows. I was glad to see that her neck and arms were properly covered. The laces on the sleeves were tawny with age; the ribbon by which the little white shawl was decorously gathered at the bosom carried the faint suggestion of yellow to a distinct tone, repeated and deepened above by the color of the maiden's hair. This hair, too, was a marvel of the dresser's art--reared straight and tight from the forehead over a high-arched roll, and losing strictness of form behind in ingenious wavy curls, which seemed the very triumph of artlessness; it was less wholly powdered than Lady Berenicia's, so that the warm gold shone through the white dust in soft gradations of half tints; at the side, well up, was a single salmon tea-rose, that served to make everything else more beautiful. Picture to yourself this delicious figure--this face which had seemed lovely before, and now, with deft cosmetics, and a solitary tiny patch, and the glow of exquisite enjoyment in the sweet hazel eyes, was nothing less than a Greuze's dream--picture our Daisy to yourself, I say, and you may guess in part how flattering was her reception, how high and fast rose the gallant congratulations that the Valley boasted such a beauteous daughter. Sir William himself gave her his arm, jovially protesting that this was not the Mohawk country, but France--not Johnson Hall, but Versailles. I came on at the tail of the dinner procession, not quite easy in my mind about all this.

10

None

The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain. There were, in all, ten of us at the table. Sir William beamed upon us from the end nearest the windows, with Daisy on his left hand and the London dame on the other--in the place of distinction to which she was, I suppose, entitled. Below Lady Berenicia sat Mr. Stewart, Sir John, and Walter Butler. I was on the left side below Mr. Cross. These details come back to me as if they were of yesterday, when I think of that dinner. I could not see Daisy from where I sat, but all through the meal I watched the effect she was producing upon those opposite us. To do her justice, Lady Berenicia seemed to have no alloy of jealousy in the delight with which she regarded the result of her handiwork. Mr. Stewart could not keep his fond eyes off the girl; they fairly glowed with satisfied pride and affection. Both Sir John and Walter gave more attention to our beautiful maiden than they did to their plates, and both faces told an open tale of admiration, each after its kind. There was plenty of gay talk at the head of the table--merry chatter of which I recall nothing, save vaguely that it was about the triumph of art over unadorned nature at which we were assisting. Mr. Cross and I bore our small part in the celebration in silence for a time. Then we fell to talking quietly of the journey upon which we were so soon to embark; but our minds were not on the subject, and after a little its discussion lapsed. All at once he said, as if speaking the thoughts which tied my tongue: "To my mind the young woman is not improved by these furbelows and fal-lals my wife has put upon her. What wit or reason is there in a homely, sensible little maiden like this--a pretty flower growing, as God designed it to, in modest sweetness on its own soil--being garnished out in the stale foppery of the last London season?" "But it is only a masquerade, sir," I pleaded--as much to my own judgment as to his--"and it does make her very beautiful, does it not?" "She _was_ beautiful before," he replied, in the same low tones. "Can a few trumpery laces and ribbons, a foolish patch, a little powder, affect what is real about a woman, think you? And do any but empty heads value unreal things?" "True enough, sir; but this is nothing more than harmless pleasantry. Women are that way. See how pleased she is--how full of smiles and happiness she seems. It's a dull sort of life here in the woods. Poor Daisy, she sees so little of gayety, it would be cruel to begrudge her this innocent pleasure." "Innocent--yes, no doubt; but, do you know, she will never be the same girl again. She will never feel quite the same pretty little Mistress Daisy, in her woollen gown and her puttical kerchief. She will never get the taste of this triumph out of her mouth. You do not know women, young man, as I do. I have studied the sex in a very celebrated and costly school. Mark my words, ideas have been put into her head that will never come out." I tried to believe that this was not so. "Ah," I said, "to know other women is not to know our Daisy. Why, she is good sense itself--so prudent and modest and thoughtful that she makes the other girls roundabout seem all hoydens or simpletons. She has read the most serious books--never anything else. Her heart is as good as her mind is rich. Never fear, Mr. Cross! not all the silks in China or velvets in Genoa could turn her dear head." He smiled, somewhat compassionately I thought, and made no answer. Was I so firm in my faith, after all? The doubt rose in my thoughts, and would not down, as the gallant talk flowed and bubbled around me. _Would_ this Daisy be quite the same next day, or next week, singing to us at the old harpsichord in the twilight, with the glare of the blaze on the hearth making red gold of that hair, plaited once more in simple braids? I tried with all my might to call up this sweet familiar figure before my mental vision: it would not freely come. She was laughing now, with a clear ripple of joyousness, at some passing quip between our host and sharp-tongued Lady Berenicia, both of whom employed pretty liberally their Irish knack of saying witty, biting things. The sound came strangely to my ears, as if it were some other than Daisy laughing. I was still in this brown study when Sir William called the health of the ladies, with some jocose words of compliment to them, congratulation to ourselves. I rose mechanically after the other gentlemen, glass in hand, to hear Mr. Stewart make pleasant and courtly acknowledgment, and to see the two women pass out in a great rustling of draperies and hoops, with Walter Butler holding open the door and bowing profoundly. The faint scent of powder left on the air annoyed me, as something stifling those thoughts of the good little adopted sister, whom I had brought to the Hall and lost there, which I would fain dwell upon. We sat over our Madeira and pipes longer than usual. Candles were brought in by Sir William's young body-servant Pontiac, for there was a full moon, and we might thus prolong our stay after nightfall. The talk was chiefly about our coming trip--a very serious undertaking. Sir William and Mr. Butler had adventures of their own early trading days to recall, and they gave us great stores of advice drawn from experience, and ranging from choice of shirts and spirits to needful diplomacy with the Algonquins and Sakis. Then the company drank the health of Mr. Cross, and were good enough to couple mine with it. A comical little yellow boy danced for us before the hearth--an admiring wall of black faces and rolling white eyeballs filling up the open door meanwhile. Walter Butler sang a pretty song--everybody, negroes and all, swelling the chorus. Rum was brought in, and mixed in hot glasses, with spice, molasses, and scalding water from the kettle on the crane. So evening deepened to night; but I never for a moment, not even when they drank my health, shook off the sense of unrest born of Daisy's masquerade. It was Molly Brant herself, nobly erect and handsome in her dark, sinister way, who came to us with word that the moon was up over the pine-ridged hills, and that Mistress Daisy was attired for the homeward ride, and waiting. Of all the pictures in Memory's portfolio, none is more distinct than this of the departure that evening from the Hall. A dozen negroes were about the steps, two or three mounted ready to escort us home, others bearing horn lanterns which the moonlight darkened into inutility, still others pulling the restive horses about on the gravel. Mr. Stewart swung himself into the saddle, and Daisy stepped out to mount behind him. She wore her own garments once more, but there was just a trace of powder on the hair under the hood, and the patch was still on her chin. I moved forward to lift her to the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight, flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of even this. So we rode away, pursued down the path to the lilacs by shouts of "Good-night! Safe home!" Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark front of the Hall, which glowed against the white sky. As I recall the scene, it seems to me that then and there I said farewell, not alone to pleasant friends, but to the Daisy of my childhood and youth. * * * * * The Hall slaves rode well ahead in the narrow road; we could just hear faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears the murmur of an Æolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous: the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness, not danger. I did indeed rest my free hand on the pistol in my holster as I jogged along close behind the old gray horse and his double burden; but the act was more an unconscious reflection of my saturnine mood, I fear, than a recognition of need. There was every reason why I should dwell with delight upon the prospect opening before me--upon the idea of the great journey so close at hand; but I scarcely thought of it at all, and I was not happy. The moon threw a jaundiced light over my mind, and in its discolored glare I saw things wrongly, and with gratuitous pain to myself. In fact, my brooding was the creature of the last few hours, born of a childish pique. But as I rode gloomily silent behind my companions, it seemed as if I had long suffered a growing separation from them. "Three is a clumsy number," I said to myself, "in family affection not less than in love; there was never any triad of friends since the world began, no matter how fond their ties, in which two did not build a little interior court of thoughts and sympathies from which the third was shut out. These two people whom I hold dearer than everything else on earth--this good gentleman to whom I owe all, this sweet girl who has grown up from babyhood in my heart--would scout the idea that there was any line of division running through our household. They do not see it--cannot see it. Yet they have a whole world of ideas and sentiments in common, a whole world of communion, which I may never enter." This was what, in sulky, inchoate fashion, I said to myself, under the spur of the jealous spirits which sometimes get rein over the thoughts of the best of us. And it was all because the London woman had tricked out our Daisy, for but a little hour or two, in the presentment of a court lady! Conversation went briskly forward, meanwhile, from the stout back of the gray horse. "Did you note, papa, how white and soft her hands were?" said Daisy. "Mine were so red beside them! It is working in the garden, I believe, although Mary Johnson always wore gloves when she was out among the flowers and vegetables, and her hands were red, too. And Lady Berenicia was so surprised to learn that I had never read any of the romances which they write now in England! She says ladies in London, and in the provinces too, do not deem themselves fit to converse unless they keep abreast of all these. She has some of them in her chests, and there are others in the Hall, she has found, and I am to read them, and welcome." "You are old enough now, my girl," replied Mr. Stewart. "They seem to me to be trivial enough things, but no doubt they have their use. I would not have you seem as inferior to other ladies in knowledge of the matters they talk of, as they are inferior to you in honest information." "How interested she was when I told her of the serious books I read, and of my daily occupations--moulding the candles, brewing the beer, carding wool, making butter, and then caring for the garden! She had never seen celery in trenches, she said, and would not know beans from gourds if she saw them growing. It seems that in England ladies have nothing to do with their gardens--when, indeed, they have any at all--save to pluck a rose now and then, or give tea to their gentlemen under the shrubbery when it is fine. And I told her of our quilting and spinning bees, and the coasting on clear winter evenings, and of watching the blacks on Pinkster night, and the picnics in the woods, and she vowed London had no pleasures like them. She was jesting though, I think. Oh, shall we ever go to London, papa?" "By all means, let us go," chuckled Mr. Stewart. "You would see something there she never saw--my grizzled old head upon Temple Bar. Shall we be off to-morrow? My neck tingles with anticipation." "Old tease!" laughed Daisy, patting his shoulder. "You know there have been no heads put there since long before I was born. Never flatter yourself that they would begin again now with yours. They've forgotten there was ever such a body as you." "Faith! the world doesn't go round so fast as you young people think. Only to-day I read in the London mail that two months ago one of the polls that had been there since '46 fell down; but if it was Fletcher's or Townley's no one can tell--like enough not even they themselves by this time. So there's a vacant spike now for mine. No, child--I doubt these old bones will ever get across the sea again. But who knows? --it may be your fortune to go some time." "Lady Berenicia says I must come to the Hall often, papa, while she is there," said the girl, returning to the subject which bewitched her; "and you must fetch me, of course. She admires you greatly; she says gentlemen in London have quite lost the fine manner that you keep up here, with your bow and your compliments. You must practise them on me now. We are to keep each other company as much as possible, she and I, while her husband and Douw go off together. You should have seen her mimic them--the two solemn, long-faced men boring each other in the depths of the wilderness." The talk had at last got around to me. Daisy laughed gayly at recollection of the London woman's jesting. Surely never a more innocent, less malicious laugh came from a maiden's merry lips, but it fell sourly on my ears. "It is easy for people to be clever who do not scruple to be disagreeable," I said, without much relevancy. "What is this, Douw?" Mr. Stewart turned half-way in his saddle and glanced inquiry back at me. "What is wrong with you? You were as glum all the evening long as a Tuscarora. Isn't the trip with Mr. Cross to your liking?" "Oh, ay! I shall be glad to go." It was on my perverse tongue's end to add the peevish thought that nobody would specially miss me, but I held it back. "He has had a perfect Dutch fit on to-day," said Daisy, with good-natured sisterly frankness; "for all the world such as old Hon Yost Polhemus has when his yeast goes bitter. Whenever I looked down the table to him, at dinner, he was scowling across at poor Walter Butler or Sir John, as if he would presently eat them both. He was the only one who failed to tell me I looked well in the--the citified costume." "Rather say I was the only one whose opinion you did not care for." She was too sweet-tempered to take umbrage at my morose rejoinder, and went on with her mock-serious catalogue of my crimes: "And what do you think, papa? Who should it be but our patient, equable Master Douw that was near quarrelling with Walter Butler, out by the lilacs, this very morning--and in the presence of ladies, too." "No one ever saw me quarrel, 'ladies' or anybody else," I replied. "Faith! then I did myself," Mr. Stewart laughingly called out. "And it was before a lady too--or the small beginnings of one. I saw him with my own eyes, Daisy, get knocked into the ashes by a young man, and jump up and run at him with both fists out--and all on your account, too, my lady; and then--" "Oh, I am reminded!" It was Daisy who cried out, and with visible excitement. Then she clapped her hand to her mouth with a pretty gesture; then she said: "Or no! I will not tell you yet. It is so famous a secret, it must come out little by little. Tell me, papa, did you know that this Mr. Cross up at the Hall--Lady Berenicia's husband--is a cousin to the old Major who brought me to you, out of the rout at Kouarie?" "Is _that_ your secret, miss? I knew it hours ago." "How wise! And perhaps you knew that the Major became a Colonel, and then a General, and died last winter, poor man." "Alas, yes, poor Tony! I heard that too from his cousin. Heigh-ho! We all walk that way." Daisy bent forward to kiss the old man. "Not you, for many a long year, papa. And now tell me, did not this Major--_my_ Major, though I do not remember him--take up a patent of land here, or hereabouts, through Sir William, while he was on this side of the water?" "Why, we should be on his land now," said Mr. Stewart, reining up the horse. We sat thus in the moonlight while he pointed out to us, as nearly as he knew them, the confines of the Cross patent. To the left of us, over a tract covered thick with low, gnarled undergrowth, the estate stretched beyond the brow of the hill, distant a mile or more. On our right, masked by a dense tangle of fir-boughs, lay a ravine, also a part of the property. We could hear, as we passed there, the gurgle of the water running at the gulf's bottom, on its way to the great leap over the rock wall, farther down, of which I have already written. "Yes, this was what Tony Cross took up. I doubt he ever saw it. Why do you ask, girl?" " _Now_ for my secret," said Daisy. "The Major's elder son, Digby, inherits the English house and lands. The other son, Philip--the boy you fought with, Douw--is given this American land, and money to clear and settle it. He sailed with the others--he is in New York--he is coming here to live!" "We'll make him welcome," cried Mr. Stewart, heartily. "I hope his temper is bettered since last he was here," was the civillest comment I could screw my tongue to. Clouds dimmed the radiance of the moon, threatening darkness, and we quickened our pace. There was no further talk on the homeward ride.

11

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As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In. When the eventful day of departure came, what with the last packing, the searches to see that nothing should be forgotten, the awkwardness and slowness of hands unnerved by the excitement of a great occasion, it was high noon before I was ready to start. I stood idly in the hall, while my aunt put final touches to my traps, my mind swinging like a pendulum between fear that Mr. Cross, whom I was to join at Caughnawaga, would be vexed at my delay, and genuine pain at leaving my dear home and its inmates, now that the hour had arrived. I had made my farewells over at my mother's house the previous day, dutifully kissing her and all the sisters who happened to be at home, but without much emotion on either side. Blood is thicker than water, the adage runs. Perhaps that is why it flowed so calmly in all our Dutch veins while we said good-by. But here in my adopted home--my true home--my heart quivered and sank at thought of departure. "I could not have chosen a better or safer man for you to travel with than Jonathan Cross," Mr. Stewart was saying to me. "He does not look on all things as I do, perhaps, for our breeding was as different as the desk is different from the drum. But he is honest and courteous, well informed after his way, and as like what you will be later on as two peas in a pod. You were born for a trader, a merchant, a man of affairs; and you will be at a good school with him." He went on in his grave, affectionate manner, telling me in a hundred indirect ways that I belonged to the useful rather than to the ornamental order of mankind, with never a thought in his good heart of wounding my feelings, or of letting me know that in his inmost soul he would have preferred me to be a soldier or an idler with race-horses and a velvet coat. Nor did he wound me, for I had too great a love for him, and yet felt too thorough a knowledge of myself to allow the two to clash. I listened silently, with tears almost ready at my eyes, but with thoughts vagrantly straying from his words to the garden outside. Tulp was to go with me, and his parents and kin were filling the air with advice and lamentations in about equal measure, and all in the major key. Their shouts and wailing--they could not have made more ado if he had just been sold to Jamaica--came through the open door. It was not of this din I thought, though, nor of the cart which the negroes, while they wept, were piling high with my goods, and which I could see in the highway beyond. I was thinking of Daisy, my sweet sister, who had gone into the garden to gather a nosegay for me. Through the door I could see her among the bushes, her lithe form bending in the quest of blossoms. Were it midsummer, I thought, and the garden filled with the whole season's wealth of flowers, it could hold nothing more beautiful than she. Perhaps there was some shadow of my moody fit, the evening after the dinner at the Hall, remaining to sadden my thoughts of parting from her. I cannot tell. I only know that they were indeed sad thoughts. I caught myself wondering if she would miss me much--this dear girl who had known no life in which I had not had daily share. Yes, the tears _were_ coming, I felt. I wrung my good old patron's hand, and turned my head away. There came a clattering of hoofs on the road and the sound of male voices. Tulp ran in agape with the tidings that Sir John and a strange gentleman had ridden up, and desired to see Mr. Stewart. We at once walked out to the garden, a little relieved perhaps by the interruption. Both visitors had had time to alight and leave their horses outside the wall. The younger Johnson stood in the centre path of the garden, presenting his companion to Daisy, who, surprised at her task, and with her back to us, was courtesying. Even to the nape of her neck she was blushing. There was enough for her to blush at. The stranger was bowing very low, putting one hand up to his breast. With the other he had taken her fingers and raised them formally to his lips. This was not a custom in our parts. Sir William did it now and then on state occasions, but young men, particularly strangers, did not. As we advanced, this gallant morning-caller drew himself up and turned toward us. You may be sure I looked him over attentively. I have seen few handsomer young men. In a way, so far as light hair, blue eyes, ruddy and regular face went, he was not unlike Sir John. But he was much taller, and his neck and shoulders were squared proudly--a trick Johnson never learned. The fine effect of his figure was enhanced by a fawn-colored top-coat, with a graceful little cape falling over the shoulders. His clothes beneath, from the garnet coat with mother-of-pearl buttons down to his shining Hessians, all fitted him as if he had been run into them as into a mould. He held his hat, a glossy sugar-loaf beaver, in one hand, along with whip and gloves. The other hand, white and shapely in its ruffles, he stretched out now toward Mr. Stewart with a free, pleasant gesture. "With my father's oldest friend," he said, "I must not wait for ceremony. I am Philip Cross, from England, and I hope you will be my friend, sir, now that my father is gone." That this speech found instant favor need not be doubted. Mr. Stewart shook him again and again by the hand, and warmly bade him welcome to the Valley and the Cedars a dozen times in as many breaths. Young Cross managed to explain between these cordial ejaculations, that he had journeyed up from New York with the youthful Stephen Watts--to whose sister Sir John was already betrothed; that they had reached Guy Park the previous evening; that Watts was too wearied this morning to think of stirring out, but that hardly illness itself could have prevented him, Cross, from promptly paying his respects to his father's ancient comrade. The young man spoke easily and fluently, looking Mr. Stewart frankly in the eye, with smiling sincerity in glance and tone. He went on: "How changed everything is roundabout! --all save you, who look scarcely older or less strong. When I was here as a boy it was winter, cold and bleak. There was a stockade surrounded by wilderness then, I remember, and a log-house hardly bigger than the fireplace inside it. Where we stand now the ground was covered with brush and chips, half hidden by snow. Now--_presto! _ there is a mansion in the midst of fields, and a garden neatly made, and"--turning with a bow to Daisy--"a fair mistress for them all, who would adorn any palace or park in Europe, and whom I remember as a frightened little baby, with stockings either one of which would have held her entire." "I saw the cart laden outside," put in Sir John, "and fancied perhaps we should miss you." "Why, no," said Mr. Stewart; "I had forgotten for the moment that this was a house of mourning. Douw is starting to the Lake country this very day. Mr. Cross, you must remember my boy, my Douw?" The young Englishman turned toward me, as I was indicated by Mr. Stewart's gesture. He looked me over briefly, with a half-smile about his eyes, nodded to me, and said: "You were the Dutch boy with the apron, weren't you?" I assented by a sign of the head, as slight as I could politely make it. "Oh, yes, I recall you quite distinctly. I used to make my brother Digby laugh by telling about your aprons. He made quite a good picture of you in one of them, drawn from my descriptions. We had a fort of snow, too, did we not? and I beat you, or you me, I forget which. I got snow down the back of my neck, I know, and shivered all the way to the fort." He turned lightly at this to Mr. Stewart, and began conversation again. I went over to where Daisy stood, by the edge of the flower-bed. "I must go now, dear sister," I said. The words were choking me. We walked slowly to the house, she and I. When I had said good-by to my aunt, and gathered together my hat, coats, and the like, I stood speechless, looking at Daisy. The moment was here, and I had no word for it which did not seem a mockery. She raised herself on tiptoe to be kissed. "Good-by, big brother," she said, softly. "Come back to us well and strong, and altogether homesick, won't you? It will not be like home, without you, to either of us." And so the farewells were all made, and I stood in the road prepared to mount. Tulp was already on the cart, along with another negro who was to bring back my horse and the vehicle after we had embarked in the boats. There was nothing more to say--time pressed--yet I lingered dumb and irresolute. At the moment I seemed to be exchanging everything for nothing--committing domestic suicide. I looked at them both, the girl and the old man, with the gloomy thought that I might never lay eyes on them again. I dare say I wore my grief upon my face, for Mr. Stewart tried cheerily to hearten me with, "Courage, lad! We shall all be waiting for you, rejoiced to welcome you back safe and sound." Daisy came to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned upon my lapel some of the pale blue blossoms she had gathered. "There's 'rosemary for remembrance,'" she murmured. "Poor Ophelia could scarce have been sadder than we feel, Douw, at your going." "And may I be decorated too--for remembrance' sake?" asked handsome young Philip Cross, gayly. "Surely, sir," the maiden answered, with a smile of sweet sorrowfulness. "You have a rightful part in the old memories--in a sense, perhaps, the greatest part of all." "Ay, you two were friends before ever you came to us, dear," said Mr. Stewart. So as I rode away, with smarting eyes and a heart weighing like lead, my last picture of the good old home was of Daisy fastening flowers on the young Englishman's breast, just as she had put these of mine in their place.

12

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Old-Time Politics Pondered Under the Forest Starlight. Among the numerous books which at one time of another I had resolved to write, and which the evening twilight of my life finds still unwritten, was one on Fur-trading. This volume, indeed, came somewhat nearer to a state of actual existence than any of its unborn brethren, since I have yet a great store of notes and memoranda gathered for its construction in earlier years. My other works, such as the great treatise on Astronomical Delusions--which Herschel and La Place afterward rendered unnecessary--and the "History of the Dutch in America," never even progressed to this point of preparation. I mention this to show that I resist a genuine temptation now in deciding not to put into this narrative a great deal about my experiences in, and information concerning, the almost trackless West of my youth. My diary of this first and momentous journey with Mr. Jonathan Cross, yellow with age and stained by damp and mildew, lies here before me; along with it are many odd and curious incidents and reflections jotted down, mirroring that strange, rude, perilous past which seems so far away to the generation now directing a safe and almost eventless commerce to the Pacific and the Gulf. But I will draw from my stock only the barest outlines, sufficient to keep in continuity the movement of my story. When we reached Caughnawaga Mr. Cross and his party were waiting for us at the trading store of my godfather, good old Douw Fonda. I was relieved to learn that I had not delayed them; for it was still undecided, I found, whether we should all take to the river here, or send the boats forward with the men, and ourselves proceed to the Great Carrying Place at Fort Stanwix by the road. Although it was so early in the season, the Mohawk ran very low between its banks. Major Jelles Fonda, the eldest son of my godfather, and by this time the true head of the business, had only returned from the Lakes, and it was by his advice that we settled upon riding and carting as far as we could, and leaving the lightened boats to follow. So we set out in the saddle, my friend and I, stopping one night with crazy old John Abeel--he who is still remembered as the father of the Seneca half-breed chieftain Corn-Planter--and the next night with Honnikol Herkimer. This man, I recall, greatly impressed Mr. Cross. We were now in an exclusively German section of the Valley, where no Dutch and very little English was to be heard. Herkimer himself conversed with us in a dialect that must often have puzzled my English friend, though he gravely forbore showing it. I had known Colonel Herkimer all my life; doubtless it was this familiarity with his person and speech which had prevented my recognizing his real merit, for I was not a little surprised when Mr. Cross said to me that night: "Our host is one of the strongest and most sagacious men I have ever encountered in the Colonies; he is worth a thousand of your Butlers or Sir Johns." It became clear in later years that my friend was right. I remember that I regarded the hospitable Colonel, at breakfast next morning, with a closer and more respectful attention than ever before, but it was not easy to discern any new elements of greatness in his talk. Herkimer was then a middle-aged, undersized man, very swart and sharp-eyed, and with a quick, almost vehement way of speaking. It took no time at all to discover that he watched the course of politics in the Colonies pretty closely, and was heart and soul on the anti-English side. One thing which he said, in his effort to make my friend understand the difference between his position and the more abstract and educated discontent of New England and Virginia, sticks in my memory. "We Germans," he said, "are not like the rest. Our fathers and mothers remember their sufferings in the old country, kept ragged and hungry and wretched, in such way as my negroes do not dream of, all that some scoundrel baron might have gilding on his carriage, and that the Elector might enjoy himself in his palace. They were beaten, hanged, robbed of their daughters, worked to death, frozen by the cold in their nakedness, dragged off into the armies to be sold to any prince who could pay for their blood and broken bones. The French who overran the Palatinate were bad enough; the native rulers were even more to be hated. The exiles of our race have not forgotten this; they have told it all to us, their children and grandchildren born here in this Valley. We have made a new home for ourselves over here, and we owe no one but God anything for it. If they try to make here another aristocracy over us, then we will die first before we will submit." The case for the Mohawk Valley's part in the great revolt has never been more truly stated, I think, than it was thus, by the rough, uneducated, little frontier trader, in his broken English, on that May morning years before the storm broke. We rode away westward in the full sunshine that morning, in high spirits. The sky was pure blue overhead; the birds carolled from every clump of foliage about us; the scenery, to which Mr. Cross paid much delighted attention, first grew nobly wild and impressive when we skirted the Little Falls--as grand and gloomy in its effect of towering jagged cliffs and foaming cataracts as one of Jacob Ruysdael's pictures--and then softened into a dream of beauty as it spread out before us the smiling, embowered expanses of the German Flatts. Time and time again my companion and I reined up our horses to contemplate the charms of this lovely scene. We had forded the river near Fort Herkimer, where old Hon Yost Herkimer, the father of the Colonel, lived, and were now once more on the north side. From an open knoll I pointed out to my friend, by the apple and pear blossoms whitening the deserted orchards, the site of the Palatines' village where Daisy's father had been killed, fifteen years ago, in the midnight rout and massacre. "It was over those hills that the French stole in darkness. Back yonder, at the very ford we crossed, her poor mother was trampled under foot and drowned in the frightened throng. It was at the fort there, where we had the buttermilk and _Kuchen,_ that your cousin, Major Cross, found the little girl. I wonder if he ever knew how deeply grateful to him we were--and are." This brought once more to my mind--where indeed it had often enough before intruded itself--the recollection of young Philip's arrival at the Cedars. For some reason I had disliked to speak of it before, but now I told Mr. Cross of it as we walked our horses along over the rough, muddy road, under the arching roof of thicket. "I'll be bound Mr. Stewart welcomed him with open arms," said my companion. "Ay, indeed! No son could have asked a fonder greeting." "Yes, the lad is very like his mother; that of itself would suffice to warm the old gentleman's heart. You knew he was a suitor for her hand long before Tony Cross ever saw her?" I didn't know this, but I nodded silently. "Curious creature she was," mused he, as if to himself. "Selfish, suspicious, swift to offence, jealous of everything and everybody about her--yet with moods when she seemed to all she met the most amiable and delightful of women. She had her fine side, too. She would have given her life gladly for the success of the Jacobites, of that I'm sure. And proud! --no duchess could have carried her head higher." "You say her son is very like her?" "As like as two leaves on a twig. Perhaps he has something of his father's Irish openness of manner as well. His father belonged to the younger, what we call the Irish, branch of our family, you know, though it is as English in the matter of blood as I am. We were only second cousins, in point of fact, and his grandfather was set up in Ireland by the bounty of mine. Yet Master Philip condescends to me, patronizes me, as if the case had been reversed." Mr. Cross did not speak as if he at all resented this, but in a calm, analytical manner, and with a wholly impersonal interest. I have never known another man who was so totally without individual bias, and regarded all persons and things with so little reference to his own feelings. If he had either prejudices or crotchets on any point, I never discovered them. He was, I feel assured, a scrupulously honest and virtuous gentleman, yet he never seemed to hate people who were not so. He was careful not to let them get an advantage over him, but for the rest he studied them and observed their weaknesses and craft, with the same quiet interest he displayed toward worthier objects. A thoroughly equable nature was his--with little capacity for righteous indignation on the one side, and no small tendencies toward envy or peevishness on the other. There was not a wrinkle on his calm countenance, nor any power of angry flashing in his steadfast, wide-apart, gray eyes. But his tongue could cut deep on occasion. We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along, partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground. We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up the fires. We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no degree nervous. We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting, wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle, under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my friends and comrades. We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully, contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank, uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form, with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side? "I spoke about Philip's having some of his father's adopted Irish traits," said Mr. Cross, after a longer interval of silence than usual. "One of them is the desire to have subordinates, dependents, about him. There is no Irishman so poor or lowly that he will not, if possible, encourage some still poorer, lowlier Irishman to hang to his skirts. It is a reflection of their old Gaelic tribal system, I suppose, which, between its chiefs above and its clansmen below, left no place for a free yeomanry. I note this same thing in the Valley, with the Johnsons and the Butlers. So far as Sir William is concerned, the quality I speak of has been of service to the Colony, for he has used his fondness and faculty for attracting retainers and domineering over subordinates to public advantage. But then he is an exceptional and note-worthy man--one among ten thousand. But his son Sir John, and his son-in-law Guy Johnson, and the Butlers, father and son, and now to them added our masterful young Master Philip--these own no such steadying balance-wheel of common-sense. They have no restraining notion of public interest. Their sole idea is to play the aristocrat, to surround themselves with menials, to make their neighbors concede to them submission and reverence. It was of them that Herkimer spoke, plainly enough, though he gave no names. Mark my words, they will come to grief with that man, if the question be ever put to the test." I had not seen enough of Englishmen to understand very clearly the differences between them and the Irish, and I said so. The conversation drifted upon race questions and distinctions, as they were presented by the curiously mixed population of New York province. My companion was of the impression that the distinctly British settlements, like those of Massachusetts and Virginia, were far more powerful and promising than my own polyglot province. No doubt from his point of view this notion was natural, but it nettled me. To this day I cannot read or listen to the inflated accounts this New England and this Southern State combine to give of their own greatness, of their wonderful patriotism and intelligence, and of the tremendous part they played in the Revolution, without smashing my pipe in wrath. Yet I am old enough now to see that all this is largely the fault of the New Yorkers themselves. We have given our time and attention to the making of money, and have left it to others to make the histories. If they write themselves down large, and us small, it is only what might have been expected. But at the time of which I am telling I was very young, and full of confidence in not only the existing superiority but the future supremacy of my race. I could not foresee how we were to be snowed under by the Yankees in our own State, and, what is worse, accept our subjugation without a protest--so that to-day the New York schoolboy supposes Fisher Ames, or any other of a dozen Boston talkers, to have been a greater man than Philip Schuyler. I remember that I greatly vaunted the good qualities of the Dutch that night. I pointed out how they alone had learned the idea of religious toleration toward others in the cruel school of European persecution; how their faith in liberty and in popular institutions, nobly exemplified at home in the marvellous struggle with Spain, had planted roots of civil and religious freedom in the New World which he could find neither to the east nor to the south of us; and how even the early Plymouth Puritans had imbibed all they knew of clemency and liberty during their stay in Holland. I fear that Mr. Cross inwardly smiled more or less at my enthusiasm and extravagance, but his comments were all serious and kindly. He conceded the justice of much that I said, particularly as to the admirable resolution, tenacity, and breadth of character the Dutch had displayed always in Europe. But then he went on to declare that the Dutch could not hope to hold their own in strange lands against the extraordinary conquering and colonizing power of the more numerous English, who, by sheer force of will and energy, were destined in the end to dominate everything they touched. Note how Clive and the English had gradually undermined or overthrown French, Portuguese, and Dutch alike in the Indies, he said; the same thing has happened here, either by bloodshed or barter. No nation could resist the English in war; no people could maintain themselves in trade or the peaceful arts against the English. "But you yourself predicted, not an hour ago, that the young gentry down the Valley would come to grief in their effort to lord it over the Dutch and Palatines." "Oh, that indeed," my friend replied. "They are silly sprouts, grown up weak and spindling under the shadow of Sir William; when he is cut down the sun will shrivel them, no doubt. But the hardier, healthier plants which finally take their place will be of English stock--not Dutch or German." I hope devoutly that this lengthened digression into politics has not proved wearisome. I have touched upon but one of a hundred like conversations which we two had together on our slow journey, and this because I wanted to set forth the manner of things we discussed, and the views we severally had. Events proved that we both were partially right. The United States of the Netherlands was the real parent of the United States of America, and the constitution which the Dutch made for the infant State of New York served as the model in breadth and in freedom for our present noble Federal Constitution. In that much my faith was justified. But it is also true that my State is no longer Dutch, but English, and that the language of my mother has died out from among us. Before noon next day we reached Fort Stanwix, the forest-girdled block-house commanding the Great Carrying Place. Here we waited one day for the boats to come up, and half of another to get them through the sluices into Wood Creek. Then, as the horses and carts returned, we embarked and set our faces toward the Lakes.

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To the Far Lake Country and Home Again. We had left what it pleases us to call civilization behind. Until our return we were scarcely again to see the blackened fields of stumps surrounding clearings, or potash kettles, or girdled trees, or chimneys. Not that our course lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed westward farther and farther to be alone--to get away from their fellows. The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. They traded a little, in a careless, desultory fashion, with the proceeds of their traps and rifles. But their desires were few--a pan and kettle, a case of needles and cord, some rum or brandy from cider or wild grapes, tobacco, lead, and powder--chiefly the last three. They fed themselves, adding to their own fish and game only a little pounded maize which they got mostly from the Indians, and cooked in mush or on a baking stone. In the infrequent cases where there were women with them, we sometimes saw candles, either dips or of the wax of myrtle-berries, but more often the pine-knot was used. Occasionally they had log-houses, with even here and there a second story above the puncheon-floor, reached by a ladder; but in the main their habitations were half-faced camps, secured in front at night by fires. They were rough, coarse, hardened, drunken men as a rule, generally disagreeable and taciturn; insolent, lazy, and miserable from my point of view, but I judge both industrious and contented from their own. We should have had little favor or countenance from these fellows, I doubt not, but for Enoch Wade. He seemed to know all the saturnine, shaggy, lounging outcasts whom we met in unexpected places; if he did not, they knew him at a glance for one of their own kidney, which came to the same thing. It was on his account that we were tolerated, nay, even advised and helped and entertained. Enoch had been a prodigious traveller--or else was a still more prodigious liar--I never quite decided which. He told them, when we chanced to sit around their fires of an evening, most remarkable stories of field and forest--of caribou and seals killed in the North; of vast herds of bison on far Western prairies; of ice-bound winters spent in the Hudson Bay Company's preserves beyond the Lakes; of houses built of oyster-shells and cement on the Carolina coast. They listened gravely, smoking their cob-and-reed pipes, and eying him attentively. They liked him, and they did not seem to dislike Coppernol and our other white servants. But they showed no friendliness toward my poor Tulp, and exhibited only scant, frigid courtesy to Mr. Cross and me. The fact that my companion was a power in the East India Company, and a director in the new Northwestern Fur Company, did not interest them, at least favorably. It was indeed not until after we had got beyond the Sandusky that Enoch often volunteered this information, for the trappers of the East had little love for companies, or organized commerce and property of any sort. I like better to recall the purely physical side of our journey. Now our little flotilla would move for hours on broad, placid, still waters, flanked on each side by expanses of sedge and flags--in which great broods of water-fowl lived--and beyond by majestic avenues formed of pines, towering mast-like sheer sixty feet before they burst into intertwining branches. Again, we would pass through darkened, narrow channels, where adverse waters sped swiftly, and where we battled not only with deep currents, but had often to chop our way through barriers of green tree-trunks, hickory, ash, and birch, which the soft soil on the banks had been unable to longer hold erect. Now we flew merrily along under sail or energetic oars; now we toiled laboriously against strong tides, by poles or by difficult towing. But it was all healthful, heartening work, and we enjoyed it to the full. Toward sundown we would begin to look for a brook upon which to pitch our camp. When one was found which did not run black, showing its origin in a tamarack swamp, a landing was made with all the five boats. These secured, axes were out with, and a shelter soon constructed, while others heaped the fire, prepared the food and utensils, and cooked the welcome meal. How good everything tasted! how big and bright the stars looked! how sweet was the odor of the balsam in the air, later, as we lay on our blankets, looking skyward, and talked! Or, if the night was wild and wet, how cheerily the great fires roared in the draught, and how snugly we lay in our shelter, blinking at the fierce blaze! When in early July we drew near the country of the Outagamis, having left the Detroit settlement behind us, not to speak of Oswego and Niagara, which seemed as far off now as the moon, an element of personal danger was added to our experiences. Both white hunters and Indians were warmly affected toward the French interest, and often enough we found reason to fear that we would be made to feel this, though luckily it never came to anything serious. It was a novel experience to me to be disliked on account of the English, whom I had myself never regarded with friendship. I was able, fortunately, being thus between the two rival races, as it were, to measure them each against the other. I had no prejudice in favor of either, God knows. My earliest recollections were of the savage cruelty with which the French had devastated, butchered, and burned among the hapless settlements at the head of the Mohawk Valley. My maturer feelings were all colored with the strong repulsion we Dutch felt for the English rule, which so scornfully misgoverned and plundered our province, granting away our lands to court favorites and pimps, shipping to us the worst and most degraded of Old-World criminals, quartering upon us soldiers whose rude vices made them even more obnoxious than the convicts, and destroying our commerce by selfish and senseless laws. From the Straits west I saw the Frenchman for the first time, and read the reasons for his failure to stand against the English. Even while we suspected grounds for fearing his hostility, we found him a more courteous and affable man than the Englishman or Yankee. To be pleasant with us seemed a genuine concern, though it may really have been otherwise. The Indians about him, too, were a far more satisfactory lot than I had known in the Valley. Although many of our Mohawks could read, and some few write, and although the pains and devotion of my friend Samuel Kirkland had done much for the Oneidas, still these French-spoken, Jesuit-taught Indians seemed a much better and soberer class than my neighbors of the Iroquois. They drank little or no rum, save as English traders furtively plied them with it, for the French laws were against its sale. They lived most amicably with the French, too, neither hating nor fearing them; and this was in agreeable contrast to the wearisome bickering eternally going on in New York between the Indians striving to keep their land, and the English and Dutch forever planning to trick them out of it. So much for the good side. The medal had a reverse. The Frenchman contrived to get on with the Indian by deferring to him, cultivating his better and more generous side, and treating him as an equal. This had the effect of improving and softening the savage, but it inevitably tended to weaken and lower the Frenchman--at least, judged by the standard of fitness to maintain himself in a war of races. No doubt the French and Indians lived together much more quietly and civilly than did the English and Indians. But when these two systems came to be tested by results, it was shown that the Frenchman's policy and kindliness had only enervated and emasculated him, while the Englishman's rough domineering and rule of force had hardened his muscles and fired his resolution. To be sure, measured by the received laws of humanity, the Frenchman was right and the other wrong. But is it so certain, after all, that the right invariably wins? * * * * * It was well along in September when, standing on the eminence to the east of Fort Stanwix, I first looked again on my beloved Mohawk. The trip had been a highly successful one. Enoch was bringing back four bateaux well packed under thin oilskin covers with rare peltries, including some choice black-beaver skins and sea-otter furs from the remote West, which would fetch extravagant prices. On the best estimate of his outward cargo of tea, spirits, powder, traps, calico, duffle, and silver ear-bobs, breast-buckles, and crosses, he had multiplied its value twenty-fold. Of course, this was of secondary importance. The true object of the journey had been to enable Mr. Jonathan Cross to see for himself the prospects of the new Northwestern Company--to look over the territory embraced in its grants, estimate its probable trade, mark points for the establishment of its forts and posts, and secure the information necessary to guard the company from the frauds or failings of agents. He professed himself vastly gratified at the results, physical as well as financial, of his experience, and that was the great thing. Or no! --perhaps for the purposes of this story there was something more important still. It is even now very pleasant to me to recall that he liked me well enough, after this long, enforced intimacy, to proffer me the responsible and exacting post of the company's agent at Albany. To say that the offer made me proud and glad would be to feebly understate my emotions. I could not be expected to decide all at once. Independent of the necessity of submitting the proposition to Mr. Stewart, there was a very deep distaste within me for fur-trading at Albany--of the meanness and fraudulency of which I had heard from boyhood. A good many hard stories are told of the Albanians, which, aside from all possible bias of race, I take the liberty of doubting. I do not, for instance, believe all the Yankee tales that the Albany Dutchmen bought from the Indians the silver plate which the latter seized in New England on the occasions of the French and Indian incursions--if for no other reason than the absence of proof that they ever had any plate in New England. But that the Indians used to be most shamefully drugged and cheated out of their eye-teeth in Albany, I fear there can be no reasonable doubt. An evil repute attached to the trade there, and I shrank from embarking in it, even under such splendid auspices. All the same, the offer gratified me greatly. To be in the woods with a man, day in and day out, is to know him through and through. If I had borne this closest of all conceivable forms of scrutiny, in the factor's estimation, there must be something good in me. So there was pride as well as joy in this first glance I cast upon the soft-flowing, shadowed water, upon the spreading, stately willows, upon the far-off furrow in the hazy lines of foliage--which spoke to me of home. Here at last was my dear Valley, always to me the loveliest on earth, but now transfigured in my eyes, and radiant beyond all dreams of beauty--because in it was my home, and in that home was the sweet maid I loved. Yes--I was returned a man, with the pride and the self-reliance and the heart of a man. As I thought upon myself, it was to recognize that the swaddlings of youth had fallen from me. I had never been conscious of their pressure; I had not rebelled against them, nor torn them asunder. Yet somehow they were gone, and my breast swelled with a longer, deeper breath for their absence. I had almost wept with excess of boyish feeling when I left the Valley--my fond old mother and protector. I gazed upon it now with an altogether variant emotion--as of one coming to take possession. Ah, the calm elation of that one moment, there alone on the knoll, with the sinking September sun behind me, and in front but the trifle of sixty miles of river route--when I realized that I was a man! Perhaps it was at this moment that I first knew I loved Daisy; perhaps it had been the truly dominant thought in my mind for months, gathering vigor and form from every tender, longing memory of the Cedars. I cannot decide, nor is it needful that I should. At least now my head was full of the triumphant thoughts that I returned successful and in high favor with my companion, that I had a flattering career opened for me, that the people at home would be pleased with me--and that I should marry Daisy. These remaining twenty leagues grew really very tedious before they were done with. We went down with the boats this time. I fear that Mr. Cross found me but poor company these last three days, for I sat mute in the bow most of the time, twisted around to look forward down the winding course, as if this would bring the Cedars nearer. I had not the heart to talk. "Now she is winding the yarn for my aunt," I would think; "now she is scattering oats for the pigeons, or filling Mr. Stewart's pipe, or running the candles into the moulds. Dear girl, does she wonder when I am coming? If she could know that I was here--here on the river speeding to her--what, would she think?" And I pictured to myself the pretty glance of surprise, mantling into a flush of joyous welcome, which would greet me on her face, as she ran gladly to my arms. Good old Mr. Stewart, my more than father, would stare at me, then smile with pleasure, and take both my hands in his, with warm, honest words straight from his great heart. What an evening it would be when, seated snugly around the huge blaze--Mr. Stewart in his arm-chair to the right, Daisy nestling on the stool at his knee and looking up into my face, and Dame Kronk knitting in the chimney-shadow to the left--I should tell of my adventures! How goodly a recital I could make of them, though they had been even tamer than they were, with such an audience! And how happy, how gratified they would be when I came to the climax, artfully postponed, of Mr. Cross's offer to me of the Albany agency! And then how natural, how easy, while these dear people were still smiling with pride and satisfaction at my good fortune, to say calmly--yes, calmly in tone, though my heart should be beating its way through my breast: "Even more, sir, I prize the hope that Daisy will share it with me--as my wife!" What with the delay at Caughnawaga, where Mr. Cross debarked, and Major Fonda would have us eat and drink while he told us the news, and Tulp's crazy rowing later, through excitement at nearing home, it was twilight before the boat was run up into our little cove, and I set my foot on land. The Cedars stood before us as yet lightless against the northern sky. The gate was open. The sweet voice of a negro singing arose from the cabins on the dusky hill-side. Tears came to my eyes as I turned to Tulp, who was gathering up the things in the boat, and said: "Do you see, boy? We're home--home at last!"

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How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome. I could hear the noisy clamor among the negroes over the advent of Tulp, whom I had sent off, desiring to be alone, while I still stood irresolute on the porch. My hand was on the familiar, well-worn latch, yet I almost hesitated to enter, so excited was I with eager anticipations of welcome. The spacious hall--our sitting-room--was deserted. A fire was blazing on the hearth, and plates were laid on the oak table as in preparation for a meal, but there was no one to speak to me. I lighted a candle, and opened the door to the kitchen; here too there was a fire, but my aunt was not visible. Mr. Stewart's room to the right of the hall, and mine to the left, were alike unoccupied. I threw aside my hat and watch-coat here, and then with the light went up-stairs, whistling as was my wont to warn Daisy of my coming. There was no sound or sign of movement. The door of her outer room stood open, and I entered and looked about. The furniture and appointments had been changed in position somewhat, so that the chamber seemed strange to me. There were numerous novel objects scattered through the rooms as well. A Spanish guitar which I had never seen before stood beside the old piano. There were several elegantly bound books, new to me, on the table; on the mantel-shelf were three miniatures, delicately painted, depicting a florid officer in scarlet, a handsome, proud-looking lady with towering powdered coiffure, and a fair-haired, proud-looking youth. This last I knew in an instant to be the likeness of Master Philip Cross, though it seemingly portrayed him at an age half-way between the two times I had seen him as boy and man. His resemblance to the lady, and then my own recurring recollection of the officer's features, helped me to place them as his parents. I called out "Daisy!" My voice had a faltering, mournful sound, and there was no answer. I came down the stairs again, burdened with a sudden sense of mental discomfort. Already the visions I had had of an enthusiastic welcome were but vague outlines of dreams. There had sprung up in my mind instead a sudden, novel doubt of my position in this house--a cruel idea that perhaps the affection which had so swelled and buoyed my heart was not reciprocated. I put this notion away as foolish and baseless, but all the same the silent hall-room down-stairs seemed now larger and colder, and the flames curled and writhed toward the flue with a chill, metallic aspect, instead of the bright, honest glow of greeting. While I stood before the fire-place, still holding the candle in my hand, my aunt entered the room from the kitchen door. At sight of me the good soul gave a guttural exclamation, dropped flat an apronful of chips she was bringing in, and stared at me open-mouthed. When she was at last persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to be kissed by me--it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add--but it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that she had been out in the smoke-house. "Philip sent down two haunches yesterday by Marinus Folts," she said, apologetically, "and this muggy weather I was afraid they wouldn't keep." "This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's infirmities. Aloud I said: "How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have the farms been doing?" "Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor." "But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?" "But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some, bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just breaking the branches. And the--" "Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?" "Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One of them is for you." Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working for me. My heart felt lighter. "But where _are_ they?" I repeated. "Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it. Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night." I sat down at this, and stared into the fire. It was not just the home-coming which I had looked forward to, but it would be all right when they returned Ah, but would it? Yes, I forced myself to believe so, and began to find comfort of mind again. My aunt picked up the chips and dumped them into the wood-box. Then she came over and stood for a long time looking at me. Once she said: "I'm going to get supper for them when they get back. Can you wait till then, or shall I cook you something now?" Upon my thanking her and saying I would wait, she relapsed into silence, but still keeping her eyes on me. I was growing nervous under this phlegmatic inspection, and idly investing it with some occult and sinister significance, when she broke out with: "Oh, I know what it was I wanted to ask you. Is it really true that the trappers and men in the woods out there eat the hind-quarters of frogs and toads?" This was the sum of my relative's interest in my voyage. When I had answered her, she gathered up my luggage and bundles and took them off to the kitchen, there to be overhauled, washed, and mended. I got into my slippers and a loose coat, lighted a pipe, and settled myself in front of the fire to wait. Tulp came over, grinning with delight at being among his own once more, to see if I wanted anything. I sent him off, rather irritably I fear, but I couldn't bear the contrast which his jocose bearing enforced on my moody mind, between my reception and his. This slave of mine had kin and friends who rushed to fall upon his neck, and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of child-like merriment. Tulp's return caused joy, while mine---- Then I grew vexed at my peevish injustice in complaining because my dear ones, not being gifted with second-sight, had failed to exactly anticipate my coming; and in blaming my poor aunt for behaving just as the dear old slow-witted creature had always behaved since she was stricken with small-pox, twenty years before. Yet this course of candid self-reproach upon which I entered brought me small relief. I was unhappy, and whether it was my own fault or that of somebody else did not at all help the matter. And I had thought to be so exaltedly happy, on this of all the nights of my life! At length I heard the sound of hoofs clattering down the road, and of voices lifted in laughing converse. Eli's fiddle ceased its droning, and on going to the window I saw lanterns scudding along to the gate from the slaves' cabins, like fireflies in a gale. I opened the window softly, enough to hear. Not much was to be seen, for the night had set in dark; but there were evidently a number of horsemen outside the gate, and, judging from the noise, all were talking together. The bulk of the party, I understood at once, were going on down the river road, to make a night of it at Sir John's bachelor quarters in old Fort Johnson, or at one of the houses of his two brothers-in-law. I was relieved to hear these roisterers severally decline the invitations to enter the Cedars for a time, and presently out of the gloom became distinguishable the forms of the two for whom I had been waiting. Both were muffled to the eyes, for the air had turned cold, but it seemed as if I should have recognized them in any disguise. I heard Tulp and Eli jointly shouting out the news of my arrival--for which premature disclosure I could have knocked their woolly heads together--but it seemed that the tidings had reached them before. In fact, they had met Mr. Cross and Enoch on the road down from Johnstown, as I learned afterward. All my doubts vanished in the warm effusion of their welcome to me, as sincere and honest as it was affectionate. I had pictured it to myself almost aright. Mr. Stewart did come to me with outstretched arms, and wring my hands, and pat my shoulder, and well-nigh weep for joy at seeing me returned, safe and hale. Daisy did not indeed throw herself upon my breast, but she ran to me and took my hands, and lifted her face to be kissed with a smile of pleasure in which there was no reservation. And it was a merry supper-table around which we sat, too, half an hour later, and gossiped gayly, while the wind rose outside, and the sparks flew the swifter and higher for it. There was so much to tell on both sides. Somehow, doubtless because of my slowness of tongue, my side did not seem very big compared with theirs. One day had been very much like another with me, and, besides, the scenes through which I had passed did not possess the novelty for these frontier folk that they would have for people nowadays. But their budget of news was fairly prodigious, alike in range and quantity. The cream of this, so to speak, had been taken off by hospitable Jelles Fonda at Caughnawaga, yet still a portentous substance remained. Some of my friends were dead, others were married. George Klock was in fresh trouble through his evil tricks with the Indians. A young half-breed had come down from the Seneca nation and claimed John Abeel as his father. Daniel Claus had set up a pack of hounds, equal in breed to Sir William's. It was really true that Sir John was to marry Miss Polly Watts of New York, and soon too. Walter Butler had been crossed in love, and was very melancholy and moody, so much so that he had refused to join the house-warming party at the new summer-house on Sacondaga Vlaie, which Sir William had christened Mount Joy Pleasure Hall--an ambitious enough name, surely, for a forest fishing-cottage. Naturally a great deal was told me concerning this festival from which they had just returned. It seems that Lady Berenicia Cross and Daisy were the only ladies there. They were given one of the two sleeping-rooms, while Sir William and Mr. Stewart shared the other. The younger men had ridden over to Fish House each night, returning next day. Without its being said in so many words, I could see that the drinking and carousing there had disturbed and displeased Daisy. There had even, I fancied, been a dispute on this subject between her and our guardian, for he was at pains several times to insist upon telling me incidents which it was plain she desired left unmentioned, and to rather pointedly yet good-humoredly laugh at her as a little puritan, who did not realize that young gentlemen had their own particular ways, as proper and natural to them as were other habits and ways to young foxes or fishes. Her manner said clearly enough that she did not like these ways, but he pleasantly joked her down. I noted some slight changes in Mr. Stewart, which gave me a sense of uneasiness. He seemed paler than before, and there were darker pits under his prominent, bright eyes. He had been visibly exhausted on entering the house, but revived his strength and spirits under the influence of the food and wine. But the spirits struck, somehow, a false note on my ear. They seemed not to come from a natural and wholesome fund, as of old, but to have a ring of artificiality in them. I could not help thinking, as I looked at him, of the aged French noblemen we read about, who, at an age and an hour which ought to have found them nightcapped and asleep, nourishing their waning vitality, were dancing attendance in ladies' boudoirs, painted, rouged, padded, and wigged, aping the youth they had parted with so long ago. Of course, the comparison was ridiculous, but still it suggested itself, and, once framed in my mind, clung there. It dawned upon me after a time that it was contact with that Lady Berenicia which had wrought this change in him, or, rather, had brought forth in his old age a development of his early associations, that, but for her, would to the end have lain hidden, unsuspected, under the manly cover of his simple middle life. If there were alterations of a similar sort in Daisy, I could not see them this night. I had regard only for the beauty of the fire-glow on her fair cheek, for the sweet, maidenly light in her hazel eyes, for the soft smile which melted over her face when she looked upon me. If she was quieter and more reserved in her manner than of old, doubtless the same was true of me, for I did not notice it. I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion, fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all accounts, to be a wonderful affair. I heard much more about it, in detail, this evening, chiefly from Mr. Stewart. Nay, I might say entirely, for Daisy never once mentioned Philip's name if it could be avoided. Mr. Stewart was evidently much captivated by the young man's spirit and social qualities and demeanor generally. "He is his father's own boy, ay, and his mother's too," said the old man, with sparkling eyes. "Not much for books, perhaps, though no dullard. But he can break a wild colt, or turn a bottle inside out, or bore a pencilled hole with a pistol-bullet at thirty paces, or tell a story, or sing a song, or ride, dance, box, cross swords, with any gentleman in the Colony. You should have seen him stand Walrath the blacksmith on his head at the races a fortnight ago! I never saw it better done in the Tweed country." "A highly accomplished gentleman, truly," I said, with as little obvious satire as possible. "Ah, but he has mind as well as muscle," put in Mr. Stewart. "He is a very Bolingbroke with the ladies. It carries me back to my days at the play, I swear, to hear him and Lady Berenicia clashing rapiers in badinage. You shall hear them, my boy, and judge. And there's a sweet side to his tongue, too, or many a pretty, blushing cheek belies the little ear behind it." The old gentleman chuckled amiably to himself as he spoke, and poured more Madeira into my glass and his. Daisy somewhat hurriedly rose, bade us "good-night," and left us to ourselves. Oh, if I had only spoken the word that night!

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The Rude Awakening from My Dream. I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness. Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too, there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade himself that it was all for the best. But these five months had created a certain change in the social conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening, here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social, part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers, husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it and I on the other. This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to me, for the first time. "Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said. "If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!" This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded, looking at him. He went on: "What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood. Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been, given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed, by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must, forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence worth of goods!" What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear. Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me. Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old. If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence, it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices, or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me. I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive, idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate, womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license, beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different! But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky. For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose, tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast, and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning, when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see her cheerful once more. And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love. One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise, and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter. To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called. Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready. She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed so much annoyed that I hastened to join them. It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely red through the smoky haze. Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side of the gulf was Philip's property. "It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek." Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering, hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and about the structure. At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level, high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were assembled, and thither we bent our steps. Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded, and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly was handsome. He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers with his lips. "You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with pleasure at him. To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle outside the tent. Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others. By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who took the trouble only to nod at me. Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr. Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she was telling. "Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to Tulp to follow me, I started. It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth I was. * * * * * Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others, of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing. He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come, and what company I had quitted to visit him. "So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple has fallen with less shaking than I thought for." I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long, heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and saw nothing. At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day: "You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'" This time I know I kept silence for a long time. I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying, in a voice which sounded like a stranger's: "I will go to Albany whenever you like." I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.

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Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart. Without heed as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a wayside stump, dead beat. "Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick," he said, gasping for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best I can." The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had put into the polyglot sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention. "Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water which dashed foaming down their defiles, and eddied in sinister depths at their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue compelled me to stop, and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale Adirondack outlines. As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent haze had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his infirmity might not be allowed to delay me. "Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody is waiting for me--nobody wants me." The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long afterward I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion that I had taken too much drink in the Hall. "Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going." Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road, and the rain was coming on. Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist. Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the settlements. The disposition to walk swiftly, which before had been a controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending the hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my brain, almost frightened me. I had fancied myself miserable that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah, fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still nourished in my heart a hope--and these _were_ happiness! I laughed aloud at my folly in having deemed them less. She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent cub! --so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy, her innocence, her grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile, the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed against them the solitary image my mind consented to limn of him--brawling dandy with fashionable smirk and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration! Where were their eyes, that they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her? Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of his class, or of his pretence to class? Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing, everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class," these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me, grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute ability to drink and race and wrestle, complimenting him upon his position among the gentry--save the mark! --of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid, fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her; it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their congratulations. And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action, my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent, honest, sober, truthful. In their hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets. They themselves time out of mind had applied them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as worthy now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer! Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not. Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn from the self-sacrificing, modest, devoted man of God, my father, and the resolute, tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed rule of that nest of aristocrats, Spain; but they had not been ashamed also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an intriguing woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to employment! It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate and industrious? It was more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the blundering playwright who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel gilt, the gaudier the better! But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations? There is nothing pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason runs abreast of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours' wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh murderous in its fierceness. The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat. The inclemency fitted and echoed my mood. On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood drawn, rumbled past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates. A half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars, and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to accompany them. "We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial Irishman; "it's human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty beckon the other way." I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily pelting upon our backs. When we turned off into the woods, to descend the steep side-hill to the waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail was slippery with wet leaves and moss. Looking over the dizzy edge, you could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct mass of dripping foliage, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears, and the peril of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert. At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross. He was returning from the Cedars: he carried a broken bough to use as a walking-stick in the difficult ascent, and was panting with the exertion; yet the lightness of his heart impelled him to hum broken snatches of a song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face! He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility toward me. "Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched, I see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this "--and made as if to pass me on the inner side. I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I could only hope he failed to note: "You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you like--here! now!" He looked at me curiously for an instant--then with a frown. "You are drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!" "No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day." The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey. If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged admiration. There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing, there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over, he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles carefully. I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and was vexed with myself for it. We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling rain for a final moment, exchanging a crossfire sweep of glances which took in not only antagonist, but every varying foot of the treacherous ground we stood upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift movement past me from behind. I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful slave had no other thought, as he glided in front of me, than to thus place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death. To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack. There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side of the cliff! Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end, one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which recent events had recalled, he did not conceal his opinion that I had chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till the candlesticks rattled, "I would have killed him or he would have killed me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than poor, brave, choleric, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously hopeless morass of infamy they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled the Englishman. The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning. With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine, limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked at him. The same idea that the struggle was postponed had come to him, evidently, for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected now not to see him. I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin defiantly in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and stood for a moment frowning down at me. "I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see you again." "When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break every bone in your body." With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I continued the descent, and crossed the creek to where the unfortunate Tulp was waiting for me.

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I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home. The slave sat upon one of the bowlders in the old Indian circle, holding his jaw with his hand, and rocking himself like a child with the colic. He could give me no account whatever of the marvellous escape he had had from instant death, and I was forced to conclude that his fall had been more than once broken by the interposition of branches or clumps of vines. He seemed to have fortunately landed on his head. His jaw was broken, and some of his teeth loosened, but none of his limbs were fractured, though all were bruised. I bound up his chin with my handkerchief, and put my neckcloth over one of his eyes, which was scratched and swollen shut, as by some poisonous thing. Thus bandaged, he hobbled along behind me over the short remaining distance. The rain and cold increased as nightfall came on, and, no longer sustained by my anger, I found the walk a very wet and miserable affair. When I reached the Cedars, and had sent Tulp to his parents with a promise to look in upon him later, I was still without any definite plan of what to say or do upon entering. The immensity of the crisis which had overtaken me had not shut my mind to the fact that the others, so far from being similarly overwhelmed, did not even suspect any reason on my part for revolt or sorrow. I had given neither of them any cause, by word or sign, to regard me as a rival to Cross--at least, of late years. So far as they were concerned, I had no ground to stand upon in making a protest. Yet when did this consideration restrain an angry lover? I had a savage feeling that they ought to have known, if they didn't. And reflection upon the late scene on the gulf side--upon the altercation, upon the abortive way in which I had allowed mastery of the situation to slip through my fingers, and upon poor Tulp's sufferings--only served to swell my mortification and rage. When I entered--after a momentary temptation to make a stranger of myself by knocking at the door--Daisy was sitting by the fire beside Mr. Stewart; both were looking meditatively into the fire, which gave the only light in the room, and she was holding his hand. My heart melted for a second as this pretty, home-like picture met my eyes, and a sob came into my throat at the thought that I was no longer a part of this dear home-circle. Then sulkiness rose to the top again. I muttered something about the weather, lighted a candle at the fire, and moved past them to the door of my room. "Why, Douw," asked Daisy, half rising as she spoke, "what has happened? There's blood on your ruffles! Where is your neckcloth?" I made answer, standing with my hand upon the latch, and glowering at her: "The blood comes from my Tulp's broken head: I used my neckcloth to tie it up. He was thrown over the side of Kayaderosseros gulf, an hour ago, by the gentleman whom it is announced you are going to marry!" Without waiting to note the effect of these words, I went into my room, closing the door behind me sharply. I spent a wretched hour or so, sorting over my clothes and possessions, trinkets and the like, and packing them for a journey. Nothing was very clear in my mind, between bitter repining at the misery which had come upon me and the growing repulsion I felt for making these two unhappy, but it was at least obvious that I must as soon as possible leave the Cedars. When at last I reentered the outer room, the table was spread for supper. Only Mr. Stewart was in the room, and he stood in his favorite attitude, with his back to the fire and his hands behind him. He preserved a complete silence, not even looking at me, until my aunt had brought in the simple evening meal. To her he said briefly that Mistress Daisy had gone to her room, weary and with a headache, and would take no supper. I felt the smart of reproof to me in every word he uttered, and even more in his curt tone. I stood at the window with my back to him, looking through the dripping little panes at the scattered lights across the river, and not ceasing for an instant to think forebodingly of the scene which was impendent. Dame Kronk had been out of the room some moments when he said, testily: "Well, sir! will you do me the honor to come to the table, or is it your wish that I should fetch your supper to you?" The least trace of softness in his voice would, I think, have broken down my temper. If he had been only grieved at my behavior, and had shown to me sorrow instead of truculent rebuke, I would have been ready, I believe, to fall at his feet. But his scornful sternness hardened me. "Thank you, sir," I replied, "I have no wish for supper." More seconds of silence ensued. The streaming windows and blurred fragments of light, against the blackness outside, seemed to mirror the chaotic state of my mind. I ought to turn to him--a thousand times over, I knew I ought--and yet for my life I could not. At last he spoke again: "Perhaps, then, you will have the politeness to face me. My association has chiefly been with gentlemen, and I should mayhap be embarrassed by want of experience if I essayed to address you to your back." I had wheeled around before half his first sentence was out, thoroughly ashamed of myself. In my contrition I had put forth my hand as I moved toward him. He did not deign to notice--or rather to respond to--the apologetic overture, and I dropped the hand and halted. He looked me over now, searchingly and with a glance of mingled curiosity and anger. He seemed to be searching for words sufficiently formal and harsh, meanwhile, and he was some time in finding them. "In the days when I wore a sword for use, young man, and moved among my equals," he began, deliberately, "it was not held to be a safe or small matter to offer me affront. Other times, other manners. The treatment which then I would not have brooked from Cardinal York himself, I find myself forced to submit to, under my own roof, at the hands of a person who, to state it most lightly, should for decency's sake put on the appearance of respect for my gray hairs." He paused here, and I would have spoken, but he held up his slender, ruffled hand with a peremptory "Pray, allow me!" and presently went on: "In speaking to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful, respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, you developed some of the to me less attractive and less generous virtues of your race, I still did not fail to see that they were, in their way, virtues, and that they inured both to my material profit and to your credit among your neighbors. I had said to myself, after much consideration, that if you had not come up wholly the sort of gentleman I had looked for, still you were a gentleman, and had qualities which, taken altogether, would make you a creditable successor to me on the portions of my estate which it was my purpose to entail upon you and yours." "Believe me, Mr. Stewart," I interposed here, with a broken voice, as he paused again, "I am deeply--very deeply grateful to you." He went on as if I had not spoken: "Judge, then, my amazement and grief to find you returning from your voyage to the West intent upon leaving me, upon casting aside the position and duties for which I had trained you, and upon going down to Albany to dicker for pence and ha'pence with the other Dutchmen there. I did not forbid your going. I contented myself by making known to you my disappointment at your selection of a career so much inferior to your education and position in life. Whereupon you have no better conception of what is due to me and to yourself than to begin a season of sulky pouting and sullenness, culminating in the incredible rudeness of open insults to me, and, what is worse, to my daughter in my presence. She has gone to her chamber sick in head and heart alike from your boorish behavior. I would fain have retired also, in equal sorrow and disgust, had it not seemed my duty to demand an explanation from you before the night passed." The blow--the whole crushing series of blows--had fallen. How I suffered under them, how each separate lash tore savagely through heart and soul and flesh, it would be vain to attempt to tell. Yet with the anguish there came no weakening. I had been wrong and foolish, and clearly enough I saw it, but this was not the way to correct or chastise me. A solitary sad word would have unmanned me; this long, stately, satirical speech, this ironically elaborate travesty of my actions and motives, had an opposite effect. I suffered, but I stubbornly stood my ground. "If I have disappointed you, sir, I am more grieved than you can possibly be," I replied. "If what I said was in fact an affront to you, and to--her--then I would tear out my tongue to recall the words. But how can the simple truth affront?" "What was this you called out so rudely about the gulf--about Tulp's being thrown over by--by the gentleman my daughter is to marry? since you choose to describe him thus." "I spoke the literal truth, sir. It was fairly by a miracle that the poor devil escaped with his life." "How did it happen? What was the provocation? Even in Caligula's days slaves were not thrown over cliffs without some reason." "Tulp suffered for the folly of being faithful to me--for not understanding that it was the fashion to desert me," I replied, with rising temerity. "He threw himself between me and this Cross of yours, as we faced each other on the ledge--where we spoke this morning of the need for a chain--and the Englishman flung him off." "Threw himself between you! Were you quarrelling, you two, then?" "I dare say it would be described as a quarrel. I think I should have killed him, or he killed me, if the calamity of poor Tulp's tumble had not put other things in our heads." "My faith!" was Mr. Stewart's only comment. He stared at me for a time, then seated himself before the fire, and looked at the blaze and smoke in apparent meditation. Finally he said, in a somewhat milder voice than before: "Draw a chair up here and sit down. Doubtless there is more in this than I thought. Explain it to me." I felt less at my ease, seated now for a more or less moderate conference, than I had been on my feet, bearing my part in a quarrel. "What am I to explain?" I asked. "Why were you quarrelling with Philip?" "Because I felt like it--because I hate him!" "Tut, tut! That is a child's answer. What is the trouble between you two? I demand to know!" "If you will have it"--and all my resentment and sense of loss burst forth in the explanation--"because he has destroyed my home for me; because he has ousted me from the place I used to have, and strove so hard to be worthy of, in your affections; because, after a few months here, with his fine clothes and his dashing, wasteful ways, he is more regarded by you and your friends than I am, who have tried faithfully all my life to deserve your regard; because he has taken--" But I broke down here. My throat choked the sound in sobs, and I turned my face away that he might not see the tears which I felt scalding my eyes. My companion kept silent, but he poked the damp, smudging sticks about in the fire-place vigorously, took his spectacles out of their case, rubbed them, and put them back in his pocket, and in other ways long since familiar to me betrayed his uneasy interest. These slight signs of growing sympathy--or, at least, comprehension--encouraged me to proceed, and my voice came back to me. "If you could know," I went mournfully on, "the joy I felt when I first looked on the Valley--_our_ Valley--again at Fort Stanwix; if you could only realize how I counted the hours and minutes which separated me from this home, from you and her, and how I cried out at their slowness; if you could guess how my heart beat when I walked up the path out there that evening, and opened that door, and looked to see you two welcome me--ah, then you could feel the bitterness I have felt since! I came home burning with eagerness, homesickness, to be in my old place again near you and her--and the place was filled by another! If I have seemed rude and sullen, _that_ is the reason. If I had set less store upon your love, and upon her--her--liking for me, then doubtless I should have borne the displacement with better grace. But it put me on the rack. Believe me, if I have behaved to your displeasure, and hers, it has been from very excess of tenderness trampled underfoot." At least the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and for a time, at all events, the heart of my life-long friend had warmed again to me as of old. He put his hand paternally upon my knee, and patted it softly. "My poor boy," he said, with a sympathetic half-smile, and in his old-time gravely gentle voice: "even in your tribulation you must be Dutch! Why not have said this to me--or what then occurred to you of it--at the outset, the first day after you came? Why, then it could all have been put right in a twinkling. But no! in your secretive Dutch fashion you must needs go aloof, and worry your heart sore by all sorts of suspicions and jealousies and fears that you have been supplanted--until, see for yourself what a melancholy pass you have brought us all to! Suppose by chance, while these sullen devils were driving you to despair, you had done injury to Philip--perhaps even killed him! Think what your feelings, and ours, would be now. And all might have been cleared up, set right, by a word at the beginning." I looked hard into the fire, and clinched my teeth. "Would a word have given me Daisy?" I asked from between them. He withdrew his hand from my knee, and pushed one of the logs petulantly with his foot. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "I mean that for five years I have desired--for the past six months have, waking or sleeping, thought of nothing else but this desire of my heart--to have Daisy for my wife." As he did not speak, I went on with an impassioned volubility altogether strange to my custom, recalling to him the tender intimacy in which she and I had grown up from babyhood; the early tacit understanding that we were to inherit the Cedars and all its belongings, and his own not infrequent allusions in those days to the vision of our sharing it, and all else in life, together. Then I pictured to him the brotherly fondness of my later years, blossoming suddenly, luxuriantly, into the fervor of a lover's devotion while I was far away in the wilds, with no gracious, civilizing presence (save always Mr. Cross) near me except the dear image of her which I carried in my heart of hearts. I told him, too, of the delicious excitement with which, day by day, I drew nearer to the home that held her, trembling now with nervousness at my slow progress, now with timidity lest, grasping this vast happiness too swiftly, I should crush it from very ecstasy of possession. I made clear to him, moreover, that I had come without ever dreaming of the possibility of a rival--as innocently, serenely confident of right, as would be a little child approaching to kiss its mother. "Fancy this child struck violently in the face by this mother, from whom it had never before received so much as a frown," I concluded; "then you will understand something of the blow which has sent me reeling." His answering words, when finally he spoke, were sympathetic and friendly enough, but not very much to the point. This was, doubtless, due to no fault of his; consolation at such times is not within the power of the very wisest to bestow. He pointed out to me that these were a class of disappointments exceedingly common to the lot of young men; it was the way of the world. In the process of pairing off a generation, probably ninety-nine out of every hundred couples would secretly have preferred some other distribution; yet they made the best of it, and the world wagged on just the same as before. With all these and many other jarring commonplaces he essayed to soothe me--to the inevitable increase of my bitter discontent. He added, I remember, a personal parallel: "I have never spoken of it to you, or to any other, but I too had my grievous disappointment. I was in love with the mother of this young Philip Cross. I worshipped her reverently from afar; I had no other thought or aim in life but to win her favor, to gain a position worthy of her; I would have crossed the Channel, and marched into St. James's, and hacked off the Hanoverian's heavy head with my father's broadsword, I verily believe, to have had one smile from her lips. Yet I had to pocket this all, and stand smilingly by and see her wedded to my tent-mate, Tony Cross. I thought the world had come to an end--but it hadn't. Women are kittle cattle, my boy. They must have their head, or their blood turns sour. Come! where is the genuineness of your affection for our girl, if you would deny her the gallant of her choice?" "If I believed," I blurted out, "that it _was_ her own free choice!" "Whose else, then, pray?" "If I felt that she truly, deliberately preferred him--that she had not been decoyed and misled by that Lady Ber--" "Fie upon such talk!" said the old gentleman, with a shade of returning testiness in his tone. "Do you comprehend our Daisy so slightly, after all these years? Is she a girl not to know her own mind? Tut! she loves the youngster; she has chosen him. If you had stopped at home, if you had spoken earlier instead of mooning, Dutch fashion, in your own mind, it might have been different. Who can say? But it may not be altered now. We who are left must still plan to promote her happiness. A hundred bridegrooms could not make her less our Daisy than she was. There must be no more quarrels between you boys, remember! I forbid it, your own judgment will forbid it. He will make a good husband to the girl, and I mistake much if he does not make a great man of himself in the Colony. Perhaps--who knows? --he may bring her a title, or even a coronet, some of these days. The Crown will have need of all its loyal gentlemen here, soon enough, too, as the current runs now, and rewards and honors will flow freely. Philip will lose no chance to turn the stream Cairncross way." My aunt came in to take away the untouched dishes--Mr. Stewart could never abide negroes in their capacity as domestics--and soon thereafter we went to bed; I, for one, to lie sleepless and disconsolate till twilight came. The next morning we two again had the table to ourselves, for Daisy sent down word that her head was still aching, and we must not wait the meal for her. It was a silent and constrained affair, this breakfast, and we hurried through it as one speeds a distasteful task. It was afterward, as we walked forth together into the garden, where the wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and take up the proffered agency. He seemed to have prepared himself for this, and offered no strong opposition. We had both, indeed, reached the conclusion that it was the best way out of the embarrassment which hung over us. He still clung, or made a show of clinging, to his regret that I had not been satisfied with my position at the Cedars. But in his heart, I am sure, he was relieved by my perseverance in the project. Two or three days were consumed in preparations at home and in conferences with Jonathan Cross, either at Johnson Hall or at our place, whither he was twice able to drive. He furnished me with several letters, and with voluminous suggestions and advice. Sir William, too, gave me letters, and much valuable information as to Albany ways and prejudices. I had, among others from him, I remember, a letter of presentation to Governor Tryon, who with his lady had visited the baronet during my absence, but which I never presented, and another to the uncle of the boy-Patroon, which was of more utility. In the hurry and occupation of making ready for so rapid and momentous a departure, I had not many opportunities of seeing Daisy. During the few times that we were alone together, no allusion was made to the scene of that night, or to my words, or to her betrothal. How much she knew of the incident on the gulf-side, or of my later explanation and confession to Mr. Stewart, I could not guess. She was somewhat reserved in her manner, I fancied, and she seemed to quietly avoid being alone in the room with me. At the final parting, too, she proffered me only her cheek to touch with my lips. Yet I could not honestly say that, deep in her heart, she was not sorry for me and tender toward me, and grieved to have me go. It was on the morning of the last day of September, 1772, that I began life alone, for myself, by starting on the journey to Albany. If I carried with me a sad heart, there yet were already visible the dawnings of compensation. At least, I had not quarrelled with the dear twain of the Cedars. As for Philip Cross, I strove not to think of him at all.

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The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany. The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had left behind. For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping. I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places, to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then, however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany. Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses, here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it. And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond. Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther. Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose. For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south. There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know how neither to rest nor to play. But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies were mine. But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age, and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list. These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political life, were of my way of thinking. More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth, and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it, as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards. Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became the most ardent of Whigs? Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established, there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern, to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others. Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered. Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped. The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon other things. Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness. I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed me, which was not at all. The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business, push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run over here." So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again. It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city, for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business. I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden, and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down. So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs, twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to mortal man. Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.

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I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House. We come to a soft, clear night in the Indian summer-time of 1774--a night not to be forgotten while memory remains to me. There was a grand gathering and ball at the Manor House of the Patroons, and to it I was invited. Cadwallader Golden, the octogenarian lieutenant-governor, and chief representative of the Crown now that Tryon was away in England, had come up to Albany in state, upon some business which I now forget, and he was to be entertained at the Van Rensselaer mansion, and with him the rank, beauty, and worth of all the country roundabout. I had heard that a considerable number of invitations had been despatched to the Tory families in my old neighborhood, and that, despite the great distance, sundry of them had been accepted. Sir William Johnson had now been dead some months, and it was fitting that his successor, Sir John, newly master of all the vast estates, should embrace this opportunity to make his first appearance as baronet in public. In fact, he had arrived in town with Lady Johnson, and it was said that they came in company with others. I could not help wondering, as I attired myself, with more than ordinary care, in my best maroon coat and smallclothes and flowered saffron waistcoat, who it was that accompanied the Johnsons. Was I at last to meet Daisy? Succeeding generations have discovered many tricks of embellishment and decoration of which we old ones never dreamed. But I doubt if even the most favored of progressive moderns has laid eyes upon any sight more beautiful than that which I recall now, as the events of this evening return to me. You may still see for yourselves how noble, one might say palatial, was the home which young Stephen Van Rensselaer built for himself, there on the lowlands at the end of Broadway, across the Kissing Bridge. But no power of fancy can restore for _you_--sober-clad, pre-occupied, democratic people that you are--the flashing glories of that spectacle: the broad, fine front of the Manor House, with all its windows blazing in welcome; the tall trees in front aglow with swinging lanterns and colored lights, hung cunningly in their shadowy branches after some Italian device; the stately carriages sweeping up the gravelled avenue, and discharging their passengers at the block; the gay procession up the wide stone steps--rich velvets and costly satins, powdered wigs and alabaster throats, bright eyes, and gems on sword-hilts or at fair breasts--all radiant in the hospitable flood of light streaming from the open door; the throng of gaping slaves with torches, and smartly dressed servants holding the horses or helping with my lady's train and cloak; the resplendent body of color, and light, and sparkling beauty, which the eye caught in the spacious hall within, beyond the figures of the widowed hostess and her son, the eight-year-old Patroon, who stood forth to greet their guests. No! the scene belongs to its own dead century and fading generation. You shall strive in vain to reproduce it, even in fancy. The full harvest-moon, which hung in the lambent heavens above all, pictures itself to my memory as far fairer and more luminous than is the best of nowaday moons. Alas! my old eyes read no romance in the silvery beams now, but suspect rheumatism instead. This round, lustrous orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance of debatable topics, one could see sidelong glances cast, and hear muttered sneers. We bowed low to one another, but with anxious faces, knowing that we stood upon the thin crust over the crater, likely at any moment to crash through it. It was my fortune to be well known to Madame Van Rensselaer, our hostess. She was a Livingston, and a patriot, and she knew me for one as well. "The Tories are here in great muster," she whispered to me, when I bowed before her; "I doubt not it is the last time you will ever see them under my roof. The Colonel has news from Philadelphia to-day. There is trouble brewing." I could see Colonel Schuyler standing beside one of the doors to the left, but to reach him was not easy. First I must pause to exchange a few words with Dominie Westerlo, the learned and good pastor of the Dutch church, of whose intended marriage with the widow, our hostess, there were even then rumors. And afterward there was the mayor, Abraham Cuyler, whom we all liked personally, despite his weak leaning toward the English, and it would not do to pass him by unheeded. While I still stood with him, talking of I know not what, the arrival of the lieutenant-governor was announced. A buzz of whispering ran round the hall. In the succeeding silence that dignitary walked toward us, a space clearing about him as he did so. The mayor advanced to meet him, and I perforce followed. I knew much about this remarkable Mr. Colden. Almost my first English book had been his account of the Indian tribes, and in later years I had been equally instructed by his writings on astronomy and scientific subjects. Even in my boyhood I had heard of him as a very old man, and here he was now, eighty-six years of age, the highest representative in the Colony of English authority. I could feel none of the hostility I ought from his office to have felt, when I presently made my obeisance, and he offered me his hand. It was a pleasant face and a kindly eye which met my look. Despite his great age, he seemed scarcely older in countenance and bearing than had Mr. Stewart when last I saw him. He was simply clad, and I saw from his long, waving, untied hair why he was called "Old Silver Locks." His few words to me were amiable commonplaces, and I passed to make room for others, and found my way now to where Schuyler stood. "The old fox!" he said, smilingly nodding toward Colden. "One may not but like him, for all his tricks. If England had had the wit to keep that rude boor of a Tryon at home, and make Colden governor, and listen to him, matters would have gone better. Who is that behind him? Oh, yes, De Lancey." Oliver de Lancey was chiefly notable on account of his late brother James, who had been chief justice and lieutenant-governor, and the most brilliant, unscrupulous, masterful politician of his time. Oliver was himself a man of much energy and ambition. I observed him curiously, for his mother had been a Van Cortlandt, and I had some of that blood in my veins as well. So far as it had contributed to shape his face, I was not proud of it, for he had a selfish and arrogant mien. It was more satisfactory to watch my companion, as he told me the names of the Tories who followed in Colden's wake, and commented on their characters. I do not recall them, but I remember every line of Philip Schuyler's face, and every inflection of his voice. He was then not quite forty years of age, almost of my stature--that is to say, a tall man. He held himself very erect, giving strangers the impression of a haughty air, which his dark face and eyes, and black lines of hair peeping from under the powder, helped to confirm. But no one could speak in amity with him without finding him to be the most affable and sweet-natured of men. If he had had more of the personal vanity and self-love which his bearing seemed to indicate, it would have served him well, perhaps, when New England jealousy assailed and overbore him. But he was too proud to fight for himself, and too patriotic not to fight for his country, whether the just reward came or was withheld. Colonel Schuyler had been chosen as one of the five delegates of the Colony to attend the first Continental Congress, now sitting at Philadelphia, but ill-health had compelled him to decline the journey. He had since been to New York, however, where he had learned much of the situation, and now was in receipt of tidings from the Congress itself. By a compromise in the New York Assembly, both parties had been represented in our delegation, the Whigs sending Philip Livingston and Isaac Low, the Tories James Duane and John Jay, and the fifth man, one Alsopp, being a neutral-tinted individual to whom neither side could object. The information which Schuyler had received was to the effect that all five, under the tremendous and enthusiastic pressure they had encountered in Philadelphia, had now resolved to act together in all things for the Colonies and against the Crown. "That means," said he, "that we shall all adopt Massachusetts's cause as our own. After Virginia led the way with Patrick Henry's speech, there was no other course possible for even Jay and Duane. I should like to hear that man Henry. He must be wonderful." The space about Mr. Colden had shifted across the room, so that we were now upon its edge, and Schuyler went to him with outstretched hand. The two men exchanged a glance, and each knew what the other was thinking of. "Your excellency has heard from Philadelphia," said the Colonel, more as a statement of fact than as an inquiry. "Sad, sad!" exclaimed the aged politician, in a low tone. "It is a grief instead of a joy to have lived so long, if my life must end amid contention and strife." "He is really sincere in deploring the trouble," said Schuyler, when he had rejoined me. "He knows in his heart that the Ministry are pig-headedly wrong, and that we are in the right. He would do justice if he could, but he is as powerless as I am so far as influencing London goes, and here he is in the hands of the De Lanceys. To give the devil his due, I believe Sir William Johnson was on our side, too, at heart." We had talked of this before, and out of deference to my sentiments of liking and gratitude to Sir William, he always tried to say amiable things about the late baronet to me. But they did not come easily, for there was an old-time feud between the two families. The dislike dated back to the beginning of young Johnson's career, when, by taking sides shrewdly in a political struggle between Clinton and De Lancey, he had ousted John Schuyler, Philip's grandfather, from the Indian commissionership and secured it for himself. In later years, since the Colonel had come to manhood, he had been forced into rivalry, almost amounting to antagonism at times, with the baronet, in Colonial and Indian affairs; and even now, after the baronet's death, it was hard for him to acknowledge the existence of all the virtues which my boyish liking had found in Sir William. But still he did try, if only to please me. As we spoke, Sir John Johnson passed us, in company with several younger men, pushing toward the room to the right, where the punch-bowl was placed. "At least, _he_ is no friend of yours?" said Schuyler, indicating the red-faced young baronet. "No man less so," I replied, promptly. Two years ago I doubt I should have been so certain of my entire enmity toward Sir John. But in the interim all my accumulating political fervor had unconsciously stretched back to include the Johnstown Tories; I found myself now honestly hating them all alike for their former coolness to me and their present odious attitude toward my people. And it was not difficult, recalling all my boyish dislike for John Johnson and his steadily contemptuous treatment of me, to make him the chief object of my aversion. We talked of him now, and of his wife, a beautiful, sweet-faced girl of twenty, who had been Polly Watts of New York. My companion pointed her out to me, as one of a circle beyond the fire-place. He had only soft words and pity for her--as if foreseeing the anguish and travail soon to be brought upon her by her husband's misdeeds--but he spoke very slightingly and angrily of Sir John. To Schuyler's mind there was no good in him. "I have known him more or less since he was a boy and followed his father in the Lake George campaign. The officers then could not abide him, though some were submissive to him because of his father's position. So now, fifteen years afterward, although he has many toadies and flatterers, I doubt his having any real friends. Through all these score of years, I have yet to learn of any gracious or manly thing he has done." "At least he did gallop from the Fort to the Hall at news of his father's death, and kill his horse by the pace," I said. "Heirs can afford to ride swiftly," replied the Colonel, in a dry tone. "No: he has neither the honesty to respect the rights of others, nor the wit to enforce those which he arrogates to himself. Look at his management in the Mohawk Valley. Scarce two months after the old baronet's death--before he was barely warm in his father's bed--all the Dutch and Palatines and Cherry Valley Scotch were up in arms against him and his friends. I call that the work of a fool. Why, Tryon County ought, by all the rules, to be the Tories' strongest citadel. There, of all other places, they should be able to hold their own. Old Sir William would have contrived matters better, believe me. But this sulky, slave-driving cub must needs force the quarrel from the start. Already they have their committee in the Palatine district, with men like Frey and Yates and Paris on it, and their resolutions are as strong as any we have heard." Others came up at this, and I moved away, thinking to pay my respects to friends in the rooms on the left. The fine hall was almost overcrowded. One's knee struck a sword, or one's foot touched a satin train, at every step. There were many whom I knew, chiefly Albanians, and my progress was thus rendered slow. At the door I met my kinsman, Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn. "Ha! well met, Cousin Sobriety!" he cried. "Let us cross the hall, and get near the punch-bowl." "It is my idea that you have had enough," I answered. " 'Too much is enough,' as the Indian said. He was nearer the truth than you are," replied Teunis, taking my arm. "No, not now! First let me see who is here." "Who is here? Everybody--from Hendrik Hudson and Killian the First down. Old Centenarian Colden is telling them about William the Silent, whom he remembers very well." "I have never heard any one speak of Teunis the Silent." "Nor ever will! It is not my _métier_, as the French students used to say. Well, then, I will turn back with you; but the punch will all be gone, mark my words. I saw Johnson and Watts and their party headed for the bowl five-and-twenty minutes ago. We shall get not so much as a lemon-seed. But I sacrifice myself." We entered the room, and my eyes were drawn, as by the force of a million magnets, to the place where Daisy sat. For the moment she was unattended. She was very beautifully attired, and jewels glistened from her hair and throat. Her eyes were downcast--looking upon the waxed floor as if in meditation. Even to this sudden, momentary glance, her fair face looked thinner and paler than I remembered it--and ah, how well did I remember it! With some muttered word of explanation I broke away from my companion, and went straight to her. She had not noted my presence or approach, and only looked up when I stood before her. There was not in her face the look of surprise which I had expected. She smiled in a wan way, and gave me her hand. "I knew you were here," she said, in a soft voice which I scarcely recognized, so changed, I might say saddened, was it by the introduction of some plaintive, minor element. "Philip told me. I thought that sooner or later I should see you." "And I have thought of little else but the chance of seeing you," I replied, speaking what was in my heart, with no reflection save that this was our Daisy, come into my life again. She was silent for a moment, her eyes seeking the floor and a faint glow coming upon her cheeks. Then she raised them to my face, with something of the old sparkle in their glance. "Well, then," she said, drawing aside her skirts, "sit here, and see me."

20

None

A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust Upon Me. I sat beside Daisy, and we talked. It was at the beginning a highly superficial conversation, as I remember it, during which neither looked at the other, and each made haste to fill up any threatened lapse into silence by words of some sort, it mattered not much what. She told me a great deal about Mr. Stewart's health, which I learned was far less satisfactory than his letters had given reason to suspect. In reply to questions, I told her of my business and my daily life here in Albany. I did not ask her in return about herself. She seemed eager to forestall any possible inquiry on this point, and hastened to inform me as to my old acquaintances in the Valley. From her words I first realized how grave the situation there had suddenly become. It was not only that opposition to the Johnsons had been openly formulated, but feuds of characteristic bitterness had sprung up within families, and between old-time friends, in consequence. Colonel Henry Frey, who owned the upper Canajoharie mills, took sides with the Tories, and had fiercely quarrelled with his brother John, who was one of the Whig Committee. There was an equally marked division in the Herkimer family, where one brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, and his nephew, outraged the others by espousing the Tory cause. So instances might be multiplied. Already on one side there were projects of forcible resistance, and on the other ugly threats of using the terrible Indian power, which hung portentous on the western skirt of the Valley, to coerce the Whigs. I gained from this recital, more from her manner than her words, that her sympathies were with the people and not with the aristocrats. She went on to say things which seemed to offer an explanation of this. The tone of Valley society, at least so far as it was a reflection of Johnson Hall, had, she said, deteriorated wofully since the old baronet's death. A reign of extravagance and recklessness both as to money and temper--of gambling, racing, hard drinking, low sports, and coarse manners--had set in. The friends of Sir John were now a class by themselves, having no relations to speak of with the body of Whig farmers, merchants, inn-keepers, and the like. Rather it seemed to please the Tory clique to defy the good opinion of their neighbors, and show by very excess and license contempt for their judgment. Some of the young men whom I had known were of late sadly altered. She spoke particularly of Walter Butler, whose moodiness had now been inflamed, by dissipation and by the evil spell which seemed to hang over everything in the Valley, into a sinister and sombre rage at the Whigs, difficult to distinguish sometimes from madness. In all this I found but one reflection--rising again and again as she spoke--and this was that she was telling me, by inference, the story of her own unhappiness. Daisy would never have done this consciously--of that I am positive. But it was betrayed in every line of her face, and my anxious ear caught it in every word she uttered as to the doings of the Johnson party. Doubtless she did not realize how naturally and closely I would associate her husband with that party. Underneath all our talk there had been, on both sides, I dare say, a sense of awkward constraint. There were so many things which we must not speak of--things which threatened incessantly to force their way to the surface. I thought of them all, and wondered how much she knew of the events that preceded my departure--how much she guessed of the heart-breaking grief with which I had seen her go to another. It came back to me now, very vividly, as I touched the satin fold of her gown with my shoe, and said to myself, "This is really she." The two years had not passed so uncomfortably, it is true; work and pre-occupation and the change of surroundings had brought me back my peace of mind and taken the keen edge from my despair--which was to have been life-long, and had faded in a month. Yet now her simple presence--with the vague added feeling that she was unhappy--sufficed to wipe out the whole episode of Albany, and transport me bodily back to the old Valley days. I felt again all the anguish at losing her, all the bitter wrath at the triumph of my rival--emphasized and intensified now by the implied confession that he had proved unworthy. To this gloom there presently succeeded, by some soft, subtle transition, the consciousness that it was very sweet to sit thus beside her. The air about us seemed suddenly filled with some delicately be-numbing influence. The chattering, smiling, moving throng was here, close upon us, enveloping us in its folds. Yet we were deliciously isolated. Did she feel it as I did? I looked up into her face. She had been silent for I know not how long, following her thoughts as I had followed mine. It was almost a shock to me to find that the talk had died away, and I fancied that I read a kindred embarrassment in her eyes. I seized upon the first subject which entered my head. "Tulp would be glad to see you," I said, foolishly enough. She colored slightly, and opened and shut her fan in a nervous way. "Poor Tulp!" she said, "I don't think he ever liked me as he did you. Is he well?" "He has never been quite the same since--since he came to Albany. He is a faithful body-servant now--nothing more." "Yes," she said, softly, with a sigh; then, after a pause, "Philip spoke of offering to make good to you your money loss in Tulp, but I told him he would better not." "It _was_ better not," I answered. Silence menaced us again. I did not find myself indignant at this insolent idea of the Englishman's. Instead, my mind seemed to distinctly close its doors against the admission of his personality. I was near Daisy, and that was enough; let there be no thoughts of him whatsoever. "You do Tulp a wrong," I said. "Poor little fellow! Do you remember--" and so we drifted into the happy, sunlit past, with its childish memories for both of games and forest rambles, and innocent pleasures making every day a little blissful lifetime by itself, and all the years behind our parting one sweet prolonged delight. Words came freely now; we looked into each other's faces without constraint, and laughed at the pastimes we recalled. It was so pleasant to be together again, and there was so much of charm for us both in the time which we remembered together. Sir John Johnson and his party had left the punch--or what remained of it--and came suddenly up to us. Behind the baronet I saw young Watts, young De Lancey, one or two others whom I did not know, and, yes! --it was he--Philip Cross. He had altered in appearance greatly. The two years had added much flesh to his figure, which was now burly, and seemed to have diminished his stature in consequence. His face, which even I had once regarded as handsome, was hardened now in expression, and bore an unhealthy, reddish hue. For that matter, all these young men were flushed with drink, and had entered rather boisterously, attracting attention as they progressed. This attention was not altogether friendly. Some of the ladies had drawn in their skirts impatiently, as they passed, and beyond them I saw a group of Dutch friends of mine, among them Teunis, who were scowling dark looks at the new-comers. Sir John recognized me as he approached, and deigned to say, "Ha! Mauverensen--you here?" after a cool fashion, and not offering his hand. I had risen, not knowing what his greeting would be like. It was only decent now to say: "I was much grieved to hear of your honored father's death last summer." "Well you might be!" said polite Sir John. "He served you many a good purpose. I saw you talking out yonder with Schuyler, that coward who dared not go to Philadelphia and risk his neck for his treason. I dare say he, too, was convulsed with grief over my father's death!" "Perhaps you would like to tell Philip Schuyler to his face that he is a coward," I retorted, in rising heat at the unprovoked insolence in his tone. "There is no braver man in the Colony." "But he didn't go to Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list." "He did not go for a reason which is perfectly well known--his illness forbade the journey." "Yes," sneered the baronet, his pale eyes shifting away from my glance; "too ill for Philadelphia, but not too ill for New York, where, I am told, he has been most of the time since your--what d'ye call it? --Congress assembled." I grew angry. "He went there to bury General Bradstreet. That, also, is well known. Information seems to reach the Valley but indifferently, Sir John. Everywhere else people understand and appreciate the imperative nature of the summons which called Colonel Schuyler to New York. The friendship of the two men has been a familiar matter of knowledge this fifteen years. I know not your notions of friendship's duties; but for a gentleman like Schuyler, scarcely a mortal illness itself could serve to keep him from paying the last respect to a friend whose death was such an affliction to him." Johnson had begun some response, truculent in tone, when an interruption came from a most unexpected source. Philip Cross, who had looked at me closely without betraying any sign of recognition, put his hand now on Sir John's shoulder. "Bradstreet?" he said. "Did I not know him? Surely he is the man who found his friend's wife so charming that he sent that friend to distant posts--to England, to Quebec, to Oswego, and Detroit--and amused himself here at home during the husband's absence. I am told he even built a mansion for her while the spouse was in London _on business. _ So he is dead, eh?" I had felt the bitter purport of his words, almost before they were out. It was a familiar scandal in the mouths of the Johnson coterie--this foul assertion that Mrs. Schuyler, one of the best and most faithful of helpmates, as witty as she was beautiful, as good as she was diligent, in truth, an ideal wife, had pursued through many years a course of deceit and dishonor, and that her husband, the noblest son of our Colony, had been base enough to profit by it. Of all the cruel and malignant things to which the Tories laid their mean tongues, this was the lowest and most false. I could not refrain from putting my hand on my sword-hilt as I answered: "Such infamous words as these are an insult to every gentleman, the world over, who has ever presented a friend to his family!" Doubtless there was apparent in my face, as in the exaggerated formality of my bow to Cross, a plain invitation to fight. If there had not been, then my manner would have wofully belied my intent. It was, in fact, so plain that Daisy, who sat close by my side, and, like some others near at hand, had heard every word that had passed, half-started to her feet and clutched my sleeve, as with an appeal against my passionate purpose. Her husband had not stirred from his erect and arrogant posture until he saw his wife's frightened action. I could see that he noted this, and that it further angered him. He also laid his hand on his sword now, and frigidly inclined his wigged head toward me. "I had not the honor of addressing you, sir," he said, in a low voice, very much at variance with the expression in his eyes. "I had no wish to exchange words with you, or with any of your sour-faced tribe. But if you desire a conversation--a lengthy and more private conversation--I am at your disposition. Let me say here, however,"--and he glanced with fierce meaning at Daisy as he spoke--"I am not a Schuyler; I do not encourage 'friends.'" Even Sir John saw that this was too much. "Come, come, Cross!" he said, going to his friend. "Your tongue runs away with you." Then, in a murmur, he added: "Damn it, man! Don't drag your wife into the thing. Skewer the Dutchman outside, if you like, and if you are steady enough, but remember what you are about." I could hear this muttered exhortation as distinctly as I had heard Cross's outrageous insult. Sir John's words appealed to me even more than they did to his companion. I was already ashamed to have been led into a display of temper and a threat of quarrelling, here in the company of ladies, and on such an occasion. We were attracting attention, moreover, and Teunis and some of his Dutch friends had drawn nearer, evidently understanding that a dispute was at hand. The baronet's hint about Daisy completed my mortification. _I_ should have been the one to think of her, to be restrained by her presence, and to prevent, at any cost, her name being associated with the quarrel by so much as the remotest inference. So I stood irresolute, with my hand still on my sword, and black rage still tearing at my heart, but with a mist of self-reproach and indecision before my eyes, in which lights, costumes, powdered wigs, gay figures about me, all swam dizzily. Stephen Watts, a man in manner, though a mere stripling in years, had approached me from the other group, a yard off, in a quiet way to avoid observation. He whispered: "There must be no quarrel _here_, Mr. Mauverensen. And there must be no notice taken of his last words--spoken in heat, and properly due, I dare say, to the punch rather than to the man." "I feel that as deeply as you can," I replied. "I am glad," said Watts, still in a sidelong whisper. "If you must fight, let there be some tolerable pretext." "We have one ready standing," I whispered back. "When we last met I warned him that at our next encounter I should break every bone in his skin. Is not that enough?" "Capital! Who is your friend?" By some remarkable intuition my kinsman Teunis was prompted to advance at this. I introduced the two young men to each other, and they sauntered off, past where Sir John was still arguing with Cross, and into the outer hall. I stood watching them till they disappeared, then looking aimlessly at the people in front of me, who seemed to belong to some strange phantasmagoria. It was Daisy's voice which awakened me from this species of trance. She spoke from behind her fan, purposely avoiding looking up at me. "You are going to fight--you two!" she murmured. I could not answer her directly, and felt myself flushing with embarrassment. "He spoke in heat," I said, stumblingly. "Doubtless he will apologize--to you, at least." "You do not know him. He would have his tongue torn out before he would admit his wrong, or any sorrow for it." To this I could find no reply. It was on my tongue's end to say that men who had a pride in combining obstinacy with insolence must reap what they sow, but I wisely kept silence. She went on: "Promise me, Douw, that you will not fight. It chills my heart, even the thought of it. Let it pass. Go away now--anything but a quarrel! I beseech you!" " 'Tis more easily said than done," I muttered back to her. "Men cannot slip out of du--out of quarrels as they may out of coats." "For my sake!" came the whisper, with a pleading quaver in it, from behind the feathers. "It is all on one side, Daisy," I protested. "I must be ridden over, insulted, scorned, flouted to my face--and pocket it all! That is a nigger's portion, not a gentleman's. You do not know what I have borne already." "Do I not? Ah, too well! For my sake, Douw, for the sake of our memories of the dear old home, I implore you to avoid an encounter. Will you not--for me?" "It makes a coward out of me! Every Tory in the two counties will cackle over the story that a Dutchman, a Whig, was affronted here under the Patroon's very roof, and dared not resent it." "How much do you value their words? Must a thing be true for them to say it? The real manhood is shown in the strength of restraint, not the weakness of yielding to the impulse of the moment. And you can be strong if you choose, Douw!" While I still pondered these words Teunis Van Hoorn returned to me, having finished his consultation with Watts, whom I now saw whispering to Sir John and the others who clustered about Cross. The doctor was in good spirits. He sidled up to me, uttering aloud some merry commonplace, and then adding, in a low tone: "I was a match for him. He insisted that they were the aggrieved party, and chose swords. I stuck to it that we occupied that position, and had the right to choose pistols. You are no Frenchman, to spit flesh with a wire; but you _can_ shoot, can't you? If we stand to our point, they must yield." I cast a swift glance toward the sweet, pleading face at my side, and made answer: "I will not fight!" My kinsman looked at me with surprise and vexation. "No," I went on, "it is not our way here. You have lived so long abroad that duelling seems a natural and proper thing. But we stay-at-homes no more recognize the right of these English fops to force their fighting customs upon us than we rush to tie our hair in queues because it is their fashion." I will not pretend that I was much in love with the line of action thus lamely defended. To the contrary, it seemed to me then a cowardly and unworthy course; but I had chosen it, and I could not retreat. There was upon the moment offered temptation enough to test my resolution sorely. Many of the ladies had in the meantime left the room, not failing to let it be seen that they resented the wrangling scene which had been thrust upon them. Mistress Daisy had crossed the floor to where Lady Johnson stood, with others, and this frightened group were now almost our sole observers. Philip Cross shook himself loose from the restraining circle of friends, and strode toward me, his face glowing darkly with passion, and his hands clinched. "You run away, do you?" he said. "I have a mind, then, to thrash you where you stand, you canting poltroon! Do you hear me? --here, where you stand!" "I hear you," I made answer, striving hard to keep my voice down and my resolution up. "Others hear you, too. There are ladies in the room. If you have any right to be among gentlemen, it is high time for you to show it. You are acting like a blackguard." "Hear the preaching Dutchman!" he called out, with a harsh, scornful laugh, to those behind him. "He will teach me manners, from his hiding-place behind the petticoats. --Come out, you skunk-skin pedler, and I'll break that sword of yours over your back!" Where this all would have ended I cannot tell. My friends gathered around beside me, and at my back. Cross advanced a step or two nearer to me, his companions with him. I felt, rather than saw, the gestures preceding the drawing of swords. I cast a single glance toward the group of women across the room--who, huddled together, were gazing at us with pale faces and fixed eyes--and I dare say the purport of my glance was that I had borne all I could, and that the results were beyond my control--when suddenly there came an unlooked-for interruption. The dignified, sober figure of Abraham Ten Broeck appeared in our wrathful circle. Some one had doubtless told him, in the outer hall, of the quarrel, and he had come to interfere. A hush fell over us all at his advent. "What have we here, gentlemen?" asked the merchant, looking from one to another of our heated faces with a grave air of authority. "Are you well advised to hold discussions here, in what ought to be a pleasant and social company?" No ready answer was forthcoming. The quarrel was none of my manufacture, and it was not my business to explain it to him. The Tories were secretly disgusted, I fancy, with the personal aspects of the dispute, and had nothing to say. Only Cross, who unfortunately did not know the new-comer, and perhaps would not have altered his manner if he had known him, said uncivilly: "The matter concerns us alone, sir. It is no affair of outsiders." I saw the blood mount to Mr. Ten Broeck's dark cheeks, and the fire flash in his eyes. But the Dutch gentleman kept tight bit on his tongue and temper. "Perhaps I am not altogether an outsider, young sir," he replied, calmly. "It might be thought that I would have a right to civil answers here." "Who is he?" asked Cross, contemptuously turning his head toward Sir John. Mr. Ten Broeck took the reply upon himself. "I am the uncle and guardian of your boy-host," he said, quietly. "In a certain sense I am myself your host--though it may be an honor which I shall not enjoy again." There was a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant, and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the principals changed his posture with a sense of relief. Philip Cross presently went over to where the ladies stood, exchanged a few words with them, and then with his male friends left the room, affecting great composure and indifference. It was departing time; the outer hall was beginning to display cloaks, hoods, and tippets, and from without could be heard the voices of the negroes, bawling out demands for carriages. I had only a momentary chance of saying farewell to Daisy. Doubtless I ought to have held aloof from her altogether, but I felt that to be impossible. She gave me her hand, looking still very pale and distrait, and murmured only, "It was brave of you, Douw." I did not entirely agree with her, so I said in reply: "I hope you will be happy, dear girl; that I truly hope. Give my love and duty to Mr. Stewart, and--and if I may be of service to you, no matter in how exacting or how slight a matter, I pray you command me." We exchanged good-byes at this, with perfunctory words, and then she left me to join Lady Johnson and to depart with their company. Later, when I walked homeward with Teunis, sauntering in the moonlight, he imparted something to me which he had heard, in confidence of course, from one of the ladies who had formed the anxious little group that watched our quarrel. "After Ten Broeck came in, Cross went over to his wife, and brusquely said to her, in the hearing of her friends, that your acquaintance with her was an insult to him, and that he forbade her ever again holding converse with you!" We walked a considerable time in silence after this, and I will not essay to describe for you my thoughts. We had come into the shadow of the old Dutch church in the square, I know, before Teunis spoke again. "Be patient yet a little longer, Douw," he said. "The break must come soon now, and then we will drive all these insolent scoundrels before us into the sea!" I shook hands with him solemnly on this, as we parted.

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Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill. To pass from October, 1774, to mid-June of 1775--from the moonlit streets of sleeping Albany to the broad noonday of open revolt in the Mohawk Valley--is for the reader but the turning of a page with his fingers. To us, in those trying times, these eight months were a painfully long-drawn-out period of anxiety and growing excitement. War was coming surely upon us--and war under strange and sinister conditions. Dull, horse-racing, dog-fighting noblemen were comforting themselves in Parliament, at London, by declaring that the Americans were cowards and would not fight. We boasted little, but we knew ourselves better. There was as yet small talk of independence, of separation. Another year was to elapse before Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_ should flash a flood of light as from some new sun upon men's minds, and show us both our real goal and the way to attain it. But about fighting, we had resolved our purpose. We should have been slaves otherwise. Turn and turn about, titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North--all tediously alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow obstinacy of determination to rule us in their way, not in ours. To get justice, or even an intelligent hearing, from these people, was hopeless. They listened to their own little clique in the colonies--a coterie of officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England--who lied us impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition; the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, if needs be, the wicked and stupid trade and impost laws which we resented; everywhere the Crown authorities existed to harass our local government, affront such honest men as we selected to honor, fetter or destroy our business, and eat up our substance in wanton taxation. There had been a chance that the new Parliament, meeting for the first time in the January of this 1775, would show more sense, and strive to honestly set matters right. We had appealed from Crown and Commons to the English people; for a little we fancied the result might be favorable. But the hope speedily fell to the ground. The English, with that strange rushing of blood to the head which, from age to age, on occasion blinds their vision, confuses their judgment, and impels them to rude and brutal courses, decreed in their choler that we should be flogged at the cart-tail. To this we said no! In Albany, on this day in the latter part of June, when the thread of the story is again resumed, there were notable, but distressingly vague, tidings. Following upon the blow struck at Concord in April, a host of armed patriots, roughly organized into something like military form, were investing Boston, and day by day closing in the cordon around the beleaguered British General Gage. A great battle had been fought near the town--this only we knew, and not its result or character. But it meant War, and the quiet burgh for the nonce buzzed with the hum of excited comment. The windows of my upper room were open, and along with the streaming sunlight came snatches of echoing words from the street below. Men had gone across the river, and horses were to be posted farther on upon the Berkshire turnpike, to catch the earliest whisper from across the mountains of how the fight had gone. No one talked of anything else. Assuredly I too would have been on the street outside, eager to learn and discuss the news from Boston, but that my old friend Major Jelles Fonda had come down from Caughnawaga, bearing to me almost as grave intelligence from the Mohawk Valley. How well I remember him still, the good, square-set, solid merchant-soldier, with his bold broad face, resolute mouth, and calm, resourceful, masterful air! He sat in his woollen shirt-sleeves, for the day was hot, and slowly unfolded to me his story between meditative and deliberate whiffs of his pipe. I listened with growing interest, until at last I forgot to keep even one ear upon the sounds from the street, which before had so absorbed me. He had much to tell. More than a month before, the two contending factions had come to fisticuffs, during a meeting held by the Whigs in and in front of John Veeder's house, at Caughnawaga. They were to raise a liberty pole there, and the crowd must have numbered two hundred or more. While they were deliberating, up rides Guy Johnson, his short, pursy figure waddling in the saddle, his arrogant, high-featured face redder than ever with rage. Back of him rode a whole company of the Hall cabal--Sir John Johnson, Philip Cross, the Butlers, and so on--all resolved upon breaking up the meeting, and supported by a host of servants and dependents, well armed. Many of these were drunk. Colonel Guy pushed his horse into the crowd, and began a violent harangue, imputing the basest motives to those who had summoned them thither. Young Jake Sammons, with the characteristic boldness of his family, stood up to the Indian superintendent and answered him as he deserved, whereat some half-dozen of the Johnson men fell upon Jake, knocked him down, and pummelled him sorely. Some insisted that it was peppery Guy himself who felled the youngster with his loaded riding-whip, but on this point Major Jelles was not clear. "But what were our people about, to let this happen?" I asked, with some heat. "To tell the truth," he answered, regretfully, "they mostly walked away. Only a few of us held our place. Our men were unarmed, for one thing. Moreover, they are in awe of the power of the Hall. The magistrates, the sheriff, the constables, the assessors--everybody, in fact, who has office in Tryon County--take orders from the Hall. You can't get people to forget that. Besides, if they had resisted, they would have been shot down." Major Jelles went on to tell me, that, despite this preponderance of armed force on the side of the Johnsons, they were visibly alarmed at the temper of the people and were making preparations to act on the defensive. Sir John had set up cannon on the eminence crowned by the Hall, and his Roman Catholic Highlanders were drilling night and day to perfect themselves as a military body. All sorts of stories came down from Johnstown and up from Guy Park, as to the desperate intentions of the aristocrats and their retainers. Peculiarly conspicuous in the bandying of these threats were Philip Cross and Walter Butler, who had eagerly identified themselves with the most violent party of the Tories. To them, indeed, was directly traceable the terrible rumor, that, if the Valley tribes proved to have been too much spoiled by the missionaries, the wilder Indians were to be called down from the headwaters of the Three Rivers, and from the Lake plains beyond, to coerce the settlements in their well-known fashion, if rebellion was persisted in. "But they would never dare do that!" I cried rising to my feet. "Why not?" asked Jelles, imperturbably sucking at his pipe. "After all, that is their chief strength. Make no mistake! They are at work with the red-skins, poisoning them against us. Guy Johnson is savage at the mealy-mouthed way in which they talked at his last council, at Guy Park, and he has already procured orders from London to remove Dominie Kirkland, the missionary who has kept the Oneidas heretofore friendly to us. That means--You can see as well as the rest of us what it means." "It means war in the Valley--fighting for your lives." "Well, let it! My customers owe me three thousand pounds and more. I will give every penny of that, and as much besides, and fight with my gun from the windows of my house, sooner than tolerate this Johnson nonsense any longer. And my old father and my brothers say it with me. My brother Adam, he thinks of nothing but war these days; he can hardly attend to his work, his head is so full of storing powder, and collecting cherry and red maple for gun-stocks, and making bullets. That reminds me--Guy Johnson took all the lead weights out of the windows at Guy Park, and hid them, to keep them from our bullet-moulds, before he ran away." "Before he ran away? Who ran away?" "Why, Guy, of course," was the calm reply. I stared at the man in open-mouthed astonishment. "You never mentioned this!" I managed to say at last. "I hadn't got to it yet," the Dutchman answered, filling his pipe slowly. "You young people hurry one so." By degrees I obtained the whole story from him--the story which he had purposely come down, I believe, to tell me. As he progressed, my fancy ran before him, and pictured the conclave of desperate plotters in the great Hall on the hill which I knew so well. I needed not his assurances to believe that Molly Brant, who had come down from the upper Mohawk Castle to attend this consultation, led and spurred on all the rest into malevolent resolves. I could conceive her, tall, swart, severely beautiful still, seated at the table where in Sir William's time she had been mistress, and now was but a visitor, yet now as then every inch a queen. I could see her watching with silent intentness--first the wigged and powdered gentlemen, Sir John, Colonel Guy, the Butlers, Cross, and Claus, and then her own brother Joseph, tall like herself, and darkly handsome, but, unlike her, engrafting upon his full wolf-totem Mohawk blood the restraints of tongue and of thought learned in the schools of white youth. No one of the males, Caucasian or aboriginal, spoke out clearly what was in their minds. Each in turn befogged his suggestions by deference to what the world--which to them meant London--would think of their acts. No one, not even Joseph Brant, uttered bluntly the one idea which lay covert in their hearts--to wit: that the recalcitrant Valley should be swept as with a besom of fire and steel in the hands of the savage horde at their command. This, when it came her time, the Indian woman said for them frankly, and with scornful words on their own faint stomachs for bloodshed. I could fancy her darkling glances around the board, and their regards shrinking away from her, as she called them cowards for hesitating to use in his interest the powers with which the king had intrusted them. It was not hard, either, to imagine young Walter Butler and Philip Cross rising with enthusiasm to approve her words, or how these, speaking hot and fast upon the echo of Mistress Molly's contemptuous rebuke, should have swept away the last restraining fears of the others, and committed all to the use of the Indians. So that day, just a week since, it had been settled that Colonel Guy and the two Butlers, father and son, should go west, ostensibly to hold a council near Fort Schuyler, but really to organize the tribes against their neighbors; and promptly thereafter, with a body of retainers, they had departed. Guy had taken his wife, because, as a daughter of the great Sir William, she would be of use in the work; but Mrs. John Butler had gone to the Hall--a refuge which she later was to exchange for the lower Indian Castle. The two houses thus deserted--Guy Park and the Butlers' home on Switzer's Hill--had been in a single night almost despoiled by their owners of their contents; some of which, the least bulky, had been taken with them in their flight, the residue given into safe-keeping in the vicinity, or hidden. "My brother Adam went to look for the lead in the windows," honest Jelles Fonda concluded, "but it was all gone. So their thoughts were on bullets as well as his. He has his eye now on the church roof at home." Here was news indeed! There could be no pretence that the clandestine flight of these men was from fear for their personal safety. To the contrary, Colonel Guy, as Indian superintendent, had fully five hundred fighting men, Indian and otherwise, about his fortified residence. They had clearly gone to enlist further aid, to bring down fresh forces to assist Sir John, Sheriff White, and their Tory minions to hold Tryon County in terror, and, if need be, to flood it with our blood. We sat silent for a time, as befitted men confronting so grave a situation. At last I said: "Can I do anything? You all must know up there that I am with you, heart and soul." Major Jelles looked meditatively at me, through his fog of smoke. "Yes, we never doubted that. But we are not agreed how you can best serve us. You are our best-schooled young man; you know how to write well, and to speak English like an Englishman. Some think you can be of most use here, standing between us and the Albany committee; others say that things would go better if we had you among us. Matters are very bad. John Johnson is stopping travellers on the highways and searching them; we are trying to watch the river as closely as he does the roads, but he has the courts and the sheriff, and that makes it hard for us. I don't know what to advise you. What do you think?" While we were still debating the question thus raised by Major Fonda--although I have written it in an English which the worthy soul never attained--my cousin Teunis Van Hoorn burst into the room with tidings from Boston which had just arrived by courier. Almost before he could speak, the sound of cheering in the streets told me the burden of his story. It was the tale of Bunker Hill which he shouted out to us--that story still so splendid in our ears, but then, with all its freshness of vigor and meaning upon us, nothing less than soul-thrilling! An hour later Major Jelles rose, put on his coat, and said he must be off. He would sleep that night at Mabie's, so as to have all the Tryon County part of his ride by daylight next day, when the roads would be safer. It was only when we were shaking hands with him at the door that I found how the secretive Dutchman had kept his greatest, to me most vital, tidings for the last. "Oh, yes!" he said, as he stood in the doorway; "perhaps I did not mention it. Young Cross has left his home and gone to join Guy Johnson and the Butlers. They say he had angry words with his wife--your Daisy--before he deserted her. She has come back to the Cedars again to live!"

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The Master and Mistress of Cairncross. There is the less need to apologize for now essaying to portray sundry scenes of which I was not an actual witness, in that the reader must by this time be heartily disposed to welcome an escape from my wearisome _ego_, at any expense whatsoever of historical accuracy. Nor is it essential to set forth in this place the means by which I later came to be familiar with the events now to be described--means which will be apparent enough as the tale unfolds. Dusk is gathering in the great room to the right and rear of the wide hall at Cairncross, and a black servant has just brought in candles, to be placed on the broad marble mantel, and on the oaken table in the centre of the room. The soft light mellows the shadows creeping over the white and gold panelling of the walls, and twinkles faintly in reflection back from the gilt threads in the heavy curtains; but it cannot dispel the gloom which, like an atmosphere, pervades the chamber. Although it is June, and warm of mid-days, a fire burns on the hearth, slowly and spiritlessly, as if the task of imparting cheerfulness to the room were beyond its strength. Close by the fireplace, holding over it, in fact, his thin, wrinkled hands, sits an old man. At first glance, one would need to be told that it was Mr. Stewart, so heavily has Time laid his weight upon him in these last four years. There are few enough external suggestions now of the erect, soldierly gentleman, swift of perception, authoritative of tone, the prince of courtiers in bearing, whom we used to know. The white hair is still politely queued, and the close-shaven cheeks glisten with the neat polish of the razor's edge; but, alas! it is scarcely the same face. The luminous glow of the clear blue eyes has faded; the corners of the mouth, eloquently resolute no longer, depend in weakness. As he turns now to speak to his companion, there is a moment's relief: the voice is still calm and full, with perhaps just a thought of change toward the querulous in tone. "I heard something like the sound of hoofs," he says; "doubtless it is Philip." "Perhaps, father; but he is wont to be late, nowadays." Here the change _is_ in the voice, if little else be altered. It is Daisy who speaks, standing by his chair, with one hand upon his shoulder, the other hanging listlessly at her side. Like him she looks at the smouldering fire, preferring the silence of her own thoughts to empty efforts at talk. The formal, unsympathetic walls and hangings seem to take up the sad sound of her murmured words and return it to her, as if to emphasize her loneliness. "The rooms are so large--so cold," she says again, after a long pause, in comment upon a little shiver which shakes the old man's bent shoulders. "If we heaped the fireplace to the top, it could not make them seem home-like." The last words sink with a sigh into the silence of the great room, and no more are spoken. Both feel, perhaps, that if more were spoken there must be tears as well. Only the poor girl presses her hand upon his arm with a mute caress, and draws closer to his side. There is nothing of novelty to them in this tacitly shared sense of gloom. This Thursday is as Monday was, as any day last year was, as seemingly all days to come will be. The misery of this marriage has never been discussed between these two. The girl is too fond to impute blame, the old gentleman too proud to accept it; in both minds there is the silent consciousness that into this calamity they walked with eyes open, and must needs bear the results without repining. And more, though there is true sympathy between the two up to a certain point, even Daisy and Mr. Stewart have drifted apart beyond it. Both view Philip within the house with the same eyes; the Philip of the outer world--the little Valley-world of hot passions, strong ambitions, fierce intolerances, growing strife and rancor--they see differently. And this was the saddest thing of all. Philip Cross entered abruptly, his spurs clanking with a sharp ring at his boot-heels, and nodded with little enough graciousness of manner to the two before the fire. "I have not ordered supper to be laid," said Daisy; "your coming was so uncertain. Shall I ring for it now?" "I have eaten at the Hall," said the young man, unlocking an escritoire at the farther end of the room as he spoke, and taking from it some papers. He presently advanced toward the fire, holding these in his hand. He walked steadily enough, but there was the evil flush upon his temples and neck--a deep suffusion of color, against which his flaxen, powdered hair showed almost white--which both knew too well. "Who is at the Hall?" asked Mr. Stewart. "There were good men there to-day--and a woman, too, who topped them all in spirit and worth. We call the Indians an inferior race, but, by God! they at least have not lost the trick of breeding women who do not whine--who would rather show us blood than tears!" Thus young Mr. Cross spoke, with a sulky inference in his tone, as he held up his papers to the candle, and scanned the writings by its light. "Ah," Mr. Stewart made answer, dissembling what pique he might have felt, and putting real interest into his words. "Is Molly Brant, then, come down from the Castle? What does she at the Hall? I thought Lady Johnson would have none of her." "Yes, she is at the Hall, or was when I left. She was sorely needed, too, to put something like resolution into the chicken-hearts there. Things will move now--nay, are moving! As for Lady Johnson, she is too dutiful and wise a woman to have any wishes that are not her husband's. I would to God there were others half so obedient and loyal as Polly Watts!" Again there was the obvious double meaning in his sullen tone. A swift glance flashed back and forth between Mr. Stewart and the pale-faced young wife, and again Mr. Stewart avoided the subject at which Cross hinted. Instead he turned his chair toward the young man, and said: "Things are moving, you say. What is new?" "Why, this is new," answered Cross, lowering the papers for the moment, and looking down upon his questioner: "blood runs now at last instead of milk in the veins of the king's men. We will know where we stand. We will master and punish disloyalty; we will brook not another syllable of rebellion!" "Yes, it has been let to run overlong," said Mr. Stewart. "Often enough, since Sir William died, have I wished that I were a score of years younger. Perhaps I might have served in unravelling this unhappy tangle of misunderstandings. The new fingers that are picking at the knot are honest enough, but they have small cunning." "That as you will; but there is to be no more fumbling at the knot. We will cut it now at a blow--cut it clean and sharp with the tomahawk!" An almost splendid animation glowed in the young man's eyes as he spoke, and for the nonce lit up the dogged hardness of his face. So might the stolid purple visage of some ancestral Cross have become illumined, over his heavy beef and tubs of ale, at the stray thought of spearing a boar at bay, or roasting ducats out of a Jew. The thick rank blood of centuries of gluttonous, hunting, marauding progenitors, men whose sum of delights lay in working the violent death of some creature--wild beast or human, it mattered little which--warmed in the veins of the young man now, at the prospect of slaughter. The varnish of civilization melted from his surface; one saw in him only the historic fierce, blood-letting islander, true son of the men who for thirty years murdered one another by tens of thousands all over England, nominally for a York or a Lancaster, but truly from the utter wantonness of the butcher's instinct, the while we Dutch were discovering oil-painting and perfecting the noble craft of printing with types. "Yes!" he repeated, with a stormy smile. "We will cut the knot with the tomahawk!" The quicker wit of the young woman first scented his meaning. "You are going to bring down the savages?" she asked, with dilated eyes, and in her emotion forgetting that it was not her recent habit to interrogate her husband. He vouchsafed her no answer, but made a pretence of again being engrossed with his papers. After a moment or two of silence the old gentleman rose to his feet, walked over to Philip, and put his hand on the young man's arm. "I will take my leave now," he said, in a low voice; "Eli is here waiting for me, and the evenings grow cold." "Nay, do not hasten your going, Mr. Stewart," said Philip, with a perfunctory return to the usages of politeness. "You are ever welcome here." "Yes, I know," replied Mr. Stewart, not in a tone of complete conviction. "But old bones are best couched at home." There was another pause, the old gentleman still resting his hand affectionately, almost deprecatingly, on the other's sleeve. "I would speak plainly to you before I go, Philip," he said, at last. "I pray you, listen to the honest advice of an old man, who speaks to you, God knows, from the very fulness of his heart. I mislike this adventure at which you hint. It has an evil source of inspiration. It is a gloomy day for us here, and for the Colony, and for the cause of order, when the counsels of common-sense and civilization are tossed aside, and the words of that red she-devil regarded instead. No good will come out of it--no good, believe me. Be warned in time! I doubt you were born when I first came into this Valley. I have known it for decades, almost, where you have known it for years. I have watched its settlements grow, its fields push steadily, season after season, upon the heels of the forest. I understand its people as you cannot possibly do. Much there is that I do not like. Many things I would change, as you would change them. But those err cruelly, criminally, who would work this change by the use of the savages." "All other means have been tried, short of crawling on our bellies to these Dutch hinds!" muttered the young man. "You do not know what the coming of the tribes in hostility means," continued Mr. Stewart, with increasing solemnity of earnestness. "You were too young to realize what little you saw, as a child here in the Valley, of Bellêtre's raid. Sir John and Guy know scarcely more of it than you. Twenty years, almost, have passed since the Valley last heard the Mohawk yell rise through the night-air above the rifle's crack, and woke in terror to see the sky red with the blaze of roof-trees. All over the world men shudder still at hearing of the things done then. Will you be a willing party to bringing these horrors again upon us? Think what it is that you would do!" "It is not I alone," Philip replied, in sullen defence. "I but cast my lot on the king's side, as you yourself do. Only you are not called upon to fit your action to your words; I am! Besides," he went on, sulkily, "I have already chosen not to go with Guy and the Butlers. Doubtless they deem me a coward for my resolution. That ought to please you." "Go with them? Where are they going?" "Up the river; perhaps only to the Upper Castle; perhaps to Oswego; perhaps to Montreal--at all events, to get the tribes well in hand, and hold them ready to strike. That is," he added, as an afterthought, "if it really becomes necessary to strike at all. It may not come to that, you know." "And this flight is actually resolved upon?" "If you call it a flight, yes! The Indian superintendent goes to see the Indians; some friends go with him--that is all. What more natural? They have in truth started by this time, well on their way. I was sorely pressed to accompany them; for hours Walter Butler urged all the pleas at his command to shake my will." "Of course you could not go; that would have been madness!" said Mr. Stewart, testily. Both men looked toward the young wife, with instinctive concert of thought. She sat by the fire, with her fair head bent forward in meditation; if she had heard the conversation, or knew now that they were thinking of her, she signified it not by glance or gesture. "No, of course," said Philip, with a faltering disclaimer. "Yet they urged me strenuously. Even now they are to wait two days at Thompson's on Cosby's Manor, for my final word--they choosing still to regard my coming as possible." "Fools!" broke in the old gentleman. "It is not enough to force war upon their neighbors, but they must strive to destroy what little happiness I have remaining to me!" His tone softened to one of sadness, and again he glanced toward Daisy. "Alas, Philip," he said, mournfully, "that it _should_ be so little!" The young man shifted his attitude impatiently, and began scanning his papers once more. A moment later he remarked, from behind the manuscripts: "It is not we who begin this trouble. These committees of the rebel scoundrels have been active for months, all about us. Lying accounts to our prejudice are ceaselessly sent down to the committees at Schenectady and Albany, and from these towns comes back constant encouragement to disorder and bad blood. If they will have it so, are we to blame? You yourself spoke often to me, formerly, of the dangerous opinions held by the Dutch here, and the Palatines up the river, and, worst of all, by those canting Scotch-Irish Presbyterians over Cherry Valley way. Yet now that we must meet this thing, you draw back, and would tie my hands as well. But doubtless you are unaware of the lengths to which the Albany conspirators are pushing their schemes." "I am not without information," replied Mr. Stewart, perhaps in his desire to repudiate the imputation of ignorance revealing things which upon reflection he would have reserved. "I have letters from my boy Douw regularly, and of late he has told me much of the doings of the Albany committee." Young Cross put his papers down from before his face with a swift gesture. Whether he had laid a trap for Mr. Stewart or not, is doubtful; we who knew him best have ever differed on that point. But it is certain that his manner and tone had changed utterly in the instant before he spoke. "Yes!" he said, with a hard, sharp inflection; "it is known that you hold regular correspondence with this peculiarly offensive young sneak and spy. Let me tell you frankly, Mr. Stewart, that this thing is not liked overmuch. These are times when men, even old men, must choose their side and stand to it. People who talk in one camp and write to the other subject themselves to uncomfortable suspicions. Men are beginning to recall that you were in arms against His Majesty King George the Second, and to hint that perhaps you are not precisely overflowing with loyalty to his grandson, though you give him lip-service readily enough. As you were pleased to say to me a few minutes ago, 'Be warned in time,' Mr. Stewart!" The old gentleman had started back as if struck by a whip at the first haughty word's inflection. Gradually, as the impertinent sentences followed, he had drawn up his bent, slender frame until he stood now erect, his hooked nose in the air, and his blue eyes flashing. Only the shrunken lips quivered with the weakness of years, as he looked tall young Mr. Cross full in the face. "Death of my life!" he stammered. " _You_ are saying these things to _me_! It is Tony Cross's son whom I listen to--and _her_ son--the young man to whom I gave my soul's treasure!" Then he stopped, and while his eyes still glowed fiery wrath the trembling lips became piteous in their inability to form words. For a full minute the fine old soldier stood, squared and quivering with indignation. What he would have said, had he spoken, we can only guess. But no utterance came. He half-raised his hand to his head with a startled movement; then, seeming to recover himself, walked over to where Daisy sat, ceremoniously stooped to kiss her forehead, and, with a painfully obvious effort to keep his gait from tottering, moved proudly out of the room. When Philip, who had dumbly watched the effect of his words, turned about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling were the glance and gesture with which she reared herself before him.

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How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home. "You are, then, not even a gentleman!" The ungracious words came almost unbidden from Daisy's pallid lips, as husband and wife for the first time faced each other in anger. She could not help it. Passive, patient, long-suffering she had been the while the mortifications and slights were for herself. But it was beyond the strength of her control to sit quietly by when Mr. Stewart was also affronted. Through all the years of her life she had been either so happy in her first home, or so silently loyal to duty in her second, that no one had discovered in Daisy the existence of a strong spirit. Sweet-tempered, acquiescent, gentle, every one had known her alike in joy or under the burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her the capabilities of flaming, wrathful resistance. He stared at her now, at first in utter bewilderment, then with the instinct of combat in his scowl. "Be careful what you say!" he answered, sharply. "I am in no mood for folly." "Nay, mood or no mood, I shall speak. Too long have I held my peace. You should be ashamed in every recess of your heart for what you have said and done this day!" She spoke with a vibrant fervency of feeling which for the moment pierced even his thick skin. "He was over-hasty," he muttered, in half-apology. "What I said was for his interest. I intended no offence." "Will you follow him, and say so?" "Certainly not! If he chooses to take umbrage, let him. It's no affair of mine." "Then _I_ will go--and not return until he comes with me, invited by you!" The woman's figure, scornfully erect, trembled with the excitement of the position she had on the moment assumed; but her beautiful face, refined and spiritualized of late by the imprint of womanhood's saddening wisdom, was coldly resolute. By contrast with the burly form and red, rough countenance of the man she confronted, she seemed made of another clay. "Yes, I will go!" she went on, hurriedly. "This last is too much! It is not fit that I should keep up the pretence longer." The husband burst out with a rude and somewhat hollow laugh. "Pretence, you say! Nay, madam, you miscall it. A pretence is a thing that deceives, and I have never been deceived. Do not flatter yourself. I have read you like a page of large print, these twenty months. Like the old gaffer whose feathers I ruffled here a while ago with a few words of truth, your tongue has been here, but your thoughts have been with the Dutchman in Albany!" The poor girl flushed and recoiled under the coarse insult, and the words did not come readily with which to repel it. "I know not how to answer insolence of this kind," she said, at last. "I have been badly reared for such purposes." She felt her calmness deserting her as she spoke; her eyes began to burn with the starting tears. This crisis in her life had sprung into being with such terrible swiftness, and yawned before her now, as reflection came, with such blackness of unknown consequences, that her woman's strength quaked and wavered. The tears found their way to her cheeks now, and through them she saw, not the heavy, half-drunken young husband, but the handsome, slender, soft-voiced younger lover of three years ago. And then the softness came to her voice too. "How _can_ you be so cruel and coarse, Philip, so unworthy of your real self?" She spoke despairingly, not able wholly to believe that the old self was the true self, yet clinging, woman-like, to the hope that she was mistaken. "Ha! So my lady has thought better of going, has she?" "Why should you find pleasure in seeking to make this home impossible for me, Philip?" she asked, in grave gentleness of appeal. "I thought you would change your tune," he sneered back at her, throwing himself into a chair. "I have a bit of counsel for you. Do not venture upon that tone with me again. It serves with Dutch husbands, no doubt; but I am not Dutch, and I don't like it." She stood for what seemed to be a long time, unoccupied and irresolute, in the centre of the room. It was almost impossible for her to think clearly or to see what she ought to do. She had spoken in haste about leaving the house, and felt now that that would be an unwise and wrongful step to take. Yet her husband had deliberately insulted her, and had coldly interpreted as weak withdrawals her conciliatory words, and it was very hard to let this state of affairs stand without some attempt at its improvement. Her pride tugged bitterly against the notion of addressing him again, yet was it not right that she should do so? The idea occurred to her of ringing for a servant and directing him to draw off his master's boots. The slave-boy who came in was informed by a motion of her finger, and, kneeling to the task, essayed to lift one of the heavy boots from the tiled hearth. The amiable Mr. Cross allowed the foot to be raised into the boy's lap. Then he kicked the lad backward, head over heels, with it, and snapped out angrily: "Get away! When I want you, I'll call!" The slave scrambled to his feet and slunk out of the room. The master sat in silence, moodily sprawled out before the fire. At last the wife approached him, and stood at the back of his chair. "You are no happier than I am, Philip," she said. "Surely there must be some better way to live than this. Can we not find it, and spare ourselves all this misery?" "What misery?" he growled. "There is none that I know, save the misery of having a wife who hates everything her husband does. The weather-cock on the roof has more sympathy with my purposes and aims than you have. At least once in a while he points my way." "Wherein have I failed? When have you ever temperately tried to set me aright, seeing my errors?" "There it is--the plausible tongue always. 'When have I done this, or that, or the other?' It is not one thing that has been done, madam, but ten thousand left undone! What did I need--having lands, money, position--to make me the chief gentleman of Tryon County, and this house of mine the foremost mansion west of Albany, once Sir William was dead? Naught but a wife who should share my ambitions, enter into my plans, gladly help to further my ends! I choose for this a wife with a pretty face, a pretty manner, a tidy figure which carries borrowed satins gracefully enough--as I fancy, a wife who will bring sympathy and distinction as well as beauty. Well, I was a fool! This precious wife of mine is a Puritan ghost who gazes gloomily at me when we are alone, and chills my friends to the marrow when they are ill-advised enough to visit me. She looks at the wine I lift to my lips, and it sours in the glass. She looks into my kennels, and it is as if turpentine had been rubbed on the hounds' snouts. This great house of mine, which ought of right to be the gallant centre of Valley life and gayety, stands up here, by God! Like a deserted churchyard. Men avoid it as if a regicide had died here. I might have been Sir Philip before this, and had his Majesty's commission in my pocket, but for this petticoated skeleton which warns off pleasure and promotion. And then she whines, 'What have I done?'" "You are clever enough, Philip, to have been anything you wanted to be, if only you had started with more heart and less appetite for pleasure. It is not your wife, but your wine, that you should blame." "Ay, there it comes! And even if it were true--as it is not, for I am as temperate as another--it would be you who had driven me to it." "What folly!" "Folly, madam? By Heaven, I will not--" "Nay, listen to me, Philip, for the once. We may not speak thus frankly again; it would have been better had we freed our minds in this plain fashion long ago. It is not poor me, but something else, that in two years has changed you utterly. To-day you could no more get your mind into the same honest course of thoughts you used to hold than you could your body into your wedding waistcoat. You talk now of ambitions; for the moment you really think you had ambitions, and because they are only memories, you accuse me. Tell me truly, what were your ambitions? To do nothing but please yourself--to ride, hunt, gamble, scatter money, drink till you could drink no more. Noble aspirations these for which to win the sympathy of a wife!" Philip had turned himself around in his chair, and was looking steadily at her. She found the courage to stand resolute under the gaze and return it. "There is one point on which I agree with you," he said, slowly: "I am not like ever again to hear talk of this kind under my roof. But while we are thus amiably laying our hearts bare to each other, there is another thing to be said. Everywhere it is unpleasantly remarked that I am not master in my own house--that here there are two kinds of politics--that I am loyal and my wife is a rebel." "Oh, that is unfair! Truly, Philip, I have given no cause for such speech. Not a word have I spoken, ever, to warrant this. It would be not only wrong but presuming to do so, since I am but a woman, and have no more than a woman's partial knowledge of these things. If you had ever asked me I would have told you frankly, that, as against the Johnsons and Butlers and Whites, my feelings were with the people of my own flesh and blood; but as to my having ever spoken--" "Yes, I know what you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words. "I can put it for you in a breath--I am an English gentleman; you are a Dutch foundling!" She looked at him, speechless and mentally staggered. In all her life it had never occurred to her that this thing could be thought or said. That it should be flung thus brutally into her face now by her husband--and he the very man who as a boy had saved her life--seemed to her astonished sense so incredible that she could only stare, and say nothing. While she still stood thus, the young aristocrat rose, jerked the bell-cord fiercely, and strode again to the escritoire, pulling forth papers from its recesses with angry haste. "Send Rab to me on the instant!" he called out to the slave who appeared. The under-sized, evil-faced creature who presently answered this summons was the son of a Scotch dependent of the Johnsons, half tinker, half trapper, and all ruffian, by an Indian wife. Rab, a young-old man, had the cleverness and vices of both strains of blood, and was Philip's most trusted servant, as he was Daisy's especial horror. He came in now, his black eyes sparkling close together like a snake's, and his miscolored hair in uncombed tangle hanging to his brows. He did not so much as glance at his mistress, but went to Philip, with a cool-- "What is it?" "There is much to be done to-night, Rab," said the master, assorting papers still as he spoke. "I am leaving Cairncross on a journey. It may be a long one; it may not." "It will at least be as long as Thompson's is distant," said the familiar. "Oh, you know, then," said Philip. "So much the better, when one deals with close tongues. Very well. I ride to-night. Do you gather the things I need--clothes, money, trinkets, and what not--to be taken with me. Have the plate, the china, the curtains, pictures, peltries, and such like, properly packed, to be sent over to the Hall with the horses and dogs in the early morning. I shall ride all night, and all to-morrow if needs be. When you have seen the goods safely at the Hall, deliver certain letters which I shall presently write, and return here. I leave you in charge of the estate; you will be master--supreme--and will account only to me, when the king's men come back. I shall take Caesar and Sam with me. Have them saddle the roan for me, and they may take the chestnut pair and lead Firefly. Look to the saddle-bags and packs yourself. Let everything be ready for my start at eleven; the moon will be up by then." The creature waited for a moment after Philip had turned to his papers. "Will you take my lady's jewels?" he asked. "Damnation! No!" growled Philip. " _If you do not, they shall be thrown after you_!" It was Daisy who spoke--Daisy, who leaned heavily upon the chair-back to keep erect in the whirling dream of bewilderment which enveloped her. The words when they had been uttered seemed from some other lips than hers. There was no thought in her mind which they reflected. She was too near upon swooning to think at all. Only dimly could she afterward recall having left the room, and the memory was solely of the wicked gleam in the serpent eyes of her enemy Rab, and of the sound of papers being torn by her husband, as she, dazed and fainting, managed to creep away and reach her chamber. * * * * * The wakeful June sun had been up for an hour or so, intent upon the self-appointed and gratuitous task of heating still more the sultry, motionless morning air, when consciousness returned to Daisy. All about her the silence was profound. As she rose, the fact that she was already dressed scarcely interested her. She noted that the lace and velvet hangings were gone, and that the apartment had been despoiled of much else besides, and gave this hardly a passing thought. Mechanically she took from the wardrobe a hooded cloak, put it about her, and left the room. The hallways were strewn with straw and the litter of packing. Doors of half-denuded rooms hung open. In the corridor below two negroes lay asleep, snoring grotesquely, beside some chests at which they had worked. There was no one to speak to her or bar her passage. The door was unbolted. She passed listlessly out, and down the path toward the gulf. It was more like sleep-walking than waking, conscious progress--this melancholy journey. The dry, parched grass, the leaves depending wilted and sapless, the leaden air, the hot, red globe of dull light hanging before her in the eastern heavens--all seemed a part of the lifeless, hopeless pall which weighed from every point upon her, deadening thought and senses. The difficult descent of the steep western hill, the passage across the damp bottom and over the tumbling, shouting waters, the milder ascent, the cooler, smoother forest walk toward the Cedars beyond--these vaguely reflected themselves as stages of the crisis through which she had passed: the heart-aching quarrel, the separation, the swoon, and now the approaching rest. Thus at last she stood before her old home, and opened the familiar gate. The perfume of the flowers, heavily surcharging the dewless air, seemed to awaken and impress her. There was less order in the garden than before, but the plants and shrubs were of her own setting. A breath of rising zephyr stirred their blossoms as she regarded them in passing. "They nod to me in welcome," her dry lips murmured. A low, reverberating mutter of distant thunder came as an echo, and a swifter breeze lifted the flowers again, and brought a whispered greeting from the lilac-leaves clustered thick about her. The door opened at her approach, and she saw Mr. Stewart standing there on the threshold, awaiting her. It seemed natural enough that he should be up at this hour, and expecting her. She did not note the uncommon whiteness of his face, or the ceaseless twitching of his fallen lips. "I have come home to you, father," she said, calmly, wearily. He gazed at her without seeming to apprehend her meaning. "I have no longer any other home," she added. She saw the pallid face before her turn to wax shot over with green and brazen tints. The old hands stretched out as if to clutch hers--then fell inert. Something had dropped shapeless, bulky at her feet and she could not see Mr. Stewart. Instead here was a reeling vision of running slaves of a form lifted and borne in, and then nothing but a sinking away of self amid the world-shaking roar of thunder and blazing lightning streaks.

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The Night Attack upon Quebec--And My Share in It. Of these sad occurrences it was my fortune not to be informed for many months. In some senses this was a beneficent ignorance. Had I known that, under the dear old roof which so long sheltered me, Mr. Stewart was helplessly stricken with paralysis, and poor Daisy lay ill unto death with a brain malady, the knowledge must have gone far to unfit me for the work which was now given into my hands. And it was work of great magnitude and importance. Close upon the heels of the Bunker Hill intelligence came the news that a Continental army had been organized; that Colonel Washington of Virginia had been designated by Congress as its chief, and had started to assume command at Cambridge; and that our own Philip Schuyler was one of the four officers named at the same time as major-generals. There was great pleasure in Albany over the tidings; the patriot committee began to prepare for earnest action, and our Tory mayor, Abraham Cuyler, sagaciously betook himself off, ascending the Mohawk in a canoe, and making his way to Canada. Among the first wishes expressed by General Schuyler was one that I should assist and accompany him, and this, flattering enough in itself, was made delightful by the facts that my friend Peter Gansevoort was named as another aide, and that my kinsman Dr. Teunis was given a professional place in the general's camp family. We three went with him to the headquarters at Cambridge very shortly after, and thenceforward were too steadily engrossed with our novel duties to give much thought to home affairs. It was, indeed, a full seven months onward from the June of which I have written that my first information concerning the Cedars, and the dear folk within its walls, came to me in a letter from my mother. This letter found me, of all unlikely places in the world, lying in garrison on the frozen bank of the St. Lawrence--behind us the strange, unnatural silence of the northern waste of snow, before us the black, citadel-crowned, fire-spitting rock of Quebec. Again there presses upon me the temptation to put into this book the story of what I saw there while we were gathering our strength and resolution for the fatal assault. If I am not altogether proof against its wiles, at least no more shall be told of it than properly belongs here, insomuch as this is the relation of my life's romance. We had started in September with the expedition against Canada, while it was under the personal command of our general; and when his old sickness came unluckily upon him and forced his return, it was at his request that we still kept on, under his successor, General Richard Montgomery. It was the pleasanter course for us, both because we wanted to see fighting, and because Montgomery, as the son-in-law of Mr. Livingston, was known to us and was our friend. And so with him we saw the long siege of St. John's ended, and Chambly, and then Montreal, Sorel, and Three Rivers, one by one submit, and the _habitants_ acclaim us their deliverers as we swept the country clean to the gates of Quebec. To this place we came in the first week of December, and found bold Arnold and his seven hundred scarecrows awaiting us. These men had been here for a month, yet had scarcely regained their strength from the horrible sufferings they encountered throughout their wilderness march. We were by this time not enamoured of campaigning in any large degree, from our own experience of it. Yet when we saw the men whom Arnold and Morgan had led through the trackless Kennebec forest, and heard them modestly tell the story of that great achievement--of their dreadful sustained battle with cold, exhaustion, famine, with whirling rapids, rivers choked with ice, and dangerous mountain precipices--we felt ashamed at having supposed we knew what soldiering was. Three weeks we lay waiting. Inside, clever Carleton was straining heaven and earth in his endeavor to strengthen his position; without, we could only wait. Those of us who were from the Albany and Mohawk country came to learn that some of our old Tory neighbors were within the walls, and the knowledge gave a new zest to our eager watchfulness. This, it should be said, was more eager than sanguine. It was evident from the outset that, in at least one respect, we had counted without our host. The French-Canadians were at heart on our side, perhaps, but they were not going to openly help us; and we had expected otherwise. Arnold himself, who as an old horse-dealer knew the country, had especially believed in their assistance and sympathy, and we had bills printed in the French language to distribute, calling upon them to rise and join us. That they did not do so was a grievous disappointment from the beginning. Yet we might have been warned of this. The common people were friendly to us--aided us privily when they could--but they were afraid of their seigneurs and curés. These gentry were our enemies for a good reason--in their eyes we were fighting New England's fight, and intolerant New England had only the year before bitterly protested to Parliament against the favor shown the Papist religion in Quebec. These seigneurs and priests stood together in a common interest. England had been shrewd enough to guarantee them their domains and revenues. Loyalty meant to them the security of their _rentes et dîmes_, and they were not likely to risk these in an adventure with the Papist-hating Yankees. Hence they stood by England, and, what is more, held their people practically aloof from us. But even then we could have raised Canadian troops, if we had had the wherewithal to feed or clothe or arm them. But of this Congress had taken no thought. Our ordnance was ridiculously inadequate for a siege; our clothes were ragged and foul, our guns bad, our powder scanty, and our food scarce. Yet we were deliberately facing, in this wretched plight, the most desperate assault of known warfare. The weeks went by swiftly enough. Much of the time I was with the commander at our headquarters in Holland House, and I grew vastly attached to the handsome, gracious, devoted young soldier. Brigadier-General Montgomery had not, perhaps, the breadth of character that made Schuyler so notable; which one of all his contemporaries, save Washington, for that matter, had? But he was very single-minded and honorable, and had much charm of manner. Often, during those weeks, he told me of his beautiful young wife, waiting for his return at their new home on the Hudson, and of his hope soon to be able to abandon the strife and unrest of war, and settle there in peace. Alas! it was not to be so. And then, again, we would adventure forth at night, when there was no moon, to note what degree of vigilance was observed by the beleaguered force. This was dangerous, for the ingenious defenders hung out at the ends of poles from the bastions either lighted lanterns or iron pots filled with blazing balsam, which illuminated the ditch even better than the moon would have done. Often we were thus discovered and fired upon, and once the General had his horse killed under him. I should say that he was hardly hopeful of the result of the attack already determined upon. But it was the only thing possible to be done, and with all his soul and mind he was resolved to as nearly do it as might be. The night came, the last night but one of that eventful, momentous year 1775. Men had passed each day for a week between our quarters and Colonel Arnold's at St. Roch, concerting arrangements. There were Frenchmen inside the town from whom we were promised aid. What we did not know was that there were other Frenchmen, in our camp, who advised Carleton of all our plans. The day and evening were spent in silent preparations for the surprise and assault--if so be it the snow-storm came which was agreed upon as the signal. Last words of counsel and instruction were spoken. Suppressed excitement reigned everywhere. The skies were clear and moonlit in the evening; now, about midnight, a damp, heavy snowfall began and a fierce wind arose. So much the better for us and our enterprise, we thought. We left Holland House some hours after midnight, without lights and on foot, and placed ourselves at the head of the three hundred and fifty men whom Colonel Campbell (not the Cherry Valley man, but a vain and cowardly creature from down the Hudson, recently retired from the British army) held in waiting for us. Noiselessly we descended from the heights, passed Wolfe's Cove, and gained the narrow road on the ledge under the mountain. The General and his aide, McPherson, trudged through the deep snow ahead of all, with Gansevoort, and me keeping up to them as well as we could. What with the very difficult walking, the wildness of the gale, and the necessity for silence, I do not remember that anything was said. We panted heavily, I know, and more than once had to stop while the slender and less eager carpenters who formed the van came up. It was close upon the fence of wooden pickets which stretched across the causeway at Cape Diamond that the last of these halts was made. Through the darkness, rendered doubly dense by the whirling snowflakes with which the wind lashed our faces, we could only vaguely discern the barrier and the outlines of the little block-house beyond it. "Here is our work!" whispered the General to the half-dozen nearest him, and pointing ahead with his gauntleted hand. "Once over this and into the guard-house, and we can never be flanked, whatever else betide." We tore furiously at the posts, even while he spoke--we four with our hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more pickets. Somebody--it may have been I--said, "Cowards!" Some one else, doubtless the General, said, "Forward!" Then the ground shook violently under our feet, a great bursting roar deafened us, and before a scythe-like sweep of fire we at the front tumbled and fell! I got to my feet again, but had lost both sword and pistol in the snow. I had been hit somewhere--it seemed in the side--but of that I scarcely thought. I heard sharp firing and the sound of oaths and groans all around me, so it behooved me to fight, too. There were dimly visible dark forms issuing from the guard-house, and wrestling or exchanging blows with other forms, now upright, now in the snow. Here and there a flash of fire from some gun or pistol gave an instant's light to this Stygian hurly-burly. A heavy man, coming from the door of the block-house, fired a pistol straight at me; the bullet seemed not to have struck me, and I leaped upon him before he could throw the weapon. We struggled fiercely backward toward the pickets, I tearing at him with all my might, and striving with tremendous effort to keep my wits as well as my strength about me, in order to save my life. Curiously enough, I found that the simplest wrestling tricks I tried I had not the power for; even in this swift minute, loss of blood was telling on me. A ferocious last effort I made to swing and hurl him, and, instead, went staggering down into the drift with him on top. As I strove still to turn, and lifted my head, a voice sounded close in my ear, "It's you, is it? Damn you!" and then a great mashing blow on my face ended my fight. Doubtless some reminiscence in that voice caused my mind to carry on the struggle in the second after sense had fled, for I thought we still were in the snow wrestling, only it was inside a mimic fort in the clearing around Mr. Stewart's old log-house, and I was a little boy in an apron, and my antagonist was a yellow-haired lad with hard fists, with which he beat me cruelly in the face--and so off into utter blackness and void of oblivion. One morning in the latter half of January, nearly three weeks after, I woke to consciousness again. Wholly innocent of the lapse of time, I seemed to be just awakening from the dream of the snow fort, and of my boyish fight with little Philip Cross. I smiled to myself as I thought of it, but even while I smiled the vague shadows of later happenings came over my mind. Little by little the outlines of that rough December night took shape in my puzzled wits. I had been wounded, evidently, and had been borne back to Holland House, for I recognized the room in which I lay. My right arm was in stiff splints; with the other hand I felt of my head and discovered that my hair had been cut close, and that my skull and face were fairly thatched with crossing strips of bandage. My chest, too, was girdled by similar medicated bands. My mental faculties moved very sedately, it seemed, and I had been pondering these phenomena for a long time when my cousin Dr. Teunis Van Hoorn came tip-toeing into the room. This worthy young man was sincerely delighted to find me come by my senses once more. In his joy he allowed me to talk and to listen more than was for my good, probably, for I had some bad days immediately following; but the relapse did not come before I had learned much that was gravely interesting. It is a story of sufficient sorrow and shame to American ears even now--this tale of how we failed to carry Quebec. Judge how grievously the recital fell upon my ears then, in the little barrack-chamber of Holland House, within hearing of the cannonade by which the farce of a siege was still maintained from day to day! Teunis told me how, by that first volley of grape at the guard-house, the brave and noble Montgomery had been instantly killed; how Arnold, forcing his way from the other direction at the head of his men, and being early shot in the leg, had fought and stormed like a wounded lion in the narrow Sault-au-Matelot; how he and the gallant Morgan had done more than their share in the temerarious adventure, and had held the town and citadel at their mercy if only the miserable Campbell had pushed forward after poor Montgomery fell, and gone on to meet those battling heroes in the Lower Town. But I have not the patience, even at this late day, to write about this melancholy and mortifying failure. Some of our best men--Montgomery, Hendricks, Humphreys, Captain Cheseman, and other officers, and nearly two hundred men--had been killed out-right, and the host of wounded made veritable hospitals of both the headquarters. Nearly half of our total original force had been taken prisoners. With the shattered remnants of our little army we were still keeping up the pretence of a siege, but there was no heart in our operations, since reverse had broken the last hope of raising assistance among the French population. We were too few in numbers to be able now to prevent supplies reaching the town, and everybody gloomily foresaw that when the river became free of ice, and open for the British fleet to throw in munitions and re-enforcements, the game would be up. All this Dr. Teunis told me, and often during the narration it seemed as if my indignant blood would burst off the healing bandages, so angrily did it boil at the thought of what poltroonery had lost to us. It was a relief to turn to the question of my own adventure. It appeared that I had been wounded by the first and only discharge of the cannon at the guard-house, for there was discovered, embedded in the muscles over my ribs, a small iron bolt, which would have come from no lesser firearm. They moreover had the honor of finding a bullet in my right forearm, which was evidently a pistol-ball. And, lastly, my features had been beaten into an almost unrecognizable mass of bruised flesh by either a heavy-ringed fist or a pistol-butt. "Pete Gansevoort dragged you off on his back," my kinsman concluded. "Some of our men wanted to go back for the poor General, and for Cheseman and McPherson, but that Campbell creature would not suffer them. Instead, he and his cowards ran back as if the whole King's army were at their heels. You may thank God and Gansevoort that you were not found frozen stiff with the rest, next morning." "Ah, you may be sure I do!" I answered. "Can I see Peter?" "Why, no--at least not in this God-forgotten country. He has been made a colonel, and is gone back to Albany to join General Schuyler. And we are to go--you and I--as soon as it suits your convenience to be able to travel. There are orders to that purport. So make haste and get well, if you please." "I have been dangerously ill, have I not?" "Scarcely that, I should say. At least, I had little fear for you after the first week. Neither of the gunshot wounds was serious. But somebody must have dealt you some hearty thwacks on the poll, my boy. It was these, and the wet chill, and the loss of blood, which threw you into a fever. But I never feared for you." Later in the year, long after I was wholly recovered, my cousin confided to me that this was an amiable lie, designed to instil me with that confidence which is so great a part of the battle gained, and that for a week or so my chance of life had been held hardly worth a _son marquee_. But I did not now know this, and I tried to fasten my mind upon that encounter in the drift by the guard-house, which was my last recollection. Much of it curiously eluded my mental grasp for a time; then all at once it came to me. "Do you know, Teunis," I said, "that I believe it was Philip Cross who broke my head with his pistol-butt?" "Nonsense!" "Yes, it surely was--and he knew me, too!" And I explained the grounds for my confidence. "Well, young man," said Dr. Teunis, at last, "if you do not find that gentleman out somewhere, sometime, and choke him, and tear him up into fiddle-strings, you've not a drop of Van Hoorn blood in your whole carcass!"

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A Crestfallen Return to Albany. For a man who had his physician's personal assurance that there was nothing serious in his case, I recovered my strength with vexatious slowness. There was a very painful and wearing week, indeed, before it became clear to me that I was even convalescent, and thereafter my progress was wofully halting and intermittent. Perhaps health would have come more rapidly if with every sound of the guns from the platforms, and every rattle of the drums outside, I had not wrathfully asked myself, "Of what use is all this now, alas!" These bad days were nearing their end when Dr. Teunis one afternoon came in with tidings from home. An express had arrived from Albany, bringing the intelligence that General Wooster was shortly to come with re-enforcements, to take over our headless command. There were many letters for the officers as well, and among these were two for me. The physician made some show of keeping these back from me, but the cousin relented, and I was bolstered up in bed to read them. One was a business epistle from Albany, enclosing a brief memorandum of the disposition of certain moneys and goods belonging to the English trading company whose agent I had been, and setting my mind at ease concerning what remained of its interests. The other was a much longer missive, written in my mother's neat, painstaking hand, and in my mother's language. My story can be advanced in no better way than by translating freely from the original Dutch document, which I still have, and which shows, if nothing else, that Dame Mauverensen had powers of directness and brevity of statement not inherited by her son. " _January 9,_ A. D. 1776. "Dearly Beloved Son: This I write, being well and contented for the most part, and trusting that you are the same. It is so long since I have seen you--now nearly four years--that your ways are beyond me, and I offer you no advice. People hereabout affect much satisfaction in your promotion to be an officer. I do not conceal my preference that you should have been a God-fearing man, though you were of humbler station. However, that I surrendered your keeping to a papistical infidel is my own blame, and I do not reproach you. "The nigger Tulp, whom you sent to me upon your departure for the wars, was more trouble than he was worth, to say nothing of his keep. He was both lame and foolish, getting forever in my way, and crying by the hour with fears for your safety. I therefore sent him to his old home, the Cedars, where, as nobody now does any manner of work (your aunt being dead, and an incapable sloven having taken her place), he will not get in the way, and where others can help him to weep. "When Mistress Cross came down to the Cedars last summer, having been deserted by her worthless husband, and found Mr. Stewart stricken with paralysis, I was moved to offer my assistance while they both lay ill. The burden of their illness was so great that your aunt broke down under it, but she did not die until after Mistress Cross had recovered from her fever, and Mr Stewart had regained his speech and a small portion of his wits. Mistress Cross was in a fair way to be despoiled of all her rightful belongings, for she brought not so much as a clean smock away with her from her husband's house, and there was there in charge an insolent rascal named Rab, who, when I demanded the keys and his mistress's chattels, essayed to turn me away. I lectured him upon his behavior in such terms that he slunk off like a whipped dog, and presently sent to me a servant from whom I received what I came for. She would otherwise have obtained nothing, for, obstinate as she is in some matters, she is a timid soul at best, and stands in mortal fear of Rab's malevolence. "Mr. Stewart's mind is still in a sad way. He is childish beyond belief, and talks about you as if you were a lad again, and then speaks of foreign matters of which we know nothing, so long past are they, as if they were still proceeding. In bodily health, he seems now somewhat stronger. I knitted him some woollen stockings, but he would not wear them, saying that they scratched his legs. Mistress Cross might have persuaded him out of this nonsense, but did not see fit to do so. She also humors him in the matter of taking him to the Papist church at Johnstown whenever the roads are open, he having become highly devotional in his second childhood. I was vigorously opposed to indulging this idea of his, which is almost as sinful in her as it is superstitious and silly in him; but she would go her own gait, and so she may for all of me. "She insisted, too, on having one of Adam Wemple's girls in to do the work when your aunt fell ill. I recommended to her the widow of Dirck Tappan, a worthy and pious woman who could not sleep if there was so much as a speck of dust on the floor under her bed, but she would not listen to me, saying that she liked Moll Wemple and wanted her, and that she did not like Dame Tappan and did not want her. Upon this I came home, seeing clearly that my company was not desired longer. "I send you the stockings which I knitted for Mr. Stewart, and sundry other woollen trifles. Your sisters are all well, but the troubles in the Valley take young men's thoughts unduly off the subject of marriage. If the committee would only hang John Johnson or themselves, there would be peace, one way or the other, and girls would get husbands again. But all say matters will be worse before they mend. "Affectionately, your mother, "Katharine Mauverensen." As I look at this ancient, faded letter, which brought to me in belated and roundabout form the tidings of Mr. Stewart's helpless condition and of Daisy's illness and grief, I can recall that my first impulse was to laugh. There was something so droll, yet so thoroughly characteristic of my honest, bustling, resolute, domineering mother in the thing, that its humor for the moment overbalanced the gravity of the news. There was no more helpful, valuable, or good-hearted woman alive than she, provided always it was permitted her to manage and dictate everything for everybody. There was no limit to the trouble she would undertake, nothing in the world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to me, unconsciously revealing her pique. Poor Daisy! My thoughts had swung quickly enough from my mother to her, and, once there, persistently lingered. She had, then, been at the Cedars since June; she had been very ill, but now was in health again; she was a fugitive from her rightful home, and stood in fear of her former servants; she had upon her hands a broken old invalid, and to all his freaks and foibles was a willing slave; she was the saddened, solitary mistress of a large estate, with all its anxieties multiplied a hundred-fold by the fact that these were war-times, that passions ran peculiarly high and fierce all about her, and that her husband's remaining friends, now her bitter foes perhaps, were in a desperate state of temper and daring. From this grewsome revery I roused myself to exclaim: "Teunis, every day counts now. The sooner I get home the better." "Quite so," said he, with ready sarcasm. "We will go on snow-shoes to Sorel to-morrow morning." "No: you know what I mean. I want to----" "Oh, yes, entirely so. We might, in fact, start this evening. The wolves are a trifle troublesome just now, but with a strong and active companion, like you, I should fear nothing." "Will you cease jesting, Teunis! What I want now is to exhaust all means of gaining strength--to make every hour tell upon the work of my restoration. There is urgent need of me at home. See for yourself!" And I gave him my mother's letter. My cousin had had from me, during our long camp intercourse, sufficient details of my early life to enable him to understand all my mother's allusions. He read the letter through carefully, and smiled. Then he went over it again, and turned grave, and began to look out of the window and whistle softly. "Well," I asked, impatiently, "what is your judgment?" "My judgment is that your mother was, without doubt, the daughter of my great-uncle Baltus. When I was fourteen years old my father put me out of his house because I said that cocoa-nuts grew on trees, he having been credibly informed by a sailor that they were dug from the ground like potatoes. Everybody said of my father, when they learned of this: 'How much he is like his uncle, Captain Baltus.' She has the true family piety, too. The saying in Schenectady used to be: 'The Van Hoorns are a God-fearing people--and they have reason to be.'" I could not but laugh at this, the while I protested that it was his views upon the tidings in the letter that I wished. "I agree with you that the sooner you get home the better," he said, seriously. "The troubles in the Valley will be ripe ere long. The letters from Albany, just arrived, are filled, they tell me, with rumors of the doings of Johnson. General Schuyler had, at last accounts, gone up toward Johnstown with a regiment, to discover the baronet's intentions. So get well as fast as you like, and we will be off." This was easy enough to say, but nearly two months went by before I was judged able to travel. We indeed did not make a start until after General Wooster arrived with more troops, and assumed command. Our return was accomplished in the company of the express he sent back with news of his arrival, and his report of the state of affairs in front of Quebec. From our own knowledge this was very bad, what with the mutinous character of many of the men, the total absence of subordination, and the bitter jealousies which existed among the rival officers. Even above the joy of turning our faces once more toward home, there rose in both of us a sense of relief at cutting loose from an expedition which had done no good, and that, too, at such a sad cost of suffering and bloodshed. It was impossible to have any pride whatever in the adventure, and we had small disposition to look people in the face, or talk with them of the siege and attack. To do them justice, the residents of the sparsely settled districts through which we slowly passed were civil enough. But we felt that we were returning like detected impostors, and we had no heart for their courtesies. Albany was reached at last, and there the news that the British had evacuated Boston put us in better spirits. The spring was backward, but it was April by the calendar if not by the tree-buds and gardens, and busy preparations for the season's campaign were going forward. General Schuyler took me into his own house, and insisted upon my having a full fortnight's rest, telling me that I needed all my strength for the work he had in mind for me. The repose was in truth grateful, after the long and difficult journey I had performed in my enfeebled condition; and what with books and pictures, and the journals of events that had transpired during my long absence, and the calls of friends, and the careful kindness of the General and his good wife, I ought to have felt myself indeed happy. But in some senses it was to me the most vexatious fortnight of the whole spring, for no hour of it all passed in which I was not devoured with anxiety to be among my own people again. The General was so pre-occupied and burdened with the stress of public and martial business, always in his case carried on for the most part under the embarrassment of recurring illness, that I shrank from questioning him, and the fear haunted me that it was his intention to send me away again without a visit to my old home. It is true that I might have pleaded an invalid's privileges, but I was really well enough to work with prudence, and I could not offer to shirk duty at such a time. But in his own good time the General relieved my mind and made me ashamed that I had ever doubted his considerateness. After breakfast one morning--it was the first, I remember, upon which I wore the new uniform with which I had been forced to replace the rags brought from Quebec--he called me to him in his library, and unfolded to me his plans: "John Johnson lied to me last January, when I went up there, disarmed his Scotchmen, and took his parole. He lied to me here in March, when he came down and denied that he was receiving and despatching spies through the woods to and from Canada. The truth is not in him. During the past month much proof has come to my hands of his hiding arms and powder and lead near the Hall, and of his devil's work among the Mohawks, whom he plots day and night to turn against us. All this time he keeps a smooth tongue for us, but is conspiring with his Tory neighbors, and with those who followed Guy to Canada, to do us a mischief. Now that General Washington is master at Boston, and affairs are moving well elsewhere, there is no reason for further mincing of matters in Tryon County. It is my purpose to send Colonel Dayton to Johnstown with part of his regiment, to settle the thing once for all. He will have the aid of Herkimer's militia if he needs them, and will arrest Sir John, the leaders of his Scotch followers, and all others, tenants and gentlemen alike, whose freedom is a threat to the neighborhood. In short, he will stamp out the whole wasps nest. "You know the Valley well, and your people are there. It is the place for you just now. Here is your commission as major. But you are still attached to my staff. I lend you merely to the Tryon County committee. You will go with Dayton as far as you like--either to Caughnawaga or some near place--perhaps your old home would suit you best. Please yourself. You need not assist in the arrests at Johnstown; that might be painful to you. But after Dayton's return with his prisoners you will be my representative in that district. You have four days in which to make ready. I see the prospect pleases you. Good! To-morrow we will discuss it further." When I got outside I fairly leaped for joy.

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I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More. I rode beside Colonel Elias Dayton one forenoon some ten days later, up the Valley road, my pulses beating fast at the growing familiarity of the scene before us. We had crossed the Chuctenunda Creek, and were within sight of the gray walls of Guy Park. Beyond rose the hills behind which lay Fort Johnson. I was on the very threshold of my boyhood's playfield--within a short hour's walk of my boyhood's home. The air was full of sounds. Birds sang with merry discordance all through the thicket to our right, flitting among the pale green tangle of spring's foliage. The May sunshine had lured forth some pioneer locusts, whose shrill cries came from who could tell where--the tall swale-grass on the river edge, erect now again after the April floods, or the brown broom-corn nearer the road, or from the sky above? We could hear the squirrels' mocking chatter in the tree-tops, the whir of the kingfishers along the willow-fringed water--the indefinable chorus of Nature's myriad small children, all glad that spring was come. But above these our ears took in the ceaseless clang of the drums, and the sound of hundreds of armed men's feet, tramping in unison upon the road before us, behind us, at our side. For my second return to the Valley was at the head of troops, bringing violence, perhaps bloodshed, in their train. I could not but contrast it in my mind with that other home-coming, four years before, when I sat turned to look eastward in the bow of Enoch's boat, and every soft dip of the oars timed the glad carol in my heart of home and friends--and the sweet maid I loved. I was so happy then! --and now, coming from the other direction, with suggestions of force and cruel purposes in every echo of our soldiers' tread, I was, to tell the plain truth, very miserable withal. My talk with Colonel Dayton had, in a way, contributed to this gloomy feeling. We had, from choice, ridden side by side for the better part of two days, and, for very need of confiding in some one, I had talked with him concerning my affairs more freely than was my wont. This was the easier, because he was a contemplative, serious, and sensible man, whose words and manner created confidence. Moreover, he was neither Dutchman nor Yankee, but a native Jerseyman, and so considered my story from an equable and fair point of view, without bias. It was, indeed, passing strange that this man, on his way to seize or crush the Johnson clique, as the case might be, should have been the one to first arouse in my mind the idea that, after all, the Tories had their good side, and were doing what to them seemed right, at tremendous cost and sacrifice to themselves. I had been telling him what a ruffian was Philip Cross, and what grounds I had for hating him, and despitefully describing the other chief Tories of the district. He said in reply, I remember: "You seem to miss the sad phase of all this, my friend. Your young blood feels only the partisan promptings of dislike. Some day--soon, perhaps-- you will all at once find this youthful heat gone; you will begin to walk around men and things, so to speak, and study them from all sides. This stage comes to every sober mind; it will come to you. Then you will realize that this baronet up yonder is, from his own stand-point, a chivalrous, gallant loyal gentleman, who imperils estates, power, peace, almost life itself, rather than do what he holds to be weak or wrong. Why, take even this enemy of yours, this Cross. He was one of the notables of these parts--rich, popular, influential; he led a life of utmost luxury and pleasure. All this he has exchanged for the rough work of a soldier, with its privations, cold, fatigue, and the risk of death. Ask yourself why he did it." "I see what you would enforce," I said. "Your meaning is that these men, as well as our side, think the right is theirs." "Precisely. They have inherited certain ideas. We disagree with them; we deem it our duty to silence them, fight them, drive them out of the country, and, with God's help, we will do it. But let us do this with our eyes open, and with the understanding that they are not necessarily scoundrels and heathen because they fail to see things as we see them." "But you would not defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages against their neighbors--against helpless women and children. That must be heathenish to any mind." "Defend it? No! I do not defend any acts of theirs. Rid your mind of the idea that because a man tries to understand a thing he therefore defends it. But I can see how they would defend it to their own consciences--just as these thrifty Whig farmers hereabout explain in their own minds as patriotic and public-spirited their itching to get hold of Johnson's Manor. Try and look at things in this light. Good and bad are relative terms; nothing is positively and unchangeably evil. Each group of men has its own little world of reasons and motives, its own atmosphere, its own standard of right and wrong. If you shut your eyes, and condemn or praise these wholly, without first striving to comprehend them, you may or may not do mischief to them; you assuredly injure yourself." Thus, and at great length, spoke the philosophical colonel. I could not help suspecting that he had too open a mind to be a very valuable fighter, and, indeed, this proved to be true. He subsequently built some good and serviceable forts along the Mohawk, one of which to this day bears his name, but he attained no distinction as a soldier in the field. But, none the less, his words impressed me greatly. What he said had never been put to me in clear form before, and at twenty-seven a man's mind is in that receptive frame, trembling upon the verge of the meditative stage, when the presentation of new ideas like these often marks a distinct turn in the progress and direction of his thoughts. It seems strange to confess it, but I still look back to that May day of 1776 as the date of my first notion that there could be anything admirable in my enemies. At the time, these new views and the tone of our talk helped to disquiet me. The swinging lines of shoulders, the tramp! tramp! in the mud, the sight of the guns and swords about me, were all depressing. They seemed to give a sinister significance to my return. It was my home, the dearest spot on earth--this smiling, peaceful, sunlit Mohawk Valley--and I was entering it with soldiers whose mission was to seize and despoil the son of my boyhood's friend, Sir William. More than one of my old play-mates, now grown to man's estate, would note with despair our approach, and curse me for being of it. The lady of Johnson Hall, to whom all this would be horrible nigh unto death, was a close, warm friend of Daisy's. So my thoughts ran gloomily, and I had no joy in any of the now familiar sights around me. The march up from Schenectady had been a most wearisome one for the men, owing to the miserable condition of the road, never over-smooth and now rendered doubly bad and difficult by the spring freshets and the oozing frost. When we reached the pleasant little hollow in which Fort Johnson nestles, a halt was accordingly ordered, and the tired soldiers prepared to refresh themselves with food by the banks of the creek. It was now afternoon; we were distant but a short mile from the Cedars, and I could not abide the thought of lingering here, to no purpose, so close to the goal of all my longings. I therefore exchanged some plans and suggestions with Colonel Dayton and his companion Judge Duer, who represented the civil law in the expedition, and so clapped spurs and dashed forward up the road. "It seems ten years, not four, since I was last here," I was saying to Daisy half an hour later, and unconsciously framing in words the thoughts which her face suggested. I know not how to describe the changes which this lapse of time had wrought upon her countenance and carriage. In the more obvious, outward sense, it had scarcely aged her. She was now twenty-three years of age, and I doubt a stranger would have deemed her older. Yet, looking upon her and listening to her, I seemed to feel that, instead of being four years her senior, I was in truth the younger of the two. The old buoyant, girlish air was all gone, for one thing. She spoke now with gentle, sweet-toned gravity; and her eyes, frankly meeting mine as of old, had in their glance a soft, reposeful dignity which was new to me. Almost another Daisy, too, she seemed in face. It was the woman in her features, I dare say, which disconcerted me. I had expected changes, perhaps, but not upon these lines. She had been the prettiest maiden of the Valley, beyond all others. She was not pretty now, I should say, but she _was_ beautiful--somewhat pallid, yet not to give an air of unhealth; the delicate chiselling of features yielded now not merely the pleasure of regularity, but the subtler charm of sensitive, thoughtful character. The eyes and hair seemed a deeper hazel, a darker brown, than they had been. The lips had lost some, thing of their childish curve, and met each other in a straight line--fairer than ever, I thought, because more firm. I am striving now, you see, against great odds, to revive in words the impressions of difference which came to me in those first hours, as I scanned her face. They furnish forth no real portrait of the dear lady: how could I hope they should? But they help to define, even if dimly, the changes toward strength and self-control I found in her. I was, indeed, all unprepared for what awaited me here at the Cedars. My heart had been torn by all manner of anxieties and concern. I had hastened forward, convinced that my aid and protection were direly needed. I sat now, almost embarrassed, digesting the fact that the fortunes of the Cedars were in sufficient and capable hands. Mr. Stewart's condition was in truth sad enough. He had greeted me with such cordiality and clear-wittedness of utterance and manner that at first I fancied his misfortunes to have been exaggerated in my mother's letter. His conversation for a moment or two was also coherent and timely. But his mind was prone to wander mysteriously. He presently said: "Assuredly I taught you to shave with both hands. I knew I could not be mistaken." I stole a glance toward Daisy at this, and her answering nod showed me the whole case. It was after old Eli had come in and wheeled Mr. Stewart in his big chair out into the garden, that I spoke to Daisy of the differences time had wrought. "Ay," she said, "it must be sadly apparent to you--the change in everything." How should I approach the subject--the one thing of which I knew we were both thinking? There seemed a wall between us. She had been unaffectedly glad to see me; had, for the instant, I fancied, thought to offer me her cheek to kiss--yet was, with it all, so self-possessed and reserved that I shrank from touching upon her trouble. "Perhaps not everything is sad," I made answer, falteringly. "Poor Mr. Stewart--that is indeed mournful; but, on the other hand--" I broke off abruptly. "On the other hand," she took up my words calmly, "you are thinking that I am advantaged by Philip's departure." My face must have showed that I could not deny it. "In some respects," she went on, "yes; in others, no. I am glad to be able to speak freely to you, Douw, for you are nearest to me of all that are left. I do not altogether know my own mind; for that matter, does any one? The Philip to whom I gave my heart and whom I married is one person; the Philip who trampled on the heart and fled his home seems quite another and a different man. I hesitate between the two sometimes. I cannot always say to myself: 'The first was all fancy; the second is the reality.' Rather, they blend themselves in my mind, and I seem to see the fond lover remaining still the good husband, if only I had had the knowledge and tenderness to keep him so!" "In what are you to be reproached, Daisy?" I said this somewhat testily, for the self-accusation nettled me. "It may easily be that I was not wise, Douw. Indeed, I showed small wisdom from the beginning." "It was all the doing of that old cat, Lady Berenicia!" I said, with melancholy conviction. "Nay, blame not her alone. I was the silly girl to be thus befooled. My heart would have served me better if it had been all good. The longing for finery and luxury was my own. I yearned to be set above the rest. I dreamed to be called 'My lady,' too, in good time. I forgot that I came from the poor people, and that I belonged to them. So well and truly did I forget this that the fact struck me like a whip when--when it was brought to my notice." "He taunted you with it, then!" I burst forth, my mind working quickly for once. She made no answer for the time, but rose from her chair and looked out upon the group in the garden. From the open door she saw the van of Dayton's soldiers trudging up the Valley road. I had previously told her of their mission and my business. "Poor Lady Johnson," she said, resting her head against her hand on the door-frame, and looking upon the advancing troops with a weary expression of face. "Her trouble is coming--mine is past." Then, after a pause: "Will they be harsh with Sir John, think you? I trust not. They have both been kind to me since--since Philip went. Sir John is not bad at heart, Douw, believe me. You twain never liked each other, I know. He is a bitter man with those who are against him, but his heart is good if you touch it aright." I had not much to say to this. "I am glad he was good to you," I managed to utter, not over-graciously, I fear. The troops went by, with no sound of drums now, lest an alarm be raised prematurely. We watched them pass in silence, and soon after I took my leave for the day, saying that I would go up to see the Fondas at Caughnawaga, and cross the river to my mother's home, and would return next morning. We shook hands at parting, almost with constraint.

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The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson. Early the next day, which was May 20th, we heard to our surprise and consternation that on the preceding afternoon, almost as Colonel Dayton and his soldiers were entering Johnstown, Sir John and the bulk of his Highlanders and sympathizers, to the number of one hundred and thirty, had privately taken to the woods at the north of the Hall, and struck out for Canada. Over six weeks elapsed before we learned definitely that the baronet and his companions had traversed the whole wilderness in safety and reached Montreal, which now was once more in British hands--our ill-starred Quebec expedition having finally quitted Canada earlier in the month. We could understand the stories of Sir John's travail and privations, for the snow was not yet out of the Adirondack trails, and few of his company were skilled in woodmen's craft. But they did accomplish the journey, and that in nineteen days. I, for one, was not very much grieved at Johnson's escape, for his imprisonment would have been an embarrassment rather than a service to us. But Colonel Dayton was deeply chagrined at finding the bird flown, and I fear that in the first hours of his discomfiture he may have forgotten some of his philosophical toleration for Tories in general. He had, moreover, the delicate question on his hands of what to do with Lady Johnson. Neither Judge Duer nor I could advise him, and so everything was held in suspense for the better part of a week, until General Schuyler's decision could be had. Meanwhile my time was fairly occupied in the fulfilment of matters intrusted to me by the General. I had to visit Colonel Herkimer at his home below Little Falls, and talk with him about the disagreeable fact that his brother, Hon-Yost Herkimer, had deserted the militia command given him by the Whigs and fled to Canada. The stout old German was free to denounce his brother, however, and I liked the looks and blunt speech of Peter Bellinger, who had been made colonel of the deserted battalion of German Flatts. There were also conversations to be had with Colonel Klock, and Ebenezer Cox, and the Fondas, at their several homes, and a day to spend with my friend John Frey, now sheriff in place of the Tory White. It thus happened that I saw very little of the people at the Cedars, and had no real talk again with Daisy, until a full week had passed. It was a cool, overcast forenoon when I alighted next at the familiar gate, and gave my horse into Tulp's charge. The boy, though greatly rejoiced to see me back again, had developed a curious taciturnity in these latter years--since his accident, in fact--and no longer shouted out the news to me at sight. Hence I had to ask him, as I neared the door, what strange carriage was that in the yard beyond, and why it was there. As I spoke, a couple of men lounged in view from the rear of the house, and I recognized them as of Dayton's command. Tulp explained that Lady Johnson was being taken away, and that she had tarried here to rest on her journey. If I had known this at the gate, I doubt I should have stopped at all; but I had been seen from the window, and it was too late now to turn about. So I entered, much wishing that I had left off my uniform, or, still better, that I had stayed away altogether. There were present in the great room Daisy, Lady Johnson, a young lady who was her sister, two children--and a man in civilian's garb, with some few military touches, such as a belt and sword and a cockade, who sat by the window, his knees impudently spread apart and his hat on his head. I looked at this fellow in indignant inquiry. Daisy came eagerly to me, with an explanation on her lips: "It is the officer who is to take Lady Johnson to Albany. He insists upon forcing his presence upon us, and will not suffer us to be alone together in any room in the house." "Who are you? --and off with your hat!" I said to the man, sharply. My uniform was of service, after all. He looked me over, and evidently remembered having seen me with his colonel, for he stood up and took off his hat. "I am a lieutenant of the Connecticut line," he said, in a Yankee snarl, "and I am doing my duty." "I am a major in the Continental line, and I should be doing _my_ duty if I sent you back in irons to your colonel," I answered. "Get out of here, what time Lady Johnson is to remain, and leave these ladies to themselves!" He was clearly in two minds about obeying me, and I fancy it was my superior size rather than my rank that induced him to go, which he did in as disagreeable a fashion as possible. I made my bow to Lady Johnson, and said something about being glad that I had come, if I had been of use. She, poor young woman, was in a sad state of nervous excitement, what with her delicate condition and the distressing circumstances of the past week. She was, moreover, a very beautiful creature, naturally of soft and refined manners, and this made me the readier to overlook the way in which she met my kindly meant phrases. "I marvel that you are not ashamed, Mr. Mauverensen," she said, heatedly, "to belong to an army made up of such ruffians. Every rag of raiment that man has on he stole from my husband's wardrobe at the Hall. To think of calling such low fellows officers, or consorting with them!" I answered as gently as I could that, unfortunately, there were many such ill-conditioned men in every service, and pointed out that the man, by his speech, was a New Englander. "And who fetched them into this province, I should like to know!" Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hold a political discussion with this poor troubled wife, who saw her husband's peril, her own plight, and the prospective birth of her first child in captivity constantly before her eyes! So I strove to bring the talk upon other grounds, but not with much success. She grew calmer, and with the returning calmness came a fine, cool dignity of manner and tone which curiously reminded me of Lady Berenicia Cross; but she could talk of nothing save her wrongs, or rather those of her husband. She seemed not to have very clear notions of what the trouble was all about, but ascribed it loosely, I gathered, to the jealousy of Philip Livingston, who was vexed that the Scotch did not settle upon his patent instead of on Sir John's land, and to the malice of General Schuyler, whose feud with the Johnsons was notorious. "And to think, too," she added, "that Mr. Schuyler's mother and my mother's mother were sisters! A very pleasant and valuable cousin he is, to be sure! Driving my husband off into the forest to perhaps die of hunger, and dragging me down to Albany, in my condition, and thrusting a low Connecticut cobbler into my carriage with me! If my sickness overtakes me on the road, and I die, my blood will be on the head of Philip Schuyler." I read in Daisy's eyes a way out of this painful conversation, and so said: "Lady Johnson, it will perhaps render your journey less harrowing if I have some talk with this officer who is your escort. Let me leave you women-folk together here in peace, the while"--and went out into the garden again. I found the lieutenant in the garden to the rear of the house, gossiping in familiar style with his half-dozen men, and drew him aside for some private words. He was sensible enough, at bottom, and when I had pointed out to him that his prisoner was a good and kindly soul, who had been, through no fault of her own, nurtured in aristocratic ideas and ways; that those of whatever party who knew her well most heartily esteemed her; and that, moreover, she was nearly related by blood to General Schuyler--he professed himself ready to behave toward her with more politeness. The trouble with him really lay in his abiding belief that people underestimated his importance, and hence he sought to magnify his position in their eyes by insolent demeanor. Therein I discerned the true Yankee. That the men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too, of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices against us, and their narrow spite against General Schuyler. So mischievous did this attitude become at last--when old General Wooster came to us with his Connecticut troops, and these set themselves up to be independent of all our plans or rules, refusing even to mess with the others or to touch Continental provisions and munitions--that Congress had to interfere and put them sharply back into their proper places. Jerseymen, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and men from the Carolinas will bear me out in saying these things about the New England soldiery. I speak not in blame or bitterness. The truth is that they were too much akin in blood and conceit to the English not to have in themselves many of the disagreeable qualities which had impelled us all to revolt against British rule. When the lieutenant had ordered the horses to be brought out for a start, I went back into the house. The women had been weeping, I could see. Lady Johnson had softened in her mood toward me, and spoke now some gentle words of thanks for the little I had done. When I told her, in turn, that her escort would henceforth be more considerate in his conduct toward her, she was for a moment pleased, but then tears filled her eyes at the thoughts of the journey before her. "When I am out of sight of this house," she said, sadly, "it will seem as if my last friend had been left behind. Why could they not have left me at the Hall? I gave them the keys; I yielded up everything! What harm could I have done them--remaining there? I had no wish to visit my relatives in Albany! It is a trick--a device! I doubt I shall ever lay eyes on my dear home again." And, poor lady, she never did. We strove to speak words of comfort to her, but they came but feebly, and could not have consoled her much. When the lieutenant opened the door, the women made a tearful adieu, with sobs and kisses upon which I could not bear to look. Lady Johnson shook hands with me, still with a pathetic quivering of the lips. But then in an instant she straightened herself to her full height, bit her lips tight, and walked proudly past the obnoxious escort down the path to the carriage, followed by her weeping sister and the two big-eyed wondering children. "Will she ever come back?" said Daisy, half in inquiry, half in despairing exclamation, as we saw the last of the carriage and its guard. "How will it all end, Douw?" "Who can foresee?" I answered. "It is war now, at last, war open and desperate. I can see no peaceful way out of it. These aristocratic landlords, these Johnsons, Butlers, Phillipses, De Lanceys, and the rest, will not give up their estates without a hard fight for them. Of that you may be sure. _They_ will come back, if their wives do not, and all that they can do, backed by England, to regain their positions, will be done. They may win, and if they do, it will be our necks that will be put into the yoke--or the halter. At all events, it has gone too far to be patched over now. We can only stand up and fight as stoutly as we may, and leave the rest to fate." "And it really was necessary to fight--I suppose it could not have been in reason avoided?" "They would have it so. They clung to the faith that they were by right the masters here, and we the slaves, and so infatuated were they that they brought in English troops and force to back them up. There was no alternative but to fight. Would you have had me on the other side--on the English side, Daisy?" "Oh, no, Douw," she answered, in a clear voice. "If war there must be, why, of course, the side of my people is my side." I was not surprised at this, but I said, "You speak of your people, Daisy--but surely mere birth does not count for more than one's whole training afterward, and you have been bred among another class altogether. Why, I should think nine out of every ten of your friends here in the Mohawk district must be Tories." "Not so great a proportion as that," she went on, with a faint smile upon her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. "You do not know the value of these 'friends,' as you call them, as closely as I do. Never have they forgotten on their side, even if I did on mine, that my parents were Palatine peasants. And you speak of my being bred among them! In what way more than you were? Was I not brought up side by side with you? Was there any difference in our rearing, in our daily life until--until you left us? Why should I not be a patriot, sir, as well as you?" She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it. We both were thinking, I felt, of the dear old days gone by, and of the melancholy fate which clouded over and darkened those days, and drove us apart. We still stood by the open door, whence we had watched the carriage disappear. After some seconds of silence I essayed to bring back the conversation to Lady Johnson, and talked of her narrow, ill-informed, purely one-sided way of regarding the troubles, and of how impossible it was that the class to which she belonged, no matter how amiable and good they might be, could ever adapt themselves to the enlarging social conditions of this new country. While I talked, there burst forth suddenly the racket of fifes and drums in the road. Some militia companies were marching past on their way to join Colonel Dayton's force. We stood and watched these go by, and in the noise that they made we failed to hear Mr. Stewart's tottering footsteps behind us. The din of the drums had called him out of his lethargy, and he came forward to watch the yeoman-soldiery. "They march badly--badly," he said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. "I do not know the uniform. But I have been away so long, and everything is changed since the King of Prussia began his wars. Yet I am happier here as I am--far happier with my fields, and my freedom, and my children." He had spoken in the tone, half-conversational, half-dreamy, which of late strangely marked most of his speech. He turned now and looked at us; a pleasant change came over his wan face, and he smiled upon us with a curious reflection of the old fond look. "You are good children," he said; "you shall be married in due time, and come after me when I am gone. There will be no handsomer, happier twain in the province." Daisy flushed crimson and looked pained at the old gentleman's childish babbling, and I made haste to get away.

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An Old Acquaintance Turns Up In Manacles. A truly miserable fourteen months' period of thankless labor, and of unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice which there menaced the cause of liberty. Fortunately I had, from time to time, assurance that my work was of actual advantage to General Schuyler, and occasionally I had leisure hours to spend at the Cedars. If these pleasurable things had been denied me, there would have been in the whole Continental service no more unenviable post than mine. I have never pretended, least of all to myself, to be much enamoured of fighting; nor have I ever been regardless of personal comfort, and of the satisfaction of having warm clothes, sufficient food, and a good bed in which to sleep. Yet I would gladly have exchanged my state for that of the most wretched private soldier, barefooted and famished, on the frozen Delaware or at Morristown. War is a hateful and repellent enough thing; but it is at least better to be in the thick of it, to smell burning powder and see and feel the enemy, even if he be at your heels, than to be posted far away from the theatre of conflict, spying upon an outwardly peaceful community for signs of treason and disaffection. I should not like to put down in black and white, here in my old age, all the harsh and malignant things which I thought of my Mohawk Valley neighbors, or some of them, during those fourteen months. I am able to see now that they were not altogether without excuse. The affairs of the revolted Colonies were, in truth, going very badly. No sooner had Congress summoned the resolution to decree Continental independence than the fates seemed to conspire to show that the declaration was a mistake. Our successes in the field came to a sudden halt; then disasters followed in their place. Public confidence, which had been too lightly raised, first wavered, then collapsed. Against the magnificent army of English and Hessian regulars which Howe mustered in New York, General Washington could not hold his own, and Congress lost the nerve to stand at his back. Our militia threw up the service, disheartened. Our commissariat faded out of existence. The patriot force became the mere skeleton of an army, ragged, ill-fed, discouraged, and almost hopeless. In battle after battle the British won--by overwhelming numbers or superior fortune, it mattered not which; the result was equally lamentable. There had been, indeed, a notable week at Christmas-time, when the swift strong blows struck at Trenton and Princeton lifted for a moment the cloud which hung over us. But it settled down again, black and threatening, before spring came. The Colonies quarrelled with one another; their generals plotted and intrigued, or sullenly held aloof. Cool men, measuring on the one side this lax and inharmonious alliance of jealous States, without money, without public-spirited populations, and, above all, without confidence in their own success, and on the other the imposing power of rich and resolute England, with its splendid armies and fleets in the St. Lawrence and in New York Harbor, and with its limitless supply of hired German auxiliaries--cool men, I say, weighing dispassionately these two opposing forces, came pretty generally to believe that in the end General Washington would find himself laid by the heels in the Tower at London. I cannot honestly say now whether I ever shared this despondent view or not. But I do know that I chafed bitterly under the orders which kept me in the Valley, and not only prevented my seeing what fighting there was, but put me to no better task than watching in a ten-acre field for rattlesnakes. I can in no apter way describe my employment from May of 1776 to July of the following year. There was unending work, but no visible fruit, either for the cause or for myself. The menace of impending danger hung over us constantly--and nothing came of it, month after month. I grew truly sick of it all. Besides, my wounds did not heal well, and my bad health from time to time induced both melancholy and an irritable mind. The situation in the Valley was extremely simple. There was a small outspoken Tory party, who made no secret of their sympathies, and kept up communications with the refugees in Canada. These talked openly of the time soon to arrive when the King's troops would purge the Valley of disloyalty, and loyalists should come by more than their own. There was a somewhat larger Whig party, which by word and deed supported Congress. Between these two, or rather, because of their large number, surrounding them, was the great neutral party, who were chiefly concerned to so trim their sails that they should ship no water whichever way the wind blew. Up to the time of the Declaration of Independence these peaceful people had leaned rather toward the Whigs. But when General Washington evacuated Long Island, and the Continental prospects seemed to dwindle, it was wonderful to note how these same trimmers began again, first furtively, then with less concealment, to drink the King's health. Roughly speaking, the majority of the avowed Tories were in the lower district of Tryon County, that called the Mohawk district, embracing all east of Anthony's Nose, including Johnstown, Tribes Hill, and Caughnawaga. They had, indeed, out-numbered the Whigs by five to one before the flights to Canada began; and even now enough remained to give a strong British color to the feeling of the district. In the western districts of the county, where the population was more purely Dutch and Palatine, the Whig sentiment was very much stronger. But here, too, there were Tories, confessed and defiant; and everywhere, as time passed, the dry-rot of doubt spread among those who were of neither party. It came at last that nearly every week brought news of some young man's disappearance from home--which meant another recruit for the hostile Canadian force; and scarcely a day went by without the gloomy tidings that this man or the other, heretofore lukewarm, now spoke in favor of submission to the King. It was my function to watch this shifting public opinion, to sway it where I could, but to watch it always. No more painful task could have been conceived. I lived in an atmosphere of treachery and suspicion. Wherever I turned I saw humanity at its worst. Men doubted their brothers, their sons, even their wives. The very ground underneath us was honeycombed with intrigues and conspiracies. Intelligence from Canada, with its burden of promises to speedily glut the passions of war, circulated stealthily all about us. How it came, how it was passed from hearth to hearth, defied our penetration. We could only feel that it was in the air around us, and strive to locate it--mainly in vain--and shudder at its sinister omens. For all felt a blow to be impending, and only marvelled at its being so long withheld. It was two years now since Colonel Guy Johnson, with the Butlers and Philip Cross, had gone westward to raise the Indians. It was more than a year since Sir John and his retainers had joined them. Some of these had been to England in the interim, and we vaguely heard of others flitting, now in Quebec, now at Niagara or Detroit; yet none doubted that the dearest purpose of all of them was to return with troops and savages to reconquer the Valley. This was the sword which hung daily, nightly, over our heads. And as the waiting time lengthened out it grew terrible to weak and selfish minds. More and more men sought to learn how they might soften and turn its wrath aside, not how they might meet and repel its stroke. Congress would not believe in our danger--perhaps could not have helped us if it would. And then our own friends at this lost heart. The flights to Canada multiplied; our volunteer militiamen fell away from the drills and patrols. Stories and rumors grew thicker of British preparations, of Indian approaches, of invasion's red track being cleared up to the very gates of the Valley. And no man saw how the ruin was to be averted. It was in the second week of July, at almost the darkest hour in that gloomy first part of 1777, that a singular link in the chain of my story was forged. Affairs were at their worst, abroad and at home. General Washington's call for more troops had fallen on deaf ears, and it seemed impossible that his poor force could withstand the grand army and fleet mustering at New York. The news of St. Clair's wretched evacuation of Ticonderoga had come in, and we scarcely dared look one another in the face when it was told. Apparently matters were nearing a climax, so far at least as we in New York State were involved. For Burgoyne was moving down through the Champlain country upon Albany, with none to stay his progress, and an auxiliary force was somewhere upon the great northern water frontier of our State, intending to sweep through the Mohawk Valley to join him. Once this junction was formed, the Hudson lay open--and after that? We dared not think! I cannot hope to make young people realize what all this meant to us. To comprehend this, one must have had not only a neck menaced by the halter, but mother, sisters, dear ones, threatened by the tomahawk and knife. Thinking back upon it now, I marvel that men did not go mad under this horrible stress of apprehension. Apparently there was no hope. The old New England spite and prejudice against General Schuyler had stirred up now a fierce chorus of calumny and attack. He was blamed for St. Clair's pusillanimous retreat, for Congressional languor, for the failure of the militia to come forward--for everything, in fact. His hands were tied by suspicion, by treason, by popular lethargy, by lack of money, men, and means. Against these odds he strove like a giant, but I think not even he, with all his great, calm confidence, saw clearly through the black cloud just then. I had gone to bed late one hot July night, and had hardly fallen asleep, for gloomy musing upon these things, when I was awakened by a loud pounding on the door beneath. I was at my mother's house, fortunately, and the messenger had thus found me out promptly. Tulp had also been aroused, and saddled my horse while I dressed, in response to the summons. I was wanted at Johnstown by Sheriff Frey, on some matter which would not wait for the morrow. This much I gathered from the messenger, as we rode together in the starlight, but he could tell me little more, save that an emissary from the Tories in Canada had been captured near the Sacondaga, and it was needful that I should see him. I wondered somewhat at this as a reason for routing me out of my sleep, but cantered silently along, too drowsy to be querulous. Daylight broke before we crossed the river, and the sunrise gun sounded as we rode up into the court-house square at Johnstown. Soldiers were already to be seen moving about outside the block-houses at the corners of the palisade which, since Sir John's flight, had been built around the jail. Our coming seemed to be expected, for one of the soldiers told us to wait while he went inside, and after a few minutes John Frey came out, rubbing his eyes. As I dismounted, he briefly explained matters to me. It seemed that a Tory spy had made his way in from the woods, had delivered letters both at Cairncross and at the Cedars, and had then started to return, but by the vigilance of one of the Vrooman boys had been headed off and taken. "He is as close as the bark on a beech-tree," concluded the sheriff. "We could get nothing out of him. Even when I told him he would be hanged this morning after breakfast, he did not change color. He only said that if this was the case he would like first to see you; it seems he knows you, and has some information for you--probably about Philip Cross's wife. Perhaps he will tell _you_ what was in the letter he brought to her." It occurred to me on the instant that this was the real reason for my being summoned. These were days of universal suspicion, and the worthy sheriff had his doubts even of Daisy. "All right! Let me see the man," I said, and we entered the jail. When the soldier in charge had opened the cell-door, the object of our interest was discovered to be asleep. Frey shook him vigorously by the shoulder. He sat bolt upright on the instant, squinting his eyes to accustom them to the light, but evincing no special concern at our presence. "Is your hanging-party ready?" he said, and yawned, stretching his arms as freely as the manacles would admit. I looked curiously at him--a long, slender, wiry figure, with thin, corded neck, and twisted muscles showing on so much of his hairy breast as the open buckskin shirt exposed. The face was pointed and bony, and brown as leather. For the moment I could not place him; then his identity dawned on me. I stepped forward, and said: "Is that you, Enoch Wade?" He looked up at me, and nodded recognition, with no show of emotion. "It might have been my ghost, cap'n," he said, "if you hadn't hurried right along. These friends of yours were bent on spoiling a good man to make bad meat. They wouldn't listen to any kind of reason. Can I have a palaver with you, all by yourself?" "What does he mean by a 'palaver'?" asked the honest Swiss sheriff. I explained that it was a common enough Portuguese word, signifying "talk," which Enoch in his wanderings had picked up. Furthermore, I told Frey that I knew the man, and wished to speak with him apart, whereupon the sheriff and the soldier left us. "It is all in my eye--their hanging me," began Enoch, with a sardonic smile slowly relaxing his thin lips. "I wasn't fooled a minute by that." "Perhaps you are mistaken there, my man," I said, as sternly as I could. "Oh, no, not a bit! What's more, they wouldn't have caught me if I hadn't wanted to be caught. You know me. You have travelled with me. Honest Injun, now, do you take me for the kind of a man to be treed by a young Dutch muskrat-trapper if I have a mind not to be?" I had to admit that my knowledge of his resourceful nature had not prepared me for such an ignoble catastrophe, but I added that all the more his conduct mystified me. "Quite so!" he remarked, with another grim smile of complacency. "Sit down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all about it." The tale to which I listened during the next half-hour, full of deep interest as it was for me, would not bear repeating here at length. Its essential points were these: After Sir William's death Enoch had remained on at the Hall, not feeling particularly bound to the new baronet, but having a cat's attachment to the Hall itself. When Sir John finally resolved to avoid arrest by flight, Enoch had been in two minds about accompanying him, but had finally yielded to the flattering reliance placed by all upon the value and thoroughness of his knowledge as a woodsman. It was largely due to his skill that the party got safely through the great wilderness, and reached Montreal so soon. Since his arrival in Canada, however, things had not been at all to his liking. There was but one thought among all his refugee companions, which was to return to the Mohawk Valley and put their old neighbors to fire and sword--and for this Enoch had no inclination whatever. He had accordingly resisted all offers to enrol him in the Tory regiment which Sir John was raising in Canada, and had looked for an opportunity to get away quietly and without reproach. This chance had only come to him a week or so ago, when Philip Cross offered to pay him well to take two letters down the Valley--one to his servant Rab, the other to Mrs. Cross. He had accepted this errand, and had delivered the letters as in duty bound. There his responsibility ended. He had no intention to return, and had allowed himself to be arrested by a slow and uninventive young man, solely because it seemed the best way of achieving his purpose. "What is your purpose, Enoch?" "Well, to begin with, it is to make your hair stand on end. I started from Buck's Island, on the St. Lawrence, on the 9th of this month. Do you know who I left there? Seven hundred uniformed soldiers, English and Tory, with eight cannons, commanded by a British colonel--Sillinger they called him--and Sir John Johnson. They are coming to Oswego, where they will meet the Butlers with more Tories, and Dan Claus with five hundred Indians. Then the whole force is to march on Fort Stanwix, capture it, and come down the Valley!" You may guess how eagerly I listened to the details which Enoch gave--details of the gravest importance, which I must hasten to send west to Herkimer and east to Schuyler. When this vital talk was ended, I returned to the personal side of the matter with a final query: "But why get yourself arrested?" "Because I wanted to see you. My errand wasn't finished till I had given you Philip Cross's message. 'Tell that Dutchman,' he said, 'if you can contrive to do it without peril to yourself, that when I come into the Valley I will cut out his heart, and feed it to a Missisague dog!'"

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The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army. The whole forenoon of this eventful day was occupied in transmitting to the proper authorities the great tidings which had so fortuitously come to us. For this purpose, after breakfast, John Frey, who was the brigade major as well as sheriff, rode down to Caughnawaga with me, four soldiers bringing Enoch in our train. It was a busy morning at the Fonda house, where we despatched our business, only Jelles Fonda and his brother Captain Adam and the staunch old Samson Sammons being admitted to our counsels. Here Enoch repeated his story, telling now in addition that one-half of the approaching force was composed of Hanau Chasseurs--skilled marksmen recruited in Germany from the gamekeeper or forester class--and that Joseph Brant was expected to meet them at Oswego with the Iroquois war party, Colonel Claus having command of the Missisaguesor Hurons from the Far West. As he mentioned the names of various officers in Sir John's regiment of Tories, we ground our teeth with wrath. They were the names of men we had long known in the Valley--men whose brothers and kinsmen were still among us, some even holding commissions in our militia. Old Sammons could not restrain a snort of rage when the name of Hon-Yost Herkimer was mentioned in this list of men who wore now the traitor's "Royal Green" uniform, and carried commissions from King George to fight against their own blood. "You saw no Sammons in that damned snake's nest, I'll be bound!" he shouted fiercely at Enoch. "Nor any Fonda, either," said Major Jelles, as firmly. But then both bethought them that these were cruel words to say in the hearing of the stalwart John Frey, who could not help it that his brother, Colonel Hendrick, was on parole as a suspected Tory, and that another brother, Bernard, and a nephew, young Philip Frey, Hendrick's son, were with Johnson in Canada. So the family subject was dropped. More or less minute reports of all that Enoch revealed, according to the position of those for whom they were intended, were written out by me, and despatched by messenger to General Schuyler at Albany; to Brigadier-General Herkimer near the Little Falls; to Colonel Campbell at Cherry Valley; and to my old comrade Peter Gansevoort, now a full colonel, and since April the commandant at Fort Stanwix. Upon him the first brunt of the coming invasion would fall. He had under him only five hundred men--the Third New York Continentals--and I took it upon myself to urge now upon General Schuyler that more should be speeded to him. This work finally cleared away, and all done that was proper until the military head of Tryon County, Brigadier Herkimer, should take action, there was time to remember my own affairs. It had been resolved that no word of what we had learned should be made public. The haying had begun, and a panic now would work only disaster by interfering with this most important harvest a day sooner than need be. There was no longer any question of keeping Enoch in prison, but there was a real fear that if he were set at large he might reveal his secret. Hence John Frey suggested that I keep him under my eye, and this jumped with my inclination. Accordingly, when the noon-day heat was somewhat abated, we set out down the Valley road toward the Cedars. There was no horse for him, but he walked with the spring and tirelessness of a grey-hound, his hand on the pommel of my saddle. The four soldiers who had come down from Johnstown followed in our rear, keeping under the shade where they could, and picking berries by the way. The mysterious letter from Philip to his deserted wife lay heavily upon my thoughts. I could not ask Enoch if he knew its contents--which it turned out he did not--but I was unable to keep my mind from speculating upon them. During all these fourteen months Daisy and I had rarely spoken of her recreant ruffian of a husband--or, for that matter, of any other phase of her sad married life. There had been some little constraint between us for a time, after Mr. Stewart's childish babbling about us as still youth and maiden. He never happened to repeat it, and the embarrassment gradually wore away. But we had both been warned by it--if indeed I ought to speak of her as possibly needing such a warning--and by tacit consent the whole subject of her situation was avoided. I did not even tell her that I owed the worst and most lasting of my wounds to Philip. It would only have added to her grief, and impeded the freedom of my arm when the chance for revenge should come. That my heart had been all this while deeply tender toward the poor girl, I need hardly say. I tried to believe that I thought of her only as the dear sister of my childhood, and that I looked upon her when we met with no more than the fondness which may properly glow in a brother's eyes. For the most part I succeeded in believing it, but it is just to add that the neighborhood did not. More than once my mother had angered me by reporting that people talked of my frequent visits to the Cedars, and faint echoes of this gossip had reached my ears from other sources. "You did not stop to see Mistress Cross open her letter, then?" I asked Enoch. "No: why should I? Nothing was said about that. He paid me only to deliver it into her hands." "And what was his mood when he gave it to you?" "Why, it was what you might call the Madeira mood--his old accustomed temper. He had the hiccoughs, I recall, when he spoke with me. Most generally he does have them. Yet, speak the truth and shame the devil! he is sober two days to that Colonel Sillinger's one. If their expedition fails, it won't be for want of rum. They had twenty barrels when they started from La Chine, and it went to my heart to see men make such beasts of themselves." I could not but smile at this. "The last time I saw you before to-day," I said, "there could not well have been less than a quart of rum inside of you." "No doubt! But it is quite another thing to guzzle while your work is still in hand. That I never would do. And it is that which makes me doubt these British will win, in the long-run. Rum is good to rest upon--it is rest itself--when the labor is done; but it is ruin to drink it when your task is still ahead of you. To tell the truth, I could not bear to see these fellows drink, drink, drink, all day long, with all their hard fighting to come. It made me uneasy." "And is it your purpose to join us? We are the sober ones, you know." "Well, yes and no. I don't mind giving your side a lift--it's more my way of thinking than the other--and you seem to need it powerfully, too. But"--here he looked critically over my blue and buff, from cockade to boot-tops--"you don't get any uniform on me, and I don't join any regiment. I'd take my chance in the woods first. It suits you to a 't,' but it would gag me from the first minute." We talked thus until we reached the Cedars. I left Enoch and the escort without, and knocked at the door. I had to rap a second time before Molly Wemple appeared to let me in. "We were all up-stairs," she said, wiping her hot and dusty brow with her apron, "hard at it! I'll send her down to you. She needs a little breathing-spell." The girl was gone before I could ask what extra necessity for labor had fallen upon the household this sultry summer afternoon. Daisy came hurriedly to me, a moment later, and took both my hands in hers. She also bore signs of work and weariness. "Oh, I am _so_ glad you are come!" she said, eagerly. "Twice I have sent Tulp for you across to your mother's. It seemed as if you never would come." "Why, what is it, my girl? Is it about the letter from--from----" "You know, then!" "Only that a letter came to you yesterday from him. The messenger--he is an old friend of ours--told me that much, nothing more." Daisy turned at this and took a chair, motioning me to another. The pleased excitement at my arrival--apparently so much desired--was succeeded all at once by visible embarrassment. "Now that you are here, I scarcely know why I wanted you, or--or how to tell you what it is," she said, speaking slowly. "I was full of the idea that nothing could be done without your advice and help--and yet, now you have come, it seems that there is nothing left for you to say or do." She paused for a moment, then added: "You know we are going back to Cairncross." I stared at her, aghast. The best thing I could say was, "Nonsense!" She smiled wearily. "So I might have known you would say. But it is the truth, none the less." "You must be crazy!" "No, Douw, only very, very wretched!" The poor girl's voice faltered as she spoke, and I thought I saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. She had borne so brave and calm a front through all her trouble, that this suggestion of a sob wrung my heart with the cruelty of a novel sorrow. I drew my chair nearer to her. "Tell me about it all, Daisy--if you can." Her answer was to impulsively take a letter from her pocket and hand it to me. She would have recalled it an instant later. "No--give it me back," she cried. "I forgot! There are things in it you should not see." But even as I held it out to her, she changed her mind once again. "No--read it," she said, sinking back in her chair; "it can make no difference--between _us_. You might as well know all!" The "all" could not well have been more hateful. I smoothed out the folded sheet over my knee, and read these words, written in a loose, bold character, with no date or designation of place, and with the signature scrawled grandly like the sign-manual of a duke, at least: "Madam:--It is my purpose to return to Cairncross forthwith, though you are not to publish it. "If I fail to find you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall act accordingly. "I am fully informed of your behavior in quitting my house the instant my back was turned, and in consorting publicly with my enemies, and with ruffian foes to law and order generally. "All these rebels and knaves will shortly be shot or hanged, including without fail your Dutch gallant, who, I am told, now calls himself a major. His daily visits to you have all been faithfully reported to me. After his neck has been properly twisted, I may be in a better humor to listen to such excuses as you can offer in his regard, albeit I make no promise. "I despatch by this same express my commands to Rab, which will serve as your further instructions. "Philip." One clearly had a right to time for reflection, after having read such a letter as this. I turned the sheet over and over in my hands, re-reading lines here and there under pretence of study, and preserving silence, until finally she asked me what I thought of it all. Then I had perforce to speak my mind. "I think, if you wish to know," I said, deliberately, "that this husband of yours is the most odious brute God ever allowed to live!" There came now in her reply a curious confirmation of the familiar saying, that no man can ever comprehend a woman. A long life's experience has convinced me that the simplest and most direct of her sex must be, in the inner workings of her mind, an enigma to the wisest man that ever existed; so impressed am I with this fact that several times in the course of this narrative I have been at pains to disavow all knowledge of why the women folk of my tale did this or that, only recording the fact that they did do it; and thus to the end of time, I take it, the world's stories must be written. This is what Daisy actually said: "But do you not see running through every line of the letter, and but indifferently concealed, the confession that he is sorry for what he has done, and that he still loves me?" "I certainly see nothing of the kind!" She had the letter by heart. "Else why does he wish me to return to his home?" she asked. "And you see he is grieved at my having been friendly with those who are not his friends; that he would not be if he cared nothing for me. Note, too, how at the close, even when he has shown that by the reports that have reached him he is justified in suspecting me, he as much as says that he will forgive me." "Yes--perhaps--when once he has had his sweet fill of seeing me kicking at the end of a rope! Truly I marvel, Daisy, how you can be so blind, after all the misery and suffering this ruffian has caused you." "He is my husband, Douw," she said, simply, as if that settled everything. "Yes, he is your husband--a noble and loving husband, in truth! He first makes your life wretched at home--you know you _were_ wretched, Daisy! Then he deserts you, despoiling your house before your very eyes, humiliating you in the hearing of your servants, and throwing the poverty of your parents in your face as he goes! He stops away two years--having you watched meanwhile, it seems--yet never vouchsafing you so much as a word of message! Then at last, when these coward Tories have bought help enough in Germany and in the Indian camps to embolden them to come down and look their neighbors in the face, he is pleased to write you this letter, abounding in coarse insults in every sentence. He tells you of his coming as he might notify a tavern wench. He hectors and orders you as if you were his slave. He pleasantly promises the ignominious death of your chief friends. And all this you take kindly--sifting his brutal words in search for even the tiniest grain of manliness. My faith, I am astonished at you! I credited you with more spirit." She was not angered at this outburst, which had in it more harsh phrases than she had heard in all her life from me before, but, after a little pause, said to me quite calmly: "I know you deem him all bad. You never allowed him any good quality." "You know him better than I--a thousand times better, more's the pity. Very well! I rest the case with you. Tell me, out of all your knowledge of the man, what 'good quality' he ever showed, how he showed it, and when!" "Have you forgotten that he saved my life?" "No; but he forgot it--or rather made it the subject of taunts, in place of soft thoughts." "And he loved me--ah! he truly did--for a little!" "Yes, he loved you! So he did his horses, his kennel, his wine cellar; and a hundred-fold more he loved himself and his cursed pride." "How you hate him!" "Hate him? Yes! Have I not been given cause?" "He often said that he was not in fault for throwing Tulp over the gulf-side. He knew no reason, he avowed, why you should have sought a quarrel with him that day, and forced it upon him, there in the gulf; and as for Tulp--why, the foolish boy ran at him. Is it not so?" "Who speaks of Tulp?" I asked, impatiently. "If he had tossed all Ethiopia over the cliff, and left me _you_--I--I----" The words were out! I bit my tongue in shamed regret, and dared not let my glance meet hers. Of all things in the world, this was precisely what I should not have uttered--what I wanted least to say. But it had been said, and I was covered with confusion. The necessity of saying something to bridge over this chasm of insensate indiscretion tugged at my senses, and finally--after what had seemed an age of silence--I stammered on: "What I mean is, we never liked each other. Why, the first time we ever met, we fought. You cannot remember it, but we did. He knocked me into the ashes. And then there was our dispute at Albany--in the Patroon's mansion, you will recall. And then at Quebec. I have never told you of this," I went on, recklessly, "but we met that morning in the snow, as Montgomery fell. He knew me, dark as it still was, and we grappled. This scar here," I pointed to a reddish seam across my temple and cheek, "this was his doing." I have said that I could never meet Daisy in these days without feeling that, mere chronology to the opposite notwithstanding, she was much the older and more competent person of the two. This sense of juvenility overwhelmed me now, as she calmly rose and put her hand on my shoulder, and took a restful, as it were maternal, charge of me and my mind. "My dear Douw," she said, with as fine an assumption of quiet, composed superiority as if she had not up to that moment been talking the veriest nonsense, "I understand just what you mean. Do not think, if I seem sometimes thoughtless or indifferent, that I am not aware of your feelings, or that I fail to appreciate the fondness you have always given me. I know what you would have said----" "It was exactly what I most of all would _not_ have said," I broke in with, in passing. "Even so. But do you think, silly boy, that the thought was new to me? Of course we shall never speak of it again, but I am not altogether sorry it was referred to. It gives me the chance to say to you"--her voice softened and wavered here, as she looked around the dear old room, reminiscent in every detail of our youth--"to say to you that, wherever my duty may be, my heart is here, here under this roof where I was so happy, and where the two best men I shall ever know loved me so tenderly, so truly, as daughter and sister." There were tears in her eyes at the end, but she was calm and self-sustained enough. She was very firmly of opinion that it was her duty to go to Cairncross at once, and nothing I could say sufficed to dissuade her. So it turned out that the afternoon and evening of this important day were devoted to convoying across to Cairncross the whole Cedars establishment, I myself accompanying Daisy and Mr. Stewart in the carriage around by the Johnstown road. Rab was civil almost to the point of servility, but, to make assurance doubly sure, I sent up a guard of soldiers to the house that very night, brought Master Rab down to be safely locked up by the sheriff at Johnstown, and left her Enoch instead.

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From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket. And now, with all the desperate energy of men who risked everything that mortal can have in jeopardy, we prepared to meet the invasion. The tidings of the next few days but amplified what Enoch had told us. Thomas Spencer, the half-breed, forwarded full intelligence of the approaching force; Oneida runners brought in stories of its magnitude, with which the forest glades began to be vocal; Colonel Gansevoort, working night and day to put into a proper state of defence the dilapidated fort at the Mohawk's headwaters, sent down urgent demands for supplies, for more men, and for militia support. At the most, General Schuyler could spare him but two hundred men, for Albany was in sore panic at the fall of Ticonderoga and the menace of Burgoyne's descent in force through the Champlain country. We watched this little troop march up the river road in a cloud of dust, and realized that this was the final thing Congress and the State could do for us. What more was to be done we men of the Valley must do for ourselves. It was almost welcome, this grim, blood-red reality of peril which now stared us in the face, so good and wholesome a change did it work in the spirit of the Valley. Despondency vanished; the cavillers who had disparaged Washington and Schuyler, sneered at stout Governor Clinton, and doubted all things save that matters would end badly, ceased their grumbling and took heart; men who had wavered and been lukewarm or suspicious came forward now and threw in their lot with their neighbors. And if here and there on the hillsides were silent houses whence no help was to come, and where, if the enemy once broke through, he would be welcomed the more as a friend if his hands were spattered with our blood--the consciousness, I say, that we had these base traitors in our midst only gave us a deeper resolution not to fail. General Herkimer presently issued his order to the Tryon militia, apprising them of the imminent danger, and summoning all between sixteen and sixty to arms. There was no doubt now where the blow would fall. Cherry Valley, Unadilla, and the Sacondaga settlements no longer feared raids from the wilderness upon their flanks. The invaders were coming forward in a solid mass, to strike square at the Valley's head. There we must meet them! It warms my old heart still to recall the earnestness and calm courage of that summer fortnight of preparation. All up and down the Valley bottom-lands the haying was in progress. Young and old, rich and poor, came out to carry forward this work in common. The meadows were taken in their order, some toiling with scythe and sickle, others standing guard at the forest borders of the field to protect the workers. It was a goodly yield that year, I remember, and never in my knowledge was the harvest gathered and housed better or more thoroughly than in this period of genuine danger, when no man knew whose cattle would feed upon his hay a month hence. The women and girls worked beside the men, and brought them cooling drinks of ginger, molasses, and vinegar, and spread tables of food in the early evening shade for the weary gleaners. These would march home in bodies, a little later, those with muskets being at the front and rear; and then, after a short night's honest sleep, the rising sun would find them again at work upon some other farm. There was something very good and strengthening in this banding together to get the hay in for all. During twenty years of peace and security, we had grown selfish and solitary--each man for himself. We had forgotten, in the strife for individual gain and preferment, the true meaning of that fine old word "neighbor"--the husbandman, or _boer_, who is nigh, and to whom in nature you first look for help and sympathy and friendship. It was in this fortnight of common peril that we saw how truly we shared everything, even life itself, and how good it was to work for as well as to fight for one another--each for all, and all for each. Forty years have gone by since that summer, yet still I seem to discover in the Mohawk Valley the helpful traces of that fortnight's harvesting in common. The poor _bauers_ and squatters from the bush came out then and did their share of the work, and we went back with them into their forest clearings and beaver-flies and helped them get in their small crops, in turn. And to this day there is more brotherly feeling here between the needy and the well-to-do than I know of anywhere else. When the barns were filled, and the sweet-smelling stacks outside properly built and thatched, the scythe was laid aside for the musket, the sickle for the sword and pistol. All up the Valley the drums' rattle drowned the drone of the locusts in the stubble. The women moulded bullets now and filled powder-horns instead of making drinks for the hay-field. There was no thought anywhere save of preparation for the march. Guns were cleaned, flints replaced, new hickory ramrods whittled out, and the grindstones threw off sparks under the pressure of swords and spear-heads. Even the little children were at work rubbing goose-grease into the hard leather of their elders' foot-gear, against the long tramp to Fort Stanwix. By this time, the first of August, we knew more about the foe we were to meet. The commander whom Enoch had heard called Sillinger was learned to be one Colonel St. Leger, a British officer of distinction, which might have been even greater if he had not embraced the Old-World military vice of his day--grievous drunkenness. The gathering of Indians at Oswego under Claus and Brant was larger than the first reports had made it. The regular troops, both British and German, intended for our destruction, were said to alone outnumber the whole militia force which we could hope to oppose to them. But most of all we thought of the hundreds of our old Tory neighbors, who were bringing this army down upon us to avenge their own fancied wrongs; and when we thought of them we moodily rattled the bullets in our deerskin bags, and bent the steel more fiercely upon the whirling, hissing stone. I have read much of war, both ancient and modern. I declare solemnly that in no chronicle of warfare in any country, whether it be of great campaigns like those of Marlborough and the late King of Prussia, and that strange Buonaparte, half god, half devil, who has now been caged at last at St. Helena; of brutal invasions by a foreign enemy, as when the French overran and desolated the Palatinate; or of buccaneering and piratical enterprise by the Spaniards and Portuguese; or of the fighting of savages or of the Don Cossacks--in none of these records, I aver, can you find so much wanton baseness and beast-like bloodthirstiness as these native-born Tories showed toward us. Mankind has not been capable of more utter cruelty and wickedness than were in their hearts. Beside them the lowest painted heathen in their train was a Christian, the most ignorant Hessian peasant was a nobleman. Ever since my talk with Colonel Dayton I had been trying to look upon these Tories as men who, however mistaken, were acting from a sense of duty. For a full year it seemed as if I had succeeded; indeed, more than once, so temperately did I bring myself in my new philosophy to think of them, I was warned by my elders that it would be better for me to keep my generous notions to myself. But now, when the stress came, all this philanthropy fell away. These men were leading down to their old home an army of savages and alien soldiers; they were boasting that we, their relatives or whilom school-fellows, neighbors, friends, should be slaughtered like rats in a pit; their commander, St. Leger, published at their instigation general orders offering his Indians twenty dollars apiece for the scalps of our men, women, and children! How could one pretend not to hate such monsters? At least I did not pretend any longer, but worked with an enthusiasm I had never known before to marshal our yeomanry together. Under the pelting July sun, in the saddle from morning till night--to Cherry Valley, to Stone Arabia, to the obscure little groups of cabins in the bush, to the remote settlements on the Unadilla and the East Creek--organizing, suggesting, pleading, sometimes, I fear, also cursing a little, my difficult work was at last done. The men of the Mohawk district regiment, who came more directly under my eye, were mustered at Caughnawaga, and some of the companies that were best filled despatched forward under Captain Adam Fonda, who was all impatience to get first to Fort Dayton, the general rendezvous. In all we were likely to gather together in this regiment one hundred and thirty men, and this was better than a fortnight ago had seemed possible. They were sturdy fellows for the most part, tall, deep-chested, and hard of muscle. They came from the high forest clearings of Kingsland and Tribes Hill, from the lower Valley flatlands near to Schenectady, from the bush settlements scattered back on Aries Creek, from the rich farms and villages of Johnstown, and Caughnawaga, and Spraker's. There were among them all sorts and conditions of men, thrifty and thriftless, cautious and imprudent, the owners of slaves along with poor yokels of scarcely higher estate than the others' niggers. Here were posted thick in the roll-call such names as Fonda, Starin, Yates, Sammons, Gardenier, and Wemple. Many of the officers, and some few of the men, had rough imitations of uniform, such as home-made materials and craft could command, but these varied largely in style and color. The great majority of the privates wore simply their farm homespun, gray and patched, and some had not even their hat-brims turned up with a cockade. But they had a look on their sunburned, gnarled, and honest faces which the Butlers and Johnsons might well have shrunk from. These men of the Mohawk district spoke more Dutch than anything else, though there were both English and High German tongues among them. They had more old acquaintances among the Tories than had their Palatine friends up the river, for this had been the Johnsons' own district. Hence, though in numbers we were smaller than the regiments that mustered above at Stone Arabia and Zimmerman's, at Canajoharie and Cherry Valley, we were richer in hate. At daybreak on August 2, the remaining companies of this regiment were to start on their march up the Valley. I rode home to my mother's house late in the afternoon of the 1st, to spend what might be a last night under her roof. On the morrow, Samson Sammons and Jelles Fonda, members of the Committee of Safety, and I, could easily overtake the column on our horses. I was greatly perplexed and unsettled in mind about Daisy and my duty toward her, and, though I turned this over in my thoughts the whole distance, I could come to no satisfactory conclusion. On the one hand, I yearned to go and say farewell to her; on the other, it was not clear, after that letter of her husband's, that I could do this without unjustly prejudicing her as a wife. For the wife of this viper she still was, and who could tell how soon she might not be in his power again? I was still wrestling with this vexatious question when I came to my mother's house. I tied the horse to the fence till Tulp should come out for him, and went in, irresolutely. At every step it seemed to me as if I ought instead to be going toward Cairncross. Guess my surprise at being met, almost upon the threshold, by the very woman of whom of all others I had been thinking! My mother and she had apparently made up their differences, and stood together waiting for me. "Were you going away, Douw, without coming to see me--to say good-by?" asked Daisy, with a soft reproach in her voice. "Your mother tells me of your starting to-morrow--for the battle." I took her hand, and, despite my mother's presence, continued to hold it in mine. This was bold, but there was little enough of bravery in my words. "Yes, we go to-morrow; I wanted to come--all day I have been thinking of little else--yet I feared that my visit might--might----" Very early in this tale it was my pride to explain that my mother was a superior woman. Faults of temper she may have had, and eke narrow prejudices on sundry points. But she had also great good sense, which she showed now by leaving the room. "I came to you instead, you see," my dear girl said, trying to smile, yet with a quivering lip; "I could not have slept, I could not have borne to live almost, it seems, if I had let you ride off without a word, without a sign." We stood thus facing each other for a moment--mumbling forth some commonplaces of explanation, she looking intently into my eyes. Then with a sudden deep outburst of anguish, moaning piteously, "_Must you truly go_?" she came, nay, almost fell into my arms, burying her face on my shoulder and weeping violently. It is not meet that I should speak much of the hour that followed. I would, in truth, pass over it wholly in silence--as being too sacred a thing for aught of disclosure or speculation--were it not that some might, in this case, think lightly of the pure and good woman who, unduly wrung by years of grief, disappointment, and trial, now, from very weariness of soul, sobbed upon my breast. And that would be intolerable. We sat side by side in the little musty parlor. I did not hold her hand, or so much as touch her gown with my knee or foot. We talked of impersonal things--of the coming invasion, of the chances of relieving Fort Stanwix, of the joy it would be to me if I could bear a good part in rescuing my dear friend Gansevoort, its brave young commandant. I told her about Peter, and of how we two had consorted together in Albany, and later in Quebec. And this led us back--as we had so often returned before during these latter hateful months--to the sweet companionship of our own childhood and youth. She, in turn, talked of Mr. Stewart, who seemed less strong and contented in his new home at Cairncross. He had much enjoyment now, she said, in counting over a rosary of beads which had been his mother's, reiterating a prayer for each one in the Romish fashion, and he was curiously able to remember these long-disused formulas of his boyhood, even while he forgot the things of yesterday. I commented upon this, pointing out to her that this is the strange quality of the Roman faith--that its forms and customs, learned in youth, remain in the affections of Papists to their dying day, even after many years of neglect and unbelief; whereas in the severe, Spanish-drab Protestantism to which I was reared, if one once loses interest in the tenets themselves, there is nothing whatever left upon which the mind may linger pleasantly. Thus our conversation ran--decorous and harmless enough, in all conscience. And if the thoughts masked by these words were all of a forbidden subject; if the very air about us was laden with sweet influences; if, when our eyes met, each read in the other's glance a whole world of meaning evaded in our talk--were we to blame? I said "no" then, in my own heart, honestly. I say it now. Why, think you! This love of ours was as old as our intelligence itself. Looking back, we could trace its soft touch upon every little childish incident we had in common memory; the cadence of its music bore forward, tenderly, sweetly, the song of all that had been happy in our lives. We were man and woman now, wise and grave by reason of sorrow and pain and great trials. These had come upon us both because neither of us had frankly said, at a time when to have said it would have been to alter all, "I love you!" And this we must not say to each other even now, by all the bonds of mutual honor and self-respect. But not any known law, human or divine, could hold our thoughts in leash. So we sat and talked of common things, calmly and without restraint, and our minds were leagues away, in fields of their own choosing, amid sunshine and flowers and the low chanting of love's cherubim. We said farewell, instinctively, before my mother returned. I held her hands in mine, and, as if she had been a girl again, gently kissed the white forehead she as gently inclined to me. "Poor old father is to burn candles for your safety," she said, with a soft smile, "and I will pray too. Oh, do spare yourself! Come back to us!" "I feel it in my bones," I answered, stoutly. "Fear nothing, I shall come back." The tall, bright-eyed, shrewd old dame, my mother, came in at this, and Daisy consented to stop for supper with us, but not to spend the night with one of my sisters as was urged. I read her reason to be that she shrank from a second and public farewell in the morning. The supper was almost a cheery meal. The women would have readily enough made it doleful, I fancy, but my spirits were too high for that. There were birds singing in my heart. My mother from time to time looked at me searchingly, as if to guess the cause of this elation, but I doubt she was as mystified as I then thought. At twilight I stood bareheaded and watched Daisy drive away, with Enoch and Tulp as a mounted escort. The latter was also to remain with her during my absence--and Major Mauverensen almost envied his slave.

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The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton. I shall not easily forget the early breakfast next morning, or the calm yet serious air with which my mother and two unmarried sisters went about the few remaining duties of preparing for my departure. For all they said, they might have been getting me ready for a fishing excursion, but it would be wrong to assume that they did not think as gravely as if they had flooded the kitchen with tears. Little has been said of these good women in the course of my story, for the reason that Fate gave them very little to do with it, and the narrative is full long as it is, without the burden of extraneous personages. But I would not have it thought that we did not all love one another, and stand up for one another, because we kept cool about it. During this last year, in truth, my mother and I had seen more of each other than for all the time before since my infancy, and in the main had got on admirably together. Despite the affectation of indifference in her letter, she did not lack for pride in my being a major; it is true that she exhibited little of this emotion to me, fearing its effect upon my vanity, doubtless, but her neighbors and gossips heard a good deal from it, I fancy. It was in her nature to be proud, and she had right to be; for what other widow in the Valley, left in sore poverty with a household of children, had, like her, by individual exertions, thrift, and keen management, brought all that family well up, purchased and paid for her own homestead and farm, and laid by enough for a comfortable old age? Not one! She therefore was justified in respecting herself and exacting respect from others, and it pleased me that she should have satisfaction as well in my advancement. But she did ruffle me sometimes by seeking to manage my business for me--she never for a moment doubting that it was within her ability to make a much better major than I was--and by ever and anon selecting some Valley maiden for me to marry. This last became a veritable infliction, so that I finally assured her I should never marry--my heart being irrevocably fixed upon a hopelessly unattainable ideal. I desired her to suppose that this referred to some Albany woman, but I was never skilful in indirection, and I do not believe that she was at all deceived. The time came soon enough when I must say good-by. My carefully packed bags were carried out and fastened to the saddle. Tall, slender, high-browed Margaret sadly sewed a new cockade of her own making upon my hat, and round-faced, red-cheeked Gertrude tied my sash and belt about me in silence. I kissed them both with more feeling than in all their lives before I had known for them, and when my mother followed me to the horse-block, and embraced me again, the tears could not be kept back. After all, I was her only boy, and it was to war in its deadliest form that I was going. And then the thought came to me--how often in that cruel week it had come to fathers, husbands, brothers, in this sunny Valley of ours, leaving homes they should never see again! --that nothing but our right arms could save these women, my own flesh and blood, from the hatchet and scalping-knife. I swung myself into the saddle sternly at this thought, and gripped the reins hard and pushed my weight upon the stirrups. By all the gods, I should not take this ride for nothing! "Be of good heart, mother," I said, between my teeth. "We shall drive the scoundrels back--such as we do not feed to the wolves." "Ay! And do you your part!" said this fine old daughter of the men who through eighty years of warfare broke the back of Spain. "Remember that you are a Van Hoorn!" "I shall not forget." "And is that young Philip Cross--_her_ husband--with Johnson's crew?" "Yes, he is." "Then if he gets back to Canada alive, you are not the man your grandfather Baltus was!" These were her last words, and they rang in my ears long after I had joined Fonda and Sammons at Caughnawaga, and we had started westward to overtake the regiment. If I could find this Philip Cross, there was nothing more fixed in my mind than the resolve to kill him. We rode for the most part without conversation along the rough, sun-baked road, the ruts of which had here and there been trampled into fine dust by the feet of the soldiers marching before. When we passed houses near the highway, women and children came to the doors to watch us; other women and children we could see working in the gardens or among the rows of tall corn. But save for now and then an aged gaffer, sitting in the sunshine with his pipe, there were no men. All those who could bear a musket were gone to meet the invasion. Two years of war in other parts had drained the Valley of many of its young men, who could not bear peace at home while there were battles at the North or in the Jerseys, and were serving in every army which Congress controlled, from Champlain and the Delaware to Charleston. And now this levy for home defence had swept the farms clean. We had late dinner, I remember, at the house of stout old Peter Wormuth, near the Palatine church. Both he and his son Matthew--a friend of mine from boyhood, who was to survive Oriskany only to be shot down near Cherry Valley next year by Joseph Brant--had of course gone forward with the Palatine militia. The women gave us food and drink, and I recall that Matthew's young wife, who had been Gertrude Shoemaker and was General Herkimer's niece, wept bitterly when we left, and we shouted back to her promises to keep watch over her husband. It is curious to think that when I next saw this young woman, some years later, she was the wife of Major John Frey. It was a stiff ride on to overtake the stalwart yeomen of our regiment, which we did not far from a point opposite the upper Canajoharie Castle. The men had halted here, weary after their long, hot march, and were sprawling on the grass and in the shade of the bushes. The sun was getting low on the distant hills of the Little Falls, and there came up a refreshing stir of air from the river. Some were for encamping here for the night; others favored going on to the Falls. It annoyed me somewhat to find that this question was apparently to be left to the men themselves, Colonel Visscher not seeming able or disposed to decide for himself. Across the stream, in the golden August haze, we could see the roofs of the Mohawks' village--or castle as they called it. Some of the men idly proposed to go over and stampede or clear out this nest of red vermin, but the idea was not seriously taken up. Perhaps if it had been, much might have been changed for the better. Nothing is clearer than that Molly Brant, who with her bastard brood and other Mohawk women was then living there, sent up an emissary to warn her brother Joseph of our coming, and that it was upon this information he acted to such fell purpose. Doubtless if we had gone over and seized the castle and its inmates then, that messenger would never have been sent. But we are all wise when we look backward. * * * * * By the afternoon of the next day, August 3, the mustering at Fort Dayton was complete. No one of the thirty-three companies of Tryon County militia was absent, and though some sent barely a score of men, still no more were to be expected Such as the little army was, it must suffice. There were of more or less trained militiamen nearly six hundred. Of artisan volunteers, of farmers who had no place in the regular company formations, and of citizens whose anxiety to be present was unfortunately much in excess of their utility, there were enough to bring the entire total up to perhaps two-score over eight hundred. Our real and effective fighting force was about half-way between these two figures--I should say about seven hundred strong. It was the first time that the whole Tryon militia had been gathered together, and we looked one another over with curiosity. Though called into common action by a common peril, the nearness of which made the Mohawk Valley seem a very small place and its people all close neighbors, the men assembled here represented the partial settlement of a country larger than any one of several European monarchies. As there were all sorts and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen different types, there were Dutch, there were Irish and Scotch Presbyterians, there were stray French Huguenots, and even Englishmen, and here and there a Yankee settler from New England. Many there were who with difficulty understood each other, as when the Scotch Campbells and Clydes of Cherry Valley, for example, essayed to talk with the bush-Germans from above Zimmerman's. Notable among the chief men of the communities here, so to speak, huddled together for safety, was old Isaac Paris, the foremost man of Stone Arabia. He should now be something over sixty years of age, yet had children at home scarce out of the cradle, and was so hale and strong in bearing that he seemed no less fit for battle and hardship than his strapping son Peter, who was not yet eighteen. These two laid their lives down together within this dread week of which I write. I shall never forget how fine and resolute a man the old colonel looked, with his good clothes of citizen make, as became a member of the State Senate and one of the Committee of Safety, yet with as martial a bearing as any. He was a Frenchman from Strasbourg, but spoke like a German; no man of us all looked forward to fighting with greater appetite, though he had been always a quiet merchant and God-fearing, peaceful burgher. Colonel Ebenezer Cox, a somewhat arrogant and solitary man for whom I had small liking, now commanded the Canajoharie regiment in place of Herkimer the Brigadier-General; there were at the head of the other regiments stout Colonel Peter Bellinger, the capable and determined Colonel Jacob Klock, and our own Colonel Frederick Visscher. Almost all of the Committee of Safety were here--most of them being also officers in the militia; but others, like Paris, John Dygert, Samson Sammons, Jacob Snell, and Samuel Billington, coming merely as lookers-on. In short, no well-known Whig of the Valley seemed absent as we looked the gathering over, and scarcely a familiar family name was lacking on our lists, which it was now my business to check off. Whole households of strong men marched together. There were nine Snells, all relatives, in the patriot ranks; so far as I can remember, there were five Bellingers, five Seebers, five Wagners, and five Wollovers--and it may well be five of more than one other family. The men of the different settlements formed groups by themselves at the first, and arranged their own separate camping-places for the night. But soon, as was but natural, they discovered acquaintances from other parts, and began to mingle, sitting in knots or strolling about the outer palisades or on the clearing beyond. The older men who had borne a part in the French war told stories of that time, which, indeed, had now a new, deep interest for us, not only in that we were to face an invading force greater and more to be dreaded than was Bellêtre's, but because we were encamped on historic ground. From the gentle knoll upon which the block-house and stockade of Fort Dayton were now reared we could see the site of that first little Palatine settlement that had then been wiped so rudely from the face of the earth; and our men revived memories of that dreadful night, and talked of them in a low voice as the daylight faded. The scene affected me most gravely. I looked at the forest-clad range of northern hills over which the French and Indian horde stole in the night, and tried to picture their stealthy approach in my mind. Below us, flowing tranquilly past the willow-hedged farms of the German Flatts settlers, lay the Mohawk. The white rippling overcast on the water marked the shallow ford through which the panic-stricken refugees crowded in affright in the wintry darkness, and where, in the crush, that poor forgotten woman, the widow of an hour, was trampled under foot, swept away by the current, drowned! How miraculous it seemed that her baby girl should have been saved, should have been brought to Mr. Stewart's door, and placed in the very sanctuary of my life, by the wilful freak of a little English boy! And how marvellous that this self-same boy, her husband now, should be among the captains of a new and more sinister invasion of our Valley, and that I should be in arms with my neighbors to stay his progress! Truly here was food enough for thought. But there was little time for musing. After supper, when most of the rest were free to please themselves, to gossip, to set night-lines in the river against breakfast, or to carve rough initials on their powder-horns in emulation of the art-work displayed by the ingenious Petrie boys, I was called to the council held by General Herkimer in one of the rooms of the fort. There were present some of those already mentioned, and I think that Colonel Wesson, the Massachusetts officer whose troops garrisoned the place, was from courtesy also invited to take part, though if he was there he said nothing. Thomas Spencer, the Seneca half-breed blacksmith, who had throughout been our best friend, had come down, and with him was Skenandoah, the war-chief of the Oneidas, whom Dominie Kirkland had kept in our interest. The thing most talked of, I remember, was the help that these Oneidas could render us. General Schuyler had all along shrunk from the use of savages on the Continental side, and hence had required only friendly neutrality of the Oneidas, whose chief villages lay between us and the foe. But these Indians now saw clearly, that, if the invasion succeeded, they would be exterminated not a whit the less ruthlessly by their Iroquois brothers because they had held aloof. In the grim code of the savage, as in the softened law of the Christian, those who were not for him were against him. So the noble old Oneida war-chief had come to us to say that his people, standing as it were between the devil and the deep sea, preferred to at least die like men, fighting for their lives. Skenandoah was reputed even then to be seventy years of age, but he had the square shoulders, full, corded neck, and sharp glance of a man of forty. Only last year he died, at a great age--said to be one hundred and ten years--and was buried on Clinton Hill beside his good friend Kirkland, whom for half a century he had loved so well. There were no two opinions in the council: let the Oneidas join us with their war-party, by all means. After this had been agreed upon, other matters came up--the quantity of stores we should take, the precedence of the regiments, the selection of the men to be sent ahead to apprise Gansevoort of our approach. But these do not concern the story. It was after this little gathering had broken up, and the candles been blown out, that General Herkimer put his hand on my shoulder and said, in his quaint German dialect: "Come, walk with me outside the fort." We went together across the parade in the growing dusk. Most of those whom we passed recognized my companion, and greeted him--more often, I am bound to say, with "Guten Abend, Honikol!" than with the salute due to his rank. There was, indeed, very little notion of discipline in this rough, simple militia gathering. We walked outside the ditch to a grassy clearing toward the Flatts where we could pace back and forth without listeners, and yet could see the sentries posted at the corners of the forest enclosure. Then the honest old Brigadier laid open his heart to me. "I wish to God we were well out of this all," he said, almost gloomily. I was taken aback at this. Dejection was last to be looked for in this brave, stout-hearted old frontier fighter. I asked, "What is wrong?" feeling that surely there must be some cause for despondency I knew not of. " _I_ am wrong," he said, simply. "I do not understand you, Brigadier." "Say rather that _they_, who ought to know me better, do not understand me." "They? Whom do you mean?" "All these men about us--Isaac Paris, Ebenezer Cox the colonel of my own regiment, Fritz Visscher, and many more. I can see it--they suspect me. Nothing could be worse than that." "Suspect _you_, Brigadier! It is pure fancy! You are dreaming!" "No, I am very much awake, young man. You have not heard them--I have! It has been as much as flung in my face to-day that my brother Hon-Yost is a colonel with Johnson--up yonder." The little man pointed westward with his hand to where the last red lights of day were paling over the black line of trees. "He is with them," he said, bitterly, "and I am blamed for it. Then, too, my brother Hendrick hides himself away in Stone Arabia, and is not of us, and his son _is_ with the Tories--up yonder." "But your brother George is here with us, as true a man as will march to-morrow." "Then I have a sister married to Dominie Rosencranz, and he is a Tory; and another married to Hendrick Frey, and _he_ is a Tory, too. All this is thrown in my teeth. I do not pass two men with their heads together but I feel they are talking of this." "Why should they? You have two other brothers-in-law here in camp--Peter Bellinger and George Bell. You imagine a vain thing, Brigadier. Believe me, I have seen or heard no hint of this." "You would not. You are an officer of the line--the only one here. Besides, you are Schuyler's man. They would not talk before you." "But I am Valley born, Valley bred, as much as any of you. Wherein am I different from the others? Why should they keep me in the dark? They are all my friends, just as--if you would only believe it--they are yours as well." "Young man," said the General, in a low, impressive voice, and filling and lighting his pipe as he slowly spoke, "if you come back alive, and if you get to be of my age, you will know some things that you don't know now. Danger makes men brave; it likewise makes them selfish and jealous. We are going out together, all of us, to try what, with God's help, we can do. Behind us, down the river, are our wives or our sweethearts; some of you leave children, others leave mothers and sisters. We are going forward to save them from death or worse than death, and to risk our lives for them and for our homes. Yet, I tell you candidly, there are men here--back here in this fort--who would almost rather see us fail, than see me win my rank in the State line." "I cannot credit that." "Then--why else should they profess to doubt me? Why should they bring up my brothers' names to taunt me with their treason?" Alas! I could not tell. We walked up and down, I remember, until long after darkness fell full upon us, and the stars were all aglow--I trying my best to dissuade the honest Brigadier from his gloomy conviction. To be frank, although he doubtless greatly exaggerated the feeling existing against him, it to a degree did exist. The reasons for it are not difficult of comprehension. There were not a few officers in our force who were better educated than bluff, unlettered old Honikol Herkimer, and who had seen something of the world outside our Valley. It nettled their pride to be under a plain little German, who spoke English badly, and could not even spell his own name twice alike. There were at work under the surface, too, old trade and race jealousies, none the less strong because those upon whom they acted scarcely realized their presence. The Herkimers were the great family on the river from the Little Falls westward, and there were ancient rivalries, unexpressed but still potent, between them and families down the Valley. Thus, when some of the Herkimers and their connections--a majority, for that matter--either openly joined the enemy or held coldly apart from us, it was easy for these jealous promptings to take the form of doubt and suspicions as to the whole-hearted loyalty of the Brigadier himself. Once begun, these cruelly unjust suspicions rankled in men's minds and spread. All this I should not mention were it not the key to the horrible tragedy which followed. It is this alone which explains how a trained Indian fighter, a veteran frontiersman like Herkimer, was spurred and stung into rushing headlong upon the death-trap, as if he had been any ignorant and wooden-headed Braddock. We started on the march westward next day, the 4th, friendly Indians bringing us news that the van of the enemy had appeared on the evening of the 2d before Fort Stanwix, and had already begun an investment. We forded the river at Fort Schuyler, just below where Utica now stands, and pushed slowly forward through the forest, over the rude and narrow road, to the Oneida village of Oriska, something to the east of the large creek which bears the name Oriskany. Here we halted a second time, encamping at our leisure, and despatching, on the evening of the 5th, Adam Helmer and two other scouts to penetrate to the fort and arrange a sortie by the garrison, simultaneous with our attack.

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"The Blood Be on Your Heads." A bright, hot sun shone upon us the next morning--the never-to-be-forgotten 6th. There would have been small need for any waking rattle of the drums; the sultry heat made all willing to rise from the hard, dry ground, where sleep had been difficult enough even in the cooler darkness. At six o'clock the camp, such as it was, was all astir. Breakfast was eaten in little groups squatted about in the clearing, or in the shade of the trees at its edges, members of families or close neighbors clustering together in parties once more, to share victuals prepared by the same housewives--it may be from the same oven or spit. It might well happen that for many of us this was the last meal on earth, for we were within hearing of the heavy guns of the fort, and when three of these should be fired in succession we were to take up our final six-miles' march. But this reflection made no one sad, apparently. Everywhere you could hear merry converse and sounds of laughter. Listening, no one would have dreamed that this body of men stood upon the threshold of so grave an adventure. I had been up earlier than most of the others, and had gone over to the spot where the horses were tethered. Of these animals there were some dozen, all told, and their appearance showed that they had had a bad night of it with the flies. After I had seen them led to water and safely brought back, and had watched that in the distribution of the scanty store of oats my steed had his proper share, I came back to breakfast with the Stone Arabia men, among whom I had many acquaintances. I contributed some sausages and slices of bread and meat, I remember, to the general stock of food, which was spread out upon one of Isaac Paris's blankets. We ate with a light heart, half-lying on the parched grass around the extemporized cloth. Some of the young farmers, their meal already finished, were up on their feet, scuffling and wrestling in jest and high spirits. They laughed so heartily from time to time that Mr. Paris would call out: "Less noise there, you, or we shall not hear the cannon from the fort!" No one would have thought that this was the morning before a battle. Eight o'clock arrived, and still there had been no signal. All preparations had long since been made. The saddle-horses of the officers were ready under the shade, their girths properly tightened. Blankets had been rolled up and strapped, haversacks and bags properly repacked, a last look taken to flints and priming. The supply-wagon stood behind where the General's tent had been, all laden for the start, and with the horses harnessed to the pole. Still no signal came! The men began to grow uneasy with the waiting. It had been against the prevalent feeling of impatience that we halted here the preceding day, instead of hastening forward to strike the blow. Now every minute's inaction increased this spirit of restlessness. The militiamen's faces--already saturnine enough, what with broken rest and three days' stubble of beard--were clouding over with dislike for the delay. The sauntering to and fro began to assume a general trend toward the headquarters of the Brigadier. I had visited this spot once or twice before during the early morning to offer suggestions or receive commands. I went again now, having it in mind to report to the General the evident impatience of the men. A doubt was growing with me, too, whether we were not too far away to be sure of hearing the guns from the fort--quite six miles distant. The privacy of the commander was indifferently secured by the posting of sentries, who guarded a square perhaps forty feet each way. In the centre of this enclosure was a clump of high bushes, with one or two young trees, bunched upon the bank of a tiny rivulet now almost dried up. Here, during the night, the General's small army-tent had been pitched, and here now, after the tent had been packed on the wagon, he sat, on the only chair in camp, under the shadow of the bushes, within full view of his soldiers. These were by this time gathered three or four deep around the three front sides of the square, and were gradually pushing the sentries in. Five or six officers stood about the General, talking earnestly with him and with one another, and the growing crowd outside the square were visibly anxious to hear what was going on. I have said before, I think, that I was the only officer of the Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every day, as regularly as if at home, with the result that I was probably the only man in the clearing that morning who wore a clean face. This served further to make me a marked man among such of the farmer boys as knew me only by sight. As I pushed my way through the throng to get inside the square, I heard various comments by strangers from Canajoharie or Cherry Valley way. "There goes Schuyler's Dutchman," said one. "He has brought his _friseur_ with him." "It would have been more to the point if he had brought some soldiers. Albany would see us hang before she would help us," growled another. "Make way for Mynheer," said a rough joker in the crowd, half-laughing, half-scowling. "What they need inside yonder is some more Dutch prudence. When they have heard him they will vote to go into winter quarters and fight next spring!" All this was disagreeable enough, but it was wisest to pretend not to hear, and I went forward to the groups around the Brigadier. The question under debate was, of course, whether we should wait longer for the signal; or, rather, whether it had not been already fired, and the sound failed to reach us on the sultry, heavy air. There were two opinions upon this, and for a time the difference was discussed in amiability, if with some heat. The General felt positive that if the shots had been fired we must have heard them. I seem to see him now, the brave old man, as he sat there on the rough stool, imperturbably smoking, and maintaining his own against the dissenting officers. Even after some of them grew vexed, and declared that either the signal had been fired or the express had been captured, and that in either case it would be worse than folly to longer remain here, he held his temper. Perhaps his keen black eyes sparkled the brighter, but he kept his tongue calm, and quietly reiterated his arguments. The beleaguering force outside the fort, he said, must outnumber ours two to one. They had artillery, and they had regular German troops, the best in Europe, not to mention many hundreds of Indians, all well armed and munitioned. It would be next to impossible to surprise an army thus supplied with scouts; it would be practically hopeless to attack them, unless we were backed up by a simultaneous sortie in force from the fort. In that, the Brigadier insisted, lay our only chance of success. "But I say the sortie _will_ be made! They are waiting for us--only we are too far off to hear their signal!" cried one of the impatient colonels. "If the wind was in the east," said the Brigadier, "that might be the case. But in breathless air like this I have heard the guns from that fort two miles farther back." "Our messengers may not have got through the lines last night," put in Thomas Spencer, the half-breed. "The swamp back of the fort is difficult travelling, even to one who knows it better than Helmer does, and Butler's Indians are not children, to see only straight ahead of their noses." "Would it not be wise for Spencer here, and some of our young trappers, or some of Skenandoah's Indians, to go forward and spy out the land for us?" I asked. "These would do little good now," answered Herkimer; "the chief thing is to know when Gansevoort is ready to come out and help us." "The chief thing to know, by God," broke forth one of the colonels, with a great oath, "is whether we have a patriot or a Tory at our head!" Herkimer's tanned and swarthy face changed color at this taunt. He stole a swift glance at me, as if to say, "This is what I warned you was to be looked for," and smoked his pipe for a minute in silence. His brother-in-law, Colonel Peter Bellinger, took the insult less tamely. "The man who says Honikol Herkimer is a Tory lies," he said, bluntly, with his hand on his sword-hilt, and honest wrath in his gray eyes. "Peace, Peter," said the Brigadier. "Let them think what they like. It is not my affair. My business is to guard the lives of these young men here, as if I were their father. I am a childless man, yet here I am as the parent of all of them. I could not go back again and look their mothers in the eye if I had led them into trouble which could be avoided." "We are not here to avoid trouble, but rather to seek it," shouted Colonel Cox, angrily. He spoke loud enough to be heard by the throng beyond, which now numbered four-fifths of our whole force, and there rolled back to us from them a loud answering murmur of approval. At the sound of this, others came running up to learn what was going on; and the line, hitherto with difficulty kept back by the sentries, was broken in in more than one place. Matters looked bad for discipline, or wise action of any sort. "A man does not show his bravery by running his head at a stone wall," said the Brigadier, still striving to keep his temper, but rising to his feet as he spoke. " _Will_ you give the order to go on?" demanded Cox, in a fierce tone, pitched even higher. "Lead us on!" came loud shouts from many places in the crowd. There was a general pushing in of the line now, and some men at the back, misinterpreting this, began waving their hats and cheering. "Give us the word, Honikol!" they yelled. Still Herkimer stood his ground, though with rising color. "What for a soldier are you," he called out, sharply, "to make mutiny like this? Know you not your duty better?" "Our duty is to fight, not to sit around here in idleness. At least _we_ are not cowards," broke in another, who had supported Cox from the outset. " _You_!" cried Herkimer, all roused at last. " _You_ will be the first to run when you see the British!" There was no longer any pretence of keeping the square. The excited farmers pressed closely about us now, and the clamor was rising momentarily. All thought of order or military grade was gone. Men who had no rank whatever thrust their loud voices into the council, so that we could hear nothing clearly. There was a brief interchange of further hot words between the Brigadier, Colonel Bellinger, and John Frey on the one side, and the mutinous colonels and men on the other. I heard the bitter epithets of "Tory" and "coward" hurled at the old man, who stood with chin defiant in air, and dark eyes ablaze, facing his antagonists. The scene was so shameful that I could scarce bear to look upon it. There came a hurly-burly of confusion and tumult as the shouts of the crowd grew more vehement, and one of the refractory colonels impetuously drew his sword and half turned as if to give the command himself. Then I heard Herkimer, too incensed to longer control himself, cry: "If you will have it so, the blood be on your heads." He sprang upon the stool at this, waved his sword, and shouted so that all the eight hundred could hear: "VORWÄRTS!" The tall pines themselves shook with the cheer which the yeomen raised. There was a scramble on the instant for muskets, bags, and belongings. To rush was the order. We under-officers caught the infection, and with no dignity at all hurried across the clearing to our horses. We cantered back in a troop, Barent Coppernol leading the Brigadier's white mare at a hand-gallop by our side. Still trembling with excitement, yet perhaps somewhat reconciled to the adventure by the exultant spirit of the scene before him, General Herkimer got into the saddle, and watched closely the efforts of the colonels, now once more all gratified enthusiasm, to bring their eager men into form. It had been arranged that Cox with his Canajoharie regiment should have the right of the line, and this body was ready and under way in less time, it seemed, than I have taken to write of it. The General saw the other three regiments trooped, told Visscher to bring the supply-wagon with the rear, and then, with Isaac Paris, Jelles Fonda, and myself, galloped to the head of the column, where Spencer and Skenandoah with the Oneida Indians were. So marching swiftly, and without scouts, we started forth at about nine in the morning. The road over which we hurried was as bad, even in those hot, dry days of August, as any still to be found in the Adirondacks. The bottom-lands of the Mohawk Valley, as is well known, are of the best farming soil in the world, but for that very reason they make bad roads. The highway leading to the fort lay for the most part over low and springy land, and was cut through the thick beech and hemlock forest almost in a straight line, regardless of swales and marshy places. These had been in some instances bridged indifferently by corduroys of logs, laid the previous spring when Gansevoort dragged up his cannon for the defence of the fort, and by this time too often loose and out of place. We on horseback found these rough spots even more trying than did the footmen; but for all of us progress was slow enough, after the first excitement of the start had passed away. There was no outlook at any point. We were hedged in everywhere by walls of foliage, of mossy tree-trunks covered with vines, of tangled undergrowth and brush. When we had gained a hill-top, nothing more was to be seen than the dark-brown band of logs on the gully bottom before us, and the dim line of road losing itself in a mass of green beyond. Neither Herkimer nor Paris had much to say, as we rode on in the van. Major Fonda made sundry efforts to engage them in talk, as if there had been no recent dispute, no harsh words, no angry recriminations, but without special success. For my part, I said nothing whatever. Surely there was enough to think of, both as to the miserable insubordination of an hour back, and as to what the next hour might bring. We had passed over about the worst of these patches of corduroy road, in the bottom of a ravine between two hills, where a little brook, dammed in part by the logs, spread itself out over the swampy soil on both sides. We in the van had nearly gained the summit of the farther eminence, and were resting for the moment to see how Visscher should manage with his wagon in the rear. Colonel Cox had also turned in his saddle, some ten yards farther down the hill, and was calling back angrily to his men to keep in the centre of the logs and not tip them up by walking on the ends. While I looked Barent Coppernol called out to me: "Do you remember? This is where we camped five years ago." Before I could answer I heard a rifle report, and saw Colonel Cox fall headlong upon the neck of his horse. There was a momentary glimpse of dark forms running back, a strange yell, a shot or two--and then the gates of hell opened upon us.

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The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest. Were I Homer and Shakespeare and Milton, merged all in one, I should still not know how fitly to depict the terrible scene which followed. I had seen poor headstrong, wilful Cox pitch forward upon the mane of his horse, as if all at once his spine had been turned, into limp string; I saw now a ring of fire run out in spitting tongues of flame around the gulf, and a circle of thin whitish smoke slowly raise itself through the dark leaves of the girdling bushes. It was an appalling second of mental numbness during which I looked at this strange sight, and seemed not at all to comprehend it. Then Herkimer cried out, shrilly: "My God! here it is!" and, whirling his mare about, dashed down the hill-side again. I followed him, keeping ahead of Paris, and pushing my horse forward through the aimlessly swarming footmen of our van with a fierce, unintelligent excitement. The air was filled now with shouts--what they were I did not know. The solid body of our troops on the corduroy bridge were huddling together like sheep in a storm. From the outer edges of this mass men were sinking to the ground. The tipping, rolling logs tossed these bodies on their ends off into the water, or under the feet of the others. Cox's horse had jumped sidelong into the marsh, and now, its hind-quarters sinking in the mire, plunged wildly, flinging the inert body still fastened in the stirrups from side to side. Some of our men were firing their guns at random into the underbrush. All this I saw in the swift gallop down the hill to rejoin the Brigadier. As I jerked up my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed together on the causeway. It was a horrible spectacle--of naked, yelling devils, daubed with vermilion and ghastly yellow, rushing with uplifted hatchets and flashing knives upon this huddled mass of white men, our friends and neighbors. These, after the first bewildering shock, made what defence they could, shooting right and left, and beating down their assailants with terrific smashing blows from their gun-stocks. But the throng on the sliding logs made them almost powerless, and into their jumbled ranks kept pouring the pitiless rain of bullets from the bush. By God's providence there were cooler brains and wiser heads than mine, here in the ravine, to face and grapple with this awful crisis. Old Herkimer seemed before my very eyes to wax bigger and stronger and calmer in the saddle, as this pandemonium unfolded in front of us. His orders I forget now--or what part I played at first in carrying them out--but they were given swiftly and with cool comprehension of all our needs. I should think that within five minutes from the first shot of the attack, our forces--or what was left of them--had been drawn out of the cruel helplessness of their position in the centre of the swamp. This could never have been done had not Honikol Herkimer kept perfectly his self-control and balance, like an eagle in a tempest. Visscher's regiment, in the rear, had not got fairly into the gulf, owing to the delay in dragging the wagon along, when the ambushed Indians fired their first volley; and he and his men, finding themselves outside the fiery circle, promptly ran away. They were followed by many of the Indians, which weakened the attacking force on the eastern side of the ravine. Peter Bellinger, therefore, was able to push his way back again from the beginning of the corduroy bridge into the woods on both sides of the road beyond, where cover was to be had. It was a noble sight to see the stalwart Palatine farmers of his regiment--these Petries, Weavers, Helmers, and Dygerts of the German Flatts--fight their path backward through the hail of lead, crushing Mohawk skulls as though they had been egg-shells with the mighty flail-like swing of their clubbed muskets, and returning fire only to kill every time. The bulk of Cox's Canajoharie regiment and of Klock's Stone Arabia yeomen were pulled forward to the rising ground on the west side, and spread themselves out in the timber as well as they could, north and south of the road. While these wise measures were being ordered, we three horsemen had, strangely enough, been out of the range of fire; but now, as we turned to ride back, a sudden shower of bullets came whizzing past us. My horse was struck in the head, and began staggering forward blindly. I leaped from his back as he toppled, only to come in violent collision with General Herkimer, whose white mare, fatally wounded, had toppled toward me. The Brigadier helped extricate himself from the saddle, and started with the rest of us to run up the hill for cover, but stumbled and stopped after a step or two. The bone of his right leg had been shattered by the ball which killed his steed, and his high boot was already welling with blood. It was in my arms, never put to better purpose, that the honest old man was carried up the side-hill. Here, under a low-branched beech some two rods from the road, Dr. William Petrie stripped off the boot, and bandaged, as best he could, the wounded leg. The spot was not well sheltered, but here the Brigadier, a little pale, yet still calm and resolute, said he would sit and see the battle out. Several young men, at a hint from the doctor, ran down through the sweeping fire to the edge of the morass, unfastened the big saddle from his dead mare, and safely brought it to us. On this the brave old German took his seat, with the maimed leg stretched out on some boughs hastily gathered, and coolly lighting his pipe, proceeded to look about him. "Can we not find a safer place for you farther back, Brigadier?" I asked. "No; here I will sit," he answered, stoutly. "The men can see me here; I will face the enemy till I die." All this time the rattle of musketry, the screech of flying bullets, the hoarse din and clamor of forest warfare, had never for an instant abated. Looking down upon the open space of the gully's bottom, we could see more than two-score corpses piled upon the logs of the road, or upon little mounds of black soil which showed above the level of the slough, half-hidden by the willows and tall, rank tufts of swamp-grass. Save for the dead, this natural clearing was well-nigh deserted. Captain Jacob Seeber was in sight, upon a hillock below us to the north, with a score of his Canajoharie company in a circle, firing outward at the enemy. Across the ravine Captain Jacob Gardenier, a gigantic farmer, armed with a captured Indian spear, had cut loose with his men from Visscher's retreat, and had fought his way back to help us. Farther to the south, some of the Cherry Valley men had got trees, and were holding the Indians at bay. The hot August sun poured its fiercest rays down upon the heaps of dead and wounded in this forest cockpit, and turned into golden haze the mist of smoke encircling it. Through this pale veil we saw, from time to time, forms struggling in the dusk of the thicket beyond. Behind each tree-trunk was the stage whereon a life-drama was being played, with a sickening and tragic sameness in them all. The yeoman from his cover would fire; if he missed, forth upon him would dart the savage, raised hatchet gleaming--and there would be a widow the more in some one of our Valley homes. "Put two men behind each tree," ordered keen-eyed Herkimer. "Then, when one fires, the other's gun will be loaded for the Indian on his running forward." After this command had been followed, the battle went better for us. There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us. An hour ago it had been so softly peaceful, with the little brook picking its clean way in the sunlight through the morass, and the kingfisher flitting among the willows, and the bees' drone laying like a spell of indolence upon the heated air. Now the swale was choked with corpses! The rivulet ran red with blood, and sluggishly spread its current around barriers of dead men. Bullets whistled across the gulf, cutting off boughs of trees as with a knife, and scattering tufts of leaves like feathers from a hawk stricken in its flight. The heavy air grew thick with smoke, dashed by swift streaks of dancing flame. The demon-like screams of the savages, the shouts and moans and curses of our own men, made hearing horrible. Yes--horrible is the right word! A frightened owl, I remember, was routed by the tumult from its sleepy perch, and flew slowly over the open space of the ravine. So curious a compound is man! --we watched the great brown-winged creature flap its purblind way across from wood to wood, and speculated there, as we stood in the jaws of death, if some random ball would hit it! I am writing of all this as if I did nothing but look about me while others fought. Of course that could not have been the case. I recall now these fragmentary impressions of the scene around me with a distinctness and with a plenitude of minutiæ which surprise me, the more that I remember little enough of what I myself did. But when a man is in a fight for his life there are no details. He is either to come out of it or he isn't, and that is about all he thinks of. I have put down nothing about what was now the most serious part of the struggle--the combat with the German mercenaries and Tory volunteers on the high ground beyond the ravine. I conceive it to have been the plan of the enemy to let the Indians lie hidden round about the gulf until our rear-guard had entered it. Then they were to disclose their ambuscade, sweeping the corduroy bridge with fire, while the Germans and Tories, meeting our van up on the crown of the hill beyond, were to attack and drive it back upon our flank in the gulf bottom, when we should have been wholly at the mercy of the encircling fusilade from the hills. Fortunately St. Leger had given the Indians a quart of rum apiece before they started; this was our salvation. The savages were too excited to wait, and closed too soon the fiery ring which was to destroy us all. This premature action cut off our rear, but it also prevented our van reaching the point where the white foe lay watching for us. Thus we were able to form upon our centre, after the first awful shock was over, and to then force our way backward or forward to some sort of cover before the Germans and Tories came upon us. The fighting in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point, where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts, crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy, shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small firs, or, best of all, of fallen and prostrate logs. Often, when one of us, creeping cautiously forward, gained a spot which promised better shelter, it was to find it already tenanted by a corpse, perhaps of a near and dear friend. It was thus that I came upon the body of Major John Eisenlord, and later upon what was left of poor Barent Coppernol, lying half-hidden among the running hemlock, scalpless and cold. It was from one of these recesses, too, that I saw stout old Isaac Paris shot down, and then dragged away a prisoner by the Tories, to be handed over to the hatchets of their Indian friends a few days hence. Fancy three hours of this horrible forest warfare, in which every minute bore a whole lifetime's strain and burden of peril! We knew not then how time passed, and could but dimly guess how things were going beyond the brambled copse in which we fought. Vague intimations reached our ears, as the sounds of battle now receded, now drew near, that the issue of the day still hung in suspense. The war-yells of the Indians to the rear were heard less often now. The conflict seemed to be spreading out over a greater area, to judge from the faintness of some of the rifle reports which came to us. But we could not tell which side was giving way, nor was there much time to think of this: all our vigilance and attention were needed from moment to moment to keep ourselves alive. All at once, with a terrific swoop, there burst upon the forest a great storm, with loud-rolling thunder and a drenching downfall of rain. We had been too grimly engrossed in the affairs of the earth to note the darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of the elements. We wrapped our neckcloths or kerchiefs about our gunlocks, and crouched under shelter from the pelting sheets of water as well as might be. As for the fight, it ceased utterly. While we lay thus quiescent in the rain, I heard a low, distant report from the west, which seemed distinct among the growlings of the thunder; there followed another, and a third. It was the belated signal from the fort! I made my way back to the hill-side as best I could, under the dripping brambles, over the drenched and slippery ground vines, upon the chance that the Brigadier had not heard the reports. The commander still sat on his saddle under the beech-tree where I had left him. Some watch-coats had been stretched over the lowest branches above him, forming a tolerable shelter. His honest brown face seemed to have grown wan and aged during the day. He protested that he had little or no pain from his wound, but the repressed lines about his lips belied their assurance. He smiled with gentle irony when I told him of what I had heard, and how I had hastened to apprise him of it. "I must indeed be getting old," he said to his brother George. "The young men think I can no longer hear cannon when they are fired off." The half-dozen officers who squatted or stood about under the tree, avoiding the streams which fell from the holes in the improvised roof, told me a terrible story of the day's slaughter. Of our eight hundred, nearly half were killed. Visscher's regiment had been chased northward toward the river, whither the fighting from the ravine had also in large part drifted. How the combat was going down there, it was difficult to say. There were dead men behind every tree, it seemed. Commands were so broken up, and troops so scattered by the stern exigencies of forest fighting, that it could not be known who was living and who was dead. What made all this doubly tragic in my ears was that these officers, who recounted to me our losses, had to name their own kinsmen among the slain. Beneath the general grief and dismay in the presence of this great catastrophe were the cruel gnawings of personal anguish. "My son Robert lies out there, just beyond the tamarack," said Colonel Samuel Campbell to me, in a hoarse whisper. "My brother Stufel killed two Mohawks before he died; he is on the knoll there with most of his men," said Captain Fox. Major William Seeber, himself wounded beyond help, said gravely: "God only knows whether my boy Jacob lives or not; but Audolph is gone, and my brother Saffreness and his son James." The old merchant said this with dry eyes, but with the bitterness of a broken heart. I told them of the shooting and capture of Paris and the death of Eisenlord. My news created no impression, apparently. Our minds were saturated with horror. Of the nine Snells who came with us, seven were said to be dead already. The storm stopped as abruptly as it had come upon us. Of a sudden it grew lighter, and the rain dwindled to a fine mist. Great luminous masses of white appeared in the sky, pushing aside the leaden clouds. Then all at once the sun was shining. On that instant shots rang out here and there through the forest. The fight began again. The two hours which followed seem to me now but the indistinct space of a few minutes. Our men had seized upon the leisure of the lull to eat what food was at hand in their pockets, and felt now refreshed in strength. They had had time, too, to learn something of the awful debt of vengeance they owed the enemy. A sombre rage possessed them, and gave to their hearts a giant's daring. Heroes before, they became Titans now. The vapors steaming up in the sunlight from the wet earth seemed to bear the scent of blood. The odor affected our senses. We ran forth in parties now, disdaining cover. Some fell; we leaped over their writhing forms, dashed our fierce way through the thicket to where the tell-tale smoke arose, and smote, stabbed, stamped out the life of, the ambushed foe. Under the sway of this frenzy, timorous men swelled into veritable paladins. The least reckless of us rushed upon death with breast bared and with clinched fists. A body of us were thus scouring the wood on the crest of the hill, pushing through the tangle of dead brush and thick high brake, which soaked us afresh to the waist, resolute to overcome and kill whomsoever we could reach. Below us, in the direction of the river, though half a mile this side of it, we could hear a scattering fusillade maintained, which bespoke bush-fighting. Toward this we made our way, firing at momentary glimpses of figures in the thicket, and driving scattered groups of the foe before us as we ran. Coming out upon the brow of the hill, and peering through the saplings and underbrush, we could see that big Captain Gardenier and his Caughnawaga men were gathered in three or four parties behind clumps of alders in the bottom, loading and firing upon an enemy invisible to us. While we were looking down and hesitating how best to go to his succor, one of old Sammons's sons came bounding down the side-hill, all excitement, crying: "Help is here from the fort!" Sure enough, close behind him were descending some fourscore men, whose musket-barrels and cocked hats we could distinguish swaying above the bushes, as they advanced in regular order. I think I see huge, burly Gardenier still, standing in his woollen shirt-sleeves, begrimed with powder and mud, one hand holding his spear, the other shading his eyes against the sinking sun as he scanned the new-comers. "Who's there?" he roared at them. "From the fort!" we could hear the answer. Our hearts leaped with joy at this, and we began with one accord to get to the foot of the hill, to meet these preservers. Down the steep side we clambered, through the dense second-growth, in hot haste and all confidence. We had some friendly Oneidas with us, and I had to tell them to keep back, lest Gardenier, deeming them Mohawks, should fire upon them. Coming to the edge of the swampy clearing we saw a strange sight. Captain Gardenier was some yards in advance of his men, struggling like a mad Hercules with half a dozen of these new-comers, hurling them right and left, then falling to the ground, pinned through each thigh by a bayonet, and pulling down his nearest assailant upon his breast to serve as a shield. While we took in this astounding spectacle, young Sammons was dancing with excitement. "In God's name, Captain," he shrieked, "you are killing our friends!" "Friends be damned!" yelled back Gardenier, still struggling with all his vast might. "These art Tories. _Fire_! you fools! _Fire_!" It was the truth. They were indeed Tories--double traitors to their former friends. As Gardenier shouted out his command, these ruffians raised their guns, and there sprang up from the bushes on either side of them as many more savages, with weapons lifting for a volley. How it was I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade, dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These latter would now have retreated up the hill again, whence they could fire to advantage, but we at this leaped forth upon their flank, and they, with a futile shot or two, turned and fled in every direction, we all in wild pursuit. Ah, that chase! Over rotten, moss-grown logs, weaving between gnarled tree-trunks, slipping on treacherous twigs, the wet saplings whipping our faces, the boughs knocking against our guns, in savage heat we tore forward, loading and firing as we ran. The pursuit had a malignant pleasure in it: we knew the men we were driving before us. Cries of recognition rose through the woods; names of renegades were shouted out which had a sinister familiarity in all our ears. I came upon young Stephen Watts, the boyish brother of Lady Johnson, lying piteously prone against some roots, his neck torn with a hideous wound of some sort; he did not know me, and I passed him by with a bitter hardening of the heart. What did he here, making war upon my Valley? One of the Papist Scots from Johnstown, Angus McDonell, was shot, knocked down, and left senseless behind us. So far from there being any pang of compassion for him, we cheered his fall, and pushed fiercely on. The scent of blood in the moist air had made us wild beasts all. I found myself at last near the river, and on the edge of a morass, where the sun was shining upon the purple flowers of the sweet-flag, and tall rushes rose above little miry pools. I had with me a young Dutch farmer--John Van Antwerp--and three Oneida Indians, who had apparently attached themselves to me on account of my epaulettes. We had followed thus far at some distance a party of four or five Tories and Indians; we came to a halt here, puzzled as to the course they had taken. While my Indians, bent double, were running about scanning the soft ground for a trail, I heard a well-known voice close behind me say: "They're over to the right, in that clump of cedars. Better get behind a tree." I turned around. To my amazement Enoch Wade stood within two yards of me, his buckskin shirt wide open at the throat, his coon-skin cap on the back of his head, his long rifle over his arm. "In Heaven's name, how did you come here?" "Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he spoke. We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet. "Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed. A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a momentary twinge of pain in my arm. "Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted excitedly from the bush. There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond. "Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars, resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him. I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.

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Alone at Last with My Enemy. My stricken foe looked steadily into my face; once his lips parted to speak, but no sound came from them. For my part I did not know what to say to him. A score of thoughts pressed upon my tongue for utterance, but none of them seemed suited to this strange occasion. Everything that occurred to me was either weak or over-violent. Two distinct ideas of this momentary irresolution I remember--one was to leave him in silence for my Oneidas to tomahawk and scalp; the other was to curse him where he lay. There was nothing in his whitening face to help me to a decision. The look in his eyes was both sad and savage--an expression I could not fathom. For all it said to me, he might be thinking wholly of his wound, or of nothing whatever. The speechless fixity of this gaze embarrassed me. For relief I turned to Enoch, and said sharply: "You haven't told me yet what you were doing here." The trapper kept his chin still on its rest, and only for a second turned his shrewd gray eyes from the wounded quarry to me. "You can see for yourself, can't ye?" he said. "What do people mostly do when there's shooting going on, and they've got a gun?" "But how came you here at all? I thought you were to stay at--at the place where I put you." "That was likely, wasn't it! Me loafing around the house like a tame cat among the niggers while good fighting was going on up here!" "If you wanted to come, why not have marched with us? I asked you." "I don't march much myself. It suits me to get around on my own legs in my own way. I told you I wouldn't go into any ranks, or tote my gun on my shoulder when it was handier to carry it on my arm. But I didn't tell you I wouldn't come up and see this thing on my own hook." "Have you been here all day?" "If you come to that, it's none of your business, young man. I got here about the right time of day to save _your_ bacon, anyway. That's enough for _you_, ain't it?" The rebuke was just, and I put no further questions. A great stillness had fallen upon the forest behind us. In the distance, from the scrub-oak thickets on the lowlands by the river, there sounded from time to time the echo of a stray shot, and faint Mohawk cries of "Oonah! Oonah!" The battle was over. "They were beginning to run away before I came down," said Enoch, in comment upon some of these dying-away yells of defeat which came to us. "They got handled too rough. If their white officers had showed themselves more, and took bigger risks, they'd have stood their ground. But these Tory fine gentlemen are a pack of cowards. They let the Injuns get killed, but they kept darned well hid themselves." The man on the ground broke silence here. "You lie!" he said, fiercely. "Oh! you can talk, can you?" said Enoch. "No, I don't lie, Mr. Cross. I'm talking gospel truth. Herkimer's officers came out like men, and fought like men, and got shot by dozens; but till we struck you, I never laid eyes on one of you fellows all day long, and my eyesight's pretty good, too. Don't you think it is? I nailed you right under the nipple, there, within a hair of the button I sighted on. I leave it to you if that ain't pretty fair shooting." The cool brutality of this talk revolted me. I had it on my tongue to interpose, when the wounded man spoke again, with a new accent of gloom in his tone. "What have I ever done to you?" he said, with his hand upon his breast. "Why, nothing at all, Mr. Cross," answered Enoch, amiably. "There wasn't any feeling about it, at least on my part. I'd have potted you just as carefully if we'd been perfect strangers." "Will you leave us here together for a little while, Enoch?" I broke in. "Come back in a few minutes; find out what the news is in the gulf--how the fight has gone. I desire some words with this--this gentleman." The trapper nodded at this, and started off with his cat-like, springing walk, loading his rifle as he went. "I'll turn up in about a quarter of an hour," he said. I watched his lithe, leather-clad figure disappear among the trees, and then wheeled around to my prostrate foe. "I do not know what to say to you," I said, hesitatingly, looking down upon him. He had taken his hand away from his breast, and was fumbling with it on the grass behind him. Suddenly he raised it, with a sharp cry of-- "I know what to say to you!" There was a pistol in the air confronting me, and I, taken all aback, looked full into the black circle of its barrel as he pulled the trigger. The flint struck out a spark of flame, but it fell upon priming dampened by the wet grass. The momentary gleam of eagerness in the pallid face before me died piteously away when no report came. If he had had the strength he would have thrown the useless weapon at me. As it was, it dropped from his nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes under the knit brows, upon which cold sweat stood out, and groaned aloud. "I do not know what to say to you," I went on, the episode of the pistol seeming, strangely enough, to have cleared my thoughts. "For two years--yes, for five years--I have been picturing to myself some such scene as this, where you should lie overthrown before me, and I should crush the life out of your hateful body with my heel, as one does with snakes. But now that it has come about, I am at a strange loss for words." "That you were not formerly," said the wounded man. "Since I have known you, you have fought always exceedingly well with your mouth. It was only in deeds that you were slow." He made this retort with a contemptuous coolness of tone which was belied by his white face and drawn brows, and by the troubled, clinging gaze in his eyes. I found myself looking with a curious impersonal interest upon this heavy, large-featured countenance, always heretofore so deeply flushed with color, and now coarsely blotched with varying depths of pallor. "Doubtless it would be best to leave you here. None of your party will straggle this way. They have all fled. You can lie here and think of your misdeeds until-----" "Until the wolves come, you mean. Yes, go away. I prefer them to you." The sky to the west was one great lurid, brassy glare, overhung with banks of sinister clouds, a leaden purple above, fiery crimson below. The unnatural light fell strongly upon us both. A big shadow passed for an instant across the sunset, and we, looking instinctively up, saw the circling bulk of some huge bird of prey. I shuddered at the sight. "Yes, leave me to _them_!" he said, bitterly. "Go back and seize my lands, my house. While the beasts and the birds tear me to bits here in the forest, do you fatten upon my substance at home. You and they are of a kidney." "You know I would touch nothing of yours." "No--not even my wife!" The thrust went home. There was a world of sardonic disdain in his voice as he spoke, but in truth I thought little of his tone. The words themselves seemed to open a gulf before my feet. Was it indeed true, in welcoming this man's death, that I was thinking of the woman it would set free--for me? It seemed a long, long time before I found tongue again. I walked up and down among the small cedars, fighting out in my own mind the issue of honor which had been with such brutal frankness raised. I could not make it seem wholly untrue--this charge he so contemptuously flung at me. There was no softening of my heart toward him: he was still the repellent, evil ruffian I had for years held him to be. I felt that I hated him the more because he had put me in the wrong. I went back to him, ashamed for the source of the increase of temper I trembled under, yet powerless to dissemble it. "Why should I not kill you where you lie?" I shouted at him. He made an effort at shrugging his shoulders, but vouchsafed no other reply. "You"--I went on, in a whirl of rage at myself, at him, at the entire universe--"you have made my whole manhood bitter. I fought you the first time I saw you, when we were little boys. Even then you insulted, injured me. I have always hated you. You have always given me reason to hate you. It was you who poisoned Mr. Stewart's mind against me. It was you who stole my sweet sister away from me. Did this content you? No. You must drive the good old gentleman into paralysis and illness unto death--out of his mind--and you must overwhelm the poor, gentle girl with drunken brutality and cruelty, and to cap all, with desertion. And this is not enough--my God! think of it! _this_ is not enough! --but you must come with the others to force Indian war upon our Valley, upon your old neighbors! There are hundreds lying dead here to-day in these woods--honest men whose wives, parents, little children, are waiting for them at home. They will never lay eyes on them again. Why? Because of you and your scoundrel friends. You have done too much mischief already. It is high time to put an end to you." The wounded man had listened to me wearily, with his free hand clutched tight over his wound, and the other tearing spasmodically at the grass beside him. "I am bleeding to death," he said, with a voice obviously weakened since his last preceding words. "So much the better for you. You would like it so. You are not bold enough to knock me on the head, or merciful enough to go about your business and leave me in peace. I ought to be above bandying words with you; nor would I if it did not take my mind from my hurt. You are right--you have always been my enemy. You were jealous of me as a little boy. You had an apron, and you envied me my coat. When, like a fool, I came again to this cursed wilderness, your sour face rose up in front of me like an ugly dream. It was my first disagreeable thing. Still you were jealous of me, for I was a gentleman; you were a skin-pedler. I married a maiden who had beauty and wit enough to grace my station, even though she had not been born to it. It was you who turned her mind against me, and incited her to unhappiness in the home I had given her. It was you who made a damned rebel out of her, and drove me into going to Canada. She has ever been more your friend than mine. You are of her sort. An English gentleman could rightly have had no part or lot with either of you. Go back to her now--tell her you left me here waiting for the wolves--and that my dying message was--" He followed with some painfully bitter and malignant words which I have not the heart to set down here in cold blood against him. "Let me see your wound," I said, when he had finished and sank back, exhausted. I knelt beside him and opened his green coat, and the fine, ruffled shirt beneath it. Both were soaked with blood on the whole right side, but the soft cambric had, in a measure, checked the flow. He made no resistance, and I spread over the ugly aperture some of the plaster with which my mother had fitted me out, and bound it fast, with some difficulty, by passing my sash under his body and winding it about his chest. He kept his eyes closed while I was doing this. I could not tell whether he was conscious or not. Nor could I explain to myself why I was concerning myself with his wound. Was it to save, if possible, his life? Was it to lengthen out his term of torture here in the great final solitude, helplessly facing the end, with snarling wolves and screaming kites for his death-watch? I scarcely knew which. I try now to retrace the courses by which my thoughts, in the confused searchings of those few moments, reached finally a good conclusion; but the effort is beyond my powers. I know only that all at once it became quite clear to my mind that I must not leave my enemy to die. How much of this was due to purely physical compassion for suffering, how much to the higher pleadings of humanity, how much to the feeling that his taunts of baseness must be proved untrue, I cannot say. I was still kneeling beside him, I know, when Enoch suddenly stood in front of me. His practised footsteps had made no sound. He glanced gravely at me and at the white, inanimate face of Cross. Emotions did not play lightly upon Enoch's leather-like visage; there was nothing in his look to tell whether he was surprised or not. "Well, what news? How has the day gone?" I asked him. "Your people hold the gulf. The British have gone back. It seems they were attacked in their rear from the fort. The woods are full of dead men." "What is Herkimer going to do?" "They were making a litter to carry him off the field. They are going home again--down the Valley." "So, then, we have lost the fight." "Well, seeing that every three sound men have got to tote back one wounded man, and that about half the people you brought here are dead to begin with, it don't look much like a victory, does it?" "But the British have retreated, you say, and there was a sortie from the fort?" "Yes, it's about six of one and half-dozen of t'other. I should say that both sides had got their bellyful of fighting. I guess they'll both want to rest for a spell." I made no answer, being lost in a maze of thoughts upon the hideous carnage of the day, and upon what was likely to come of it. Enoch went on: "They seemed to be pretty nigh through with their litter-making. They must be about ready to start. You'd better be spry if you want to go along with 'em." "Did you speak to any one of me? Did you tell them where I was?" "I ain't quite a fool, young man," said the trapper, with a gaunt sort of smile. "If they'd caught sight of me, I wouldn't have got much chance to explain about myself, let alone you. It kind of occurred to me that strangers found loafing around in the woods wouldn't get much of an opening for polite conversation just now--especially if those strangers were fellows who had come down from Sillinger's camp with letters only a fortnight ago." All this time Cross had been stretched at my knees, with his eyes closed. He opened them here, at Enoch's last words, and broke into our conversation with a weak, strangely altered voice: "I know you now--damn you! I couldn't think before. You are the fellow I gave my letters to, there on Buck's Island. I paid you your own price--in hard gold--and now you shoot me in return. You are on the right side now. You make a good rebel." "Now look here, Mr. Cross," put in Enoch, with just a trace of temper in his tone. "You paid me to carry those letters because I was going that way, and I carried 'em straight. You didn't pay me for anything else, and you couldn't, neither. There ain't been gold enough minted yet to hire me to fight for your King George against Congress. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!" "Come, Enoch," I here interrupted, "enough of that. The man is suffering. You must not vex him further by words." "Suffering or not," returned the trapper, "he might keep a civil tongue in his head. --Why, I even did something you didn't pay me for," he went on, scowling down at the prostrate soldier. "I delivered your message here to this man" (indicating me with a gesture of his thumb)--"all that, you know, about cutting out his heart when you met him, and feeding it to a Missisague dog." Enoch's grim features relaxed into a sardonic smile as he added: "There may be more or less heart-eating round about here presently, but it don't look much as if it would be his, and the dogs that'll do it don't belong to anybody--not even to a Missisague buck." The wounded man's frame shook under a spasm of shuddering, and he glowered at us both wildly, with a look half-wrath, half-pitiful pleading, which helped me the better to make up my mind. Enoch had turned to me once more: "Come," he said, "we better hustle along. It will be all right with me so long as I am with you, and there is no time to lose. They must be starting from the gulf by this time. If we step along brisk, we'll soon catch them. As for this chap here, I guess we'd better leave him. He won't last long anyway, and your folks don't want any wounded prisoners. They've got too many litters to carry already." "No," I made answer, with my resolve clear now before me. "We will make our own litter, and we will carry him to his home ourselves--by the river--away from the others." "The hell you say!" said Enoch.

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The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put. In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few, indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey. This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting, which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal. The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said, yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings, covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke: "Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough for you." "Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help we want from you is for you to hold your jaw." "You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man, raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring affrightedly straight ahead of him. There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group. A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and, on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering. If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned in spirit. "Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help me God, I will not!" The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were all on the other side. "Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give 'em the word." Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast. "It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be tortured--scalped--by these devils!" I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said, bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps." "Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your canting tongue to deny it." It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe them to take scalps." "Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain." "Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_ will you keep still?" He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of mystification and utter weakness. Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went, down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress. Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey. "They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will be enough." The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired, together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done, and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the rude litter and started for the trail. I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away. Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in the sunset radiance, watching us gravely. We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the forest primeval. * * * * * Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I recall no other equally wretched five days in my life. The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles, my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on the ground utterly worn out. We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes, and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not build a fire. Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe, floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal service and attention for granted. After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark, while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe well enough. The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks, the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black against the pale sky. There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue. "Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more commodious boat." "Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low, musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if we were going through a dead country." Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly blurted it out. "Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom! Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue." He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental. "Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat. "I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are the wolves!" He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous quaver. "These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get where you can have rest and care." It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it. He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled through a stretch of still water, in silence. "You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally. I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered: "Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches, in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?" "What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman." I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind. "For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have brought you back." "Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily. After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the alternate moonlight and shadow. The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless, stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive. More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me, but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon the man himself. His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable, generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty, and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other. Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story. To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led him down the fell incline. I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine. Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!

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A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully Spared. Just before daybreak of the fifth day we stole past the sleeping hamlet of Caughnawaga, and as the sun was rising over the Schoharie hills I drew up the canoe into the outlet of Dadanoscara Creek, a small brook which came down through the woods from the high land whereon Cairncross stood. Our journey by water was ended. Enoch was waiting for us, and helped me lift Cross from the canoe. His body hung inert in our arms; not even my clumsy slipping on the bank of the rivulet startled him from the deep sleep in which he had lain for hours in the boat. "I have been frightened. Can he be dying?" I asked. Enoch knelt beside him, and put his hand over the patient's heart. He shook his head dubiously after a moment, and said: "It's tearing along like a racehorse. He's in a fever--the worst kind. This ain't sleep--it's stupor." He felt the wounded man's pulse and temples. "If you're bent on saving his life," he added, "you'd better scoot off and get some help. Before we can make another litter for him, let alone taking him up this creek-bed to his house, it may be too late. If we had a litter ready, it might be different. As it is, I don't see but you will have to risk it, and bring somebody here." For once in my life my brain worked in flashes. I actually thought of something which had not occurred to Enoch! "Why not carry him in this canoe?" I asked. "It is lighter than any litter we could make." The trapper slapped his lank, leather-clad thigh in high approval. "By hokey!" he said, "you've hit it!" We sat on the mossy bank, on either side of the insensible Philip, and ate the last remaining fragments of our store of food. Another day of this and we should have been forced to shoot something, and light a fire to cook it over, no matter what the danger. Enoch had, indeed, favored this course two days before, but I clung to my notion of keeping Cross's presence in the Valley an absolute secret. His life would have been in deadly peril hereabouts, even before the battle. How bitterly the hatred of him and his traitor-fellows must have been augmented by the slaughter of that cruel ambuscade, I could readily imagine. With what words could I have protected him against the righteous rage of a Snell, for example, or a Seeber, or any one of a hundred others who had left kinsmen behind in that fatal gulch? No! There must be no risk run by meeting any one. With the scanty meal finished our rest was at an end. We ought to lose no time. Each minute's delay in getting the wounded man under a roof, in bed, within reach of aid and nursing, might be fatal. It was no light task to get the canoe upon our shoulders, after we had put in it our guns, covered these with ferns and twigs, and upon these laid Philip's bulky form, and a very few moments' progress showed that the work before us was to be no child's play. The conformation of the canoe made it a rather awkward thing to carry, to begin with. To bear it right side up, laden as it was, over eight miles of almost continuous ascent, through a perfectly unbroken wilderness, was as laborious an undertaking as it is easy to conceive. We toiled along so slowly, and the wretched little brook, whose bed we strove to follow, described such a wandering course, and was so often rendered fairly impassable by rocks, driftwood, and overhanging thicket, that when the sun hung due south above us we had covered barely half our journey, and confronted still the hardest portion of it. We were so exhausted when this noon hour came, too, that I could make no objection when Enoch declared his purpose of getting some trout from the brook, and cooking them. Besides, we were far enough away from the river highway and from all habitations now to render the thing practically safe. Accordingly I lighted a small fire of the driest wood to be found, while the trapper stole up and down the brook, moving with infinite stealth and dexterity, tracking down fish and catching them with his hands under the stones. Soon he had enough for a meal--and, my word! it was a feast for emperors or angels. We stuffed the pink dainties with mint, and baked them in balls of clay. It seemed as if I had not eaten before in years. We tried to rouse Cross sufficiently to enable him to eat, and in a small way succeeded; but the effect upon him was scarcely beneficial, it appeared to us. His fever increased, and when we started out once more under our burden, the motion inseparable from our progress affected his head, and he began to talk incoherently to himself. Nothing can be imagined more weird and startling than was the sound of this voice above us, when we first heard it. Both Enoch and I instinctively stopped. For the moment we could not tell whence the sound came, and I know not what wild notions about it flashed through my mind. Even when we realized that it was the fever-loosed tongue of our companion which spoke, the effect was scarcely less uncanny. Though I could not see him, the noise of his ceaseless talking came from a point close to my head; he spoke for the most part in a bold, high voice--unnaturally raised above the pitch of his recent faint waking utterances. Whenever a fallen log or jutting bowlder gave us a chance to rest our load without the prospect of too much work in hoisting it again, we would set the canoe down, and that moment his lips would close. There seemed to be some occult connection between the motion of our walking and the activity of his disordered brain. For a long time--of course in a very disconnected way--he babbled about his mother, and of people, presumably English, of whom I knew nothing, save that one name, Digby, was that of his elder brother Then there began to be interwoven with this talk stray mention of Daisy's name, and soon the whole discourse was of her. The freaks of delirium have little significance, I believe, as clews to the saner courses of the mind, but he spoke only gently in his imaginary speeches to his wife. I had to listen, plodding wearily along with aching shoulders under the burden of the boat, to fond, affectionate words addressed to her in an incessant string. The thread of his ideas seemed to be that he had arrived home, worn-out and ill, and that he was resting his head upon her bosom. Over and over again, with tiresome iteration, he kept entreating plaintively: "You _are_ glad to see me? You do _truly_ forgive me, and love me?" Nothing could have been sadder than to hear him. I reasoned that this ceaseless dwelling upon the sweets of a tender welcome doubtless reflected the train of his thoughts during the journey down from the battle-field. He had forborne to once mention Daisy's name during the whole voyage, but he must have thought deeply, incessantly of her--in all likelihood with a great softening of heart and yearning for her compassionate nursing. It was not in me to be unmoved by this. I declare that as I went painfully forward, with this strangely pathetic song of passion repeating itself in my ears, I got fairly away from the habit of mind in which my own love for Daisy existed, and felt myself only an agent in the working out of some sombre and exalted romance. In Foxe's account of the English martyrs there are stories of men at the stake who, when a certain stage of the torture was reached, really forgot their anguish in the emotional ecstasy of the ideas born of that terrible moment. In a poor and imperfect fashion I approached that same strange state--not far removed, in sober fact, from the delirium of the man in the canoe. The shadows were lengthening in the woods, and the reddening blaze of the sun flared almost level in our eyes through the tree-trunks, when at last we had crossed the water-shed of the two creeks, and stood looking down into the gulf of which I have so often spoken heretofore. We rested the canoe upon a great rock in the mystic circle of ancient Indian fire worship, and leaned, tired and panting, against its side. My arm was giving me much pain, and what with insufficient food and feverish sleep, great immediate fatigue, and the vast nervous strain of these past six days, I was well-nigh swooning. "I fear I can go no farther, Enoch," I groaned. "I can barely keep my feet as it is." The trapper himself was as close to utter exhaustion as one may be and have aught of spirit left, yet he tried to speak cheerily. "Come, come!" he said, "we mustn't give out now, right here at the finish. Why, it's only down over that bridge, and up again--and there we are!" I smiled in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest, and we'll at it again." While we stood half reclining against the bowlder, looking with trepidation at the stiff ascent before us on the farther side of the gulf, the scene of the old quarrel of our youth suddenly came to my mind. "Do you see that spruce near the top, by the path--the one hanging over the edge? Five years ago I was going to fight this Philip Cross there, on that path. My little nigger Tulp ran between us, and he threw him head over heels to the bottom. The lad has never been himself since." "Pretty tolerable fall," remarked Enoch, glancing down the precipitous, brush-clad wall of rock. "But a nigger lands on his head as a cat does on her feet, and it only scratches him where it would kill anybody else." We resumed our burden now, and made our way with it down the winding path to the bottom. Here I was fain to surrender once for all. "It is no use, Enoch," I said, resolutely. "I can't even try to climb up there with this load. You must wait here; I will go ahead to Cairncross, prepare them for his coming, and send down some slaves to fetch him the rest of the way." * * * * * The great square mansion reared before me a closed and inhospitable front. The shutters of all the windows were fastened. Since the last rain no wheels had passed over the carriage-way. For all the signs of life visible, Cairncross might have been uninhabited a twelve-month. It was only when I pushed my way around to the rear of the house, within view of the stables and slave quarters, that I learned the place had not been abandoned. Half a dozen niggers, dressed in their holiday, church-going raiment, were squatting in a close circle on the grass, intent upon the progress of some game. Their interest in this was so deep that I had drawn near to them, and called a second time, before they became aware of my presence. They looked for a minute at me in a perplexed way--my mud-baked clothes, unshaven face, and general unkempt condition evidently rendering me a stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of the great house. So I was supposed to be dead! Curiously enough, it had not occurred to me before that this would be the natural explanation of my failure to return with the others. The idea now gave me a queer quaking sensation about the heart, and I stood stupidly staring at the back balcony of the house, with my mind in a whirl of confused thoughts. It seemed almost as if I _had_ come back from the grave. While I still stood, faint and bewildered, trying to regain control of my ideas, the door opened, and a white-faced lady, robed all in black, came swiftly out upon the porch. It was Daisy, and she was gazing at me with distended eyes and parted lips, and clinging to the carved balustrade for support. As in a dream I heard her cry of recognition, and knew that she was gliding toward me. Then I was on my knees at her feet, burying my face in the folds of her dress, and moaning incoherent nothings from sheer exhaustion and rapture. When at last I could stand up, and felt myself coming back to something like self-possession, a score of eager questions and as many outbursts of deep thanksgiving were in my ears--all from her sweet voice. And I had tongue for none of them, but only looked into her dear face, and patted her hands between mine, and trembled like a leaf with excitement. So much was there to say, the sum of it beggared language. When finally we did talk, I was seated in a great chair one of the slaves had brought upon the sward, and wine had been fetched me, and my dear girl bent gently over me from behind, softly resting my head against her waist, her hands upon my arms. "You shall not look me in the face again," she said--with ah! such compassionate, tender playfulness--"until I have been told. How did you escape? Were you a prisoner? Were you hurt?" --and oh! a host of other things. Suddenly the sky seemed to be covered with blackness, and the joy in my heart died out as by the stroke of death. I had remembered something. My parched and twitching lips did their best to refuse to form the words: "I have brought Philip home. He is sorely wounded. Send the slaves to bring him from the gulf." After a long silence, I heard Daisy's voice, clear and without a tremor, call out to the blacks that their master had been brought as far as the gulf beyond, and needed assistance. They started off helter-skelter at this, with many exclamations of great surprise, a bent and misshapen figure dragging itself with a grotesque limping gait at their tail. I rose from my chair, now in some measure restored to calmness and cold resolution. In mercy I had been given a brief time of blind happiness--of bliss without the alloy of a single thought. Now I must be a man, and walk erect, unflinching, to the sacrifice. "Let us go and meet them. It is best," I said. The poor girl raised her eyes to mine, and their startled, troubled gaze went to my heart. There must have been prodigious effort in the self-command of her tone to the slaves, for her voice broke down utterly now, as she faltered: "You have--brought--him home! For what purpose? How will this all end? It terrifies me!" We had by tacit consent begun to walk down the path toward the road. It was almost twilight. I remember still how the swallows wheeled swiftly in the air about the eaves, and how their twittering and darting seemed to confuse and tangle my thoughts. The situation was too sad for silence. I felt the necessity of talking, of uttering something which might, at least, make pretence of occupying these wretched minutes, until I should say: "This is your husband--and farewell!" "It was clear enough to me," I said. "My duty was plain. I would have been a murderer had I left him there to die. It was very strange about my feelings. Up to a certain moment they were all bitter and merciless toward him. So many better men than he were dead about me, it seemed little enough that his life should go to help avenge them. Yet when the moment came--why, I could not suffer it. Not that my heart relented--no; I was still full of rage against him. But none the less it was my duty to save his life." "And to bring him home to _me_." She spoke musingly, completing my sentence. "Why, Daisy, would you have had it otherwise? Could I have left him there, to die alone, helpless in the swamp?" "I have not said you were not right, Douw," she answered, with saddened slowness. "But I am trying to think. It is so hard to realize--coming like this. I was told you were both dead. His name was reported in their camp, yours among our people. And now you are both here--and it is all so strange, so startling--and what is right seems so mingled and bound up with what is cruel and painful! Oh, I cannot think! What will come of it? How will it all end?" "We must not ask how it will end!" I made answer, with lofty decision. "That is not our affair. We can but do our duty--what seems clearly right--and bear results as they come. There is no other way. You ought to see this." "Yes, I ought to see it," she said, slowly and in a low, distressed voice. As she spoke there rose in my mind a sudden consciousness that perhaps my wisdom was at fault. How was it that I--a coarse-fibred male animal, returned from slaughter, even now with the blood of fellow-creatures on my hands--should be discoursing of duty and of good and bad to this pure and gentle and sweet-souled woman? What was my title to do this? --to rebuke her for not seeing the right? Had I been in truth generous? Rather had I not, in the purely selfish desire to win my own self-approbation, brought pain and perplexity down upon the head of this poor woman? I had thought much of my own goodness--my own strength of purpose and self-sacrifice and fidelity to duty. Had I given so much as a mental glance at the effect of my acts upon the one whom, of all others, I should have first guarded from trouble and grief? My tongue was tied. Perhaps I had been all wrong. Perhaps I should not have brought back to her the man whose folly and obstinacy had so well-nigh wrecked her life. I could no longer be sure. I kept silence, feeling indirectly now that her woman's instinct would be truer and better than my logic. She was thinking; she would find the real right and wrong. Ah, no! To this day we are not settled in our minds, we two old people, as to the exact balance between duty and common-sense in that strange question of our far-away youth. There broke upon our ears, of a sudden, as we neared the wooded crest of the gulf, a weird and piercing scream--an unnatural and repellent yell, like a hyena's horrid hooting! It rose with terrible distinctness from the thicket close before us. As its echoes returned, we heard confused sounds of other voices, excited and vibrant. Daisy clutched my arm, and began hurrying me forward, impelled by some formless fear of she knew not what. "It is Tulp," she murmured, as we went breathlessly on. "Oh, I should have kept him back! Why did I not think of it?" "What about Tulp?" I asked, with difficulty keeping beside her in the narrow path. "I had no thought of him. I did not see him. He was not among the others, was he?" "He has gone mad!" "What--Tulp, poor boy? Oh, not as bad as that, surely! He has been strange and slow of wit for years, but--" "Nay, the tidings of your death--you know I told you we heard that you were dead--drove him into perfect madness. I doubt he knew you when you came. Only yesterday we spoke of confining him, but poor old father pleaded not. When you see Tulp, you shall decide. Oh! what has happened? Who is this man?" In the path before us, some yards away, appeared the tall, gaunt form of Enoch, advancing slowly. In the dusk of the wooded shades behind him huddled the group of slaves. They bore nothing in their hands. Where was the canoe? They seemed affrighted or oppressed by something out of the common, and Enoch, too, wore a strange air. What could it mean? When Enoch saw us he lifted his hand in a warning gesture. "Have her go back!" he called out, with brusque sharpness. "Will you walk back a little?" I asked her. "There is something here we do not understand. I will join you in a moment. "For God's sake, what is it, Enoch?" I demanded, as I confronted him. "Tell me quick." "Well, we've had our five days' tussle for nothing, and you're minus a nigger. That's about what it comes to." "Speak out, can't you! Is he dead? What was the yell we heard?" "It was all done like a flash of lightning. We were coming up the side nighest us here--we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs over--when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it went, and he with it--rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!" The negroes broke forth in a babel of mournful cries at this, and clustered about us. I grew sick and faint under this shock of fresh horrors, and was fain to lean on Enoch's arm, as I turned to walk back to where I had left Daisy. She was not visible as we approached, and I closed my eyes in abject terror of some further tragedy. Thank God, she had only swooned, and lay mercifully senseless in the tall grass, her waxen face upturned in the twilight.

37

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The Peaceful Ending of It All. In the general paralysis of suffering and despair which rested now upon the Valley, the terrible double tragedy of the gulf passed almost unnoted. Women everywhere were mourning for the husbands, sons, lovers who would never return. Fathers strove in vain to look dry-eyed at familiar places which should know the brave lads--true boys of theirs--no more. The play and prattle of children were hushed in a hundred homes where some honest farmer's life, struck fiercely at by a savage or Tory, still hung in the dread balance. Each day from some house issued forth the procession of death, until all our little churchyards along the winding river had more new graves than old--not to speak of that grim, unconsecrated God's-acre in the forest pass, more cruel still to think upon. And with all this to bear, there was no assurance that the morrow might not bring the torch and tomahawk of invasion to our very doors. So our own strange tragedy had, as I have said, scant attention. People listened to the recital, and made answer: "Both dead at the foot of the cliff, eh? Have you heard how William Seeber is to-day?" or "Is it true that Herkimer's leg must be cut off?" In those first few days there was little enough heart to measure or boast of the grandeur of the fight our simple Valley farmers had waged, there in the ambushed ravine of Oriskany. Still less was there at hand information by the light of which the results of that battle could be estimated. Nothing was known, at the time of which I write, save that there had been hideous slaughter, and that the invaders had forborne to immediately follow our shattered forces down the Valley. It was not until much later--until definite news came not only of St. Leger's flight back to Canada, but of the capture of the whole British army at Saratoga--that the men of the Mohawk began to comprehend what they had really done. To my way of thinking, they have ever since been unduly modest about this truly historic achievement. As I wrote long ago, we of New York have chosen to make money, and to allow our neighbors to make histories. Thus it happens that the great decisive struggle of the whole long war for Independence--the conflict which, in fact, made America free--is suffered to pass into the records as a mere frontier skirmish. Yet, if one will but think, it is as clear as daylight that Oriskany was the turning-point of the war. The Palatines, who had been originally colonized on the upper Mohawk by the English to serve as a shield against savagery for their own Atlantic settlements, reared a barrier of their own flesh and bones, there at Oriskany, over which St. Leger and Johnson strove in vain to pass. That failure settled everything. The essential feature of Burgoyne's plan had been that this force, which we so roughly stopped and turned back in the forest defile, should victoriously sweep down our Valley, raising the Tory gentry as they progressed, and join him at Albany. If that had been done, he would have held the whole Hudson, separating the rest of the colonies from New England, and having it in his power to punish and subdue, first the Yankees, then the others at his leisure. Oriskany prevented this! Coming as it did, at the darkest hour of Washington's trials and the Colonies' despondency, it altered the face of things as gloriously as does the southern sun rising swiftly upon the heels of night. Burgoyne's expected allies never reached him; he was compelled, in consequence, to surrender--and from that day there was no doubt who would in the long-run triumph. Therefore, I say, all honor and glory to the rude, unlettered, great souled yeomen of the Mohawk Valley, who braved death in the wildwood gulch at Oriskany that Congress and the free Colonies might live. But in these first few days, be it repeated, nobody talked or thought much of glory. There were too many dead left behind--too many maimed and wounded brought home--to leave much room for patriotic meditations around the saddened hearth-stones. And personal grief was everywhere too deep and general to make it possible that men should care much about the strange occurrence by which Philip and Tulp lost their lives together in the gulf. I went on the following day to my mother, and she and my sister Margaret returned with me to Cairncross, to relieve from smaller cares, as much as might be, our poor dear girl. All was done to shield both her and the stricken old gentleman, our common second father, from contact with material reminders of the shock that had fallen upon us, and as soon as possible afterward they were both taken to Albany, out of reach of the scene's sad suggestions. From the gulf's bottom, where Death had dealt his double stroke, the soldier's remains were borne one way, to his mansion; the slave's the other, to his old home at the Cedars. Between their graves the turbulent stream still dashes, the deep ravine still yawns. For years I could not visit the spot without hearing, in and above the ceaseless shouting of the waters, poor mad Tulp's awful death-scream. During the month immediately following the event, my time was closely engaged in public work. It was my melancholy duty to go up to the Falls to represent General Schuyler and Congress at the funeral of brave old Brigadier Nicholas Herkimer, who succumbed to the effects of an unskilful amputation ten days after the battle. A few days later I went with Arnold and his relieving force up the Valley, saw the siege raised and the flood of invasion rolled back, and had the delight of grasping Peter Gansevoort, the stout commander of the long-beleaguered garrison, once more by the hand. On my return I had barely time to lease the Cedars to a good tenant, and put in train the finally successful efforts to save Cairncross from confiscation, when I was summoned to Albany to attend upon my chief. It was none too soon, for my old wounds had broken out again, under the exposure and travail of the trying battle week, and I was more fit for a hospital than for the saddle. I found the kindliest of nursing and care in my old quarters in the Schuyler mansion. It was there, one morning in January of the new year 1778, that a quiet wedding breakfast was celebrated for Daisy and me; and neither words nor wishes could have been more tender had we been truly the children of the great man, Philip Schuyler, and his good dame. The exact date of this ceremony does not matter; let it be kept sacred within the knowledge of us two old people, who look back still to it as to the sunrise of a new long day, peaceful, serene, and almost cloudless, and not less happy even now because the ashen shadows of twilight begin gently to gather over it. Though the war had still the greater half of its course to run, my part thereafter in it was far removed from camp and field. No opportunity came to me to see fighting again, or to rise beyond my major's estate. Yet I was of as much service, perhaps, as though I had been out in the thick of the conflict; certainly Daisy was happier to have it so. Twice during the year 1780 did we suffer grievous material loss at the hands of the raiding parties which malignant Sir John Johnson piloted into the Valley of his birth. In one of these the Cairncross mansion was rifled and burned, and the tenants despoiled and driven into the woods. This meant a considerable monetary damage to us; yet our memories of the place were all so sad that its demolition seemed almost a relief, particularly as Enoch, to whom we had presented a freehold of the wilder part of the grant, that nearest the Sacondaga, miraculously escaped molestation. But it was a genuine affliction when, later in the year, Sir John personally superintended the burning down of the dear old Cedars, the home of our youth. If I were able to forgive him all other harm he has wrought, alike to me and to his neighbors, this would still remain obstinately to steel my heart against him, for he knew that we had been good to his wife, and that we loved the place better than any other on earth. We were very melancholy over this for a long time, and, to the end of his placid days of second childhood passed with us, we never allowed Mr. Stewart to learn of it. But even here there was the recompense that the ruffians, though they crossed the river and frightened the women into running for safety to the woods, did not pursue them, and thus my mother and sisters, along with Mrs. Romeyn and others, escaped. Alas! that the Tory brutes could not also have forborne to slay on his own doorstep my godfather, honest old Douw Fonda! There was still another raid upon the Valley the ensuing year, but it touched us only in that it brought news of the violent death of Walter Butler, slain on the bank of the East Canada Creek by the Oneida chief Skenandoah. Both Daisy and I had known him from childhood, and had in the old times been fond of him. Yet there had been so much innocent blood upon those delicate hands of his, before they clutched the gravel on the lonely forest stream's edge in their death-grasp, that we could scarcely wish him alive again. Our first boy was born about this time--a dark-skinned, brawny man-child whom it seemed the most natural thing in the world to christen Douw. He bears the name still, and on the whole, though he has forgotten all the Dutch I taught him, bears it creditably. In the mid-autumn of the next year--it was in fact the very day on which the glorious news of Yorktown reached Albany--a second little boy was born. He was a fair-haired, slender creature, differing from the other as sunshine differs from thunder-clouds. He had nothing like the other's breadth of shoulders or strength of lung and limb, and we petted him accordingly, as is the wont of parents. When the question of his name came up, I sat, I remember, by his mother's bedside, holding her hand in mine, and we both looked down upon the tiny, fair babe nestled upon her arm. "Ought we not to call him for the dear old father--give him the two names, 'Thomas' and 'Stewart'?" I asked. Daisy stroked the child's hair gently, and looked with tender melancholy into my eyes. "I have been thinking," she murmured, "thinking often of late--it is all so far behind us now, and time has passed so sweetly and softened so much our memories of past trouble and of the--the dead--I nave been thinking, dear, that it would be a comfort to have the lad called Philip." I sat for a long time thus by her side, and we talked more freely than we had ever done before of him who lay buried by the ruined walls of Cairncross. Time had indeed softened much. We spoke of him now with gentle sorrow--as of a friend whose life had left somewhat to be desired, yet whose death had given room for naught but pity. He had been handsome and fearless and wilful--and unfortunate; our minds were closed against any harsher word. And it came about that when it was time for me to leave the room, and I bent over to kiss lightly the sleeping infant, I was glad in my heart that he was to be called Philip. Thus he was called, and though the General was his godfather at the old Dutch church, we did not conceal from him that the Philip for whom the name was given was another. It was easily within Schuyler's kindly nature to comprehend the feelings which prompted us, and I often fancied he was even the fonder of the child because of the link formed by his name with his parents' time of grief and tragic romance. In truth, we all made much of this light-haired, beautiful, imperious little boy, who from the beginning quite cast into the shade his elder and slower brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty spectacle indeed--one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even now--to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, to be sure, my heart smote me with the fear that poor quiet Master Douw felt keenly underneath his calm exterior this preference, and often, too, I grew nervous lest our fondness was spoiling the younger child. But it was not in us to resist him. The little Philip died suddenly, in his sixth year, and within the month Mr. Stewart followed him. Great and overpowering as was our grief, it seemed almost perfunctory beside the heart-breaking anguish of the old man. He literally staggered and died under the blow. * * * * * There is no story in the rest of my life. The years have flowed on as peacefully, as free from tempest or excitement, as the sluggish waters of a Delft canal. No calamity has since come upon us; no great trial or large advancement has stirred the current of our pleasant existence. Having always a sufficient hold upon the present, with means to live in comfort, and tastes not leading into venturesome ways for satisfaction, it has come to be to us, in our old age, a deep delight to look backward together. We seem now to have walked from the outset hand in hand. The joys of our childhood and youth spent under one roof--the dear smoky, raftered roof, where hung old Dame Kronk's onions and corn and perfumed herbs--are very near to us. There comes between this scene of sunlight and the not less peaceful radiance of our later life, it is true, the shadow for a time of a dark curtain. Yet, so good and generous a thing is memory, even this interruption appears now to have been but of a momentary kind, and has for us no harrowing side. As I wrote out the story, page by page, it seemed to both of us that all these trials, these tears, these bitter feuds and fights, must have happened to others, not to us--so swallowed up in happiness are the griefs of those young years, and so free are our hearts from scars.

1

None

It happened in the ‘seventies in winter, on the day after St. Nicholas’s Day. There was a fete in the parish and the innkeeper, Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov, a Second Guild merchant, being a church elder had to go to church, and had also to entertain his relatives and friends at home. But when the last of them had gone he at once began to prepare to drive over to see a neighbouring proprietor about a grove which he had been bargaining over for a long time. He was now in a hurry to start, lest buyers from the town might forestall him in making a profitable purchase. The youthful landowner was asking ten thousand rubles for the grove simply because Vasili Andreevich was offering seven thousand. Seven thousand was, however, only a third of its real value. Vasili Andreevich might perhaps have got it down to his own price, for the woods were in his district and he had a long-standing agreement with the other village dealers that no one should run up the price in another’s district, but he had now learnt that some timber-dealers from town meant to bid for the Goryachkin grove, and he resolved to go at once and get the matter settled. So as soon as the feast was over, he took seven hundred rubles from his strong box, added to them two thousand three hundred rubles of church money he had in his keeping, so as to make up the sum to three thousand; carefully counted the notes, and having put them into his pocket-book made haste to start. Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreevich’s labourers who was not drunk that day, ran to harness the horse. Nikita, though an habitual drunkard, was not drunk that day because since the last day before the fast, when he had drunk his coat and leather boots, he had sworn off drink and had kept his vow for two months, and was still keeping it despite the temptation of the vodka that had been drunk everywhere during the first two days of the feast. Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring village, ‘not a manager’ as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the thrifty head of a household but lived most of his time away from home as a labourer. He was valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work, and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper. But he never settled down anywhere for long because about twice a year, or even oftener, he had a drinking bout, and then besides spending all his clothes on drink he became turbulent and quarrelsome. Vasili Andreevich himself had turned him away several times, but had afterwards taken him back again--valuing his honesty, his kindness to animals, and especially his cheapness. Vasili Andreevich did not pay Nikita the eighty rubles a year such a man was worth, but only about forty, which he gave him haphazard, in small sums, and even that mostly not in cash but in goods from his own shop and at high prices. Nikita’s wife Martha, who had once been a handsome vigorous woman, managed the homestead with the help of her son and two daughters, and did not urge Nikita to live at home: first because she had been living for some twenty years already with a cooper, a peasant from another village who lodged in their house; and secondly because though she managed her husband as she pleased when he was sober, she feared him like fire when he was drunk. Once when he had got drunk at home, Nikita, probably to make up for his submissiveness when sober, broke open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up an axe, and chopped all her undergarments and dresses to bits. All the wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no objection to that. So now, two days before the holiday, Martha had been twice to see Vasili Andreevich and had got from him wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which she thanked him as for a special favour, though he owed Nikita at least twenty rubles. ‘What agreement did we ever draw up with you?’ said Vasili Andreevich to Nikita. ‘If you need anything, take it; you will work it off. I’m not like others to keep you waiting, and making up accounts and reckoning fines. We deal straight-forwardly. You serve me and I don’t neglect you.’ And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced that he was Nikita’s benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did not overreach them. ‘Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich. You know that I serve you and take as much pains as I would for my own father. I understand very well!’ Nikita would reply. He was quite aware that Vasili Andreevich was cheating him, but at the same time he felt that it was useless to try to clear up his accounts with him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get. Now, having heard his master’s order to harness, he went as usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasselled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to harness was standing by himself. ‘What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?’ said Nikita in answer to the low whinny with which he was greeted by the good-tempered, medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather slanting crupper, who stood alone in the shed. ‘Now then, now then, there’s time enough. Let me water you first,’ he went on, speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the words he was using, and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water. Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and making play with his hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita, who was running at a trot beside him to the pump. ‘Now then, now then, you rascal!’ Nikita called out, well knowing how carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy sheepskin coat but not to strike him--a trick Nikita much appreciated. After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet lips, from the hairs of which transparent drops fell into the trough; then standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a loud snort. ‘If you don’t want any more, you needn’t. But don’t go asking for any later,’ said Nikita quite seriously and fully explaining his conduct to Mukhorty. Then he ran back to the shed pulling the playful young horse, who wanted to gambol all over the yard, by the rein. There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook’s husband, who had come for the holiday. ‘Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed--the wide one or the small one--there’s a good fellow!’ The cook’s husband went into the house, which stood on an iron foundation and was iron-roofed, and soon returned saying that the little one was to be harnessed. By that time Nikita had put the collar and brass-studded belly-band on Mukhorty and, carrying a light, painted shaft-bow in one hand, was leading the horse with the other up to two sledges that stood in the shed. ‘All right, let it be the little one!’ he said, backing the intelligent horse, which all the time kept pretending to bite him, into the shafts, and with the aid of the cook’s husband he proceeded to harness. When everything was nearly ready and only the reins had to be adjusted, Nikita sent the other man to the shed for some straw and to the barn for a drugget. ‘There, that’s all right! Now, now, don’t bristle up!’ said Nikita, pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the cook’s husband had brought. ‘And now let’s spread the sacking like this, and the drugget over it. There, like that it will be comfortable sitting,’ he went on, suiting the action to the words and tucking the drugget all round over the straw to make a seat. ‘Thank you, dear man. Things always go quicker with two working at it!’ he added. And gathering up the leather reins fastened together by a brass ring, Nikita took the driver’s seat and started the impatient horse over the frozen manure which lay in the yard, towards the gate. ‘Uncle Nikita! I say, Uncle, Uncle!’ a high-pitched voice shouted, and a seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat, new white felt boots, and a warm cap, ran hurriedly out of the house into the yard. ‘Take me with you!’ he cried, fastening up his coat as he ran. ‘All right, come along, darling!’ said Nikita, and stopping the sledge he picked up the master’s pale thin little son, radiant with joy, and drove out into the road. It was past two o’clock and the day was windy, dull, and cold, with more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit of frost. Half the sky was hidden by a lowering dark cloud. In the yard it was quiet, but in the street the wind was felt more keenly. The snow swept down from a neighbouring shed and whirled about in the corner near the bath-house. Hardly had Nikita driven out of the yard and turned the horse’s head to the house, before Vasili Andreevich emerged from the high porch in front of the house with a cigarette in his mouth and wearing a cloth-covered sheep-skin coat tightly girdled low at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and stopped. Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up, began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the moustache, so that his breath should not moisten the collar. ‘See now! The young scamp is there already!’ he exclaimed when he saw his little son in the sledge. Vasili Andreevich was excited by the vodka he had drunk with his visitors, and so he was even more pleased than usual with everything that was his and all that he did. The sight of his son, whom he always thought of as his heir, now gave him great satisfaction. He looked at him, screwing up his eyes and showing his long teeth. His wife--pregnant, thin and pale, with her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl so that nothing of her face could be seen but her eyes--stood behind him in the vestibule to see him off. ‘Now really, you ought to take Nikita with you,’ she said timidly, stepping out from the doorway. Vasili Andreevich did not answer. Her words evidently annoyed him and he frowned angrily and spat. ‘You have money on you,’ she continued in the same plaintive voice. ‘What if the weather gets worse! Do take him, for goodness’ sake!’ ‘Why? Don’t I know the road that I must needs take a guide?’ exclaimed Vasili Andreevich, uttering every word very distinctly and compressing his lips unnaturally, as he usually did when speaking to buyers and sellers. ‘Really you ought to take him. I beg you in God’s name!’ his wife repeated, wrapping her shawl more closely round her head. ‘There, she sticks to it like a leech! ... Where am I to take him?’ ‘I’m quite ready to go with you, Vasili Andreevich,’ said Nikita cheerfully. ‘But they must feed the horses while I am away,’ he added, turning to his master’s wife. ‘I’ll look after them, Nikita dear. I’ll tell Simon,’ replied the mistress. ‘Well, Vasili Andreevich, am I to come with you?’ said Nikita, awaiting a decision. ‘It seems I must humour my old woman. But if you’re coming you’d better put on a warmer cloak,’ said Vasili Andreevich, smiling again as he winked at Nikita’s short sheepskin coat, which was torn under the arms and at the back, was greasy and out of shape, frayed to a fringe round the skirt, and had endured many things in its lifetime. ‘Hey, dear man, come and hold the horse!’ shouted Nikita to the cook’s husband, who was still in the yard. ‘No, I will myself, I will myself!’ shrieked the little boy, pulling his hands, red with cold, out of his pockets, and seizing the cold leather reins. ‘Only don’t be too long dressing yourself up. Look alive!’ shouted Vasili Andreevich, grinning at Nikita. ‘Only a moment, Father, Vasili Andreevich!’ replied Nikita, and running quickly with his inturned toes in his felt boots with their soles patched with felt, he hurried across the yard and into the workmen’s hut. ‘Arinushka! Get my coat down from the stove. I’m going with the master,’ he said, as he ran into the hut and took down his girdle from the nail on which it hung. The workmen’s cook, who had had a sleep after dinner and was now getting the samovar ready for her husband, turned cheerfully to Nikita, and infected by his hurry began to move as quickly as he did, got down his miserable worn-out cloth coat from the stove where it was drying, and began hurriedly shaking it out and smoothing it down. ‘There now, you’ll have a chance of a holiday with your good man,’ said Nikita, who from kindhearted politeness always said something to anyone he was alone with. Then, drawing his worn narrow girdle round him, he drew in his breath, pulling in his lean stomach still more, and girdled himself as tightly as he could over his sheepskin. ‘There now,’ he said addressing himself no longer to the cook but the girdle, as he tucked the ends in at the waist, ‘now you won’t come undone!’ And working his shoulders up and down to free his arms, he put the coat over his sheepskin, arched his back more strongly to ease his arms, poked himself under the armpits, and took down his leather-covered mittens from the shelf. ‘Now we’re all right!’ ‘You ought to wrap your feet up, Nikita. Your boots are very bad.’ Nikita stopped as if he had suddenly realized this. ‘Yes, I ought to.... But they’ll do like this. It isn’t far!’ and he ran out into the yard. ‘Won’t you be cold, Nikita?’ said the mistress as he came up to the sledge. ‘Cold? No, I’m quite warm,’ answered Nikita as he pushed some straw up to the forepart of the sledge so that it should cover his feet, and stowed away the whip, which the good horse would not need, at the bottom of the sledge. Vasili Andreevich, who was wearing two fur-lined coats one over the other, was already in the sledge, his broad back filling nearly its whole rounded width, and taking the reins he immediately touched the horse. Nikita jumped in just as the sledge started, and seated himself in front on the left side, with one leg hanging over the edge.

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The good stallion took the sledge along at a brisk pace over the smooth-frozen road through the village, the runners squeaking slightly as they went. ‘Look at him hanging on there! Hand me the whip, Nikita!’ shouted Vasili Andreevich, evidently enjoying the sight of his ‘heir,’ who standing on the runners was hanging on at the back of the sledge. ‘I’ll give it you! Be off to mamma, you dog!’ The boy jumped down. The horse increased his amble and, suddenly changing foot, broke into a fast trot. The Crosses, the village where Vasili Andreevich lived, consisted of six houses. As soon as they had passed the blacksmith’s hut, the last in the village, they realized that the wind was much stronger than they had thought. The road could hardly be seen. The tracks left by the sledge-runners were immediately covered by snow and the road was only distinguished by the fact that it was higher than the rest of the ground. There was a swirl of snow over the fields and the line where sky and earth met could not be seen. The Telyatin forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust. The wind came from the left, insistently blowing over to one side the mane on Mukhorty’s sleek neck and carrying aside even his fluffy tail, which was tied in a simple knot. Nikita’s wide coat-collar, as he sat on the windy side, pressed close to his cheek and nose. ‘This road doesn’t give him a chance--it’s too snowy,’ said Vasili Andreevich, who prided himself on his good horse. ‘I once drove to Pashutino with him in half an hour.’ ‘What?’ asked Nikita, who could not hear on account of his collar. ‘I say I once went to Pashutino in half an hour,’ shouted Vasili Andreevich. ‘It goes without saying that he’s a good horse,’ replied Nikita. They were silent for a while. But Vasili Andreevich wished to talk. ‘Well, did you tell your wife not to give the cooper any vodka?’ he began in the same loud tone, quite convinced that Nikita must feel flattered to be talking with so clever and important a person as himself, and he was so pleased with his jest that it did not enter his head that the remark might be unpleasant to Nikita. The wind again prevented Nikita’s hearing his master’s words. Vasili Andreevich repeated the jest about the cooper in his loud, clear voice. ‘That’s their business, Vasili Andreevich. I don’t pry into their affairs. As long as she doesn’t ill-treat our boy--God be with them.’ ‘That’s so,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘Well, and will you be buying a horse in spring?’ he went on, changing the subject. ‘Yes, I can’t avoid it,’ answered Nikita, turning down his collar and leaning back towards his master. The conversation now became interesting to him and he did not wish to lose a word. ‘The lad’s growing up. He must begin to plough for himself, but till now we’ve always had to hire someone,’ he said. ‘Well, why not have the lean-cruppered one. I won’t charge much for it,’ shouted Vasili Andreevich, feeling animated, and consequently starting on his favourite occupation--that of horse-dealing--which absorbed all his mental powers. ‘Or you might let me have fifteen rubles and I’ll buy one at the horse-market,’ said Nikita, who knew that the horse Vasili Andreevich wanted to sell him would be dear at seven rubles, but that if he took it from him it would be charged at twenty-five, and then he would be unable to draw any money for half a year. ‘It’s a good horse. I think of your interest as of my own--according to conscience. Brekhunov isn’t a man to wrong anyone. Let the loss be mine. I’m not like others. Honestly!’ he shouted in the voice in which he hypnotized his customers and dealers. ‘It’s a real good horse.’ ‘Quite so!’ said Nikita with a sigh, and convinced that there was nothing more to listen to, he again released his collar, which immediately covered his ear and face. They drove on in silence for about half an hour. The wind blew sharply onto Nikita’s side and arm where his sheepskin was torn. He huddled up and breathed into the collar which covered his mouth, and was not wholly cold. ‘What do you think--shall we go through Karamyshevo or by the straight road?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. The road through Karamyshevo was more frequented and was well marked with a double row of high stakes. The straight road was nearer but little used and had no stakes, or only poor ones covered with snow. Nikita thought awhile. ‘Though Karamyshevo is farther, it is better going,’ he said. ‘But by the straight road, when once we get through the hollow by the forest, it’s good going--sheltered,’ said Vasili Andreevich, who wished to go the nearest way. ‘Just as you please,’ said Nikita, and again let go of his collar. Vasili Andreevich did as he had said, and having gone about half a verst came to a tall oak stake which had a few dry leaves still dangling on it, and there he turned to the left. On turning they faced directly against the wind, and snow was beginning to fall. Vasili Andreevich, who was driving, inflated his cheeks, blowing the breath out through his moustache. Nikita dozed. So they went on in silence for about ten minutes. Suddenly Vasili Andreevich began saying something. ‘Eh, what?’ asked Nikita, opening his eyes. Vasili Andreevich did not answer, but bent over, looking behind them and then ahead of the horse. The sweat had curled Mukhorty’s coat between his legs and on his neck. He went at a walk. ‘What is it?’ Nikita asked again. ‘What is it? What is it?’ Vasili Andreevich mimicked him angrily. ‘There are no stakes to be seen! We must have got off the road!’ ‘Well, pull up then, and I’ll look for it,’ said Nikita, and jumping down lightly from the sledge and taking the whip from under the straw, he went off to the left from his own side of the sledge. The snow was not deep that year, so that it was possible to walk anywhere, but still in places it was knee-deep and got into Nikita’s boots. He went about feeling the ground with his feet and the whip, but could not find the road anywhere. ‘Well, how is it?’ asked Vasili Andreevich when Nikita came back to the sledge. ‘There is no road this side. I must go to the other side and try there,’ said Nikita. ‘There’s something there in front. Go and have a look.’ Nikita went to what had appeared dark, but found that it was earth which the wind had blown from the bare fields of winter oats and had strewn over the snow, colouring it. Having searched to the right also, he returned to the sledge, brushed the snow from his coat, shook it out of his boots, and seated himself once more. ‘We must go to the right,’ he said decidedly. ‘The wind was blowing on our left before, but now it is straight in my face. Drive to the right,’ he repeated with decision. Vasili Andreevich took his advice and turned to the right, but still there was no road. They went on in that direction for some time. The wind was as fierce as ever and it was snowing lightly. ‘It seems, Vasili Andreevich, that we have gone quite astray,’ Nikita suddenly remarked, as if it were a pleasant thing. ‘What is that?’ he added, pointing to some potato vines that showed up from under the snow. Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep sides were heaving heavily. ‘What is it?’ ‘Why, we are on the Zakharov lands. See where we’ve got to!’ ‘Nonsense!’ retorted Vasili Andreevich. ‘It’s not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich. It’s the truth,’ replied Nikita. ‘You can feel that the sledge is going over a potato-field, and there are the heaps of vines which have been carted here. It’s the Zakharov factory land.’ ‘Dear me, how we have gone astray!’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘What are we to do now?’ ‘We must go straight on, that’s all. We shall come out somewhere--if not at Zakharova, then at the proprietor’s farm,’ said Nikita. Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated. So they went on for a considerable time. At times they came onto bare fields and the sledge-runners rattled over frozen lumps of earth. Sometimes they got onto a winter-rye field, or a fallow field on which they could see stalks of wormwood, and straws sticking up through the snow and swaying in the wind; sometimes they came onto deep and even white snow, above which nothing was to be seen. The snow was falling from above and sometimes rose from below. The horse was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up from sweat and was covered with hoar-frost, and he went at a walk. Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a ditch or water-course. Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but Nikita cried to him: ‘Why stop? We’ve got in and must get out. Hey, pet! Hey, darling! Gee up, old fellow!’ he shouted in a cheerful tone to the horse, jumping out of the sledge and himself getting stuck in the ditch. The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen bank. It was evidently a ditch that had been dug there. ‘Where are we now?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. ‘We’ll soon find out!’ Nikita replied. ‘Go on, we’ll get somewhere.’ ‘Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!’ said Vasili Andreevich, pointing to something dark that appeared amid the snow in front of them. ‘We’ll see what forest it is when we get there,’ said Nikita. He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry, oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there. They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the height of the sledge, drew up his hind legs also, pulling the sledge onto higher ground, and turned to the left, no longer sinking up to his knees in snow. They were back on a road. ‘Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!’ said Nikita. The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted snow, and before they had gone another hundred yards the straight line of the dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which poured down from it. After passing the barn the road turned to the wind and they drove into a snow-drift. But ahead of them was a lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had been blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift. And so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they came out into a street. At the end house of the village some frozen clothes hanging on a line--shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat--fluttered wildly in the wind. The white shirt in particular struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about. ‘There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes down before the holiday,’ remarked Nikita, looking at the fluttering shirts.

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At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it was calm, warm, and cheerful. At one house a dog was barking, at another a woman, covering her head with her coat, came running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping on the threshold to have a look at the passing sledge. In the middle of the village girls could be heard singing. Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and the frost was less keen. ‘Why, this is Grishkino,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘So it is,’ responded Nikita. It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far to the left and had travelled some six miles, not quite in the direction they aimed at, but towards their destination for all that. From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles. In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man walking down the middle of the street. ‘Who are you?’ shouted the man, stopping the horse, and recognizing Vasili Anereevich he immediately took hold of the shaft, went along it hand over hand till he reached the sledge, and placed himself on the driver’s seat. He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich’s acquaintance, and well known as the principal horse-thief in the district. ‘Ah, Vasili Andreevich! Where are you off to?’ said Isay, enveloping Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk. ‘We were going to Goryachkin.’ ‘And look where you’ve got to! You should have gone through Molchanovka.’ ‘Should have, but didn’t manage it,’ said Vasili Andreevich, holding in the horse. ‘That’s a good horse,’ said Isay, with a shrewd glance at Mukhorty, and with a practised hand he tightened the loosened knot high in the horse’s bushy tail. ‘Are you going to stay the night?’ ‘No, friend. I must get on.’ ‘Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita Stepanych!’ ‘Who else?’ replied Nikita. ‘But I say, good friend, how are we to avoid going astray again?’ ‘Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the street and then when you come out keep straight on. Don’t take to the left. You will come out onto the high road, and then turn to the right.’ ‘And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the winter way?’ asked Nikita. ‘The winter way. As soon as you turn off you’ll see some bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one with branches--and that’s the way.’ Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the outskirts of the village. ‘Why not stay the night?’ Isay shouted after them. But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse. Four miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest, seemed easy to manage, especially as the wind was apparently quieter and the snow had stopped. Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here and there by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung out and where the white shirt had broken loose and was now attached only by one frozen sleeve, they again came within sound of the weird moan of the willows, and again emerged on the open fields. The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have grown yet stronger. The road was completely covered with drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not lost their way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not easy to see, since the wind blew in their faces. Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and looked out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse’s sagacity, letting it take its own way. And the horse really did not lose the road but followed its windings, turning now to the right and now to the left and sensing it under his feet, so that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened they still continued to see way-marks now to the left and now to the right of them. So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly, through the slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something black showed up which moved in front of the horse. This was another sledge with fellow-travellers. Mukhorty overtook them, and struck his hoofs against the back of the sledge in front of them. ‘Pass on... hey there... get in front!’ cried voices from the sledge. Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge. In it sat three men and a woman, evidently visitors returning from a feast. One peasant was whacking the snow-covered croup of their little horse with a long switch, and the other two sitting in front waved their arms and shouted something. The woman, completely wrapped up and covered with snow, sat drowsing and bumping at the back. ‘Who are you?’ shouted Vasili Andreevich. ‘From A-a-a...’ was all that could be heard. ‘I say, where are you from?’ ‘From A-a-a-a!’ one of the peasants shouted with all his might, but still it was impossible to make out who they were. ‘Get along! Keep up!’ shouted another, ceaselessly beating his horse with the switch. ‘So you’re from a feast, it seems?’ ‘Go on, go on! Faster, Simon! Get in front! Faster!’ The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got jammed but managed to separate, and the peasants’ sledge began to fall behind. Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow, breathed heavily under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using the last of its strength, vainly endeavoured to escape from the switch, hobbling with its short legs through the deep snow which it threw up under itself. Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like that of a fish, nostrils distended and ears pressed back from fear, kept up for a few seconds near Nikita’s shoulder and then began to fall behind. ‘Just see what liquor does!’ said Nikita. ‘They’ve tired that little horse to death. What pagans!’ For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little horse and the drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the panting and the shouts died away, and around them nothing could be heard but the whistling of the wind in their ears and now and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept part of the road. This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he drove on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on the horse and trusting to him. Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances he drowsed, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the horse stopped and Nikita nearly fell forward onto his nose. ‘You know we’re off the track again!’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘How’s that?’ ‘Why, there are no way-marks to be seen. We must have got off the road again.’ ‘Well, if we’ve lost the road we must find it,’ said Nikita curtly, and getting out and stepping lightly on his pigeon-toed feet he started once more going about on the snow. He walked about for a long time, now disappearing and now reappearing, and finally he came back. ‘There is no road here. There may be farther on,’ he said, getting into the sledge. It was already growing dark. The snow-storm had not increased but had also not subsided. ‘If we could only hear those peasants!’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘Well they haven’t caught us up. We must have gone far astray. Or maybe they have lost their way too.’ ‘Where are we to go then?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. ‘Why, we must let the horse take its own way,’ said Nikita. ‘He will take us right. Let me have the reins.’ Vasili Andreevich gave him the reins, the more willingly because his hands were beginning to feel frozen in his thick gloves. Nikita took the reins, but only held them, trying not to shake them and rejoicing at his favourite’s sagacity. And indeed the clever horse, turning first one ear and then the other now to one side and then to the other, began to wheel round. ‘The one thing he can’t do is to talk,’ Nikita kept saying. ‘See what he is doing! Go on, go on! You know best. That’s it, that’s it!’ The wind was now blowing from behind and it felt warmer. ‘Yes, he’s clever,’ Nikita continued, admiring the horse. ‘A Kirgiz horse is strong but stupid. But this one--just see what he’s doing with his ears! He doesn’t need any telegraph. He can scent a mile off.’ Before another half-hour had passed they saw something dark ahead of them--a wood or a village--and stakes again appeared to the right. They had evidently come out onto the road. ‘Why, that’s Grishkino again!’ Nikita suddenly exclaimed. And indeed, there on their left was that same barn with the snow flying from it, and farther on the same line with the frozen washing, shirts and trousers, which still fluttered desperately in the wind. Again they drove into the street and again it grew quiet, warm, and cheerful, and again they could see the manure-stained street and hear voices and songs and the barking of a dog. It was already so dark that there were lights in some of the windows. Half-way through the village Vasili Andreevich turned the horse towards a large double-fronted brick house and stopped at the porch. Nikita went to the lighted snow-covered window, in the rays of which flying snow-flakes glittered, and knocked at it with his whip. ‘Who is there?’ a voice replied to his knock. ‘From Kresty, the Brekhunovs, dear fellow,’ answered Nikita. ‘Just come out for a minute.’ Someone moved from the window, and a minute or two later there was the sound of the passage door as it came unstuck, then the latch of the outside door clicked and a tall white-bearded peasant, with a sheepskin coat thrown over his white holiday shirt, pushed his way out holding the door firmly against the wind, followed by a lad in a red shirt and high leather boots. ‘Is that you, Andreevich?’ asked the old man. ‘Yes, friend, we’ve gone astray,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘We wanted to get to Goryachkin but found ourselves here. We went a second time but lost our way again.’ ‘Just see how you have gone astray!’ said the old man. ‘Petrushka, go and open the gate!’ he added, turning to the lad in the red shirt. ‘All right,’ said the lad in a cheerful voice, and ran back into the passage. ‘But we’re not staying the night,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘Where will you go in the night? You’d better stay!’ ‘I’d be glad to, but I must go on. It’s business, and it can’t be helped.’ ‘Well, warm yourself at least. The samovar is just ready.’ ‘Warm myself? Yes, I’ll do that,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘It won’t get darker. The moon will rise and it will be lighter. Let’s go in and warm ourselves, Nikita.’ ‘Well, why not? Let us warm ourselves,’ replied Nikita, who was stiff with cold and anxious to warm his frozen limbs. Vasili Andreevich went into the room with the old man, and Nikita drove through the gate opened for him by Petrushka, by whose advice he backed the horse under the penthouse. The ground was covered with manure and the tall bow over the horse’s head caught against the beam. The hens and the cock had already settled to roost there, and clucked peevishly, clinging to the beam with their claws. The disturbed sheep shied and rushed aside trampling the frozen manure with their hooves. The dog yelped desperately with fright and anger and then burst out barking like a puppy at the stranger. Nikita talked to them all, excused himself to the fowls and assured them that he would not disturb them again, rebuked the sheep for being frightened without knowing why, and kept soothing the dog, while he tied up the horse. ‘Now that will be all right,’ he said, knocking the snow off his clothes. ‘Just hear how he barks!’ he added, turning to the dog. ‘Be quiet, stupid! Be quiet. You are only troubling yourself for nothing. We’re not thieves, we’re friends....’ ‘And these are, it’s said, the three domestic counsellors,’ remarked the lad, and with his strong arms he pushed under the pent-roof the sledge that had remained outside. ‘Why counsellors?’ asked Nikita. ‘That’s what is printed in Paulson. A thief creeps to a house--the dog barks, that means “Be on your guard!” The cock crows, that means, “Get up!” The cat licks herself--that means, “A welcome guest is coming. Get ready to receive him! ”’ said the lad with a smile. Petrushka could read and write and knew Paulson’s primer, his only book, almost by heart, and he was fond of quoting sayings from it that he thought suited the occasion, especially when he had had something to drink, as to-day. ‘That’s so,’ said Nikita. ‘You must be chilled through and through,’ said Petrushka. ‘Yes, I am rather,’ said Nikita, and they went across the yard and the passage into the house.

4

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The household to which Vasili Andreevich had come was one of the richest in the village. The family had five allotments, besides renting other land. They had six horses, three cows, two calves, and some twenty sheep. There were twenty-two members belonging to the homestead: four married sons, six grandchildren (one of whom, Petrushka, was married), two great-grandchildren, three orphans, and four daughters-in-law with their babies. It was one of the few homesteads that remained still undivided, but even here the dull internal work of disintegration which would inevitably lead to separation had already begun, starting as usual among the women. Two sons were living in Moscow as water-carriers, and one was in the army. At home now were the old man and his wife, their second son who managed the homestead, the eldest who had come from Moscow for the holiday, and all the women and children. Besides these members of the family there was a visitor, a neighbour who was godfather to one of the children. Over the table in the room hung a lamp with a shade, which brightly lit up the tea-things, a bottle of vodka, and some refreshments, besides illuminating the brick walls, which in the far corner were hung with icons on both sides of which were pictures. At the head of the table sat Vasili Andreevich in a black sheepskin coat, sucking his frozen moustache and observing the room and the people around him with his prominent hawk-like eyes. With him sat the old, bald, white-bearded master of the house in a white homespun shirt, and next him the son home from Moscow for the holiday--a man with a sturdy back and powerful shoulders and clad in a thin print shirt--then the second son, also broad-shouldered, who acted as head of the house, and then a lean red-haired peasant--the neighbour. Having had a drink of vodka and something to eat, they were about to take tea, and the samovar standing on the floor beside the brick oven was already humming. The children could be seen in the top bunks and on the top of the oven. A woman sat on a lower bunk with a cradle beside her. The old housewife, her face covered with wrinkles which wrinkled even her lips, was waiting on Vasili Andreevich. As Nikita entered the house she was offering her guest a small tumbler of thick glass which she had just filled with vodka. ‘Don’t refuse, Vasili Andreevich, you mustn’t! Wish us a merry feast. Drink it, dear!’ she said. The sight and smell of vodka, especially now when he was chilled through and tired out, much disturbed Nikita’s mind. He frowned, and having shaken the snow off his cap and coat, stopped in front of the icons as if not seeing anyone, crossed himself three times, and bowed to the icons. Then, turning to the old master of the house and bowing first to him, then to all those at table, then to the women who stood by the oven, and muttering: ‘A merry holiday!’ he began taking off his outer things without looking at the table. ‘Why, you’re all covered with hoar-frost, old fellow!’ said the eldest brother, looking at Nikita’s snow-covered face, eyes, and beard. Nikita took off his coat, shook it again, hung it up beside the oven, and came up to the table. He too was offered vodka. He went through a moment of painful hesitation and nearly took up the glass and emptied the clear fragrant liquid down his throat, but he glanced at Vasili Andreevich, remembered his oath and the boots that he had sold for drink, recalled the cooper, remembered his son for whom he had promised to buy a horse by spring, sighed, and declined it. ‘I don’t drink, thank you kindly,’ he said frowning, and sat down on a bench near the second window. ‘How’s that?’ asked the eldest brother. ‘I just don’t drink,’ replied Nikita without lifting his eyes but looking askance at his scanty beard and moustache and getting the icicles out of them. ‘It’s not good for him,’ said Vasili Andreevich, munching a cracknel after emptying his glass. ‘Well, then, have some tea,’ said the kindly old hostess. ‘You must be chilled through, good soul. Why are you women dawdling so with the samovar?’ ‘It is ready,’ said one of the young women, and after flicking with her apron the top of the samovar which was now boiling over, she carried it with an effort to the table, raised it, and set it down with a thud. Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich was telling how he had lost his way, how they had come back twice to this same village, and how they had gone astray and had met some drunken peasants. Their hosts were surprised, explained where and why they had missed their way, said who the tipsy people they had met were, and told them how they ought to go. ‘A little child could find the way to Molchanovka from here. All you have to do is to take the right turning from the high road. There’s a bush you can see just there. But you didn’t even get that far!’ said the neighbour. ‘You’d better stay the night. The women will make up beds for you,’ said the old woman persuasively. ‘You could go on in the morning and it would be pleasanter,’ said the old man, confirming what his wife had said. ‘I can’t, friend. Business!’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘Lose an hour and you can’t catch it up in a year,’ he added, remembering the grove and the dealers who might snatch that deal from him. ‘We shall get there, shan’t we?’ he said, turning to Nikita. Nikita did not answer for some time, apparently still intent on thawing out his beard and moustache. ‘If only we don’t go astray again,’ he replied gloomily. He was gloomy because he passionately longed for some vodka, and the only thing that could assuage that longing was tea and he had not yet been offered any. ‘But we have only to reach the turning and then we shan’t go wrong. The road will be through the forest the whole way,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘It’s just as you please, Vasili Andreevich. If we’re to go, let us go,’ said Nikita, taking the glass of tea he was offered. ‘We’ll drink our tea and be off.’ Nikita said nothing but only shook his head, and carefully pouring some tea into his saucer began warming his hands, the fingers of which were always swollen with hard work, over the steam. Then, biting off a tiny bit of sugar, he bowed to his hosts, said, ‘Your health!’ and drew in the steaming liquid. ‘If somebody would see us as far as the turning,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘Well, we can do that,’ said the eldest son. ‘Petrushka will harness and go that far with you.’ ‘Well, then, put in the horse, lad, and I shall be thankful to you for it.’ ‘Oh, what for, dear man?’ said the kindly old woman. ‘We are heartily glad to do it.’ ‘Petrushka, go and put in the mare,’ said the eldest brother. ‘All right,’ replied Petrushka with a smile, and promptly snatching his cap down from a nail he ran away to harness. While the horse was being harnessed the talk returned to the point at which it had stopped when Vasili Andreevich drove up to the window. The old man had been complaining to his neighbour, the village elder, about his third son who had not sent him anything for the holiday though he had sent a French shawl to his wife. ‘The young people are getting out of hand,’ said the old man. ‘And how they do!’ said the neighbour. ‘There’s no managing them! They know too much. There’s Demochkin now, who broke his father’s arm. It’s all from being too clever, it seems.’ Nikita listened, watched their faces, and evidently would have liked to share in the conversation, but he was too busy drinking his tea and only nodded his head approvingly. He emptied one tumbler after another and grew warmer and warmer and more and more comfortable. The talk continued on the same subject for a long time--the harmfulness of a household dividing up--and it was clearly not an abstract discussion but concerned the question of a separation in that house; a separation demanded by the second son who sat there morosely silent. It was evidently a sore subject and absorbed them all, but out of propriety they did not discuss their private affairs before strangers. At last, however, the old man could not restrain himself, and with tears in his eyes declared that he would not consent to a break-up of the family during his lifetime, that his house was prospering, thank God, but that if they separated they would all have to go begging. ‘Just like the Matveevs,’ said the neighbour. ‘They used to have a proper house, but now they’ve split up none of them has anything.’ ‘And that is what you want to happen to us,’ said the old man, turning to his son. The son made no reply and there was an awkward pause. The silence was broken by Petrushka, who having harnessed the horse had returned to the hut a few minutes before this and had been listening all the time with a smile. ‘There’s a fable about that in Paulson,’ he said. ‘A father gave his sons a broom to break. At first they could not break it, but when they took it twig by twig they broke it easily. And it’s the same here,’ and he gave a broad smile. ‘I’m ready!’ he added. ‘If you’re ready, let’s go,’ said Vasili Andreevich. ‘And as to separating, don’t you allow it, Grandfather. You got everything together and you’re the master. Go to the Justice of the Peace. He’ll say how things should be done.’ ‘He carries on so, carries on so,’ the old man continued in a whining tone. ‘There’s no doing anything with him. It’s as if the devil possessed him.’ Nikita having meanwhile finished his fifth tumbler of tea laid it on its side instead of turning it upside down, hoping to be offered a sixth glass. But there was no more water in the samovar, so the hostess did not fill it up for him. Besides, Vasili Andreevich was putting his things on, so there was nothing for it but for Nikita to get up too, put back into the sugar-basin the lump of sugar he had nibbled all round, wipe his perspiring face with the skirt of his sheepskin, and go to put on his overcoat. Having put it on he sighed deeply, thanked his hosts, said good-bye, and went out of the warm bright room into the cold dark passage, through which the wind was howling and where snow was blowing through the cracks of the shaking door, and from there into the yard. Petrushka stood in his sheepskin in the middle of the yard by his horse, repeating some lines from Paulson’s primer. He said with a smile: ‘Storms with mist the sky conceal, Snowy circles wheeling wild. Now like savage beast ‘twill howl, And now ‘tis wailing like a child.’ Nikita nodded approvingly as he arranged the reins. The old man, seeing Vasili Andreevich off, brought a lantern into the passage to show him a light, but it was blown out at once. And even in the yard it was evident that the snowstorm had become more violent. ‘Well, this is weather!’ thought Vasili Andreevich. ‘Perhaps we may not get there after all. But there is nothing to be done. Business! Besides, we have got ready, our host’s horse has been harnessed, and we’ll get there with God’s help!’ Their aged host also thought they ought not to go, but he had already tried to persuade them to stay and had not been listened to. ‘It’s no use asking them again. Maybe my age makes me timid. They’ll get there all right, and at least we shall get to bed in good time and without any fuss,’ he thought. Petrushka did not think of danger. He knew the road and the whole district so well, and the lines about ‘snowy circles wheeling wild’ described what was happening outside so aptly that it cheered him up. Nikita did not wish to go at all, but he had been accustomed not to have his own way and to serve others for so long that there was no one to hinder the departing travellers.

5

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Vasili Andreevich went over to his sledge, found it with difficulty in the darkness, climbed in and took the reins. ‘Go on in front!’ he cried. Petrushka kneeling in his low sledge started his horse. Mukhorty, who had been neighing for some time past, now scenting a mare ahead of him started after her, and they drove out into the street. They drove again through the outskirts of the village and along the same road, past the yard where the frozen linen had hung (which, however, was no longer to be seen), past the same barn, which was now snowed up almost to the roof and from which the snow was still endlessly pouring past the same dismally moaning, whistling, and swaying willows, and again entered into the sea of blustering snow raging from above and below. The wind was so strong that when it blew from the side and the travellers steered against it, it tilted the sledges and turned the horses to one side. Petrushka drove his good mare in front at a brisk trot and kept shouting lustily. Mukhorty pressed after her. After travelling so for about ten minutes, Petrushka turned round and shouted something. Neither Vasili Andreevich nor Nikita could hear anything because of the wind, but they guessed that they had arrived at the turning. In fact Petrushka had turned to the right, and now the wind that had blown from the side blew straight in their faces, and through the snow they saw something dark on their right. It was the bush at the turning. ‘Well now, God speed you!’ ‘Thank you, Petrushka!’ ‘Storms with mist the sky conceal!’ shouted Petrushka as he disappeared. ‘There’s a poet for you!’ muttered Vasili Andreevich, pulling at the reins. ‘Yes, a fine lad--a true peasant,’ said Nikita. They drove on. Nikita, wrapping his coat closely about him and pressing his head down so close to his shoulders that his short beard covered his throat, sat silently, trying not to lose the warmth he had obtained while drinking tea in the house. Before him he saw the straight lines of the shafts which constantly deceived him into thinking they were on a well-travelled road, and the horse’s swaying crupper with his knotted tail blown to one side, and farther ahead the high shaft-bow and the swaying head and neck of the horse with its waving mane. Now and then he caught sight of a way-sign, so that he knew they were still on a road and that there was nothing for him to be concerned about. Vasili Andreevich drove on, leaving it to the horse to keep to the road. But Mukhorty, though he had had a breathing-space in the village, ran reluctantly, and seemed now and then to get off the road, so that Vasili Andreevich had repeatedly to correct him. ‘Here’s a stake to the right, and another, and here’s a third,’ Vasili Andreevich counted, ‘and here in front is the forest,’ thought he, as he looked at something dark in front of him. But what had seemed to him a forest was only a bush. They passed the bush and drove on for another hundred yards but there was no fourth way-mark nor any forest. ‘We must reach the forest soon,’ thought Vasili Andreevich, and animated by the vodka and the tea he did not stop but shook the reins, and the good obedient horse responded, now ambling, now slowly trotting in the direction in which he was sent, though he knew that he was not going the right way. Ten minutes went by, but there was still no forest. ‘There now, we must be astray again,’ said Vasili Andreevich, pulling up. Nikita silently got out of the sledge and holding his coat, which the wind now wrapped closely about him and now almost tore off, started to feel about in the snow, going first to one side and then to the other. Three or four times he was completely lost to sight. At last he returned and took the reins from Vasili Andreevich’s hand. ‘We must go to the right,’ he said sternly and peremptorily, as he turned the horse. ‘Well, if it’s to the right, go to the right,’ said Vasili Andreevich, yielding up the reins to Nikita and thrusting his freezing hands into his sleeves. Nikita did not reply. ‘Now then, friend, stir yourself!’ he shouted to the horse, but in spite of the shake of the reins Mukhorty moved only at a walk. The snow in places was up to his knees, and the sledge moved by fits and starts with his every movement. Nikita took the whip that hung over the front of the sledge and struck him once. The good horse, unused to the whip, sprang forward and moved at a trot, but immediately fell back into an amble and then to a walk. So they went on for five minutes. It was dark and the snow whirled from above and rose from below, so that sometimes the shaft-bow could not be seen. At times the sledge seemed to stand still and the field to run backwards. Suddenly the horse stopped abruptly, evidently aware of something close in front of him. Nikita again sprang lightly out, throwing down the reins, and went ahead to see what had brought him to a standstill, but hardly had he made a step in front of the horse before his feet slipped and he went rolling down an incline. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ he said to himself as he fell, and he tried to stop his fall but could not, and only stopped when his feet plunged into a thick layer of snow that had drifted to the bottom of the hollow. The fringe of a drift of snow that hung on the edge of the hollow, disturbed by Nikita’s fall, showered down on him and got inside his collar. ‘What a thing to do!’ said Nikita reproachfully, addressing the drift and the hollow and shaking the snow from under his collar. ‘Nikita! Hey, Nikita!’ shouted Vasili Andreevich from above. But Nikita did not reply. He was too occupied in shaking out the snow and searching for the whip he had dropped when rolling down the incline. Having found the whip he tried to climb straight up the bank where he had rolled down, but it was impossible to do so: he kept rolling down again, and so he had to go along at the foot of the hollow to find a way up. About seven yards farther on he managed with difficulty to crawl up the incline on all fours, then he followed the edge of the hollow back to the place where the horse should have been. He could not see either horse or sledge, but as he walked against the wind he heard Vasili Andreevich’s shouts and Mukhorty’s neighing, calling him. ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! What are you cackling for?’ he muttered. Only when he had come up to the sledge could he make out the horse, and Vasili Andreevich standing beside it and looking gigantic. ‘Where the devil did you vanish to? We must go back, if only to Grishkino,’ he began reproaching Nikita. ‘I’d be glad to get back, Vasili Andreevich, but which way are we to go? There is such a ravine here that if we once get in it we shan’t get out again. I got stuck so fast there myself that I could hardly get out.’ ‘What shall we do, then? We can’t stay here! We must go somewhere!’ said Vasili Andreevich. Nikita said nothing. He seated himself in the sledge with his back to the wind, took off his boots, shook out the snow that had got into them, and taking some straw from the bottom of the sledge, carefully plugged with it a hole in his left boot. Vasili Andreevich remained silent, as though now leaving everything to Nikita. Having put his boots on again, Nikita drew his feet into the sledge, put on his mittens and took up the reins, and directed the horse along the side of the ravine. But they had not gone a hundred yards before the horse again stopped short. The ravine was in front of him again. Nikita again climbed out and again trudged about in the snow. He did this for a considerable time and at last appeared from the opposite side to that from which he had started. ‘Vasili Andreevich, are you alive?’ he called out. ‘Here!’ replied Vasili Andreevich. ‘Well, what now?’ ‘I can’t make anything out. It’s too dark. There’s nothing but ravines. We must drive against the wind again.’ They set off once more. Again Nikita went stumbling through the snow, again he fell in, again climbed out and trudged about, and at last quite out of breath he sat down beside the sledge. ‘Well, how now?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. ‘Why, I am quite worn out and the horse won’t go.’ ‘Then what’s to be done?’ ‘Why, wait a minute.’ Nikita went away again but soon returned. ‘Follow me!’ he said, going in front of the horse. Vasili Andreevich no longer gave orders but implicitly did what Nikita told him. ‘Here, follow me!’ Nikita shouted, stepping quickly to the right, and seizing the rein he led Mukhorty down towards a snow-drift. At first the horse held back, then he jerked forward, hoping to leap the drift, but he had not the strength and sank into it up to his collar. ‘Get out!’ Nikita called to Vasili Andreevich who still sat in the sledge, and taking hold of one shaft he moved the sledge closer to the horse. ‘It’s hard, brother!’ he said to Mukhorty, ‘but it can’t be helped. Make an effort! Now, now, just a little one!’ he shouted. The horse gave a tug, then another, but failed to clear himself and settled down again as if considering something. ‘Now, brother, this won’t do!’ Nikita admonished him. ‘Now once more!’ Again Nikita tugged at the shaft on his side, and Vasili Andreevich did the same on the other. Mukhorty lifted his head and then gave a sudden jerk. ‘That’s it! That’s it!’ cried Nikita. ‘Don’t be afraid--you won’t sink!’ One plunge, another, and a third, and at last Mukhorty was out of the snow-drift, and stood still, breathing heavily and shaking the snow off himself. Nikita wished to lead him farther, but Vasili Andreevich, in his two fur coats, was so out of breath that he could not walk farther and dropped into the sledge. ‘Let me get my breath!’ he said, unfastening the kerchief with which he had tied the collar of his fur coat at the village. ‘It’s all right here. You lie there,’ said Nikita. ‘I will lead him along.’ And with Vasili Andreevich in the sledge he led the horse by the bridle about ten paces down and then up a slight rise, and stopped. The place where Nikita had stopped was not completely in the hollow where the snow sweeping down from the hillocks might have buried them altogether, but still it was partly sheltered from the wind by the side of the ravine. There were moments when the wind seemed to abate a little, but that did not last long and as if to make up for that respite the storm swept down with tenfold vigour and tore and whirled the more fiercely. Such a gust struck them at the moment when Vasili Andreevich, having recovered his breath, got out of the sledge and went up to Nikita to consult him as to what they should do. They both bent down involuntarily and waited till the violence of the squall should have passed. Mukhorty too laid back his ears and shook his head discontentedly. As soon as the violence of the blast had abated a little, Nikita took off his mittens, stuck them into his belt, breathed onto his hands, and began to undo the straps of the shaft-bow. ‘What’s that you are doing there?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. ‘Unharnessing. What else is there to do? I have no strength left,’ said Nikita as though excusing himself. ‘Can’t we drive somewhere?’ ‘No, we can’t. We shall only kill the horse. Why, the poor beast is not himself now,’ said Nikita, pointing to the horse, which was standing submissively waiting for what might come, with his steep wet sides heaving heavily. ‘We shall have to stay the night here,’ he said, as if preparing to spend the night at an inn, and he proceeded to unfasten the collar-straps. The buckles came undone. ‘But shan’t we be frozen?’ remarked Vasili Andreevich. ‘Well, if we are we can’t help it,’ said Nikita.

6

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Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow-drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. To calm himself he sat down in the sledge and got out his cigarettes and matches. Nikita meanwhile unharnessed Mukhorty. He unstrapped the belly-band and the back-band, took away the reins, loosened the collar-strap, and removed the shaft-bow, talking to him all the time to encourage him. ‘Now come out! come out!’ he said, leading him clear of the shafts. ‘Now we’ll tie you up here and I’ll put down some straw and take off your bridle. When you’ve had a bite you’ll feel more cheerful.’ But Mukhorty was restless and evidently not comforted by Nikita’s remarks. He stepped now on one foot and now on another, and pressed close against the sledge, turning his back to the wind and rubbing his head on Nikita’s sleeve. Then, as if not to pain Nikita by refusing his offer of the straw he put before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried it away, and covered it with snow. ‘Now we will set up a signal,’ said Nikita, and turning the front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge. ‘There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the shafts and dig us out,’ he said, slapping his mittens together and putting them on. ‘That’s what the old folk taught us!’ Vasili Andreevich meanwhile had unfastened his coat, and holding its skirts up for shelter, struck one sulphur match after another on the steel box. But his hands trembled, and one match after another either did not kindle or was blown out by the wind just as he was lifting it to the cigarette. At last a match did burn up, and its flame lit up for a moment the fur of his coat, his hand with the gold ring on the bent forefinger, and the snow-sprinkled oat-straw that stuck out from under the drugget. The cigarette lighted, he eagerly took a whiff or two, inhaled the smoke, let it out through his moustache, and would have inhaled again, but the wind tore off the burning tobacco and whirled it away as it had done the straw. But even these few puffs had cheered him. ‘If we must spend the night here, we must!’ he said with decision. ‘Wait a bit, I’ll arrange a flag as well,’ he added, picking up the kerchief which he had thrown down in the sledge after taking it from round his collar, and drawing off his gloves and standing up on the front of the sledge and stretching himself to reach the strap, he tied the handkerchief to it with a tight knot. The kerchief immediately began to flutter wildly, now clinging round the shaft, now suddenly streaming out, stretching and flapping. ‘Just see what a fine flag!’ said Vasili Andreevich, admiring his handiwork and letting himself down into the sledge. ‘We should be warmer together, but there’s not room enough for two,’ he added. ‘I’ll find a place,’ said Nikita. ‘But I must cover up the horse first--he sweated so, poor thing. Let go!’ he added, drawing the drugget from under Vasili Andreevich. Having got the drugget he folded it in two, and after taking off the breechband and pad, covered Mukhorty with it. ‘Anyhow it will be warmer, silly!’ he said, putting back the breechband and the pad on the horse over the drugget. Then having finished that business he returned to the sledge, and addressing Vasili Andreevich, said: ‘You won’t need the sackcloth, will you? And let me have some straw.’ And having taken these things from under Vasili Andreevich, Nikita went behind the sledge, dug out a hole for himself in the snow, put straw into it, wrapped his coat well round him, covered himself with the sackcloth, and pulling his cap well down seated himself on the straw he had spread, and leant against the wooden back of the sledge to shelter himself from the wind and the snow. Vasili Andreevich shook his head disapprovingly at what Nikita was doing, as in general he disapproved of the peasant’s stupidity and lack of education, and he began to settle himself down for the night. He smoothed the remaining straw over the bottom of the sledge, putting more of it under his side. Then he thrust his hands into his sleeves and settled down, sheltering his head in the corner of the sledge from the wind in front. He did not wish to sleep. He lay and thought: thought ever of the one thing that constituted the sole aim, meaning, pleasure, and pride of his life--of how much money he had made and might still make, of how much other people he knew had made and possessed, and of how those others had made and were making it, and how he, like them, might still make much more. The purchase of the Goryachkin grove was a matter of immense importance to him. By that one deal he hoped to make perhaps ten thousand rubles. He began mentally to reckon the value of the wood he had inspected in autumn, and on five acres of which he had counted all the trees. ‘The oaks will go for sledge-runners. The undergrowth will take care of itself, and there’ll still be some thirty sazheens of fire-wood left on each desyatin,’ said he to himself. ‘That means there will be at least two hundred and twenty-five rubles’ worth left on each desyatin. Fifty-six desyatiins means fifty-six hundreds, and fifty-six hundreds, and fifty-six tens, and another fifty-six tens, and then fifty-six fives....’ He saw that it came out to more than twelve thousand rubles, but could not reckon it up exactly without a counting-frame. ‘But I won’t give ten thousand, anyhow. I’ll give about eight thousand with a deduction on account of the glades. I’ll grease the surveyor’s palm--give him a hundred rubles, or a hundred and fifty, and he’ll reckon that there are some five desyatins of glade to be deducted. And he’ll let it go for eight thousand. Three thousand cash down. That’ll move him, no fear!’ he thought, and he pressed his pocket-book with his forearm. ‘God only knows how we missed the turning. The forest ought to be there, and a watchman’s hut, and dogs barking. But the damned things don’t bark when they’re wanted.’ He turned his collar down from his ear and listened, but as before only the whistling of the wind could be heard, the flapping and fluttering of the kerchief tied to the shafts, and the pelting of the snow against the woodwork of the sledge. He again covered up his ear. ‘If I had known I would have stayed the night. Well, no matter, we’ll get there to-morrow. It’s only one day lost. And the others won’t travel in such weather.’ Then he remembered that on the 9th he had to receive payment from the butcher for his oxen. ‘He meant to come himself, but he won’t find me, and my wife won’t know how to receive the money. She doesn’t know the right way of doing things,’ he thought, recalling how at their party the day before she had not known how to treat the police-officer who was their guest. ‘Of course she’s only a woman! Where could she have seen anything? In my father’s time what was our house like? Just a rich peasant’s house: just an oatmill and an inn--that was the whole property. But what have I done in these fifteen years? A shop, two taverns, a flour-mill, a grain-store, two farms leased out, and a house with an iron-roofed barn,’ he thought proudly. ‘Not as it was in Father’s time! Who is talked of in the whole district now? Brekhunov! And why? Because I stick to business. I take trouble, not like others who lie abed or waste their time on foolishness while I don’t sleep of nights. Blizzard or no blizzard I start out. So business gets done. They think money-making is a joke. No, take pains and rack your brains! You get overtaken out of doors at night, like this, or keep awake night after night till the thoughts whirling in your head make the pillow turn,’ he meditated with pride. ‘They think people get on through luck. After all, the Mironovs are now millionaires. And why? Take pains and God gives. If only He grants me health!’ The thought that he might himself be a millionaire like Mironov, who began with nothing, so excited Vasili Andreevich that he felt the need of talking to somebody. But there was no one to talk to.... If only he could have reached Goryachkin he would have talked to the landlord and shown him a thing or two. ‘Just see how it blows! It will snow us up so deep that we shan’t be able to get out in the morning!’ he thought, listening to a gust of wind that blew against the front of the sledge, bending it and lashing the snow against it. He raised himself and looked round. All he could see through the whirling darkness was Mukhorty’s dark head, his back covered by the fluttering drugget, and his thick knotted tail; while all round, in front and behind, was the same fluctuating whity darkness, sometimes seeming to get a little lighter and sometimes growing denser still. ‘A pity I listened to Nikita,’ he thought. ‘We ought to have driven on. We should have come out somewhere, if only back to Grishkino and stayed the night at Taras’s. As it is we must sit here all night. But what was I thinking about? Yes, that God gives to those who take trouble, but not to loafers, lie-abeds, or fools. I must have a smoke!’ He sat down again, got out his cigarette-case, and stretched himself flat on his stomach, screening the matches with the skirt of his coat. But the wind found its way in and put out match after match. At last he got one to burn and lit a cigarette. He was very glad that he had managed to do what he wanted, and though the wind smoked more of the cigarette than he did, he still got two or three puffs and felt more cheerful. He again leant back, wrapped himself up, started reflecting and remembering, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly lost consciousness and fell asleep. Suddenly something seemed to give him a push and awoke him. Whether it was Mukhorty who had pulled some straw from under him, or whether something within him had startled him, at all events it woke him, and his heart began to beat faster and faster so that the sledge seemed to tremble under him. He opened his eyes. Everything around him was just as before. ‘It looks lighter,’ he thought. ‘I expect it won’t be long before dawn.’ But he at once remembered that it was lighter because the moon had risen. He sat up and looked first at the horse. Mukhorty still stood with his back to the wind, shivering all over. One side of the drugget, which was completely covered with snow, had been blown back, the breeching had slipped down and the snow-covered head with its waving forelock and mane were now more visible. Vasili Andreevich leant over the back of the sledge and looked behind. Nikita still sat in the same position in which he had settled himself. The sacking with which he was covered, and his legs, were thickly covered with snow. ‘If only that peasant doesn’t freeze to death! His clothes are so wretched. I may be held responsible for him. What shiftless people they are--such a want of education,’ thought Vasili Andreevich, and he felt like taking the drugget off the horse and putting it over Nikita, but it would be very cold to get out and move about and, moreover, the horse might freeze to death. ‘Why did I bring him with me? It was all her stupidity!’ he thought, recalling his unloved wife, and he rolled over into his old place at the front part of the sledge. ‘My uncle once spent a whole night like this,’ he reflected, ‘and was all right.’ But another case came at once to his mind. ‘But when they dug Sebastian out he was dead--stiff like a frozen carcass. If I’d only stopped the night in Grishkino all this would not have happened!’ And wrapping his coat carefully round him so that none of the warmth of the fur should be wasted but should warm him all over, neck, knees, and feet, he shut his eyes and tried to sleep again. But try as he would he could not get drowsy, on the contrary he felt wide awake and animated. Again he began counting his gains and the debts due to him, again he began bragging to himself and feeling pleased with himself and his position, but all this was continually disturbed by a stealthily approaching fear and by the unpleasant regret that he had not remained in Grishkino. ‘How different it would be to be lying warm on a bench!’ He turned over several times in his attempts to get into a more comfortable position more sheltered from the wind, he wrapped up his legs closer, shut his eyes, and lay still. But either his legs in their strong felt boots began to ache from being bent in one position, or the wind blew in somewhere, and after lying still for a short time he again began to recall the disturbing fact that he might now have been lying quietly in the warm hut at Grishkino. He again sat up, turned about, muffled himself up, and settled down once more. Once he fancied that he heard a distant cock-crow. He felt glad, turned down his coat-collar and listened with strained attention, but in spite of all his efforts nothing could be heard but the wind whistling between the shafts, the flapping of the kerchief, and the snow pelting against the frame of the sledge. Nikita sat just as he had done all the time, not moving and not even answering Vasili Andreevich who had addressed him a couple of times. ‘He doesn’t care a bit--he’s probably asleep!’ thought Vasili Andreevich with vexation, looking behind the sledge at Nikita who was covered with a thick layer of snow. Vasili Andreevich got up and lay down again some twenty times. It seemed to him that the night would never end. ‘It must be getting near morning,’ he thought, getting up and looking around. ‘Let’s have a look at my watch. It will be cold to unbutton, but if I only know that it’s getting near morning I shall at any rate feel more cheerful. We could begin harnessing.’ In the depth of his heart Vasili Andreevich knew that it could not yet be near morning, but he was growing more and more afraid, and wished both to get to know and yet to deceive himself. He carefully undid the fastening of his sheepskin, pushed in his hand, and felt about for a long time before he got to his waistcoat. With great difficulty he managed to draw out his silver watch with its enamelled flower design, and tried to make out the time. He could not see anything without a light. Again he went down on his knees and elbows as he had done when he lighted a cigarette, got out his matches, and proceeded to strike one. This time he went to work more carefully, and feeling with his fingers for a match with the largest head and the greatest amount of phosphorus, lit it at the first try. Bringing the face of the watch under the light he could hardly believe his eyes.... It was only ten minutes past twelve. Almost the whole night was still before him. ‘Oh, how long the night is!’ he thought, feeling a cold shudder run down his back, and having fastened his fur coats again and wrapped himself up, he snuggled into a corner of the sledge intending to wait patiently. Suddenly, above the monotonous roar of the wind, he clearly distinguished another new and living sound. It steadily strengthened, and having become quite clear diminished just as gradually. Beyond all doubt it was a wolf, and he was so near that the movement of his jaws as he changed his cry was brought down the wind. Vasili Andreevich turned back the collar of his coat and listened attentively. Mukhorty too strained to listen, moving his ears, and when the wolf had ceased its howling he shifted from foot to foot and gave a warning snort. After this Vasili Andreevich could not fall asleep again or even calm himself. The more he tried to think of his accounts, his business, his reputation, his worth and his wealth, the more and more was he mastered by fear, and regrets that he had not stayed the night at Grishkino dominated and mingled in all his thoughts. ‘Devil take the forest! Things were all right without it, thank God. Ah, if we had only put up for the night!’ he said to himself. ‘They say it’s drunkards that freeze,’ he thought, ‘and I have had some drink.’ And observing his sensations he noticed that he was beginning to shiver, without knowing whether it was from cold or from fear. He tried to wrap himself up and lie down as before, but could no longer do so. He could not stay in one position. He wanted to get up, to do something to master the gathering fear that was rising in him and against which he felt himself powerless. He again got out his cigarettes and matches, but only three matches were left and they were bad ones. The phosphorus rubbed off them all without lighting. ‘The devil take you! Damned thing! Curse you!’ he muttered, not knowing whom or what he was cursing, and he flung away the crushed cigarette. He was about to throw away the matchbox too, but checked the movement of his hand and put the box in his pocket instead. He was seized with such unrest that he could no longer remain in one spot. He climbed out of the sledge and standing with his back to the wind began to shift his belt again, fastening it lower down in the waist and tightening it. ‘What’s the use of lying and waiting for death? Better mount the horse and get away!’ The thought suddenly occurred to him. ‘The horse will move when he has someone on his back. As for him,’ he thought of Nikita--‘it’s all the same to him whether he lives or dies. What is his life worth? He won’t grudge his life, but I have something to live for, thank God.’ He untied the horse, threw the reins over his neck and tried to mount, but his coats and boots were so heavy that he failed. Then he clambered up in the sledge and tried to mount from there, but the sledge tilted under his weight, and he failed again. At last he drew Mukhorty nearer to the sledge, cautiously balanced on one side of it, and managed to lie on his stomach across the horse’s back. After lying like that for a while he shifted forward once and again, threw a leg over, and finally seated himself, supporting his feet on the loose breeching-straps. The shaking of the sledge awoke Nikita. He raised himself, and it seemed to Vasili Andreevich that he said something. ‘Listen to such fools as you! Am I to die like this for nothing?’ exclaimed Vasili Andreevich. And tucking the loose skirts of his fur coat in under his knees, he turned the horse and rode away from the sledge in the direction in which he thought the forest and the forester’s hut must be.

7

None

From the time he had covered himself with the sackcloth and seated himself behind the sledge, Nikita had not stirred. Like all those who live in touch with nature and have known want, he was patient and could wait for hours, even days, without growing restless or irritable. He heard his master call him, but did not answer because he did not want to move or talk. Though he still felt some warmth from the tea he had drunk and from his energetic struggle when clambering about in the snowdrift, he knew that this warmth would not last long and that he had no strength left to warm himself again by moving about, for he felt as tired as a horse when it stops and refuses to go further in spite of the whip, and its master sees that it must be fed before it can work again. The foot in the boot with a hole in it had already grown numb, and he could no longer feel his big toe. Besides that, his whole body began to feel colder and colder. The thought that he might, and very probably would, die that night occurred to him, but did not seem particularly unpleasant or dreadful. It did not seem particularly unpleasant, because his whole life had been not a continual holiday, but on the contrary an unceasing round of toil of which he was beginning to feel weary. And it did not seem particularly dreadful, because besides the masters he had served here, like Vasili Andreevich, he always felt himself dependent on the Chief Master, who had sent him into this life, and he knew that when dying he would still be in that Master’s power and would not be ill-used by Him. ‘It seems a pity to give up what one is used to and accustomed to. But there’s nothing to be done, I shall get used to the new things.’ ‘Sins?’ he thought, and remembered his drunkenness, the money that had gone on drink, how he had offended his wife, his cursing, his neglect of church and of the fasts, and all the things the priest blamed him for at confession. ‘Of course they are sins. But then, did I take them on of myself? That’s evidently how God made me. Well, and the sins? Where am I to escape to?’ So at first he thought of what might happen to him that night, and then did not return to such thoughts but gave himself up to whatever recollections came into his head of themselves. Now he thought of Martha’s arrival, of the drunkenness among the workers and his own renunciation of drink, then of their present journey and of Taras’s house and the talk about the breaking-up of the family, then of his own lad, and of Mukhorty now sheltered under the drugget, and then of his master who made the sledge creak as he tossed about in it. ‘I expect you’re sorry yourself that you started out, dear man,’ he thought. ‘It would seem hard to leave a life such as his! It’s not like the likes of us.’ Then all these recollections began to grow confused and got mixed in his head, and he fell asleep. But when Vasili Andreevich, getting on the horse, jerked the sledge, against the back of which Nikita was leaning, and it shifted away and hit him in the back with one of its runners, he awoke and had to change his position whether he liked it or not. Straightening his legs with difficulty and shaking the snow off them he got up, and an agonizing cold immediately penetrated his whole body. On making out what was happening he called to Vasili Andreevich to leave him the drugget which the horse no longer needed, so that he might wrap himself in it. But Vasili Andreevich did not stop, but disappeared amid the powdery snow. Left alone Nikita considered for a moment what he should do. He felt that he had not the strength to go off in search of a house. It was no longer possible to sit down in his old place--it was by now all filled with snow. He felt that he could not get warmer in the sledge either, for there was nothing to cover himself with, and his coat and sheepskin no longer warmed him at all. He felt as cold as though he had nothing on but a shirt. He became frightened. ‘Lord, heavenly Father!’ he muttered, and was comforted by the consciousness that he was not alone but that there was One who heard him and would not abandon him. He gave a deep sigh, and keeping the sackcloth over his head he got inside the sledge and lay down in the place where his master had been. But he could not get warm in the sledge either. At first he shivered all over, then the shivering ceased and little by little he began to lose consciousness. He did not know whether he was dying or falling asleep, but felt equally prepared for the one as for the other.

8

None

Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the reins, urged the horse on in the direction in which for some reason he expected the forest and forester’s hut to be. The snow covered his eyes and the wind seemed intent on stopping him, but bending forward and constantly lapping his coat over and pushing it between himself and the cold harness pad which prevented him from sitting properly, he kept urging the horse on. Mukhorty ambled on obediently though with difficulty, in the direction in which he was driven. Vasili Andreevich rode for about five minutes straight ahead, as he thought, seeing nothing but the horse’s head and the white waste, and hearing only the whistle of the wind about the horse’s ears and his coat collar. Suddenly a dark patch showed up in front of him. His heart beat with joy, and he rode towards the object, already seeing in imagination the walls of village houses. But the dark patch was not stationary, it kept moving; and it was not a village but some tall stalks of wormwood sticking up through the snow on the boundary between two fields, and desperately tossing about under the pressure of the wind which beat it all to one side and whistled through it. The sight of that wormwood tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich shudder, he knew not why, and he hurriedly began urging the horse on, not noticing that when riding up to the wormwood he had quite changed his direction and was now heading the opposite way, though still imagining that he was riding towards where the hut should be. But the horse kept making towards the right, and Vasili Andreevich kept guiding it to the left. Again something dark appeared in front of him. Again he rejoiced, convinced that now it was certainly a village. But once more it was the same boundary line overgrown with wormwood, once more the same wormwood desperately tossed by the wind and carrying unreasoning terror to his heart. But its being the same wormwood was not all, for beside it there was a horse’s track partly snowed over. Vasili Andreevich stopped, stooped down and looked carefully. It was a horse-track only partially covered with snow, and could be none but his own horse’s hoofprints. He had evidently gone round in a small circle. ‘I shall perish like that!’ he thought, and not to give way to his terror he urged on the horse still more, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only flitting and fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the barking of dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard them or merely imagined them, and he stopped and began to listen intently. Suddenly some terrible, deafening cry resounded near his ears, and everything shivered and shook under him. He seized Mukhorty’s neck, but that too was shaking all over and the terrible cry grew still more frightful. For some seconds Vasili Andreevich could not collect himself or understand what was happening. It was only that Mukhorty, whether to encourage himself or to call for help, had neighed loudly and resonantly. ‘Ugh, you wretch! How you frightened me, damn you!’ thought Vasili Andreevich. But even when he understood the cause of his terror he could not shake it off. ‘I must calm myself and think things over,’ he said to himself, but yet he could not stop, and continued to urge the horse on, without noticing that he was now going with the wind instead of against it. His body, especially between his legs where it touched the pad of the harness and was not covered by his overcoats, was getting painfully cold, especially when the horse walked slowly. His legs and arms trembled and his breathing came fast. He saw himself perishing amid this dreadful snowy waste, and could see no means of escape. Suddenly the horse under him tumbled into something and, sinking into a snow-drift, began to plunge and fell on his side. Vasili Andreevich jumped off, and in so doing dragged to one side the breechband on which his foot was resting, and twisted round the pad to which he held as he dismounted. As soon as he had jumped off, the horse struggled to his feet, plunged forward, gave one leap and another, neighed again, and dragging the drugget and the breechband after him, disappeared, leaving Vasili Andreevich alone on the snow-drift. The latter pressed on after the horse, but the snow lay so deep and his coats were so heavy that, sinking above his knees at each step, he stopped breathless after taking not more than twenty steps. ‘The copse, the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,’ thought he. ‘How can I leave all that? What does this mean? It cannot be!’ These thoughts flashed through his mind. Then he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him. ‘Can this be a dream?’ he thought, and tried to wake up but could not. It was real snow that lashed his face and covered him and chilled his right hand from which he had lost the glove, and this was a real desert in which he was now left alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and meaningless death. ‘Queen of Heaven! Holy Father Nicholas, teacher of temperance!’ he thought, recalling the service of the day before and the holy icon with its black face and gilt frame, and the tapers which he sold to be set before that icon and which were almost immediately brought back to him scarcely burnt at all, and which he put away in the store-chest. He began to pray to that same Nicholas the Wonder-Worker to save him, promising him a thanksgiving service and some candles. But he clearly and indubitably realized that the icon, its frame, the candles, the priest, and the thanksgiving service, though very important and necessary in church, could do nothing for him here, and that there was and could be no connexion between those candles and services and his present disastrous plight. ‘I must not despair,’ he thought. ‘I must follow the horse’s track before it is snowed under. He will lead me out, or I may even catch him. Only I must not hurry, or I shall stick fast and be more lost than ever.’ But in spite of his resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward and even ran, continually falling, getting up and falling again. The horse’s track was already hardly visible in places where the snow did not lie deep. ‘I am lost!’ thought Vasili Andreevich. ‘I shall lose the track and not catch the horse.’ But at that moment he saw something black. It was Mukhorty, and not only Mukhorty, but the sledge with the shafts and the kerchief. Mukhorty, with the sacking and the breechband twisted round to one side, was standing not in his former place but nearer to the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he was stepping on drew downwards. It turned out that Vasili Andreevich had sunk in the same ravine Nikita had previously fallen into, and that Mukhorty had been bringing him back to the sledge and he had got off his back no more than fifty paces from where the sledge was.

9

None

Having stumbled back to the sledge Vasili Andreevich caught hold of it and for a long time stood motionless, trying to calm himself and recover his breath. Nikita was not in his former place, but something, already covered with snow, was lying in the sledge and Vasili Andreevich concluded that this was Nikita. His terror had now quite left him, and if he felt any fear it was lest the dreadful terror should return that he had experienced when on the horse and especially when he was left alone in the snow-drift. At any cost he had to avoid that terror, and to keep it away he must do something--occupy himself with something. And the first thing he did was to turn his back to the wind and open his fur coat. Then, as soon as he recovered his breath a little, he shook the snow out of his boots and out of his left-hand glove (the right-hand glove was hopelessly lost and by this time probably lying somewhere under a dozen inches of snow); then as was his custom when going out of his shop to buy grain from the peasants, he pulled his girdle low down and tightened it and prepared for action. The first thing that occurred to him was to free Mukhorty’s leg from the rein. Having done that, and tethered him to the iron cramp at the front of the sledge where he had been before, he was going round the horse’s quarters to put the breechband and pad straight and cover him with the cloth, but at that moment he noticed that something was moving in the sledge and Nikita’s head rose up out of the snow that covered it. Nikita, who was half frozen, rose with great difficulty and sat up, moving his hand before his nose in a strange manner just as if he were driving away flies. He waved his hand and said something, and seemed to Vasili Andreevich to be calling him. Vasili Andreevich left the cloth unadjusted and went up to the sledge. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What are you saying?’ ‘I’m dy... ing, that’s what,’ said Nikita brokenly and with difficulty. ‘Give what is owing to me to my lad, or to my wife, no matter.’ ‘Why, are you really frozen?’ asked Vasili Andreevich. ‘I feel it’s my death. Forgive me for Christ’s sake...’ said Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing to wave his hand before his face as if driving away flies. Vasili Andreevich stood silent and motionless for half a minute. Then suddenly, with the same resolution with which he used to strike hands when making a good purchase, he took a step back and turning up his sleeves began raking the snow off Nikita and out of the sledge. Having done this he hurriedly undid his girdle, opened out his fur coat, and having pushed Nikita down, lay down on top of him, covering him not only with his fur coat but with the whole of his body, which glowed with warmth. After pushing the skirts of his coat between Nikita and the sides of the sledge, and holding down its hem with his knees, Vasili Andreevich lay like that face down, with his head pressed against the front of the sledge. Here he no longer heard the horse’s movements or the whistling of the wind, but only Nikita’s breathing. At first and for a long time Nikita lay motionless, then he sighed deeply and moved. ‘There, and you say you are dying! Lie still and get warm, that’s our way...’ began Vasili Andreevich. But to his great surprise he could say no more, for tears came to his eyes and his lower jaw began to quiver rapidly. He stopped speaking and only gulped down the risings in his throat. ‘Seems I was badly frightened and have gone quite weak,’ he thought. But this weakness was not only unpleasant, but gave him a peculiar joy such as he had never felt before. ‘That’s our way!’ he said to himself, experiencing a strange and solemn tenderness. He lay like that for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat and tucking under his knee the right skirt, which the wind kept turning up. But he longed so passionately to tell somebody of his joyful condition that he said: ‘Nikita!’ ‘It’s comfortable, warm!’ came a voice from beneath. ‘There, you see, friend, I was going to perish. And you would have been frozen, and I should have...’ But again his jaws began to quiver and his eyes to fill with tears, and he could say no more. ‘Well, never mind,’ he thought. ‘I know about myself what I know.’ He remained silent and lay like that for a long time. Nikita kept him warm from below and his fur coats from above. Only his hands, with which he kept his coat-skirts down round Nikita’s sides, and his legs which the wind kept uncovering, began to freeze, especially his right hand which had no glove. But he did not think of his legs or of his hands but only of how to warm the peasant who was lying under him. He looked out several times at Mukhorty and could see that his back was uncovered and the drugget and breeching lying on the snow, and that he ought to get up and cover him, but he could not bring himself to leave Nikita and disturb even for a moment the joyous condition he was in. He no longer felt any kind of terror. ‘No fear, we shan’t lose him this time!’ he said to himself, referring to his getting the peasant warm with the same boastfulness with which he spoke of his buying and selling. Vasili Andreevich lay in that way for one hour, another, and a third, but he was unconscious of the passage of time. At first impressions of the snow-storm, the sledge-shafts, and the horse with the shaft-bow shaking before his eyes, kept passing through his mind, then he remembered Nikita lying under him, then recollections of the festival, his wife, the police-officer, and the box of candles, began to mingle with these; then again Nikita, this time lying under that box, then the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his house with its iron roof with Nikita lying underneath, presented themselves to his imagination. Afterwards all these impressions blended into one nothingness. As the colours of the rainbow unite into one white light, so all these different impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep. For a long time he slept without dreaming, but just before dawn the visions recommenced. It seemed to him that he was standing by the box of tapers and that Tikhon’s wife was asking for a five kopek taper for the Church fete. He wished to take one out and give it to her, but his hands would not life, being held tight in his pockets. He wanted to walk round the box but his feet would not move and his new clean goloshes had grown to the stone floor, and he could neither lift them nor get his feet out of the goloshes. Then the taper-box was no longer a box but a bed, and suddenly Vasili Andreevich saw himself lying in his bed at home. He was lying in his bed and could not get up. Yet it was necessary for him to get up because Ivan Matveich, the police-officer, would soon call for him and he had to go with him--either to bargain for the forest or to put Mukhorty’s breeching straight. He asked his wife: ‘Nikolaevna, hasn’t he come yet?’ ‘No, he hasn’t,’ she replied. He heard someone drive up to the front steps. ‘It must be him.’ ‘No, he’s gone past.’ ‘Nikolaevna! I say, Nikolaevna, isn’t he here yet?’ ‘No.’ He was still lying on his bed and could not get up, but was always waiting. And this waiting was uncanny and yet joyful. Then suddenly his joy was completed. He whom he was expecting came; not Ivan Matveich the police-officer, but someone else--yet it was he whom he had been waiting for. He came and called him; and it was he who had called him and told him to lie down on Nikita. And Vasili Andreevich was glad that that one had come for him. ‘I’m coming!’ he cried joyfully, and that cry awoke him, but woke him up not at all the same person he had been when he fell asleep. He tried to get up but could not, tried to move his arm and could not, to move his leg and also could not, to turn his head and could not. He was surprised but not at all disturbed by this. He understood that this was death, and was not at all disturbed by that either. He remembered that Nikita was lying under him and that he had got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikita and Nikita was he, and that his life was not in himself but in Nikita. He strained his ears and heard Nikita breathing and even slightly snoring. ‘Nikita is alive, so I too am alive!’ he said to himself triumphantly. And he remembered his money, his shop, his house, the buying and selling, and Mironov’s millions, and it was hard for him to understand why that man, called Vasili Brekhunov, had troubled himself with all those things with which he had been troubled. ‘Well, it was because he did not know what the real thing was,’ he thought, concerning that Vasili Brekhunov. ‘He did not know, but now I know and know for sure. Now I know!’ And again he heard the voice of the one who had called him before. ‘I’m coming! Coming!’ he responded gladly, and his whole being was filled with joyful emotion. He felt himself free and that nothing could hold him back any longer. After that Vasili Andreevich neither saw, heard, nor felt anything more in this world. All around the snow still eddied. The same whirlwinds of snow circled about, covering the dead Vasili Andreevich’s fur coat, the shivering Mukhorty, the sledge, now scarcely to be seen, and Nikita lying at the bottom of it, kept warm beneath his dead master.

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Nikita awoke before daybreak. He was aroused by the cold that had begun to creep down his back. He had dreamt that he was coming from the mill with a load of his master’s flour and when crossing the stream had missed the bridge and let the cart get stuck. And he saw that he had crawled under the cart and was trying to lift it by arching his back. But strange to say the cart did not move, it stuck to his back and he could neither lift it nor get out from under it. It was crushing the whole of his loins. And how cold it felt! Evidently he must crawl out. ‘Have done!’ he exclaimed to whoever was pressing the cart down on him. ‘Take out the sacks!’ But the cart pressed down colder and colder, and then he heard a strange knocking, awoke completely, and remembered everything. The cold cart was his dead and frozen master lying upon him. And the knock was produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge with his hoof. ‘Andreevich! Eh, Andreevich!’ Nikita called cautiously, beginning to realize the truth, and straightening his back. But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and his stomach and legs were stiff and cold and heavy like iron weights. ‘He must have died! May the Kingdom of Heaven be his!’ thought Nikita. He turned his head, dug with his hand through the snow about him and opened his eyes. It was daylight; the wind was whistling as before between the shafts, and the snow was falling in the same way, except that it was no longer driving against the frame of the sledge but silently covered both sledge and horse deeper and deeper, and neither the horse’s movements nor his breathing were any longer to be heard. ‘He must have frozen too,’ thought Nikita of Mukhorty, and indeed those hoof knocks against the sledge, which had awakened Nikita, were the last efforts the already numbed Mukhorty had made to keep on his feet before dying. ‘O Lord God, it seems Thou art calling me too!’ said Nikita. ‘Thy Holy Will be done. But it’s uncanny.... Still, a man can’t die twice and must die once. If only it would come soon!’ And he again drew in his head, closed his eyes, and became unconscious, fully convinced that now he was certainly and finally dying. It was not till noon that day that peasants dug Vasili Andreevich and Nikita out of the snow with their shovels, not more than seventy yards from the road and less than half a mile from the village. The snow had hidden the sledge, but the shafts and the kerchief tied to them were still visible. Mukhorty, buried up to his belly in snow, with the breeching and drugget hanging down, stood all white, his dead head pressed against his frozen throat: icicles hung from his nostrils, his eyes were covered with hoar-frost as though filled with tears, and he had grown so thin in that one night that he was nothing but skin and bone. Vasili Andreevich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and when they rolled him off Nikita his legs remained apart and his arms stretched out as they had been. His bulging hawk eyes were frozen, and his open mouth under his clipped moustache was full of snow. But Nikita though chilled through was still alive. When he had been brought to, he felt sure that he was already dead and that what was taking place with him was no longer happening in this world but in the next. When he heard the peasants shouting as they dug him out and rolled the frozen body of Vasili Andreevich from off him, he was at first surprised that in the other world peasants should be shouting in the same old way and had the same kind of body, and then when he realized that he was still in this world he was sorry rather than glad, especially when he found that the toes on both his feet were frozen. Nikita lay in hospital for two months. They cut off three of his toes, but the others recovered so that he was still able to work and went on living for another twenty years, first as a farm-labourer, then in his old age as a watchman. He died at home as he had wished, only this year, under the icons with a lighted taper in his hands. Before he died he asked his wife’s forgiveness and forgave her for the cooper. He also took leave of his son and grandchildren, and died sincerely glad that he was relieving his son and daughter-in-law of the burden of having to feed him, and that he was now really passing from this life of which he was weary into that other life which every year and every hour grew clearer and more desirable to him. Whether he is better or worse off there where he awoke after his death, whether he was disappointed or found there what he expected, we shall all soon learn.

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"With fearless pride I say That she is healthful, fleet, and strong And down the rocks will leap along, Like rivulets in May." WORDSWORTH. Along a beautiful Devonshire lane, with banks of rock overhung by tall bowery hedges, rode a lively and merry pair, now laughing and talking, now summoning by call or whistle the spaniel that ran by their side, or careered through the fields within the hedge. The younger was a maiden of about twelve years old, in a long black and white plaid riding-skirt, over a pink gingham frock, and her dark hair hidden beneath a little cap furnished with a long green veil, which was allowed to stream behind her in the wind, instead of affording the intended shelter to a complexion already a shade or two darkened by the summer sun, but with little colour in the cheeks; and what there was, only the pale pink glow like a wild rose, called up for the moment by warmth and exercise, and soon to pass away. Still there was no appearance of want of health; the skin was of a clear, soft, fresh shade of brown; the large dark eyes, in spite of all their depth of melancholy softness, had the wild, untamed animation of a mountaineer; the face and form were full of free life and vigour, as she sat erect and perfectly at ease on her spirited little bay pony, which at times seemed so lively that it might have been matter of surprise to a stranger that so young a horsewoman should be trusted on its back. Her companion was a youth some ten or eleven years her senior, possessing a handsome set of regular features, with a good deal of family likeness to hers; dark eyes and hair, and a figure which, though slight, was rather too tall to look suitable to the small, stout, strong pony which carried him and his numerous equipments, consisting of a long rod-case, a fishing-basket and landing-net, in accordance with the lines of artificial flies wreathed round his straw hat, and the various oddly contrived pockets of his grey shooting-coat. In the distance at the end of the lane there appeared two walking figures. "Mrs. Wortley!" exclaimed the young lady. "No, surely not out so soon!" was the answer. "She is in the depth of lessons." "No, but Edmund, it is, look, and Agnes too! There, Ranger has better eyes than you; he is racing to them." "Well, I acknowledge my mistake," said Edmund, drawing up his rein as they came upon the pair,--a pleasing lady, and a pretty blue-eyed girl of fourteen. "I did not believe my eyes, Mrs. Wortley, though Marian tried to persuade me. I thought you were always reading Italian at this time in the morning, Agnes". "And I thought you were reading Phædrus with Gerald," said Mrs. Wortley. "Ay," said Agnes, "we did not know what to make of you coming up the lane; you with your lance there, like the Red Cross Knight himself, and Marian with her palfry for Una." "The knight must have borrowed the dwarf's ass," said Edmund, laughing, and putting his lance in rest. "And where have you been, then, at this portentous time of day, Agnes?" asked Marian. "We heard a report of Betty Lapthorn's child having another fit," said Agnes, "and set off to see; but it turned out to be a false alarm. And now we are going up to the Manor House to ask Lady Arundel if she has any arrowroot for it, for ours is all used up." "Shall we find her at leisure?" added Mrs. Wortley. "Yes," said Marian. "Gerald has finished his lessons by this time. Mamma thought it would be too far for him to go with us, and besides he frightens the fish." "Which you are in too good training to do, Marian," said Mrs. Wortley. "And how is your papa to-day?" "Oh, it is a good day," said Marian: "he was up before we set off." "Down stairs? For perhaps we had better not go now, just after he is tired with coming down," said Mrs. Wortley. "Now, Mr. Arundel, you will tell me honestly, and this arrowroot will do just as well another time; or if Marian will carry home the message--" "Well," said Edmund, smiling, "to give you a proof of my sincerity, I think you had better perhaps go rather later in the day. My uncle very unnecessarily hurried himself, thinking that he was keeping me waiting to help him down stairs, and I thought he seemed rather tired; but he will be very glad to see you in the afternoon. Indeed, he would be very glad now, only you asked me as a question of prudence." "Don't make civil speeches at the end to spoil just such a reply as I wanted," said Mrs. Wortley. "I am afraid you do not think Sir Edmund much better since you were last at home." Edmund shook his head. "If he has not lost ground, it is well," said he, "and I think at least there is less pain." "Well, I will not keep you any longer," said Mrs. Wortley; "good-bye, and good sport to you." And with a wave of the hand on rode the two cousins, Edmund and Marian Arundel. "What an excellent thing it is for the village that those Wortleys are come!" said Edmund. "Yes; now that mamma cannot attend much to the school and poor people, I don't know what we should do without them. How different it was in old Mr. May's time! I hope we shall get the Church set to rights now, when papa is well enough to attend to it." "It is high time, certainly," said Edmund; "our Church is almost a disgrace to us, especially with the Arundel aisle, to show what our ancestors did." "No, not quite to us," said Marian; "you know papa would have done it all long ago, if the idea had not vexed poor old Mr. May so much. But Ranger! Ranger! where is Ranger, Edmund?" Edmund whistled, and presently, with whirring, rushing wing, there flew over the hedge beside them a covey of partridges, followed by Ranger's eager bark. Marian's pony started, danced, and capered; Edmund watched her with considerable anxiety, but she reined it in with a steady, dexterous, though not a strong hand, kept her seat well, and rode on in triumph, while Edmund exclaimed, "Capital, Marian!" Then looking back, "What a shot that was!" he added in a sort of parenthesis, continuing, "I am proud, Mayflower is not a bit too much for you now, though I think we must have given her up if you had had another tumble." "Oh, no, no, I do so delight in Mayflower, pretty creature!" said Marian, patting her neck. "I like to feel that the creature I ride is alive--not an old slug, like that animal which you are upon, Edmund." "That is decidedly ungrateful of you, Marian, when you learnt to ride upon this identical slug, and owe the safety of your neck to its quiet propensities. Now take care down this stony hill; hold her up well--that is right." Care was certainly needed as they descended the steep hill side; the road, or rather pathway, cut out between high, steep, limestone rocks, and here and there even bare of earth. Any one but a native would have trembled at such a descent but though the cousins paid attention to their progress, they had no doubts or alarms. At the bottom a clear sparkling stream traversed the road, where, for the convenience of foot passengers, a huge flat stone had been thrown across from one high bank to the other, so as to form a romantic bridge. Marian, however, did not avail herself of it, but rode gallantly through the shallow water, only looking back at it to observe to Edmund, "We must make a sketch of that some day or other." "I am afraid we cannot get far enough off," said Edmund, "to make a good drawing of it. Too many things go to the making of the picturesque." "Yes, I know, but that is what I never can understand. I see by woeful experience that what is pretty in itself will not make a pretty drawing, and everyone says so; but I never could find out why." "Perhaps because we cannot represent it adequately." "Yes, but there is another puzzle; you sometimes see an exact representation, which is not really a picture at all. Don't you know that thing that the man who came to the door did of our house,--the trees all green, and the sky all blue, and the moors all purple?" "As like as it can stare; yes, I know." "Well, why does that not satisfy us? why is it not a picture?" "Because it stares, I suppose. Why does not that picture of my aunt at Mrs. Week's cottage satisfy you as well as the chalk sketch in the dining-room?" "Because it has none of herself--her spirit." "Well, I should say that nature has a self and a spirit which must be caught, or else the Chinese would be the greatest artists on the face of the earth." "Yes, but why does an archway, or two trees standing up so as to enclose the landscape, or--or any of those things that do to put in the foreground, why do they enable you to make a picture, to catch this self and spirit." "Make the phial to enclose the genie," said Edmund. "Abstruse questions, Marian; but perhaps it is because they contract the space, so as to bring it more to the level of our capacity, make it less grand, and more what we can get into keeping. To be sure, he would be a presumptuous man who tried to make an exact likeness of that," he added, as they reached the top of the hill, and found themselves on an open common, with here and there a mass of rock peeping up, but for the most part covered with purple heath and short furze, through which Ranger coursed, barking joyously. The view was splendid, on one side the moors rising one behind the other, till they faded in grey distance, each crowned with a fantastic pile of rocks, one in the form of a castle, another of a cathedral, another of a huge crouching lion, all known to the two cousins by name, and owned as familiar friends. On the other side, between two hills, each surmounted by its own rocky crest, lay nestled in woods the grey Church tower and cottages of the village of Fern Torr; and far away stretched the rich landscape of field, wood, and pasture, ending at length in the blue line of horizon, where sky and sea seemed to join. "Beautiful! how clear!" was all Marian's exclamation, though she drew up her horse and gazed with eager eyes, and a deep feeling of the loveliness of the scene, but with scarcely a remark. There was something in the sight which made her heart too full for words. After a time of delighted contemplation, Ranger was summoned from a close investigation of a rabbit-hole, and turning into a cart track, the cousins rode down the side of the hill, where presently appeared an orchard full of gnarled old apple trees, covered with fruit of all shades of red, yellow, and green. A little further on were the large stone barns, and picturesque looking house, which enclosed a farm-yard strewn with heaps of straw, in which pigs, poultry, and red cows were enjoying themselves. The gate was opened by a wild-looking cow-boy, who very respectfully touched his cap; and at the house door appeared a nice elderly looking old fashioned farmer's wife, who came forward to meet them with bright looks of cordiality, and kindly greetings to Master Edmund and Miss Marian. "Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Cornthwayte," said Edmund, as he held Marian's pony; "we are come to ask if you will give our ponies stable room for a couple of hours, while we go fishing up the river." "O yes, certainly, sir, but won't you come in a little while and rest? it is a long walk for Miss Marian." They did comply with her invitation so far as to enter the large clean kitchen; the kitchen for show, that is to say, with the sanded floor, the bunch of evergreens in the covered kitchen-range, the dark old fashioned clock, the bright range of crockery, and well polished oaken table; and there, while Marian laid aside her riding-skirt, the good woman commenced her anxious inquiries for Sir Edmund. "Pretty much the same as usual, thank you," said Edmund. "No better, then, sir? Ah! I was afraid how it was; it is so long since I have seen him at church, and he used to come sometimes last summer: and my husband said when he saw him last week about the rent, he was so fallen away that he would hardly have known him." "It has been a very long illness," said Edmund. "Yes, sir; I do wish we could see him about among us again, speaking as cheerful as he used." "Why he is very cheerful now, Mrs. Cornthwayte," said Edmund. "No one who only heard him talk would guess how much he has to suffer." Mrs. Cornthwayte shook her head with a sort of gesture of compassionate admiration, and presently added, "But do you think he gets better on the whole, Master Edmund? Do the doctors say there is much likelihood of his being well again, and coming among us?" Edmund looked down and did not reply very readily. "I am afraid we must not hope for that; we must be satisfied as long as he does not lose ground, and I certainly think he has had less pain of late." A little more conversation passed between Edmund and the good wife, and a few words from Marian; after which they set off across one or two fields towards the place of their destination, Marian carrying her little sketching-basket in silence for some distance, until she suddenly exclaimed, "Edmund, is papa really getting worse?" "Why should you think so, Marian?" "I don't know, only from what you say when people inquire after him; and sometimes when I come to think about it, I believe he can do less than last year. He gets up later, and does not go out so often, and now you say he will never get quite well, and I always thought he would." "No, I am afraid there is no likelihood of that, Marian: the doctors say he may be much better, but never quite well." "But do you think he is better?" "He has had less suffering of late, certainly, and so far we must be thankful; but, as you say, Marian, I am afraid he is weaker than last time I was at home, and I thought him much altered when I came. Still I do not think him materially worse, and I believe I might have thought him improved, if I had been here all the winter." Marian became silent again, for her disposition was not to express her feelings readily, and besides, she was young enough to be able to put aside anxiety which, perhaps, she did not fully comprehend. It was the ordinary state of things for her father to be unwell, and his illness scarcely weighed upon her spirits, especially on a holiday and day of pleasure like the present; for though she often shared Edmund's walks and rides, a long expedition like this was an unusual treat. After traversing several fields, they entered a winding path through a copse, which, descending a steep hill side, conducted them at length to the verge of a clear stream, which danced over or round the numerous rocks which obstructed its passage, making a pleasant, rippling sound. Here and there under the overhanging trees were deep quiet pools, where the water, of clear transparent brown color, contained numbers of little trout, the object of Edmund's pursuit. But more frequently the water splashed, dashed, and brawled along its rocky way, at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine in which the valley ended. It was indeed a beautiful scene, with the sun glancing on the green of the trees and the bright sparkling water; and Marian could scarcely restrain her exclamations of delight, out of consideration for the silence required by her cousin's sport. She helped him to put his rod together, and arrange his reel, with the dexterity of one who well understood the matter; and then sat down under a fern-covered rock with a book in her hand, whilst he commenced his fishing. As he slowly proceeded up the stream, she changed her place so as to follow him at a distance; now and then making expeditions into the wood at the side of the hill to study some remarkable rock, some tree of peculiar form, or to gather a handsome fern-leaf, or nodding fox-glove with its purple bells. Or the little sketch-book came out, and she caught the form of the rock with a few strokes of bold outline and firm shading, with more power over her soft pencil than is usual at her age, though her foliage was not of the most perfect description. Her own occupations did not, however, prevent her from observing all her cousin's proceedings; she knew whenever he captured a trout, she was at hand to offer help when his hook, was caught in a bramble, and took full and complete interest in the sport. At last, after a successful fishing up the glen, they arrived at a place where the ravine was suddenly closed in by a perpendicular rock of about twenty feet in height, down which the water fell with its full proportion of foam and spray, forming a cascade which Marian thought "magnificent,"--Edmund, "very pretty." "Edmund, I am afraid the Lake country has spoilt you for Devonshire. I wish they had never sent your regiment to the north!" "That would not prevent the falls in Westmoreland from being twice the height of this." "It would prevent you from saying that here it is not as beautiful as any thing can be." "And nothing short of that will satisfy you. You had better stand in a narrow pass, and challenge every passer-by to battle in defence of the beauty of Fern Torr." "I don't care about every body; but you, Edmund, ought to be more dutiful to your own home." "You are exclusive, Marian; but come," and he stuck his rod into the ground, "let us have some of your sandwiches." "Not till you confess that you like Fern Torr better than all the fine places that you ever saw." "Liking with all one's heart is one thing, admiring above all others is another, as you will find when you have seen more of the world, Marian." "I am sure I shall never think so." While this contest was going on, Marian had unpacked some sandwiches and biscuits, and they sat down to eat them with the appetite due to such a walk. Then came a conversation, in which Marian submitted to hear something of the beauties of the Lakes, in the shape of a comment on the "Bridal of Triermain," which she had brought with her; next an attempt at sketching the cascade, in which Edmund was successful enough to make Marian much discontented with her own performance, and declare that she was tired of sitting still, and had a great mind to try to climb up the rocks by the side of the fall. She was light, active, and well able to scramble, and with a little help here and there from her cousin's strong hand, the top was merrily gained; and springing along from rock to rock, they traced the windings of the stream even to the end of the copse and the opening of the moor. It was a great achievement for Marian, for even Edmund had only once been this way before when out shooting. She would fain have mounted to the top of a peak which bounded her view, but being assured that she would only find Alps on Alps arise, she submitted to Edmund's judgment, and consented to retrace her steps, through wood and wild, to Mrs. Cornthwayte's, where they found a feast prepared for them of saffron buns, Devonshire cream, and cyder. Then mounting their steeds, and releasing Ranger from durance in the stable, they rode homewards for about three miles, when they entered the village in the valley at the foot of the steep rocky hill, from which it was named Fern Torr. Excepting the bare rugged summit, this hill was well covered with wood, and opposite to it rose more gently another elevation, divided into fields and meadows. The little old Church, with its square tower, and the neat vicarage beside it, were the only buildings above the rank of cottages, of which some twenty stood irregularly ranged in their gardens and orchards, along the banks of the bright little stream which bounded the road, at present scarcely large enough to afford swimming space for the numerous ducks that paddled in it; but the width of its stony bed, and the large span of the one-arched bridge that traversed it, showing what was its breadth and strength in the winter floods. A little beyond this bridge was a wicket gate, leading to a path up the wooded height; and Edmund at this moment seeing a boy in a stable jacket, asked Marian if he should not let him lead the ponies round by the drive, while they walked up the steps. She readily agreed, and Edmund helping her to dismount, they took their way up the path, which after a very short interval led to a steep flight of steps, cut out in the face of the limestone rock, and ascending through ferns, mountain-ash, and rhododendrons for about fifty or sixty feet, when it was concluded by what might be called either a broad terrace or narrow lawn, upon which stood a house irregularly built of the rough stone of the country, and covered with luxuriant myrtles and magnolias. Immediately behind, the ground again rose so precipitously, that scarcely could coign of vantage be won for the garden, on a succession of narrow shelves or ledges, which had a peculiarly beautiful effect, adorned, as they were, with gay flowers, and looking, as Edmund was wont to say, as gorgeous and as deficient in perspective as an old piece of tapestry. "There is papa out of doors," exclaimed Marian, as she emerged upon the lawn, and ran eagerly up to a Bath chair, in which was seated a gentleman whose face and form showed too certain tokens of long and wasting illness. He held out his hand to her, saying, "Well, Marian, good sport, I hope, and no more tumbles from Mayflower." "Marian sits like a heroine," said Edmund, coming up; "I am glad to see you out." "It is such a fine evening that I was tempted to come and see the magnolia that you have all been boasting of: and really it is worth seeing. Those white blossoms are magnificent." "But where is mamma?" asked Marian. "Carried off by Gerald, to say whether he may have a superannuated sea kale pot for some purpose best known to himself, in his desert island. They will be here again in another minute. There, thank you, Edmund, that is enough," he added, as his nephew drew his chair out of a streak of sunshine which had just come over him. "Now, how far have you been? I hope you have seen the cascade, Marian?" "O yes, papa, and scrambled up the side of it too. I had no idea of any thing so beautiful," said Marian. "The spray was so white and glancing. Oh! I wish I could tell you one half of the beauty of it." "I remember well the delight of the first discovery of it," said Sir Edmund, "when I was a mere boy, and found my way there by chance, as I was shooting. I came up the glen, and suddenly found myself in the midst of this beautiful glade, with the waterfall glancing white in the sun." "I wish we could transplant it," said Edmund; "but after all, perhaps its being so remote and inaccessible is one of its great charms. Ah! young monkey, is it you?" added he, as Gerald, a merry bright-eyed boy of seven years old, came rushing from behind and commenced a romping attack upon him. "Take care, not such a disturbance close to papa." "O mamma, we have had the most delightful day!" cried Marian, springing to the side of her mother, who now came forward from the kitchen garden, and whose fair and gentle, but careworn, anxious face, lighted up with a bright sweet smile, as she observed the glow on her daughter's usually pale cheek, and the light that danced in her dark brown eye. "I'm glad you have had such a pleasant day, my dear," said she. "It is very kind in Edmund to be troubled with such a wild goose." "Wild geese are very good things in their way," said Edmund; "water and land, precipice and moor, 'tis all the same to them." "And when will you take me, Edmund?" asked Gerald. "When you have learnt to comport yourself with as much discretion as Marian, master," said Edmund, sitting down on the grass, and rolling the kicking, struggling boy over and over, while Marian stood by her papa, showing him her sketches, and delighted by hearing him recognize the different spots. "How can you remember them so well, papa," said she, "when it is so very long since you saw them?" "That is the very reason," he answered, "we do not so much dwell on what is constantly before us as when we have long lost sight of it. To be confined to the house for a few years is an excellent receipt for appreciating nature." "Yes, because it must make you wish for it so much," said Marian sadly. "Not exactly," said her father. "You cannot guess the pleasure it has often given me to recall those scenes, and to hear you talk of them; just as your mamma likes to hear of Oakworthy." "Certainly," said Lady Arundel. "I have remembered much at poor old Oakworthy that I never thought of remarking at the time I was there. Even flaws in the glass, and cracks in the ceiling have returned upon me, and especially since the house has been pulled down." "I cannot think how the natives of an old house can wilfully destroy all their old associations, their heirloooms," said Edmund. "Sometimes they have none," said his aunt. "Ay," said Sir Edmund, "when Gerald brings home a fine wife from far away, see what she will say to all our dark passages and corner cupboards, and steps up and steps down." "Oh! I shall not be able to bear her if she does not like them," cried Marian. "I suppose that was the case with Mrs. Lyddell," added Sir Edmund, "that she discovered the deficiencies of the old house, as well as brought wherewith to remedy them. He does not look like a man given to change." "He has no such feeling for association as these people," said Lady Arundel, pointing to Edmund and Marian; "he felt his position, in the country raised by her fortune, and was glad to use any means of adding to his consequence." "I should like to see more of them. I wish we could ask them to stay here," said Sir Edmund, with something like a sigh. "But come, had we not better go in? The hungry fishers look quite ready for tea."

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"And now I set thee down to try How thou canst walk alone." _Lyra Innocentium_. Scarcely eight months had passed since the last recorded conversation, when Marian, in a dress of deep mourning, was slowly pacing the garden paths, her eyes fixed on the ground, and an expression of thoughtful sadness on her face. Heavy indeed had been the strokes that had fallen upon her. Before the last summer had closed, the long sufferings of her father had been terminated by one of the violent attacks, which had often been expected to be fatal. Nor was this all that she had to mourn. With winter had come severe colds and coughs; Lady Arundel was seized with an inflammation of the chest, her constitution had been much enfeebled by watching, anxiety, and grief, and in a very few days her children were orphans. It was the day following the funeral. Mrs. Wortley was staying in the house, as were also the two guardians of the young Sir Gerald Arundel and his sister. These were Mr. Lyddell, a relation of Lady Arundel; and our former acquaintance, Edmund Arundel, in whom, young as he was, his uncle had placed full confidence. He had in fact been entirely brought up by Sir Edmund, and knew no other home than Fern Torr, having been sent thither an orphan in earliest childhood. His uncle and aunt had supplied the place of parents, and had been well rewarded for all they had done for him, by his consistent well doing and completely filial affection for them. Marian was startled from her musings by his voice close at hand, saying, "All alone, Marian?" "Gerald is with Jemmy Wortley, somewhere," she replied, "and I begged Mrs. Wortley and Agnes to go down the village and leave me alone. I have been very busy all the morning, and my head feels quite confused with thoughts!" "I am glad to have found you," said Edmund. "I have seen so little of you since I have been here." "Yes, you have been always with Mr. Lyddell. When does he go?" "To-morrow morning." "And you stay longer, I hope?" "Only till Monday; I wish it was possible to stay longer, but it is something to have a Sunday to spend here." "And then I am afraid it will be a long time before we see you again." "I hope not; if you are in London, it will be always easier to meet." "In London! Ah! that reminds me I wanted to ask you what I am to say to Selina Marchmont. I have a very kind letter from her, asking us to come to stay with her directly, and hoping that it may be arranged for us to live with them." "Ah! I have a letter from her husband to the same effect," said Edmund. "It really is very kind and friendly in them." "Exceedingly," said Marian. "Will you read her letter, and tell me how I am to answer her!" "As to the visit, that depends upon what you like to do yourself. I should think that you would prefer staying with the Wortleys, since they are so kind as to receive you." "You don't mean," exclaimed Marian, eagerly, "staying with them for ever!" Edmund shook his head. "No, Marian, I fear that cannot be." "Then it is as I feared," sighed Marian. "I wonder how it is that I have thought so much about myself; but it would come into my head, what was to become of us, and I was very much afraid of living with the Lyddells; but still there was a little glimmering of hope that you might be able to manage to leave us with the Wortleys." "I heartily wish I could," said Edmund, "but it is out of my power. My uncle--" "Surely papa did not wish us to live with the Lyddells?" cried Marian. "I do not think he contemplated your living any where but at home." "But the Vicarage is more like home than any other place could ever be," pleaded Marian, "and papa did not like the Lyddells nearly so well as the Wortleys." "We must abide by his arrangements, rather than our own notions of his wishes," said Edmund. "Indeed, I know that he thought Mr. Lyddell a very sensible man." "Then poor Gerald is to grow up away from his own home, and never see the dear old moors! But if we cannot stay here, I had rather be with Selina. She is so fond of Gerald, and she knows what home was, and she knew and loved--them. And we should not meet so many strangers. Only think what numbers of Lyddells there are! Boys to make Gerald rude, and girls, and a governess--all strangers. And they go to London!" concluded poor Marian, reaching the climax of her terrors. "O Edmund, can you do nothing for us?" "You certainly do not embellish matters in anticipation. You will find them very different from what you expect--even London itself, which, by the by, you would have to endure even if you were with Selina, whom I suspect to be rather too fine and fashionable a lady for such a homely little Devonshire girl." "That Mrs. Lyddell will be. She is a very gay person, and they have quantities of company. O Edmund!" "The quantities of company," replied her cousin, "will interfere with you far less in your schoolroom with the Miss Lyddells, than alone with my Lady Marchmont, where, at your unrecognized age, you would be in rather an awkward situation." "Or I could go to Torquay, to old Aunt Jessie?" "Aunt Jessie would not be much obliged for the proposal of giving her such a charge." "But I should take care of her, and make her life less dismal and lonely." "That may be very well some years hence, when you are your own mistress: but at present I believe the trouble and change of habits which having you with her would occasion, would not be compensated by all your attention and kindness. Have you written to her yet?" "No, I do not know how, and I hoped it was one of the letters that you undertook for me." "I think I ought not to relieve you of that. Aunt Jessie is your nearest relation; I am sure this has been a great blow to her, and that it has cost her much effort to write to you herself. You must not turn her letter over to me, like a mere complimentary condolence." "Very well," said Marian, with a sigh, "though I cannot guess what I shall say. And about Selina?" "You had better write and tell her how you are situated, and I will do the same to Lord Marchmont." "And when must we go to the Lyddells? I thought he meant more than mere civility, when he spoke of Oakworthy this morning, at breakfast." "He spoke of taking you back to London immediately, but I persuaded him to wait till they go into Wiltshire, so you need not be rooted up from Fern Torr just yet." "Thank you, that is a great reprieve." "And do not make up your mind beforehand to be unhappy at Oakworthy. Very likely you will take root there, and wonder you ever shrank from being transplanted to your new home." "Never! never! it is cruel to say that any place but this can be like home! And you, Edmund, what shall you do, where shall you go, when you have leave of absence?" "I shall never ask for it," said he with an effort, while his eye fell on the window of the room which had been his own for so many years, and the thought crossed him, "Mine no more." It had been his home, as fully as that of his two cousins, but now it was nothing to him; and while they had each other to cling to, he stood in the world a lonely man. Marian perceived his emotion, but rather than seem to notice it, she assumed a sort of gaiety. "I'll tell you, Edmund. You shall marry a very nice wife, and take some delightful little house somewhere hereabouts, and we will come and stay with you till Gerald is of age." "Which he will be long before I have either house or wife," said Edmund, in the same tone, "but mind, Marian, it is a bargain, unless you grow so fond of the Lyddells as to retract." "Impossible." "Well, I will not strengthen your prejudices by contending with them." "Prejudice! to say that I can never be as happy anywhere as at my own dear home! To say that I cannot bear strangers!" "If they were to remain strangers for all the years that you are likely to spend with them, there might be something in that. But I see you cannot bear to be told that you can ever be happy again, so I will not say so any more, especially as I must finish my letters." "And I will try to write mine," said Marian with a sigh, as she reached the door, and went up to take off her bonnet. Edmund lingered for a moment in the hall, and there was met by Mrs. Wortley, who said she was glad to see that he had been out, for he was looking pale and harassed. "I did not go out for any pleasant purpose," said he. "I had to pronounce sentence on poor Marian." "Is it finally settled?" said Mrs. Wortley. "We still had hopes of keeping her." "Sir Gerald and Miss Arundel are of too much distinction in Mr. Lyddell's eyes to be left to their best friends," said Edmund. "It was hard to persuade him not to take possession directly, on the plea of change being good for their spirits." "It is very kind of you to put off the evil day," said Mrs. Wortley; "it will be a grievous parting for poor Agnes." "A grievous business for every one," said Edmund. "How? Do not you think well of Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell?" "I know my uncle never thought of these poor children's living with them. He thought Mr. Lyddell a good man of business, but neither he nor my aunt ever dreamed of such a home for them." "Would they have preferred Lady Marchmont's? Marian is very fond of her, and was much gratified by a very nice affectionate letter that she received this morning." "Yes, but I am glad she is out of the question. It is offering a great deal both on her part and her husband's to take charge of these two, but it would never do. She is almost a child herself,--a bride and beauty under twenty,--excessively admired, very likely to have her head turned. No, it would be too absurd. All her kindness, amiability, desire to make Marian her friend and companion, would only serve to do harm." "Yes, you are right; yet I cannot help half wishing it could be, if it was only to save poor Marian her terrors of going among strangers." "I know exactly how it will be," said Edmund. "She will shut herself up in a double proof case of shyness and reserve. They will never understand her, nor she them." "But that cannot go on for ever." "No; and perhaps it might be better if it could." "Well, but do you really know anything against them? He seems inclined to be very kind and considerate." "Electioneering courtesy," said Edmund. "But now you begin to question me, I cannot say that my--my mistrust shall I call it--or aversion? is much better founded than the prejudices I have been scolding poor Marian for. Perhaps it is only that I am jealous of them, and cannot think any one out of Fern Torr worthy to bring up my uncle's children. All I know of them is, that Mrs. Lyddell was heiress to a rich banker, she goes out a good deal in London, and the only time that I met her I thought her clever and agreeable. In their own county I believe she is just what a popular member's wife should be--I don't mean popular in the sense of radical. I think I have heard too something about the eldest son not turning out well; but altogether, you see, I have not grounds enough to justify any opposition to their desire of having the children." "How are they as to Church principles?" "That I really cannot tell. I should think they troubled themselves very little about the matter, and would only dislike any thing strong either way. If my aunt had but been able to make some arrangement! No doubt it was upon her mind when she asked so often for me!" "Yes, but there is this comfort," said Mrs. Wortley, seeing him much troubled, "that she did not seem to make herself anxious and restless on their account. She trusted them, and so may we." "Yes, that is all that one can come to," said Edmund, sighing deeply. "But Gerald! One pities Marian the most now, but it is a more serious matter for him." "Gerald will be more in your power than his sister," said Mrs. Wortley. "As if that was much comfort," said Edmund, half smiling, then again sighing, "when even for my own concerns I miss my uncle's advice at every turn. And probably I may have to go on foreign service next year." "Then he will be at school." "Yes. He was not to have gone till he was ten years old, but I shall try to hasten it now. He must go with his sister to Oakworthy though, for to begin without him there would be complete desolation in her eyes." Here the conversation was concluded by Marian's coming down to write her painfully composed letters. That to her cousin, Lady Marchmont, who, as Selina Grenville, had been a frequent and favourite visitor at the manor, ran glibly enough off the pen, and the two or three quiet tears that blotted the paper, fell from a feeling of affection rather than of regret; but the letter to old Mrs. Jessie Arundel, her great aunt, and one or two others which Edmund had desired her to write, were works of time. Marian's feelings were seldom freely expressed even to those whom she loved best, and to write down expressions of grief, affection, or gratitude, as a matter of course, was positively repugnant to her. The great work was not finished till late, and then came in Gerald and Agnes, and the tea drinking among themselves was rendered cheerful by Agnes' anticipations of pleasure in their going the next day to the parsonage for a long visit. Gerald began to play with her, and soon got into quite high spirits, and Marian herself had smiled, nay, almost laughed, before the gentlemen came in from the dining room, when the presence of Mr. Lyddell cast over her a cloud of dull dread and silence, so that she did not through the rest of the evening raise her head three inches from her book. Yet as Mrs. Wortley had said, Mr. Lyddell was evidently inclined to be kind to her and her brother. He patted Gerald on the head as he wished him good night, and said good-naturedly to Marian that she must be great friends with his girls, Caroline and Clara. Marian tried to look civil, but could not find an answer both sincere and polite, and Mrs. Wortley, speaking for her, asked if they were nearly of the same age as she was. "Well, I can't exactly tell," said Mr. Lyddell. "I should think she was between them. You are thirteen, aren't you, Marian? Well, Caroline may be a couple of years older, and Clara--I know her birthday was the other day, for I had to make her a present,--but how old she was I can't exactly recollect, whether it was twelve or thirteen. So you see you will not want for companions at Oakworthy, and you will be as happy there as your poor mamma used to be in the old house. Many was the laugh she has had there with my poor sister, and now they are both gone--well, there, I did not mean to overset you,--but--" Marian could not bear it. She could talk of her mother to Mrs. Wortley, Agnes, or Edmund, with complete composure, but she could not bear Mr. Lyddell's hearty voice trying, as she thought, at sentiment, and forcing the subject upon her, and without a word or a look she hurried out of the room, and did not come back all the evening. Agnes followed her, and pitied her, and thought Mr. Lyddell should have said nothing of the kind, and sat down over the fire with her in her own room to read hymns. The next day Mr. Lyddell left Fern Torr, and Marian was so glad to gee him depart as to be able to endure much better his invitations to Oakworthy. That same day Marian and Gerald went to the parsonage, and Edmund, after spending a quiet Sunday at Fern Torr, bade them farewell on the Monday morning.

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"Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, Children not thine 'may tread' my nurseryfloor." COWPER. The way of life at Fern Torr parsonage was so quiet as to afford few subjects for narration. Mrs. Wortley was a gentle, sensible person, very fond of Marian and Gerald, both for their own sake and their mother's, and to be with her was to them as like being at home as anything could be. Agnes was quite wrapped up in her friend, whom she pitied so heartily, and was to lose so soon. She had known no troubles except through Marian, she reverenced Marian's griefs, and in her respect for them was inclined to spoil her not a little. Then, through nothing against the Lyddells had ever been said to Agnes, she had caught all Marian's prejudiced dislike to them, and sometimes in lively exaggeration, sometimes in grave condolence, talked of them "as these horrid people." Marian felt every day was precious as it passed, and the time seemed to her far less than two months, when one day there arrived a letter from Mrs. Lyddell to announce that the family were about to leave London, and in the course of a week Mr. Lyddell would come to fetch her and Gerald to Oakworthy. The letter was kindly expressed, but this was lost upon Marian in the pain its purport gave her, and the difficulty of composing an answer. She chose her smallest sheet of writing-paper with the deepest black edge, wrote as widely as she could, and used the longest words, but with all Mrs. Wortley's suggestions, she could not eke out what she had to say beyond the first page. She would not even send her love to her cousins, for she said she could have no particular affection for them, and to express any pleasure in the prospect of seeing so many strangers would be an actual untruth. What a week was that which followed! Marian loved her home with that enthusiasm which especially belongs to the inhabitants of mountainous districts, and still more acutely did she feel the separation from all that reminded her of her parents. If she had not had Gerald to go with her she did not know how she could have borne it, but Gerald, her own beautiful brother, with his chestnut curls, dark bright eyes, sweet temper, and great cleverness and goodness, he must be a comfort to her wherever she was. Gerald was one of those children who seem to have a peculiar atmosphere of bright grace and goodness around them, who make beautiful earnest sayings in their simplicity which are treasured up by their friends, who, while regarding them with joy and something like veneration, watch them likewise with fear and trembling. Thus had his mother looked upon Gerald, and thus in some degree did Mrs. Wortley; but Marian had nothing but pride, joy, and confidence in him, unalloyed save now and then by the secret, half superstitious fear that such goodness might mark him for early death. By Marian's own especial desire, she went to almost every cottage to take leave, but all she could do was to stand with her head averted and her lips compressed, while Mrs. Wortley spoke for her. Her next task was to look over the boxes and drawers at the manor house, in case it should be let; for no one else could be trusted to decide what hoards of highly prized trifles should be locked up, and what must be thrown away. She alone could choose the little keepsakes to be given to old servants and village friends, and she must select what she would take to Oakworthy. She stood lingering before each picture, viewing the old familiar furniture with loving eyes, and sighing at the thought that strangers would alter the arrangements, look carelessly or critically on her father's portrait, think her wild garden a collection of weeds, and root up the flowering fern which Edmund had helped her to transplant. She went into her own room, and felt almost ready to hate the person who might occupy it; she lay down on the bed, and looking up at the same branch of lime tree, and the same piece of sky which had met her eyes every morning, she mused there till she was roused by hearing Gerald's voice very loud in the nursery. Hastening thither, she found him insisting that his collection of stones and spars was much too precious to mend the roads with, as their maid Saunders proposed, and Agnes settling the matter satisfactorily by offering to take them to adorn a certain den in the vicarage garden with. The ponies were to be turned out to grass, the rabbits were bestowed on James Wortley, and Ranger was to be kept at the vicarage till Edmund could come and fetch him, together with his books, which Marian had to look out, and she found it a service of difficulty, since "Edmund Gerald" could scarcely be said to answer the purpose of a proper name in the Arundel family. The last day at home arrived, the eve of S. James. Marian went to prepare her class at the weekly school, resolved to do just as usual to the last. She had to read them the conversation on S. James's Day in "Fasts and Festivals," but she could hardly get through with it, the separation between early friends reminded her so much of herself and Agnes, and then the comparison of the two roads, one in burning and scorching sunshine, the other in the cool fresh shade, almost overset her, for though she could not tell why, she chose to be persuaded that the first must be hers. But they both ended in the same place. She felt tears coming into her eyes, but she kept them down, and went on reading in a steady monotonous voice, as if the meaning was nothing to her; she asked the children questions in a dry, grave, matter-of-fact way, as if she had not the slightest interest in them or in the subject, though her heart was full of affection to the dullest and roughest among them, and when she went away, her nod, and "well, good morning," to the school mistress were several shades further from warmth than usual. All the way back from the school she was eagerly telling Agnes exactly the point where she left each child in her class, and begging her to say the kind things which she meant to have said to Grace Knight, the mistress. Agnes laughed and said, "I hope she will take my word for it all. Why could you not speak to her? At least I thought you were not afraid of her." "I don't know," said Marian. "I thought I could, but it is very odd. You see, Agnes, how it is; the more I care, the more I can't speak, and I can't help it." "Well, don't be unhappy about it," said Agnes. "I know what you mean, and am ready to take you as you are, and if other people don't, it is their own fault." Agnes was rather too fond of Marian to be exactly right here, for it was not at all a good thing that she should be encouraged in a reserve which led her not always to do as she would be done by. The two girls came in, lingered in each other's rooms while they dressed, and at last were called down stairs by Mrs. Wortley, who was ready to finish with them the last chapter of the book they had been reading aloud together. Gerald sat in the window, his friend Jemmy hanging over him, and the two together composing a marvellous battlepiece, in which Gerald drew horses, men, cannon, and arrows, and Jemmy, like a small Homer, suggested the various frightful wounds they should be receiving, and the attitudes in which they should fall. The general, with a tremendous Turkish sabre, an immense cocked hat, and a horse with very stiff legs, was just being represented receiving an unfortunate-looking prisoner, considerably spotted with vermillion paint, when a sound of wheels was heard, and both boys starting up, exclaimed, "Here he comes!" He, as Marian knew full well, was Mr. Lyddell; and a chilliness came over her as he entered, tall, broad, ruddy, treading heavily, and speaking loudly: and Gerald pressed close to her, squeezing her hand so tight that she could hardly withdraw it to shake hands with her guardian. With one hand he held her cold reluctant fingers, with the other gave Gerald's head a patronizing pat. "Well, my dears, how d'ye do? quite well? and ready to start with me to-morrow? That is right. Caroline and Clara have had their heads full of nothing but you this long time--only wanted to have come with me." Here Marian succeeded in drawing back her hand, and retreated to the window; Gerald was creeping after her, but Mr. Lyddell laid hold of his chin, and drew him back, saying. "What, shy, my man? we shall cure you at Oakworthy My boys will give you no peace if they see you getting into your sister's pocket." Gerald disengaged himself, and made a rapid retreat. It was a long time before he again appeared, and when Mrs. the housekeeper at the Manor House, came down in the course of the evening to say good-bye, she said, "And ma'am, where do you think I found that dear child, Sir Gerald, not two hours ago?" She wiped away a gush of tears, and went on. "I thought I heard a noise in the drilling room, and went to see, and there, ma'am, was the dear little fellow lying on the floor, the bare boards, for the carpet is taken up, you know, Miss Marian, before his papa's picture, crying and sobbing as if his heart would break. But as soon as I opened the door, and he saw me, he snatched up his hat, and jumped out at the open window, which he had come in by, I suppose, for I never heard him open the door." Marian, after her usual fashion, had no reply, but it was pleasant to her to think of what had taken place, since Gerald had not in general shown much concern at the leaving home. They all met at breakfast next morning; Marian, was firmly determined against crying, and by dint of squeezing up her lips, and not uttering a word, succeeded in keeping her resolution; but poor Agnes could eat no breakfast, and did nothing but cry, till Mr. Lyddell, by saying that her tears were a great honour both to herself and Marian, entirely checked them. "I hope," said Mr. Wortley, "that Mrs. Lyddell will not be very strict in inquiring into the quantity of Marian's idle correspondence. The friends there mean to console themselves with multitudes of letters." "Oh, certainly, certainly," said Mr. Lyddell. "Old friends for ever! So mind, Marian, I mean to be very angry if you forget to write to Miss Wortley." "Thank you," said Marian, knowing that she was saying something silly, and trying to smile. "Come, then," said Mr. Lyddell, "thank your friends once more for their kindness, and let us be going." Thanks from Marian were out of the question, and she tried to get out of hearing of the sentences beginning, "I am sure we shall always be sensible," "Nothing could be kinder," which her guardian was pouring out. She moved with Agnes to the door: the summer sky was deeply blue, without a cloud, the fresh green branches of the trees stood up against it as if bathed in light, the flower beds were glowing with gay blossoms, Gerald and Jemmy were playing with Ranger under the verandah, and the Church bells rang cheerfully for morning service, but alas! at the gate was the carriage, Saunders sitting sobbing on the outside, and David Chapple, Mr. Wortley's man, standing on one leg on the step talking to her. Near at hand was the gardener from the Manor House, waiting with his hands full of Miss Arundel's favourite flowers, and there stood old Betty Lapthorn and her grandchild, Gerald's nurse who had married, and the old man to whom the children had so often carried the remains of their dinner; all the school children too, and Grace in the middle of them, waiting for the last view of Miss Arundel and little Sir Gerald. Mr. Lyddell finished his acknowledgments, and Marian and her brother received an embrace and good-bye from their friends, David jumped down and shut the door, Saunders sobbed aloud, there was another good-bye from each of the Wortleys, and a hearty response from Gerald, Mr. Lyddell called out, "All right," and away they went. On went the carriage, past the Church, with its open door and pealing bell, the rocky steps up to the Manor House, nestled in the shrubs, the well known trees, the herds of longhorned, red cattle, the grey stone cottages, and the women and tiny children at the doors, the ford through the sparkling shallow brook, the hill with the great limestone quarry, the kiln so like a castle, the river and its bridge of one narrow, high pitched, ivy grown arch, the great rod rock, remembered as having been the limit of papa's last drive, the farm house in the winding valley beyond, with its sloping orchard and home field, the last building in the parish. They drove through the little market town, slowly wound up the heights beyond, looked down into the broad, beautiful space where the river Exe winds its blue course amid wood, field, and castled hill, descended, losing sight of the last of the Torrs, glanced at Exeter and its Cathedral, arrived at the station, and there, while waiting hand in hand on the platform, gazing at the carriage, and starting at each puff, snort, cough, and shriek of the engines, Marian and Gerald did indeed feel themselves severed from the home of their childhood. It was not till the afternoon that they left the railroad, and then they had a two hours' drive through a country which Marian found very unlike her own: the bleak, bare downs of Wiltshire, low green hills rising endlessly one after the other, the white road visible far away before them, the chalk pits white and cold, a few whitey brown ponds now and then, and at long intervals a farm house, looking as if it had been set down there by mistake, and did not like it, carts full of chalk, and flocks of sheep the chief moving objects they met, and not many of them. Marian sighed, yawned, and looked at Gerald many a time before they at length came to a small, very neat-looking town, where the houses stood far back from the street, and had broad clean pavement in front of them. "This is Oakworthy," said Mr. Lyddell, and Marian looked with interest. The church was just outside the town, white, and clean looking, like everything else, and with a spire. That was all she could see, for they drove on by the side of a long park wall, enclosing a fir plantation. The gate of a pretty lodge was thrown back, and they entered upon a gravelled carriage-road, which, after some windings, led to a large house, built of white brick, regular and substantial. They stopped under the portico at the door, and Mr. Lyddell, as he handed Marian out of the carriage, exclaimed, "Welcome to Oakworthy Park!" It seemed to Marian that there was a whole crowd waiting for her in the hall, and she had received at least three kisses before she had time to look around her, and perceive that this formidable troop consisted of a tall, fresh-coloured lady, two girls, and two little boys. Each of the girls eagerly grasped one of her hands, and drew her into the drawing-room, exclaiming, "I am glad you are come!" Here were two more strangers, youths of the age at which their juniors call them men, and their seniors, boys. They did not trouble the guests with any particular demonstrations of welcome, only shaking hands with them carelessly, and after another moment or two Marian found herself sitting on a chair, very stiffly and upright, while Gerald stood about two feet from her, afraid of a second accusation of getting into her pocket, looking down, and twisting the handles of her basket. "Lionel, Johnny," said Mrs. Lyddell, "have you nothing to say to your cousin? Come here, my dear, and tell me, were you very sorry to leave Fern Torr?" Gerald coloured and looked at his sister, who replied by a hesitating, faltering, "Yes, very." "Ah! yes, I see," said Mrs. Lyddell, "but you will soon be at home here. It shall not be my fault or your cousins' if you are not,--eh, Caroline?" "Indeed it shall not," returned Caroline, again taking Marian's hand, at first pressing it cordially, but letting it go on feeling the limp, passive fingers, which were too shy and frightened to return the pressure. Mr. Lyddell came in, and while his wife was engaged in speaking to him, Marian had time to make her observations, for the chilling embarrassment of her manner had repelled the attentions of her cousins. Though she had never seen them before, she knew enough about them to be able to fit the names to the persons she saw before her, and make a few conjectures as to how she would like them. That youth in the odd-looking, rough, shapeless coat, yet with a certain expensive, fashionable air about the rest of his dress, who stood leaning against the chimney-piece in a nonchalant attitude, was her eldest cousin, Elliot Lyddell. The other, a great contrast in appearance, small, slender, and pale, with near-sighted spectacles over his weak, light grey eyes, dressed with scrupulous precision and quietness, who had retreated to the other end of the room and taken up a book, was Walter. The elder girl, Caroline, was about fifteen, a very pleasing likeness of her mother, with a brilliant complexion, bright blue eyes, and a remarkably lively and pleasant smile, which Marian was so much taken with, that she wished she could have found something to say, but the dress and air both gave her the appearance of being older than Agnes, and thus made Marian feel as if she was a great way above and beyond her. The other sister had a fair, pretty face, much more childish, with beautiful glossy light hair, and something sweet and gentle in her expression, and Marian felt warmly towards her because she was her mother's god-child, and bore the same name. The younger boys, Lionel and John, were nice-looking little fellows of nine and seven. They had drawn towards Walter, gazing all the time at Gerald, and all parties were rejoiced when Mrs. Lyddell, after a few more attempts at conversation, proposed to take the guests to their rooms. With a light, quick step, she led the way up two staircases and a long passage, to a good-sized, comfortable room intended for Marian, while Gerald's was just opposite. With a civil welcome to Saunders, kind hopes that Marian would make herself at home, and information that dinner would he ready at seven, she left the room, and Saunders proceeded with the young lady's toilette. Gerald stood gazing from the window at the trees and little glimpse of the town in the distance. He said little, and seemed rather forlorn till leave was given him to unpack some goods which he could not easily damage. Just as Marian was dressed, there was a knock at the door, and without waiting for an answer, Caroline and Clara entered, the former saying, "I hope you find everything comfortable: you see we make you quite at home, and stand on no ceremony." It was pleasantly said, but Marian only gave a constrained smile, and answered, "Thank you," in such an awkward, cold way, that Caroline was thrown back. Her sister, only conscious of freedom from the restraints of the drawing-room, began exclaiming in short sentences, "O what a pretty basket! so you have out your work already! what a lovely pattern! how quick you have been in dressing! we came to see how you were getting on. O what is this pretty box? do let me see." "A work-box," said Marian, by no means disposed to turn out all the small treasures it contained for Clara's inspection. --Caroline perceived this, and said with a little reproof to Clara, "You curious child! Perhaps Marian would like to come and see the schoolroom before going down." "Oh, yes," said Clara; "you must come. You have not seen Miss Morley yet,--our governess,--poor, unfortunate, faithful Morley, as we always call her." This manner of mentioning the governess, and before Saunders too, greatly surprised Marian, and she felt little inclination to face another stranger; but she could think of no valid objection, and allowed herself and Gerald to be conducted down one of the flights of stairs into a passage less decorated than the rest of the house. Clara threw open a door, calling out, "Here they are!" and Marian found herself in the presence of a little, nicely dressed lady, who looked very little older than Caroline, and had a very good-natured face. Coming forward with a smile, she said, "Miss Arundel, I believe. I hope you are quite well, and not tired. Sir Gerald, how d'ye do? We shall be good friends, I am sure." Gerald shook hands, and Marian thought she ought to do so too; but it had not been her first impulse, and it was too late, so she only made a stiff bend of head and knee. Clara, happily unconscious of the embarrassment with which Marian had infected Caroline, went on talking fast and freely: "So, you see, this is the schoolroom. There is Caroline's desk, and here is mine; and we have made room for you here. I suppose you have a desk. And here are all our books, and our chiffonnière; Caroline has one side and I the other. Oh, I must show you my last birthday presents. Ah! aren't we lucky to have got such a nice view of the terrace and the portico from here! We can always see the people coming to dinner, and when the gentlemen go out riding, it is such fun, and--" "My dear Clara," interposed Miss Morley, seeing Marian's bewildered looks, "your cousin is not used to such a chatterbox. I assure you, Miss Arundel, that Clara has been quite wild for the last week with the prospect of seeing you. I have actually not known what to do with her." Marian gave one of her awkward smiles, and said nothing. "You left Devonshire this morning, I think?" said Miss Morley. "Yes, we did." "Fern Torr is in a very beautiful part of the country, is it not?" "Yes, very." They were getting on at this rate when Mrs. Lyddell came in, and took Marian and Gerald down to the drawing-room with her, as it was almost dinner time. No sooner had the door closed behind them, than governess and pupils at once exclaimed, "How pale!" "how shy!" "how awkward!" "I dare say that is only shyness," said Caroline, "but I must say I never saw anything so stiff and chilly." "Yes, that she is," said Clara, "but it's only shyness; I am sure she is a dear girl. But how white she is! I thought she would have been pretty, because they say the Arundels are all so handsome." "She has fine eyes," said Miss Motley; "and that dear little Sir Gerald, I am sure we shall all be in love with him." "Well, I hope we may get on better in time," said Caroline, taking up a book, and settling herself in a most luxurious attitude in spite of the unaccommodating furniture of the schoolroom. Marian recovered a little at dinner, and was not quite so monosyllabic in her replies. Her netting was a great resource when she went into the drawing-room after dinner, and she began to feel a little less rigid and confused, made some progress in acquaintance with Clara, and when she went to bed was not without hopes of, in time, liking both her and Caroline very much.

4

None

"A place where others are at home, But all are strange to me." _Lyra Innocentium. _ Marian began the next morning by wondering what a Sunday at Oakworthy would be like, but she was glad the formidable first meeting was over, and greeted Gerald cheerfully when he came into the room. After a few minutes a bell rang, and Marian, thinking it must be for family prayers, hastened into the passage, wondering at herself for not having asked last night where she was to go. She was glad to meet Caroline coming out of her room, and after quickly exchanging a "good morning," she said, "Was that the bell for prayers?" "No, it was for the servants' breakfast," said Caroline "and for ours in the schoolroom too." "But don't you have prayers in the morning?" said Gerald, "No," answered Caroline gravely. "Why not," the little boy was beginning but Marian pressed his hand to check him, shocked herself, and sorry for Caroline's sake that the question had been asked. Caroline spoke rather hurriedly, "I wish we could, but you see papa is out so often, and there are so many people staying here sometimes: and in London, papa is so late at the House--it is very unlucky, but it would not do, it is all so irregular." "What?" said Clara, hopping down stairs behind them. "O, about prayers! We have not had any in the school room since Miss Cameron's time." "Miss Cameron used to read a chapter and pray with us afterwards," said Caroline; "but when she was gone, mamma said she did not like the book she used." "Besides, it was three quarters out of her own head, and that wasn't fair, for she used to go on such a monstrous time," said Clara. "Hush, Clara," said her sister, "and mamma has never found a book she does think quite fit." "There's the Prayer Book," said Gerald. "O that is only for Church," said Clara, opening the schoolroom door; "O she is not here! Later than ever. Well, Marian, what do you think of her?" "Of whom?" asked Marian. "Of poor unfortunate faithful Morley," said Clara. "You call her so after Queen Anne?" "Yes," said Caroline, "and you will see how well the name suits her when you are fully initiated." "But does she like it?" "Like it?" and Clara fell into a violent fit of laughing, calling out to Lionel, who just then came in, "Here is Marian asking if we call Miss Morley 'poor unfortunate' whenever we speak to her." "She is coming," said Lionel, and Clara sunk her boisterous laughter into a titter, evident enough to occasion Miss Morley to ask what made them so merry, but the only answer she received was from Lionel, "Something funny," and then both he and Clara burst out again into laughter, his open, and hers smothered. Marian looked amazed. "Ah! you are not used to such ways," said the governess; "Clara and Lionel are sometimes sad creatures." Breakfast took a very long time, and before it was quite over, Mrs. Lyddell came in, spoke in her rapid, good-natured tone to Marian and Gerald, and remarked rather sharply to Miss Morley that she thought they grew later and later every Sunday. Nevertheless, no one went on at all the faster after she was gone. Miss Morley continued her talk with Caroline and Clara about some young friends of theirs in London, and Lionel and Johnny went on playing tricks with their bread and butter, accompanied by a sort of secret teasing of Clara. Nothing brought them absolutely to a conclusion till one of the servants appeared in order to take away the things, and unceremoniously bore away John's last piece of bread and cup of tea. Johnny looked up at the man and made a face at him; Miss Morley shook her head, and Caroline said, "How can you be so naughty, Johnny? it serves you quite right, and I only wish it happened every morning." "Come, Gerald, and see the ponies," said Lionel. "My dears," said Miss Morley, "you know your mamma never likes you to go out before Church especially to the stables; you only get hot, and you make us late with waiting for you." "Nobody asked you to wait for us," said John. "Come, Gerald." "No, I see Sir Gerald is a good little boy, and is coming steadily with us," said Miss Morley. "Yes, Gerald, do," said Marian. "There will be plenty of time by and by," said Gerald, sitting down again. "O very well," said John. "Well, if you won't, I will; I want to see Elliot's colt come in from exercising, and he will be sure to be there himself now." Lionel and Johnny ran off, Caroline looked distressed, and went out into the passage leaving the door open. Walter was coming along it, and as she met him, she said, "Walter, the boys are off to the stable again; we shall have just such a fuss as we had last Sunday if you cannot stop them. Is Elliot there again?" "I am afraid he is," said Walter. "Then there is no chance!" said Caroline, retreating; but at that moment Lionel and John came clattering down from their own distant abode at the top of the house. "Who likes to walk with me through, the plantations to Church?" said Walter; "I was coming to ask if you liked to show that way to Gerald." Lionel and John, who had a real respect for Walter, thought it best to keep silence on their disobedient designs, and accept the kind offer. Gerald gladly joined them, and off they set. Miss Morley, Caroline, and Clara, had all gone different ways, and Marian remained, leaning her forehead against the window, thinking what her own dear Sunday-school class were doing at Fern Torr, and feeling very disconsolate. She had stood in this manner for some minutes when Clara came to tell her it was time to prepare for Church, followed her to her room, and contrived to make more remarks on her dress than Marian could have thought could possibly have been bestowed on a plain black crape bonnet and mantle. Through all the rather long walk, Clara still kept close to her, telling who every one was, and talking incessantly, till she felt almost confused, and longed for the quietness of the church. Mr. Lyddell's pew was a high, square box, curtained round, with a table and a stove, so that she hardly felt as if she was in church, and she was surprised not to see Elliot Lyddell there. They had to walk quickly back after the service, dine hurriedly, and then set off again for the afternoon service. Miss Morley sighed, and said that the second long hot walk almost killed her, and she went so slowly that the schoolroom party all came in late. They found no one in the pew but Mrs. Lyndell and Walter, and Marian once more sighed and wondered. On coming home, Miss Morley went in to rest, but as it was now cool and pleasant, her pupils stayed out a little longer to show the park and garden. They were very desirous of making the Arundels admire all they saw, and Lionel and John were continually asking, "Have you anything like that at Fern Torr?" Gerald, jealous for the honor of home, was magnificent in his descriptions, and unconscious that he was talking rhodomontade. According to him, his park took in a whole mountain, his house was quite as large and much handsomer than Mr. Lyddell's, the garden was like the hanging gardens of Babylon, and greenhouses were never wanted there, for "all sorts of things" would grow in the open air. His cousins were so amazed that they would hardly attend to Marian's explanations, and thought her description of the myrtle, which reached to the top of the house, as fabulous as his hanging gardens. "And, Marian, what do you think of this place?" asked Clara. After some pressing, the following reply was extracted:--"It is so shut in with fir-trees, but I suppose you want them to hide the town, and there is nothing to see if they were away." "O Marian!" said Caroline, "when we showed you the beautiful view over the high gate." "But there was no hill, and no wood, and no water." "Did you not see Oakworthy Hill?" "That tame green thing!" said Marian. "The truth is," said Johnny, "that she likes it the best all the time, only she won't own it." "Nonsense, Johnny," replied Lionel, "every one likes their own home best, and I like Marian for not pretending to be polite and nonsensical." "And I tell you," said Gerald, "that you never saw anything so good as my Manor house in your whole life." Here they went in, and Marian gently said to Gerald as they came into her room, "I wish you would not say _my_, Gerald, it seems like boasting. My park--my house--" Gerald hung his head, and the colour came deeply into his cheeks. "Marian," said he, "you know how I wish it wasn't mine now," and the tears were in his eyes. "But they boast over me, and they ought not, for I'm Sir--" "Oh! hush, Gerald. You used never to like to hear yourself called so, because it put you in mind--. Yes, I know they boast; but this is not the way to stop them, it only makes them go on; and what does it signify to you? it does not make this place really better than home." "Yes, but I want them to know it." "But you should not want to set yourself up above them. If you don't answer, and, let them say what nonsense they please, it would be the best way, and the right way, and so you would humble yourself, which is what we must all do Gerald." Gerald was silenced, but looked dissatisfied; however, there was no more time to talk, for Clara came to say that tea was almost ready, and Marian rang for Saunders. Gerald looked as if he was meditating when first they sat down to tea, and after some little time he abruptly began, "I don't like your church at all. It is just like a room, and nobody makes any noise." "Nobody makes any noise," repeated Caroline, smiling; "is that Fern Torr fashion?" "I do not mean exactly a noise," said Gerald, "but people read their verse of the psalm, and say Amen, and all that, quite loud. They don't leave it all to the clerk in his odd voice." Lionel mimicked the clerk so drolly, that in spite of "Don't, my dear," and "O! Lionel," nobody could help laughing; and Johnny added an imitation of the clerk at their church in London. After the mirth was over, Gerald went on, "Why does not every one say Amen here?" "Like so many charity children," said Lionel, with a nasal drawl. "No, indeed!" cried Gerald, indignantly; "Edmund does it, and everybody." "Everybody! as if you could tell, who never went to church in your life, except at that little poky place," said Johnny, Gerald's colour rose, but Marian's eye met his, and he remembered what she had said, and answered quietly, "I don't know whether Fern Torr is poky, but it is a place where people are taught to behave well." "Capital, Gerald, excellent!" cried Caroline, laughing heartily, "that is a hit, Lionel, for you!" while Gerald looked round him, amazed at the applause with which his speech, made in all simplicity, was received. As soon as tea was over, Miss Morley called Lionel and John to repeat the Catechism, and added doubtfully, "Perhaps Sir Gerald would rather wait for next Sunday." "O no, thank you," said Marian, "we always say it." "You need not, Marian," said Caroline, "we never do, only it would be so troublesome for the boys to have to learn it at school." "I should like to say it if Miss Morley has no objection," said Marian. "Oh! yes, certainly," was the answer. "See, Lionel, there is an example for you." Marian and Gerald stood upright, with their hands behind them, just as they had stood every Sunday since they could speak; Lionel was astride on the music stool, spinning round and round, and Johnny balancing himself with one leg on the floor, and one hand on the window sill. When the first question was asked, the grave voice that replied, "Edmund Gerald," was drowned in a loud shout-- "Jack Lyddell, Jack Lyddell, Shall play on the fiddle"-- evidently an old worn out joke, brought to life again in the hope of making the grave cousins laugh, instead of which they stood aghast. Miss Morley only said imploringly, "Now, Johnny, my dear boy, _do_," and proceeded to the next question. Throughout the two boys were careless and painfully irreverent, and the governess, annoyed and ashamed, hurried on as fast as she could, in order to put an end to the unpleasant scene. When it was over she greatly admired the correctness of Gerald's answers, seeming to think it extraordinary that he should not have made a single mistake; whereas Marian would have been surprised if he had. Gerald whispered to his sister as they went down to the drawing-room, "Would it not be fun to see what Mr. Wortley would say to Lionel and Johnny, if he had them in his class?" On Monday, Marian and Gerald began to fall into the habits of the place, and to learn the ways of their cousins, though it was many years before they could be said really to understand them. Of their guardian himself, they found they should see very little, for their four schoolroom companions, his own children, had but little intercourse with him. Sometimes, indeed, Johnny, who enjoyed the privileges of the youngest, would make a descent upon him, and obtain some pleasure or some present, or at least a game of play; and sometimes Lionel fell into great disgrace, and was brought to him for reproof, but Caroline and Clara only saw him now and then in the evening, and never seemed to look to him as the friend and approver that Marian thought all fathers were. As to Miss Morley, she had only spoken twice to him since she had been in the house. Mrs. Lyddell seemed supreme in everything at home. She was quick, active, and clever, an excellent manager, nor was she otherwise than very kind in word and deed; and Marian could by no means understand the cause of the mixture of dread and repugnance with which she regarded her. Perhaps it was, that though not harsh, her manner wanted gentleness; her tones were not soft, and she would cut off answers before they were half finished. Her bright, clear, cold, blue eye had little of sympathy in it, and every look and tone showed that she expected implicit obedience, to commands, which were far from unpleasant in themselves, though rendered ungracious by the want of softness and mildness with which they were given. Marian often wondered, apart from the principle, how her cousins, and even Miss Morley, could venture to disregard orders given in that decided manner; but she soon perceived that they trusted to Mrs. Lyddell's multifarious occupations, which kept her from knowing all their proceedings with exactness, and left them a good deal at liberty. Marian was disposed to like Miss Morley, with her gentle voice and kind manner, but she was much surprised at her letting things go on among her pupils, which she must have known to be wrong in themselves, as well as against express commands of Mrs. Lyddell. Once or twice when she heard her talking to Clara, she said to herself, "Would not mamma say that was silly?" but at any rate it was a great thing to have a person of whom she was not in the least shy or afraid, and who set her quite at her ease in the schoolroom. The first business on Monday morning, after the little boys had gone off for two hours to a tutor, was an examination into Marian's attainments, beginning with French and Italian reading and translation, in which she acquitted herself very well till Mrs. Lyddell came in, and put her in such a state of trepidation that she no longer knew what she was about. In truth, Marian's education had been rather irregular in consequence of her father's illness, and its effect had been to give her a general cultivation of mind, and appreciation of excellence, to train her to do her best, and fed an eagerness for information, but without instructing her in that routine of knowledge for which Mrs. Lyddell and Miss Morley looked. She was not ready in answering questions, even upon what she knew perfectly well; she had no tables of names and dates at finger's ends, and when she saw that every one thought her backward and ignorant, the feeling that she was not doing justice to her mamma's teaching added to her confusion, her mistakes and puzzles increased, and at last she was almost ready to cry. At that moment Caroline said, "Mamma, you have not seen Marian's drawings yet. Do fetch them, Marian." The drawings served in some degree to save Marian in the opinion; at least, of Miss Morley: for an artist-like hand and eye were almost an inheritance in the Arundel family, and teaching her had been a great amusement to Sir Edmund. Miss Morley and Caroline thought her drawings wonderful; but Mrs. Lyddell, who had never learnt to draw, was, as Marian quickly perceived, unable to distinguish the merits from the faults, and was only commending them in order to reassure her. Her music was the next subject of inquiry, and here again she did not shine, for practising had been out of the question during the last two years of her father's life; but as she could not bear to offer this as an excuse, she only said she knew she could hardly play at all, but she hoped to improve. To her great relief, Mrs. Lyddell did not stay to listen to her performance, but went away, leaving her to Miss Morley, who found something to commend in her taste and touch. When the business of learning actually commenced, Marian grew more prosperous; for she had the good custom of giving her whole attention, and learnt therefore fast and correctly. Her exercise was very well done; her arithmetic, in which Edmund had helped her, was almost beyond Miss Morley's knowledge; and she was quite at home in the history they were reading aloud. Moreover, when they came to talk of what they had read, it proved that Marian was well acquainted with many books which were still only names to Caroline; and when Gerald came in with his books, his reference to her showed that she knew as much Latin as he did. They dined in the schoolroom at half-past one, then took a walk on the long, dull, white road, and came back at a little past four; after which the girls had each to practise for an hour, to look over some lessons for the next day, and to dress; but all the rest of their time was at their own disposal. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, and Clara advised her not to dress till after tea. "For we don't go down till after dinner," said she, "and I don't like to miss seeing the people come. Gerald, you had better get ready, though, for you boys always go down before." "Must I?" said Gerald. "O yes, that we must!" said Lionel; "and you will see how Johnny there likes to be petted by all the old ladies, and called their pretty dear." Johnny rushed upon his brother, and there was a skirmish between them, during which Miss Morley vainly exclaimed by turns, "Now Lionel!" and "Now Johnny!" It ended by John's beginning to cry, Lionel laughing at him, and declaring that he had done nothing to hurt him, and both walking off rather sullenly to dress for the evening. Gerald was bent on the same errand; and no sooner was he gone than Miss Morley, Caroline, and Clara all broke out into loud praises of him. He was so docile, he shut the door so gently, he seemed so very clever. He had quite won Miss Morley's heart by running back to the schoolroom to fetch her parasol for her when she found she had left it behind; Caroline admired him for being so merry and playful without rudeness, and Clara chimed in with them both. All expressed wonder at not finding him a spoiled child; and this, though the praises gratified Marian greatly, rather offended her in her secret soul; and she wondered too that Caroline and Clara seemed disposed to make the very worst of their own little brothers, so as to set off Gerald's perfections by force of contrast. Mrs. Lyddell came in while they were still talking. She was beautifully dressed, and looked very handsome, and, in Marian's eyes, very formidable; but she sat down and joined heartily in the praises of Gerald, till Marian thought, "What could they have expected poor Gerald to be, if they are so amazed at finding him the dear good little fellow he is!" It was in fact true that he was an agreeable surprise, for as an only son--a great treasure--and coming so early to his title, he was exactly the child whom all would have presumed most likely to be spoiled; and his ready obedience struck the Lyddells as no less unusual than those habits in which he had been trained, in consequence of the necessity of stillness during Sir Edmund's long illness. It was more natural to him to shut the door quietly than to bang it, to speak than to shout, and to amuse himself tranquilly in the house than to make a great uproar. He was courteous, too, and obliging; and though Lionel and Johnny were in consequence inclined to regard him as a "carpet knight so trim," the ladies fully appreciated these good qualities. Mrs. Lyddell perhaps made the more of her satisfaction, because she was conscious of not liking his sister's stiff, formal, frightened manners. Mrs. Lyddell waited till the boys came from dressing, and took them all three down with her. Clara sat down in the window-seat to watch the arrivals, as soon as she had recovered from her amazement at hearing that Marian had not been in a house with a dinner-party since Gerald was born. "Is it possible!" she went on saying, and then bursting into a laugh, till Caroline said sharply, "How can you be so silly, Clara! you know the reason perfectly well." "But it is so odd," continued Clara. "Why, we are never a week without a party, and sometimes two!" "Hush," said Caroline, "or I shall never finish my Italian." The little boys came up to tea; Gerald would not make much answer when Clara asked if the ladies had talked to him, but Johnny looked cross, and Lionel reported "it was because his nose was put out of joint." Coming up to Marian, to whom he seemed to have taken a fancy, Lionel further explained confidentially how all the ladies made a fuss with Johnny, and admired his yellow curls, and called him the rose-bud, and all sorts of stuff; and how Johnny liked to go down in his fine crimson velvet, and show off, and have all his nonsense praised, "And the pretty dear is so jealous," said Lionel, "that he can't bear any one to say one word to poor me--oh no!" "Why, do you wish for them to do so?" said Marian. "Oh no, not I--I never did; and I'm glad I'm grown too big and ugly for them. I always get as near Elliot as I can and try to hear if they are saying any thing about the hunt; and the ladies never trouble their heads about what is good for any thing, so they never talk to me." "That is no great compliment to Gerald," said Marian. "Ah! you'll soon see. If there is any fun in him, they will soon cast him off; but now he is new, and he has not found them out yet, and they _do_ dearly like to say Sir Gerald; so Johnny is regularly thrown out, and that is what makes him look sulky." "Well, but it is using him very ill to desert him for Gerald," said Marian. "Oh, they won't desert him. They like mamma's good dinners too well for that; only Johnny can't bear any one else to be taken notice of. Trust the county member's son for their making much of him." "But that applies to you too, Lionel." "Ay, and I could soon get their civility if I cared for it," said Lionel grandly. "But I know well enough what it is worth. Why, there is Walter, who is the best of us all--nobody cares one straw for him, except Caroline and--" "And you?" asked Marian. "Why--why--yes, if he was not so much of a parson already." "Oh, Lionel!" said Marian, shocked; and he turned it rather hastily into "I mean, he is not up to any thing; he does not shoot, and he does not care for dogs, or horses; nothing but books for ever." A summons to the tea-table put an end to Lionel's communications, which had so amazed Marian that she could do nothing but ponder on them all the time that Clara would leave her in quiet. The going into the drawing-room was to her a most awful affair; and Saunders seemed to be very anxious about it, brushing and settling her hair, and arranging the plain black frock, as if she would never have done; seeming, too, not a little worried by Clara, who chose to look on at all her proceedings. At last it was over Marian wished Gerald good night, and descended with her two cousins and Miss Morley. Caroline and Clara were in blue, Miss Morley in white; and as they entered just opposite to a long pier glass, Marian thought that with her white face, straight dark hair, and deep mourning dress, she looked like a blot between them, and wished to shrink out of sight, instead of being conspicuous in blackness. The ladies came in a few minutes after, and Caroline and Clara went forward, shaking hands, smiling, and replying in a way which was by no means forward, and with ease that to Marian was marvellous. If people would but be kind enough not to look at her! But Mrs. Lyddell was a great deal too civil for that too come to pass, and presently Marian was called and introduced to two ladies. She was seated between them, and they began talking to her in a patronising manner; telling her they remembered her dear mamma at her age; saying that they had seen her brother, and congratulating her on having two such delightful companions as the Miss Lyddells. Then they asked about Devonshire; and as Marian's cold short replies let every subject fall to the ground in a moment, they proceeded to inquire whether she could play. Truth required her to confess that she could, a very little; and then they begged to hear her. Poor Marian! this was too much. She felt as if she was in a horrible mist, and drawing up her head as she always did in embarrassment, she repeated, "Indeed, indeed I cannot!" protestations which her tormentors would not believe, and which grew every moment more ungracious, as, to augment her distress, she saw that Mrs. Lyddell was observing her. At the moment when she was looking most upright and rigid, Caroline came to her relief. The same request had just been made to her, and she came to propose to Marian to join in the one thing she knew she could play--a duet which she had that morning been practising with Clara. It was very kind, and Marian knew it; for Caroline had said that she never liked that duet, and was heartily tired of it; but all the acknowledgement her strange bashfulness would allow her to make was a grateful look, and a whisper, "Oh, thank you!" Afterwards one of the young lively visitors sang, and Marian, who had never heard much music, was quite delighted; her stiff company-face relaxed, a tear came to her eyes, and she sat with parted lips, forgetting all her fears and all the party till the singing was over, and Caroline touched her, and told her it was bed-time. Marian wondered to see how well Caroline and Clara managed to escape without being observed; but she marvelled at their going to bed so much as if it was a thing of course to have no "good night" from father or mother. When they were outside the door, in the hall, Marian, her heart still full of the music, could not help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" "What? Miss Bernard's singing?" said Clara. "I declare, Caroline, Marian was very nearly crying! I saw you were, Marian." "She does sing very nicely," said Caroline, "but that song does not suit her voice. It is too high." "And she makes faces," said Clara, "she strains her throat; and she has such great fingers--I could never cry at Miss Bernard's singing, I am sure." Marian did not like this. "Good night," said she, abruptly. "You are not vexed, are you?" said Clara, kindly. "I did not think you would mind my noticing your crying. Don't be angry, Marian." "Oh, no, I am not at all angry," said Marian, trying to speak with ease, but she did not succeed well. Her "good nights," had in them a tone as if she was annoyed, as in fact she was; though not at all in the way Clara supposed. She did not care for the notice of her tears, but she said to herself, "This is what Edmund calls destroying the illusion. If they would but have let me go to bed with the spell of that song resting on me!" She sighed with a feeling of relief and yet of weariness as she came into her own room, and found Saunders there. Saunders looked rather melancholy, but said nothing for the first two or three minutes; then as she combed Marian's hair straight over her face, she began, "I hope you enjoyed yourself, Miss Marian?" "Oh, Saunders," said Marian, "I'm very tired; I don't think I shall ever enjoy myself anywhere but at home." "Ah--hem--ah," coughed Saunders, solemnly; then, after waiting for some observation from Marian, and hearing only a long yawn and a sigh, she went on. "Prettily different is this place from home." "Indeed it is," said Marian, from her heart. "Such finery as I never thought to see below stairs, Miss Marian. I am sure the Manor House was a pattern to all the country round for comfort for the servants, and I should know something about it; but here--such a number of them, such eating and drinking all day long, and the very kitchen maids in such bonnets and flowers on Sundays, as would perfectly have shocked Mrs. White. And they are so ignorant. Fancy, Miss Marian, that fine gentleman the butler declaring he could not understand me, and that I spoke with a foreign accent! I speak French indeed!" "But, Saunders," said Marian, rather diverted, "you do speak Devonshire a little." "Well, Miss Marian, perhaps I may; I only know 'tisn't for them to boast, for they speak so funny I can't hardly make them out; and with my own ears I have heard that same Mr. Perkins himself calling you Miss Harundel. But that is not all. Why, not half of them ever go to church on a Sunday; and as to Mrs. Mitten, the housekeeper, not a bit does she care whether they do or not; and no wonder, when Mr. Lyddell himself never goes in the afternoon, and has gentlemen to speak to him. And then down at the stables--'tis a pretty set of drinking, good-for-nothing fellows there. I hope from my heart Sir Gerald won't be for getting down there among them; but they say Master Lionel and Master John are always there. And that Mr. Elliot--" In this manner Saunders discoursed all the while she was putting Marian to bed. Both she and her young lady wore doing what had much better have been let alone. Saunders had no business to carry complaints and gossip, Marian ought not to have listened to them; but the truth was that Saunders was an old attached confidential servant, who had come to Oakworthy, more because she could not bear to let her young master and mistress go entirely alone and unfriended among strangers, than because it would be prudent to save a little more before becoming Mrs. David Chapple. Fern Torr was absolute perfection in her eyes; and had the household at Oakworthy been of superior excellence, she would have found fault with everything in which it differed from the Manor House. Her heart was full; and to Miss Marian, her young lady, a Fern Torrite, a Devonian like herself, she must needs pour it out, where she had no other friend. On the other hand, Saunders was still in Marian's eyes a superior person--an authority--one whom she could never dream of keeping in order, or restraining; and here a friend, a counsellor, the only person, except Gerald, who had known the dear home. So a foundation was laid for confidences from Saunders, which were not likely to improve Marian's contentment. When she had bidden her maid good night, and sat thinking before she knelt down to say her prayers, she felt bewildered; her head seemed giddy with the strangeness of this new world; she knew not what in it was right and what was wrong; all that she knew was, that she felt lonely and dreary, and as if it could never be home. Her heart seemed to reach out for her mother's embrace and support, and then Marian sank down on her knees, rested her face on her arms, and while the tears began to flow, she murmured, "OUR FATHER, Which art in heaven." Soon after, her weary head was on her pillow, and the dim grey light of the summer night showed the quiet peace and calmness that had settled on her sleeping face.

5

None

"That is not home where, day by day, I wear the busy hours away." In a short time, Marian had settled into her place at Oak Worthy, lost some part of her shyness towards the inhabitants, and arrived at the terms which seemed likely to continue between her and her cousins. There was much that was very excellent about Caroline Lyddell; she had warm feeling, an amiable and obliging disposition, and great sweetness of temper; and when first Marian arrived she intended to do all in her power to make her at home, and be like a sister to her. But she did not understand reserve; and before Marian had got over her first shyness and awkwardness, Caroline felt herself repulsed, and ceased to make demonstrations of affection which met with no better response. Marian made none on her side; and so the two cousins remained very obliging and courteous to each other, but nothing more. Clara had begun by making herself Marian's inseparable companion in rather a teasing manner, caressing her continually, and always wanting to do whatever she was doing; but as novelty was the great charm in Clara's eyes, and as she met with no very warm return to her endearments, all this soon wore off; and though she always came to Marian whenever she had any bit of news to tell,--though she often confided to her little complaints of the boys or Miss Morley,--this was no great compliment, for she would have done the same to anything that had ears. Her talk was no longer, as it had been at first, exclusively for Marian; and this wag rather a relief, for it was not at all like the talk Marian was used to with Agnes or with Edmund. Young and unformed as Marian was, it would be hard to believe how much, without knowing it, she missed the intercourse with superior minds, to which she had been accustomed. It was just as her eye was dissatisfied with the round green chalk hills, instead of the rocks and streams of her own dear home; or as she felt weary of the straight, formal walks she now took, instead of her dear old rambles, "Over bank and over brae, Where the copsewood is the greenest, Where the fountain glistens sheenest, Where the lady-fern grows strongest, Where the morning dew lies longest." Edmund's high spirits, Agnes' playful glee,--how delightful they were! and though Marian often laughed now, it was not as she had laughed at home. Then, too, she grew shy of making remarks, or asking questions, when Clara had nothing to say but "How odd!" or Miss Morley would give some matter-of-fact answer, generally either quite beside the point, or else what Marian know before. Caroline understood what she meant, and would take up the subject, but not always in a satisfactory manner; for she and Marian always seemed to have quite opposite ways of viewing every thing. Each felt that the other had more serious thoughts and principles than most of those around them, but yet their likings and dislikings were very different in the matter of books. "Anna Ross" was almost the only one of Caroline's favourites that Marian cordially liked; and this, as Caroline suspected, might he owing to a certain analogy between Anna's situation and her own, by no means flattering to the Lyddell family. It was wonderful how many were the disparities of tastes, views, and opinions between them; but the root of these differences seemed undiscoverable, since Marian would not or could not argue, replied to all objections with a dry, short, "I don't know," and adhered unalterably to her own way of thinking. Miss Morley settled the matter by pronouncing that Sir Edmund and Lady Arundel must have been very narrow-minded people; and this judgment was so admired by Caroline and Clara, that it was sure to be brought forward as conclusive, whenever Marian was the subject of conversation. At last Lionel broke in one day, "Stuff! Marian is a good, sensible, downright girl, and it is my belief that all that you mean by narrow-mindedness is that she cares for what is right, and nothing else." "How much you know about it, Lionel!" said Clara, laughing; but Caroline answered in earnest, "There is reason in what you say, Lionel--Marian does care for what is right; but the question is, whether her views of it are not narrow?" "The narrower the better, say I," said Lionel, as he plaited his whip-lash. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life," came into Caroline's head, and she stood thoughtful. Clara exclaimed, "Well done, Lionel! I wonder what he'll say next to defend his dear Marian." "I know what I mean well enough," said Lionel. "I suppose you call it being broad-minded to trace your drawings through against the window, when mamma goes on telling you not. Better have her narrow mind, say I." "Then why don't you," said Clara, "instead of going down to the stables for ever with that man of Elliot's that mamma said you were never to speak to?" Lionel whisked his whip-lash before Clara's eyes, so as to make her wink. "I did not say I was good myself;" said he; "I said Marian was." And he ran out of the room. Clara laughed at Lionel's admiration of Marian, which had begun to be a joke in the schoolroom; but Caroline, as she practised her music, thought a good deal over the conversation. "Is a narrow mind really a fear of doing wrong?" was a question she asked herself several times; and then she thought of all the things she had heard called narrow-minded and scrupulous in Marian or others, but she soon found herself lost in a mist, and wished she could talk it over with her former governess, Miss Cameron. As to what Lionel had said about the drawing, she was conscious she was very wrong; her mamma had called it an idle practice to trace the outline through against the glass, and had forbidden it; but a difficulty had soon brought her back to the window-pane, exclaiming, "Just for this one thing, I am sure mamma would not object." "If Miss Cameron had been here, it would not have happened," said Caroline to herself with a sigh, and for a few days she kept away from the window; but another difficulty occurred, again she yielded to the temptation, and whoa she heard her mother's step in the passage, hurried back to her desk with guilty precipitation. A few days after, Clara was actually caught in the fact by Mrs. Lyddell, and then Miss Morley began making an excuse, evidently quite as much out of kindness to herself as to her pupil. Marian looked up in surprise, with a wondering, inquiring expression in her eyes. They were cast down the instant the governess turned towards her; but Miss Morley always felt abashed, by meeting that look of astonishment, which awoke in her a sensation of self-reproach such as she had seldom known before. Miss Morley was a little afraid of Marian's eyes, though not of her in any other respect; nor did she like her much better than Caroline did, though she gave her much less trouble than any of her other pupils, except Caroline. Those questions and observations puzzled her, and she thought the poor child had been reading books beyond her years--it was such a great disadvantage to be an only daughter. Besides, she really believed Marian Arundel had no affection for any one,--no warmth of feeling; she would ten times prefer a less diligent and more troublesome pupil, in whom she could take some interest, and who showed some affection, to one so steady and correct in behaviour, without the frank openness of heart which was so delightful. To make up, however, for this general want of liking for poor Marian, on the other hand, every one was fond of Gerald. His behaviour in the schoolroom was so very nice and good, and out of doors his climbing, running, and riding were no less admired by his contemporaries. Now and then, indeed, a dispute arose between him and the other two boys, when Gerald criticised, and declared that "Edmund and everybody" thought as he did; or when he would try to outdo the sporting exploits reported of Elliot, by Edmund's shooting at Fern Torr. One day there was a very serious quarrel, Gerald having taken up the cause of an unfortunate frog, which Lionel and Johnny were proposing to hunt, by rolling their marbles at it. Gerald declared they should not, that frogs were harmless, innocent creatures, and that Edmund and everybody liked them. This only made Lionel and Johnny more determined; partly from the absurdity of Gerald's appeal, and partly for the sake of mischief; and Gerald was overpowered, unable to save his protégé, and obliged to witness its cruel death. He burst into tears, and then, came the accusation of crying for a frog. Poor little boy, he burst away from his tormentors, and never stopped till, he was safe in his sister's room pouring out his grief to her and Saunders (for it was her dressing-time), and comforted by their sympathising horror and pity. Saunders said it gave her a turn, and Marian's feelings were much of the same nature. She could not have thought it of Lionel. He was, indeed, reckless and unruly; by reputation _the_ naughty one of the set; but Marian had often thought that much of Johnny's misbehaviour was unjustly charged on him, and there was an honesty about him, together with a cordiality towards herself, which made her like him. And that he should have been wantonly cruel! She comforted Gerald as well as she could, and they went back to the schoolroom together. Lionel, as he often did, brought her a knot in a piece of string to be untied; she felt almost ready to shrink from him, as capable of such a deed, and gave it back to him after untying it, without a word. Lionel stood leaning against the shutter looking at her for some minutes, while she fetched her books, and sat down to learn her lessons. Tea came in; and while there was something of a bustle, and all the others were talking, and engaged in different ways, Lionel crossed over to her and said in a low voice, "So Gerald has made you angry with me?" "No; but Lionel, I could not have thought you would have done such a thing." " 'Twas only a frog," said Lionel; "besides, I only did it to tease Gerald." "I do not see that that makes it any better," said Marian, gravely. "Why, Gerald was so ridiculous, to say Edmund and everybody liked frogs; but I didn't--I only mean that, if he had not made a fuss, I would never have hurt the frog, and I did not mean to kill it as it was; so never mind, Marian. I'll tell you what, Marian," added he, sinking his voice, "I'd rather Caroline and Clara, and poor unfortunate into the bargain, scolded me till they were black in the face, than that you looked at me as you did just now." "Did I?" said Marian, rather alarmed. "I am sure I did not know I looked anyhow." "Didn't you, though? It is just the way you look at poor unfortunate when she sports her humbug." "Hush, Lionel! this will never do. You know you ought not to talk in that way," said Marian, rising to put an end to the conversation. "But we have made it up?" said Lionel, holding her dress. "Yes, yes," said Marian hastily, and with full forgiveness in look and tone. As she took her place at the tea-table, she wondered within herself what was the matter with her eyes to cause such remarks, and still more why she could not help liking Lionel so much the best of her cousins, in spite of all the naughtiness of word and deed, which shocked her so much. The nest day she was walking in the garden with Clara, when Gerald came running up, with an entreaty that she would come and have a game at cricket with him and Lionel. Clara exclaimed, laughed, and stared in amazement. "She plays famously," said Gerald; "she, and Agnes, and I, beat all the other Wortleys one day last summer. Come, Marian, don't say no; we have not had a game for a very long time." "Who is playing?" asked Marian. "Only Lionel and me; Johnny is out with Mrs. Lyddell Come, we want you very much indeed; there's a good girl." To Clara's astonishment and Lionel's admiration, Marian complied; and though, of course, no great cricketer, her skill was sufficient to make her a prodigy in their eyes. But the game was brought to a sudden conclusion by Miss Morley, who, seeing them from the window, came out very much shocked, and gave the girls a lecture on decorum, which Marian felt almost as an insult. When they went in, Gerald told Saunders the whole adventure; and she, who at Fern Torr had been inclined to the same opinion as Miss Morley, and had often sighed and declared it to be unlike young ladies when Marian and Agnes had played, now agreed with him that it was very hard on Miss Marian not to have a little exercise, lamented that she should always be cooped up in the schoolroom, and declared that there could be no harm in playing with such a little boy as Master Lionel. The most unpleasant result was, that Miss Morley and the cousins took an impression that Agnes Wortley must be a vulgar romp, and were inclined to think her an unsuitable friend for Marian. Their curiosity was excited by the frequent letters between the two friends. Marian always read those which she received with the utmost eagerness, hardly ever telling any part of their contents, but keeping them to be enjoyed with Gerald in her own room; and half her leisure moments were employed in filling fat, black-edged envelopes, which were sent off at least as often as once a week. "I wonder what she says about us!" said Clara, one day. "I don't think it would suit you," said Caroline; "I should not think she painted us _couleur de rose_." "Except Lionel," said Clara, "if their admiration is mutual. But, by the by, Miss Morley, why do you not desire to see her letters? You always look at mine." "She is not quite in the same situation," said Miss Morley. "But could not you?" continued Clara. "It would be very entertaining only to look for once." "And I think it would be only proper," said Caroline. "Who knows what she may say of us to these dear friends of hers?" The subject was not allowed to drop; the girls' curiosity led them to find numerous reasons why their cousin's correspondence should not pass without examination, and Miss Morley found she must either endure their importunity, or yield to it. She was driven to choose the part of the oppressor; and one day, when Clara had been tormenting her more than usual, she addressed Marian, who was folding up a letter. "I think," said she, speaking in a timid, deprecating tone--"I think, Marian, if you please, it might be as well, perhaps, if I were sometimes to look over your letters; it has always been the custom here." Then; was no encouragement to proceed in the look of blank amazement with which Marian replied, "Edmund Arundel and Mr. Lyddell both approve of my writing to Agnes Wortley." "Ah!" interposed Clara; "but did they mean that your letters should never be looked over?" "I heard nothing about it," said Marian. "Miss Cameron always looked over mine," said Caroline. "I will ask Mr. Lyddell himself as soon as he comes home," said Marian, determinedly. There was a pause, but Caroline and Clara did not look satisfied. Miss Morley knew they would leave her no peace if she desisted, and she went on,--"I wish I could sometimes see a proof of willingness to yield." Marian was out of patience, and putting her letter into the desk, locked it up; and Caroline laughingly remarked, "Really, there must be some treason in that letter!" If the observation had been taken as it was meant, all would have been well; but Marian bit her lip with an air that convinced the sisters that Caroline had hit the mark; and their glances stimulated Miss Morley to say, as decidedly as she could, "Marian, your present conduct convinces me that it is desirable that I should see that letter." Marian's dark eyes gave one indignant flash, as she proudly drew up her head, opened her desk, laid her letter on the table before Miss Morley, and slowly walked out of the room; but as soon as she had shut the door, she ran at full speed along the passage to her own room, where, throwing herself on the bed, she gave way to a fit of violent weeping, and sobs which shook her whole frame. Proud, passionate feelings at first almost choked her, and soon these were followed by a flood of the bitter tears of loneliness and bereavement. "Who would have dared insult her thus, had her father and mother been living?" and for a minute her agony for their loss was more intense than it had ever been. Gradually, "the turbid waters brightening as they ran," became soothing, as she dwelt on the sweet, holy memory of her parents, and wholesome as she mourned over her fit of pride and anger. But for what were they accountable, whose selfish weakness and thoughtless curiosity had caused the orphan's tears to flow? Caroline had not seen those flashing eyes without an instant perception of the injustice of the accusation. Her half-jesting speech had led the matter much further than she had intended; and alarmed at the consequences, she ran after her cousin to entreat her pardon; but Marian, unconscious of all save the tumult within herself, hurried on too fast to be overtaken, and just as Caroline reached her door, had shut it fast, and drawn the bolt, and a gentle knock and low call of "Marian, dear Marian," were lost in the first burst of sobs. Caroline, baffled and offended, turned away with feelings even more painful than hers; and too proud to repeat the call, walked up and down, waiting till the door should be opened, to assure her cousin that nothing should induce her to touch the letter, and to beg her forgiveness; but as minutes passed away in silence, she grew tired of waiting, thought Marian sullen and passionate, and at length, returned to the schoolroom. As soon as she entered, Clara exclaimed, "O Caroline, only think, how odd--" "I don't want to hear anything about it," said Caroline, sitting down to the piano; "I wish we had never thought of it." She began, playing with all her might, but gradually she abated her vehemence, as she caught a few sounds of a conversation between Clara and Miss Morley. At last she turned round, asking, "What? who is his godfather?" "Mr. Arundel, 'Edmund and every body,' you know," answered Clara. "I never heard anything like it. Only fancy his hearing that boy say his catechism!" "What? I don't understand," said Caroline; "Mr. Arundel and Gerald! Nonsense! He can't be his godfather. Mamma said he was only four-and-twenty, and Gerald is almost nine." "Here is Marian's authority for it," said Clara; "and certainly those Arundels are a curious family." "Mr. Arundel is the next heir, is he not?" inquired Miss Morley. "Yes," said Caroline; "I heard mamma telling old Mrs. Graves the whole story. His father and mother both died when he was very young, and Sir Edmund brought him up entirely, and every one looked upon him as the heir till Gerald was born; and a groat disappointment it must have been, for now he has next to nothing. But they all were just as fond of each other as before; and it does seem very strange that Sir Edmund should have made him their guardian, at his age, when there was Lord Marchmont, who is their cousin, too." "I dare say," said Clara, as if a most brilliant thought had struck her, "I dare say there is a family compact, such as one reads of in books, that he is to marry Marian." "My dear Clara!" said Miss Morley laughing, "How should such a notion come into your little head?" "Now see if it is not so!" said Clara; "I do believe she is in love with him already, and he is coming to see her." "Is he?" cried Caroline, "I am very curious to sec him. Mamma says he is very handsome, and quite a distinguished looking person. When does he come?" "You had better read," said Clara; "I can tell you that there are wonderful things in the letter." Curiosity again asserted its power, and Caroline yielded. The letter had been opened, and it would not signify if one more person looked at it. She took it, and read eagerly and stealthily, starting at every sound. "My dear Agnes--I hope you and Jemmy are getting on well in your solitude without the schoolboys. Tell Charles, when you write, that a gentleman staying here caught a trout last week that weighed three pounds, but I believe that those which are caught in these rivers taste of mud, and are not nearly so good as our own. I was very much afraid that Gerald would go to school this summer, but now Mrs. Lyddell has heard that it was settled that he should not go till he was ten, and it is arranged for him to stay till next year, when I hope he will be happier than Charles was at first. You asked after his drawing, so I have put in the last scrap I met with, and in case you should not be able to find out what it is meant for, I must inform you that it is the dog springing on the young Buecleuch. The other day he sent Edmund a letter in hieroglyphics, with pictures instead of nouns, and Edmund answered it in the same way with funny little clever drawings throughout. His regiment is going abroad nest spring, he thinks, to the Cape, but he has promised to come and see us first, and thinks of going home to see about his things. Thank Mrs. Wortley for being so kind as to scold me for not dating my letters. I shall not be likely to forget the date of this on September 30th, for Mr. Lyddell has just paid me my first quarter's allowance, and I am frightened to think how large it is; ten pounds a quarter only for my dress, and I am to have more when I am seventeen. So matters can go on more as they used in the parish. Will you be so kind as to pay this quarter's schooling for Amy Lapthorn and Honor Weeks and Mary Daw, and find out what clothes they want, and if Susan Grey has not a new bonnet, give her one, and a flannel petticoat for old Betty, and if any body else wants anything else let me know, and pay up for all the children that dear mamma used to put into the penny club, and send me word what it comes to, and I will send the money when Edmund comes to pay his visit. I suppose the apples are gathered by this time; you cannot think how I miss the golden and red piles under the trees, and the droning of the old cyder press. And do those beautiful Red Admiral butterflies come in the crowds they did last year to the heaps of apples in our orchard? Do you remember how we counted five that all came and sat on your pink frock while we were watching them? "Will Mr. Wortley be kind enough to tell me of some book of questions on the Catechism, more advanced than the one he gave me? I suppose we ought to go on with the Catechism, till we are confirmed, and so Gerald and I always go through a section every Sunday, taking the book by turns, and he knows our old one perfectly. He is so good and steady about it that I quite wonder, considering that there is no authority to keep him up to it, but he is very anxious to stand a good examination when his godfather comes, and Edmund is sure to ask hard questions. And Gerald has never missed since we have been here, getting up in time to come and read the Psalms with me before breakfast, and really I think that is exceedingly good of him; but I have come to the end of my paper, so good-bye. "Your affectionate "MARIAN C. ARUNDEL." Caroline's cheeks glowed as she read, both with shame at her own proceedings, and with respect for her narrow-minded cousin; but she had no opportunity for making remarks, for just as she had finished the letter, and folded it up again, the boys were heard coming in. The first thing Gerald said was, "So Marian has not sent her letter; I will run down with it, or it will be too late." "It is not sealed," said Clara. "Clara looks as if she had been peeping," said Johnny. "I should like to see any one peep into Marian's letters," said Gerald, taking it up, and carrying it away with him. Lionel stood with his eyes fixed on Clara. "I do believe it is true then!" said he, laying hold of Clara's arm; "I have a great mind to say I'll never speak to you again, Clara. Peeping into people's letters. Why, you ought to be hooted through the town!" The boys looked nearly ready to put the hooting into effect, but Clara answered angrily, "Peeping! I have been doing no such thing! Don't be so rude, Lionel." "That is humbug," said Lionel; "you have been looking impudently, if you have not been peeping slyly." "Lionel, you are a very naughty boy indeed!" said Clara, almost crying; "I have done just as Miss Morley and Caroline have been doing; Miss Morley always looks over----" "Let who will do it," said Lionel, "it is an impudent, ungentlemanlike thing, that you all ought to be ashamed of. I declare papa shall hear of it." "Lionel, do you know what you are saying?" said Caroline. "This is sadly naughty!" feebly murmured Miss Morley. "Lionel, mamma will be very angry," said Clara. "I don't care," said Lionel loudly and vehemently; "I know that you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you. Why, if you were boys you would never hold up your heads again; but girls can do anything, and that is the reason they have no shame." "Hush! Lionel, dear Lionel!" said Caroline, coming to him persuasively, but he shook her off: "I want none of your _dears_," said he; "ask Marian's pardon, not mine." He turned his back, and took up a book. The girls dared say no more to him; Miss Morley very nearly cried as she thought how impossible it was for women to manage great boys. She ought to complain of his rudeness, but the explanation of what gave rise to it was impossible, and so, poor woman, she thought herself too good-natured. Gerald, in the meantime, had gone to his sister's room, where he called hastily on finding the door fastened. She opened it, and he eagerly asked what was the matter. "Never mind," said Marian; "thank you for remembering my letter. Will you fetch the sealing wax out of----" "Well, but what is the matter?" "Nothing that signifies; never mind." "But I do mind, I can't bear for you to cry. You know I can't, so don't begin again," added he, as his affectionate tones made her lip quiver, and her eyes fill with tears. "But, Gerald, pray get the wax, or----. But no, no," added she hurriedly, "do not, I will not touch it, till----" "Till when?" asked Gerald; "I wish you would tell me how they have been vexing you. I am sure they hare, for they all looked guilty. Poor Marian!" He put his arm round her neck, and drew her cheek to his. Who could withstand such a brother? Marian whispered. "Only--but don't make a fuss--only Miss Morley made me show her my letter." He started from her, and broke forth into a torrent of indignation; and it was not quickly that she succeeded in getting him to listen to her entreaties that he would not tell any one. "What do you mean to do?" said he. "O I will write such a letter to Edmund, in hopes she will ask to see it. But she won't venture on mine. Shall I tell Edmund?" "No, no, Gerald, you do nothing; pray don't say anything. I will speak to Mr. Lyddell, for it was he who gave me leave." "And I hope he will give poor unfortunate a good rowing. Won't it be fun?" "Now, Gerald, pray don't say such things, or I shall be sorry I told you. I dare say she thought it was right." "Stuff and nonsense! Right indeed! I hope Mr. Lyddell will give it to her well!" "If I may not write without having my letters read, I am sure I shall never be able to write at all!" "And when shall you speak? Luckily there is no company to-night, and I hope I shall be there to hear." "No, you will not; I shall wait till you are gone to bed, for I am sure Lionel and Johnny ought to know nothing about it. I believe I had better not have told you; but, Gerald, you are all I have, and I can't help telling you everything." "Of course, Marian, so you ought, for let them laugh at me as they will, I always tell you everything. And won't it be nice when I am grown up, and we can get away from them all, and live at home together, and I go out shooting every day, and you and Ranger stand at the top of the steps to watch me? For Ranger will be too old to go out shooting by that time." In the midst of this picture of rural felicity, Saunders came to tell Marian that it was time to dress. When she returned to the schoolroom, Caroline would have given anything not to have read the letter; she was too sure that there was nothing wrong in it, and she could not show the trust in her cousin which would have enabled her to speak freely, and say she was very sorry for her speech and meant nothing by it; nor did she wish to revive the subject before Lionel, whose indignation would be still more unpleasant in Marian's own presence. She therefore said nothing, and on the other hand Marian felt awkward and constrained; Lionel was secretly ashamed of his own improper behaviour to Miss Morley, and well knowing that he should never dare to perform his threat of telling his father, put on a surly kind of demeanour, quite as uncivil to Marian as to anyone else; and but that Clara never minded anything, and that Johnny knew and cared little about the matter, their tea that evening would have been wonderfully unsociable. Gerald had not much to say, but the bent of his thoughts was evident enough when his ever-busy pencil produced the sketch of a cat pricking her paw by patting a hedgehog rolled up in a ball. Neither Miss Morley nor her pupils ever expected to hear more of the letter, for they knew perfectly well that what Lionel had said was but a threat, for the appeal direct to Mr. or Mrs. Lyddell was a thing never thought of at Oakworthy. Marian had, however, made up her mind; her anxiety overpowered her shyness; she knew that Mr. Lyddell was the proper person, and perhaps the fact was that she was less afraid of him than of his wife. So, though she resisted all the glances cast at her by Gerald, whenever he thought he saw a good opportunity for her, and waited till all the three little boys had gone to bed, she by no means gave up her purpose. It was time for her too, to wish good night; and while her heart beat fast, she said, "Mr. Lyddell, you gave me leave to write to Agnes Wortley. Was it on condition of my letters being looked over?" "Who meddles with your letters?" said Mr. Lyddell, much surprised. Caroline, having helped to get her governess into the scrape, thought it but fair to say what she could for her, and answered, "Miss Morley thought that you and mamma would wish it." "By no means," said Mr. Lyddell, turning to Marian, "I have the highest opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Wortley, the very highest; I wish your correspondence to be perfectly free." "Thank you," said Marian. "Good night!" and away she went, to tell Gerald how it had passed; and he, who had been lying awake in expectation, was much disappointed to hear no more than this. As soon as she was gone, Mrs. Lyddell exclaimed, "What could have given Miss Morley reason to think that her letters were to be inspected? Really, Miss Morley must have some courage! I should be sorry to be the person to make the request." "Ah! Marian was very angry indeed," said Clara; "quite in a passion." "Very proper," said Mr. Lyddell. "A spirited thing. She is a girl of sense." Mrs. Lyddell let the matter drop with the girls, but going to the schoolroom, she inquired into it more fully, and found that by poor unfortunate faithful Morley's own account, she had allowed herself to be made the tool of the curiosity of Caroline and Clara. She spoke severely, and Miss Morley had displeasure to endure, which was considerably more disagreeable than all Clara's importunities could have been. However, the next morning it appeared as if the whole affair was forgotten by all parties; Marian win just as usual, and so were her cousins; but, in secret, Caroline felt guilty, and held her in higher estimation since she had seen the contents of the letter, which, as she could perceive, Marian might well be doubly unwilling to show; she wished that Marian would but be as open to her as she was to Agnes, but this unfortunate business seemed like another great bar to their ever being really intimate, and she did not know how to surmount it. These reflections were shortly after driven out of Caroline's head by a severe fit of toothache, which for three days made her unfit for anything but to sit by the fire reading idle books. Mrs. Lyddell proposed to take her to Salisbury to consult a dentist, and Lionel was supposed likewise to require inspection. Then, turning to Marian, Mrs. Lyddell said, "This is not the pleasantest kind of expedition, but perhaps you may like to see Salisbury, and I think your bonnet wants renewing." "Thank you," said Marian, pleased with the Invitation. "I shall be very glad to go; I believe my teeth ought to be looked at. The dentist at Exeter said last winter that they were crowded and ought to be watched." "Very well," said Mrs. Lyddell, "we will see what Mr. Polkinghorn says." "Polkinghorn," said Marian, as Mrs. Lyddell left the room; "that is a Devonshire name." "You are very welcome to him, I am sure," said Caroline; "I wish the trade was abolished." "What cowards girls are!" said Lionel. "Let us see how boys behave before we say anything against girls," was Marian's answer. "Shan't you scream?" said Lionel. "Of course she will not," said Caroline, "unless with joy at meeting a Devonshire man." Marian laughed, and Lionel began an exhilarating story about an unfortunate who was strapped to the dentist's chair, dragged nine times round the room, and finally had his jaw broken. Marian enjoyed her drive to Salisbury, though it added to her contempt for Wiltshire scenery, by showing her more and more of desolate down. She watched the tall Cathedral spire from far in the distance, peering up among the hills like a picture more than a reality, and she admired the green meadows and quiet vale where the town stands. Poor Caroline was taken up with dreadful anticipations of Mr. Pokingtooth, as Lionel called him, and when arrived at his clamber of torture, hung back, so as to allow Marian to be the first victim. The result of the examination was, that it would be better; though not absolutely necessary, that a certain double tooth should be extracted, and Mr. Polkinghorn, left the room in search of an instrument. "So you think it ought to go?" sighed Marian. "I should say so," said Mrs. Lyddell, "but you may decide for yourself." Marian covered her face with her hands, and considered. The dentist returned; she laid back her head and opened her mouth, and the tooth was drawn. Caroline and Lionel escaped more easily, and they left the dentist's. Mrs. Lyddell said something in commendation of Marian's courage, and asked if she would like to see the Cathedral, an offer which she gladly accepted, expecting to go to the service, as the bells now began to ring; but she was disappointed, for Mrs. Lyddell said, "Ah! I had forgotten the hour. We must do our commissions first, and be at the Cathedral before the doors are shut." Marian did not venture to express her wishes, but she thought of the days when attending the Cathedral service had been the crowning pleasure of a drive to Exeter, and in dwelling on the recollection, she spent the attention which Mrs. Lyddell expected her to bestow on her new bonnet. Their business did not occupy them very long, and they entered the Cathedral before the anthem was over; but Marian felt that it was not fitting to loiter about the nave while worship was going on within the choir; and the uncomfortable feeling occupied her so much, that she could hardly look at the fair clustered columns and graceful arches, and seemed scarcely to know or care for the gallant William Longsword, when led to the side of his mail-clad, cross-legged effigy. The deep notes of the organ, which delighted Caroline, gave her a sense of shame; and even when the service was over, and they entered the choir, these thoughts had not so passed away as to enable her to give full admiration to the exquisite leafy capitals and taper arcades of the Lady Chapel. Perhaps, too, there was a little perverseness in her inability to think that this Cathedral surpassed that of Exeter. She thanked Mrs. Lyddell rather stiffly, as she thought to herself, "I did not reckon upon this!" and they set out on their homeward drive. Caroline looked thoughtful, and did not say much, Lionel fell asleep, and Mrs. Lyddell, after a few not very successful attempts at talking to Marian, took out her bills, and began to look over them and to reckon. Marian sat looking out of the window, lost in a vision of the hills, woods, and streams of Fern Torr, which lasted till they had reached home. Such an expedition was so uncommon an event in the lives of the inhabitants of the schoolroom, that those who stayed at home were as excited about it as those who went, and a full and particular account was expected of all they had seen and all they had done. Caroline and Lionel both seemed to think Marian a perfect miracle of courage in voluntarily consenting to lose a tooth. "And I am sure," said Caroline as they sat at tea, "I cannot now understand what made you have it done." "To oblige a countryman," said Marian laughing. "Well, but what was your real reason?" persisted Caroline. "Mrs. Lyddell thought it best, and so did the dentist," said Marian. "O," said Caroline, "he only said so because it was his trade." "Then how could Mrs. Lyddell depend on him?" said Marian, gravely. "Dentists never are to be depended on," said Caroline; "they only try to fill their own pockets like other people." "You forget," said Lionel, "Devonshire men are not like other people." "O yes, I beg their pardon," said Caroline, while every one laughed except Gerald; who thought the praise only their due. "But why did you have it done?" said Clara, returning to the charge; "I am sure I never would." "Yes, but Marian is not you," said Lionel. "You would have disobeyed no one," said Caroline. "I do not know," said Marian, thinking of one whom she would have disobeyed by showing weakness. "Then did you think it wrong not to have that tooth drawn?" said Caroline. "I do not know." "Did you think it right to have it done?" "I do not know, unless that I did not like it." "Do you mean to say that not liking a thing makes it right?" exclaimed Clara. "Very often," said Marian. "Miss Morley, now is not that Popish?" cried Clara. "Perhaps your cousin can explain herself," said Miss Morley. "Yes, do," said Caroline, "you must tell us what you mean." "I don't know," was Marian's first answer; but while uttering the reply, the real reason arranged itself in words; and finding she must speak clearly, she said, "Self-denial is always best, and in a doubtful case, the most disagreeable is always the safest." Miss Morley said that Marian was right in many instances, but that this was not a universal rule, and so the conversation ended.

6

None

"O Brignal banks are fresh and fair, And Greta woods are green; I'd rather rove with Edmund there, Than reign our English queen." ROKEBY. Winter came, and with it the time fixed for that farewell visit from Edmund Arundel, to which Marian and Gerald had long looked forward. Marian was becoming very anxious for it on Gerald's account, for she was beginning to feel that he was not quite the same child as when he first arrived at Oakworthy. He was less under control, less readily obedient to Miss Morley, less inclined to quote Edmund upon all occasions, more sensible of his own consequence, and more apt to visit that forbidden ground, the stables. She longed for Edmund's coming, trusting to him to set everything right, and to explain to her the marvels of this strange new world. Several gentlemen were staying in the house, and there was to be a dinner party on the day when he was expected, so that she thought the best chance of seeing him would be to stay in the garden with Gerald, while the others took their walk, so that she might be at hand on his arrival. Clara, though by no means wanted, chose to stay also, and the two girls walked up and down the terrace together. "It is so very odd," said Clara "that you should care about such a great old cousin." "He is only twenty-four," answered Marian. "But he must have been grown up ever since you remember." "Yes, but he is so kind. He used to carry us about and play with us when we were quite little children, and since I have been older he has made me almost a companion. He taught me to ride, and trained my bay pony, my beautiful Mayflower, and read with me, and helped me in my music and drawing." "That is more than Elliot would do for us, if he could," said Clara. "It is very dull to have no one to care about our lessons, but to be shut up in the schoolroom for ever with poor unfortunate." Marian did not choose to say how fully she assented to this complaint, but happiness had opened her heart, and she went on,--"I have had so many delightful walks with him through the beautiful wood full of rocks, and out upon the moor. O, Clara, you cannot think what it is to sit upon one of those rocks, all covered with moss and lichen, and the ferns growing in every cleft and cranny, and the beautiful little ivy-leafed campanula wreathing itself about the moss, and such a soft, free, delicious air blowing all around. And Edmund and I used to take out a book, and read and sketch so delightfully there!" "Do you know, Marian," said Clara mysteriously, "I have heard some one say--I will not tell you who--that it is a wonder that Mr. Arundel is so fond of you, of Gerald, at least, for if it was not for him, he would have had Fern Torr, and have been Sir Edmund." "But why should he not be fond of Gerald?" "Really, Marian, you are a very funny person in some things," exclaimed Clara. "To think of your not being able to guess that!" Here Mrs. Lyddell interrupted them by calling from the window to ask why they were staying in the garden? "We were waiting to see Mr. Arundel, mamma," answered Clara. "I think," said Mrs. Lyddell, "that as I am going out, it is not quite _the thing_ for you young ladies to wait to receive a gentleman in my absence. You had better overtake the others. Marian will see Mr. Arundel in the evening." "How cross!" exclaimed Clara, as soon as they were out of hearing. "Now we have to go along that horrid, stupid path that poor unfortunate is so fond of! If mamma had to go there herself, she would know what a nuisance it is!" Marian was silent, because she was too much annoyed to speak properly of Mrs. Lyddell, whose interference seemed to her a needless piece of unkindness. At home she would have thought it strange not to hasten to greet cousin Edmund, and she feared he would think she neglected him, yet she could not, in Clara's presence, leave a message for him with her brother. Gerald begged her to remain, but she replied, with, a short, blunt "I can't," and set off with Clara, feeling provoked with everybody. In process of time she recovered candour enough to acknowledge to herself that Mrs. Lyddell was right as far as Clara was concerned, but the struggle kept her silent, her cousin thought her sulky, and the walk was not agreeable. Gerald did not as usual attend her toilette, but as she passed along the passage on her way to the schoolroom, she heard sounds in the hall so like home that her heart bounded, Gerald's voice and Edmund's in reply! She could not help opening the door which separated the grand staircase from the schoolroom passage, the voice sounded plainer, she looked over the balusters, and saw--yes, actually saw Edmund, the top of his black head was just below her. Should she call? Should she run half-way down stairs, and just exchange one greeting unrestrainedly? But no; her heart beat so fast as to take away her breath, and that gave her time for recollection: Mrs. Lyddell might not think it proper, it would be meeting him in an underhand way, and that would never do! Marian turned back, shut the door of communication, and in the next moment was in the schoolroom. When Gerald came up to tea, he was in the wildest spirit; making fun, romping with Lionel and John, and putting everything in such an uproar that it was quite a relief when the time came for going down to the drawing-room. Now, Marian's great fear was that the gentlemen would be cruel enough to stay in the dining-room till after half-past nine, when she would be obliged to go to bed. She could hardly speak to anybody, she shrank away, as near the door as she dared, and half sprang up every time it opened, then sat down ashamed of herself, and disappointed to see only the servants with coffee and tea. At last, the fatal time had all but come, when the black figures of the gentlemen entered one after the other, Marian scarcely venturing to look at them, and overpowered with a double access of fright and shyness, which chained her to her seat, and her eyes to the ground. But now--Edmund's hand was grasping hers, Edmund was by her side, his voice was saying, "Well, Marian, how are you?" She looked up at him for one moment, then on the ground again, without speaking. "Oakworthy has put no colour in your cheeks," said he. "Are you quite well?" "Quite, thank you," said she, almost as shortly and coldly as if she had been answering Mrs. Lyddell. "When did you hear from home?" "Yesterday," said she, speaking more readily. "Agnes always writes once a week. When do you go there?" "Next week, when I leave this place." "You come from the Marchmonts, don't you?" "Yes, Selina sends you her love, and all manner of kind messages. She hopes to see you in London after Easter." "O dear! There is Mrs. Lyddell looking at me, and I see Caroline is gone! Good night, Edmund." "So soon? I hoped to have seen more of you to-day; I came early on purpose." "I thought so, but they would not let me stay at home." "I understand. Don't squeeze up your lips and look woeful. I knew how it was. Good night." Marian walked slowly up stairs, sighing as she went, and looked into Gerald's room. He was awake, and called out, "Well, Marian, are you not glad he has come?" "O yes, very," returned Marian, in a tone of little gladness; "I hope you will be very happy with him." "Why not you?" "It will be all disappointment," she answered in a choking voice, as, sheltered by the darkness, she knelt down by Gerald's bed, and burst into tears. "It will all be like to-day." "No, it shall not!" cried Gerald; "I will tell Edmund all about it, and he shall send them all to the right about! I can't think why you did not tell Mrs. Lyddell that you always stay at home for Edmund." "Miss Arundel," said Saunders, at the door, "do you know that it is half an hour later than usual?" The next morning Marian awoke with brighter spirits. It was possible that she might accomplish one walk with him, and Gerald was sure of being constantly at his side, which was the great point. At any rate, she could not be very unhappy while he was in the house. She heard nothing of him all the morning, but, just as the schoolroom dinner was over, in came Mrs. Lyddell, and with her Edmund himself, to the great surprise of all the inhabitants. Marian looked very happy, but said very little, while there was some talk with Miss Morley, and then Edmund asked if she had no drawings to show him. She brought out her portfolio, and felt it like old times when he observed on her improved shading, or criticised the hardness of her distant hills, while Miss Morley wondered at his taste and science. It was delightful to find that she and Gerald were really to take a walk with him by themselves. She almost flew to fetch her walking dress, and soon the three were on their way together. There was a great quantity of home news to be talked over, for Edmund had not heard half so often nor so minutely as Marian, and he had to be told how Charles Wortley got on at his new school, that Ranger had been lost for a day and a half, and many pieces of the same kind of intelligence, of which the most important was that Farmer Bright's widow had given up the hill farm, and his nephew wanted to take it, but Mr. Wortley hoped that this would not be allowed, as he was a dissenter. "Indeed!" said Edmund; "I wonder Carter did not mention that." "Had you heard this before?" said Marian; "I thought it news." "Most of it is," said Edmund, "but not about the farm. The letting it is part of my business here, but I did not know of this man's dissent. Your correspondence has done good service." "I am sure it is my great delight," said Marian; "I do not know what I should do without hearing from Agnes. I think I have learnt to prize her more since I have known other people." "You don't find the Miss Lyddells quite as formidable as you expected though?" said Edmund; "the eldest has a nice open, countenance." "We get on very well," said Marian. "Caroline is so good-tempered and clever, and Lionel is delightful." "O, Edmund," interposed Gerald, "Lionel and I had such fun the other day. We caught the old donkey and blindfolded it with our handkerchiefs, and let it loose, and if you could but have seen how it kicked up its heels----" They went on with the history of adventures of the same description, enjoying themselves exceedingly, and when Marian went in, she was much pleased to find how favourable an impression Edmund had made on her companions, although some of their commendations greatly surprised her; Miss Morley pronouncing that he had in the greatest degree an _air distingue_, and was a remarkably fashionable young man. Marian could endure the _air distingue_, but could hardly swallow the fashionable young man, an expression which only conveyed to her mind the idea of Elliot Lyddell and his moustached friends. However, she knew it was meant for high praise, and her present amiable fit was strong enough to prevent her from taking it as an insult. The next day was Sunday, and she provokingly missed Edmund three times, in the walks to and from church, he being monopolized by "some stupid person," who had far less right to him than she had; but at last, when she had been completely worried and vexed with her succession of disappointments, and had come into what Lionel would have emphatically called "a state of mind," Edmund contrived to come to her before going in doors, and asked if she could not take a few turns with him on the terrace. She came gladly, and yet hardly with full delight, for the irritation of the continually recurring disappointments through the whole day, still had its influence on her spirits, and she did not at first speak. "Where is Gerald?" asked Edmund. "I don't know; somewhere with the boys," said Marian, disconsolately. "Well, why not?" said Edmund laughing. "I don't know," said Marian. "That is a meditative 'I don't know,' which conveys more than meets the ear." "I don't know whether----; I mean I don't think it does Gerald any good." "It? --what?" "I don't know," repeated Marian in a tone which to any one else would have appeared sullen. "I should like to arrive at your meaning, Marian. Are you not happy about Gerald!" "I don't know," said Marian; but Edmund, convinced that all was not right, was resolved to penetrate these determined professions of ignorance. "Is Gerald under Miss Morley?" he asked. "Yes, during most of the day. They all say he is very good." "And does not that satisfy you?" "I don't know." Edmund perceived that the subject of her brother was too near her heart to be easily approached, and resolved to change his tone. "How have you been getting on?" he asked. "Does learning flourish under the present dynasty?" "I don't know," replied Marian for the seventh time, but she did not as usual stop there, and continued, "they think one knows nothing unless one has learnt all manner of dates, and latitudes, and such things. Not one of them knew Orion when they saw him in the sky, and yet even Clara thought me dreadfully stupid because I could not find out on the globe the altitude of Beta in Serpentarius, at New Orleans, at three o'clock in the morning." Edmund could not help laughing at her half-complaining, half-humorous tone, and this encouraged her to proceed. "In history they don't care whether a man is good or bad; they only care when he lived. O Edmund, the lists of names and dates, kings and Roman emperors----." "Metals, semi-metals, and distinguished philosophers," said Edmund; and Marian, who in days of old had read "Mansfield Park," laughed as she used to do at home. "Exactly," said she, "O, Edmund, it is very different learning from what it used to be. All lesson and no thinking, no explaining, no letting one make out more about the interesting places. I wanted the other day to look out in some history book to find whether Rinaldo in Tasso was a real man, but nobody would care about it; and as to the books, all the real good _grown-up_ ones are down in Mr. Lyddell's library, where no one can get at them." "Does not Miss Lyddell enter into these things?" "O yes, Caroline does, a great deal more than Miss Morley; but I don't know--I never can get on with Caroline----." Marian had now gone on to the moment when her heart was ready to be open, and the whole story, so long laid up for Edmund, began to be poured forth; while he, anxious to hear all, and more sympathizing than he was willing to show himself, only put in a word or two here and there, so as to sustain the narration. Everything was told, how Clara was frivolous and wearisome; how Caroline was cold, incomprehensible, and unsympathetic; how unjust and weak Miss Morley was; how sharp, hasty, and unmotherly she found Mrs. Lyddell; and then, growing more eager, Marian, with tears springing to her eyes, told of the harm the influence of Oakworthy was doing Gerald; his love of the stables, and Saunders' opinion of the company he was likely to meet there. This led her to more of Saunders' communications about the general arrangement of the house, and the want of really earnest care for what is right; further still to what Saunders had told of Elliot and his ways, which were such as to shock her excessively, and yet she had herself heard Mr. Lyddell say that he was a fine spirited fellow! Edmund was not sorry to find that he had but small space in which to give the reply for which Marian was eagerly looking. He avoided the main subject, and spoke directly to a point on which his little cousin was certainly wrong. "Well, Marian, who would have thought of your taking to gossiping with servants?" Then, as she looked down, too much ashamed to speak, he added, "I suppose poor Saunders has not sought for charms at Oakworthy any more than you have." "Indeed I do not think I tried to make the worst of it when I came." "Is that a confession that you are doing so now?" "I do not know." "Then let us see if you will give the same account to-morrow; I shall ask you whenever I see you particularly amiable. And now I think I have kept you out quite late enough." The next day was very pleasant, bright, and frosty; Marian, from having relieved her heart, felt more free and happy, and her lessons went off quickly and smoothly. All went well, even though Edmund was obliged to go and call on a friend at Salisbury instead of coming to walk with her. Her walk with Miss Morley and her cousins was prosperous and pleasant; the boys ran races, and Marian and Clara were allowed to join them without a remonstrance. Marian was running and laughing most joyously, when she was stopped by hearing a horse's feet near her, and looking round saw Edmund returning from his ride. "May I keep her out a little longer?" said he to Miss Morley, as he jumped off his horse, and Marian came to his side. Miss Morley returned a ready assent, and after disposing of the horse, the two cousins walked on happily together, she telling him some pleasant histories of Gerald and the other little boys, and lamenting the loss that Lionel would be when he went to school. After they had talked over Salisbury Cathedral, and Marian had heard with great interest of Edmund's late employments in Scotland, and all he was to do and see in Africa, and saying much about that never-ending subject, Fern Torr, Edmund thought her so cheerful that he said, "Well, may I venture to ask your opinion of the people here?" "I don't know," said Marian, who was so much ashamed of the accusation of gossiping with Saunders as to be willing to pass over all that had been founded on her information, "perhaps I did say too much yesterday, and yet I do not know I am sure I should never have chosen them for friends." "Perhaps they would return that compliment." "Then you really think it is my own fault?" "No;" (Edmund tried hard to prevent his "no" from being too emphatic, and forced himself to go on thus) "I do not suppose it is entirely your fault, but at the same time you do not strike me as a person likely to make friends easily." "O, Edmund, I could never bring myself to kiss, and say 'dearest' and 'darling,' and all that, like Clara." "There is the thing," said Edmund; "not that it is wrong to dislike it, not that I could ever imagine your doing any thing like it;" and, indeed, the idea seemed so preposterous, that both the cousins laughed; "but the disposition is not one likely to be over and above prepossessing to strangers." "You mean that I am disagreeable?" "No, far from it. I only mean that you are chilly, and make almost all who come near you the same towards you." "I cannot help it," said Marian. "Yes, you could in time, if you did not fairly freeze yourself by constant dwelling on their worst points. Make the best of them with all your might, and you will soon learn to like them better." "But if the things are so, Edmund, how can I see them otherwise?" "Don't look out for them, and be glad of every excuse for disliking the people. Don't fancy harshness and unkindness where no one intends it. I am quite sure that Mr. Lyddell wishes to give you every advantage, and that Mrs. Lyddell thinks she treats you like her own child." "I don't think I should like to be her own child," said Marian. "It is true that she is the same with me as with them, but--" "Poor Marian," said Edmund, kindly, "you have been used to such gentleness at home, that no wonder the world seems hard and unkind to you. But I did not mean to make you cry; you know you must rough it, and bravely too." "Never mind my crying," said Marian, struggling to speak; "it is nothing, but I cannot help it. It is so very long since any one has known what I meant." Edmund could not trust himself to speak, so full was he of affectionate compassion for her, and of indignation against the Lyddells, when these few words revealed to him all her loneliness; and they walked on for a considerable distance in silence, till, with a sudden change of tone, he asked if she had had any riding since she came to Oakworthy. "O no, I have not been on horseback once. What a treat a good canter on Mayflower would be!" "I suspect one victory over her would put you in spirits to be amiable for a month," said Edmund. "Dear old Mayflower!" said Marian. "How delightful that day was when she first came home, and we took that very long ride to the Eastcombe!" Edmund and Marian fell into a line of reminiscences which enlivened them both, and she went in-doors in a cheerful mood, while he seriously took the riding into consideration; knowing, as he did, that her mother had thought a great deal of out-of-door exercise desirable for her, and guessing that her want of spirits might very probably arise from want of the air and freedom to which she had always been accustomed. The result of his meditations was, that the next morning she was delighted by Gerald's rushing into the school-room, calling out, "Put on your habit, Marian; make haste and put on your habit. You are to have my pony, and I am to have Lionel's, and Edmund is to have Sorell, and we are all to ride together to Chalk Down!" How fast Marian obeyed the summons may well be believed; and though Gerald's pony was not comparable to Mayflower, it was much to feel herself again in the saddle, with the fresh wind breathing on her checks, and Edmund by her side. Par and joyously did they ride; so far, that Gerald was tired into unusual sleepiness all the evening; but Marian was but the fresher and brighter, full of life and merriment, which quite surprised her cousins. But visits, alas! are fleeting things, and Edmund's last day at Oakworthy came only too soon. Precious as it was, it was for the most part devoted to business with Mr. Lyddell, though he sent Marian a message that he hoped for a walk with her and her brother in the afternoon. The hour came, but not the man; and while Caroline and Clara went out with Miss Morley, Marian sat down with a book to wait for him. In about an hour's time the boys came to tell her they were going to the pond with Walter. "O Gerald, won't you wait for Edmund?" "I have waited till I am tired. I cannot stay in this whole afternoon, and I do not think he will come this age." "He is shut up in the study with papa," said Lionel; "I heard their voices very loud, as if they were in _such_ a rage." "I wish I could see them," said Johnny, "it would be such fun." Away ran the boys, leaving Marian in a state of wonder and anxiety, but still confident that Edmund would not forget her. She put on her walking dress, and sat down to her book again, but still she was left to wait. The winter twilight commenced, and still no Edmund; steps approached, but not the right ones; and in came the walking party, with a general exclamation of "Poor Marian! what, still waiting?" Miss Morley advised her to take a few turns on the terrace, instead of practising that horrid Mozart. Marian disconsolately went down stairs, looking wistfully at the library door as she went past it, and, at a funeral pace, promenaded along the terrace. As she passed beneath the window of Caroline's room, a head was popped out, and a voice sang-- "So, sir, you're come at last, I thought you'd come no more, I've waited with my bonnet on from one till half-past four! You know I sit alone--" At that moment, Edmund himself was seen advancing from the door; the song ended in a scream of laughter and dismay, and the window was hastily shut. Edmund smiled a little, but very little, and said, "True enough, I am afraid I have used you very ill." "Tiresome affairs," said Marian, looking up into his harassed face. "I hope they have not made your head ache?" "I have been worried, but it is not the fault of the affairs, I wish you had not lost your walk," added he abruptly, beginning to stride on so fast that she could scarcely keep up with him, and apparently forgetting her presence entirely in his own engrossing thoughts. She watched him intently as she toiled to keep by his side, longing, but not daring, to inquire what was the matter. At last he broke out into a muttered exclamation, "destitute of all principle! all labour in vain!" "What--how--Mr. Lyddell?" "This whole day have I been at it, trying to bring him to reason about that farm!" "What? Did he wish the Dissenter to have it?" "He saw no objection--treated all I said as the merest moonshine!" "What? all the annoyance to the Wortleys, and the mischief to the poor people!" exclaimed Marian, "Why, we should have a meeting-house!" "Nothing more likely, in the Manor field, and fifty pounds subscribed--all for the sake of toleration and Gerald's interests." "You don't mean that he has done it?" said Marian, alarmed, and not quite understanding Edmund's tone of irony, "Cannot you prevent it?" "I have prevented It; I said that, with my knowledge of my uncle's intentions, I could never feel justified in consenting to sign the lease." "And that puts a stop to it? Oh, I am very glad. But I suppose he was very angry?" "I never saw a man more so. He said he had no notion of sacrificing Gerald's interest to party feeling." "How could it be for Gerald's interest to bring Dissenters to Fern Torr? I am sure it would be very disagreeable. I thought it, was quite wrong to have any dealings with them." "He has been popularity-hunting too long to have many scruples on that score." Marian could not help triumphing. "Well, Edmund, I am glad you have come to my opinion at last. I knew you would not like the Lyddells when you knew them better." "I never was much smitten with them," said Edmund, abruptly, as if affronted at the imputation of having liked them. "But Edmund," cried Marian, standing still in the extremity of her amazement, "what have you been about all this time? Have you not been telling me it is all my own fault that I do not get on with them?" He was silent for a little while; and then turning round half-way, as people do when much diverted, he broke out into a hearty fit of laughter. "It is plain," said he, at last, "that nature never designed me for a young lady's counsellor." "What do you mean, Edmund?" "I suspect I have done mischief," said Edmund, after a little consideration, "and I believe all that remains to be done is to tell you all, and come down from my character of Mentor, which certainly I have not fulfilled particularly well." "I am sure I do not understand you," said Marian. "Well, then," said Edmund, speaking in a more free and unembarrassed tone than he had used since he had been at Oakworthy, "this is the fact of the matter, as Mrs. Cornthwayte would say, Marian. I always thought it very unlucky that you were obliged to live here; but as it could not be helped, and I really knew nothing against the Lyddells, there was no use in honing and moaning about it beforehand, so I tried to make the best of it. Well, I came here, and found things as bad as I expected, and was very glad to find you steady in the principles we learnt at home. Still, I thought you deficient in kindly feeling towards them, and inclined to give way to repining and discontent, and I think you allowed I was not far wrong. To-day, I must allow, I was off my guard, and have made a complete mess of all my prudence." "O, I am very glad of it," said Marian. "I understand you now, and you are much more like yourself." "Yes, it was a very unsuccessful attempt," said Edmund, again laughing at himself, "and I am very glad it is over; for I have been obliged to be the high and mighty guardian all this time, and I am very tired of it;" and he yawned. "Then you don't like them any better than I do," repeated Marian, in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction. "Stop, stop, stop; don't think that cousin Edmund means to give you leave to begin hating them." "Hating them? O no! but now you will tell me what I ought to do, since there is no possibility of getting away from them." "No, there is no possibility," said Edmund, considering; "I could not ask the Marchmonts again, though they did make the offer in the first fulness of their hearts. Besides, there are objections; I should not feel satisfied to trust you to so giddy a head as Selina's. No, Marian, it cannot be helped; so let us come to an understanding about these same Lyddells." "Well, then, why is it that we do not do better? I know there are faults on my side; but what are the faults on theirs?" "Marian, I believe the fault to be that they do not look beyond this present life," said Edmund, in a grave, low tone. Marian thought a little while, and then said, "Caroline does, but I see what you mean with the others." "Then your conduct should be a witness of your better principles," said Edmund. "You may stand on very high ground, and it entirely depends on yourself whether you maintain that position, or sink down to their level." "O, but that is awful!" cried Marian; and then in a tone of still greater dismay, "and Gerald? O, Edmund, what is to become of him?" "I must trust him to you, Marian." "To me!" "You have great influence over him, and that, rightly used, may be his safeguard. Many a man has owed everything to a sister's influence." Then, as Marian's eye glistened with somewhat of tender joy and yet of fear, he went on, "But take care; if you deteriorate, he will be in great danger; and, on the other hand, beware of obstinacy and rigidity in trifles--you know what I mean--which might make goodness distasteful to him." "O, worse and worse, Edmund! What is to be done? If I can do him so much harm, I know I can do him very little good; and what will it be when he is older, and will depend less on what I say?" "He will always depend more on what you _do_ than on what you say." "But what can I do? all the schoolboy temptations that I know nothing about. And Elliot--O, Edmund! think of Elliot, and say if it is not dreadful that Mr. Lyddell should have the management of our own Gerald? Papa never could have known--" "I think, while he is still so young, that there is not much harm to be apprehended from that quarter," said Edmund; "afterwards, I believe I may promise you that he shall not be left entirely to Oakworthy training." "And," said Marian, "could you not make him promise to keep away from the stables? Those men--and their language--could you not, Edmund?" "I could, but I would not," said Edmund. "I had rather that, if he transgresses, he should not break his word as well as run into temptation. There is no such moral crime in going down to the stables, as should make us willing to oblige him to take a vow against it." "Would it not keep him out of temptation?" "Only by substituting another temptation," said Edmund. "No, Marian; a boy must be governed by principles, and not by promises." "Principles--people are always talking of them, but I don't half understand what they are," said Marian. "The Creed and the Ten Commandments are what I call principles," said Edmund. "But those are promises, Edmund." "You are right, Marian; but they are not promises to man." "I could do better if I had any one to watch me, or care about me," said Marian. Edmund's face was full of sadness. "We--I mean you, are alone indeed, Marian; but, depend upon it, it is for the best. We might be tempted not to look high enough, and you have to take heed to yourself for Gerald's sake." "I do just sometimes feel as I ought," said Marian; "but it is by fits and starts. O, Edmund, I would give anything that you were not going." "It is too late now," said Edmund, "and there are many reasons which convince me that I ought not to exchange. In a year or two, when I have my promotion, I hope to return, and then, Marian, I shall find you a finished young lady." Marian shuddered. "Poor child," said Edmund, laughing. "And you are going home," said Marian, enviously. "Home, yes," said Edmund, in a tone which seemed as if he did not think himself an object of envy. "Yes, the hills and woods," said Marian, "and the Wortleys." "Yes, I am very glad to go," said Edmund. "Certainly even the being hackneyed cannot spoil the beauty or the force of those lines of Gray's." "What, you mean, 'Ah! happy hills; ah! pleasing shade?'" "Yes," said Edmund, sighing and musing for some minutes before he again spoke, and then it was very earnestly. "Marian, you must not go wrong, Gerald must not--with such parents as yours----." Marian did not answer, for she could not; and presently he added, "It does seem strange that such care as my uncle's should have been given to me, and then his own boy left thus. But, Marian, you must watch him, you must guard him. If you are in real difficulty or doubt how to act, you have the Wortleys; and if you see anything about which you are seriously uneasy with regard to him, write to me, and I will do my utmost, little as that is." "Yes, yes, I am glad to be sure of it," said Marian. "Well, I am glad to have had this talk," said Edmund. "I did you injustice, Marian; you are fit to be treated as a friend: but you must forgive me, for it cost me a good deal to try to be wise with you." "I think you have seemed much wiser since you left it off," said Marian, "Somehow, though I was glad to hear you, it did not comfort me or set me to rights before." Edmund and Marian could have gone on for hours longer, but it was already quite dark; and the sound of Elliot's whistle approaching warned them that one was coming who would little understand their friendship,--why the soldier should loiter with the little girl, or why the young girl should cling to the side of her elder cousin. They went in-doors, and hastened different ways; they saw each other again, but only in full assembly of the rest of the family. And at last, soon after breakfast the nest morning, Marian stood in the hall, watching Edmund drive from the door; and while her face was cold, pale, and still as ever, her heart throbbed violently, and her throat felt as if she was ready to choke. She heard of him at Fern Torr, she heard of him at Portsmouth, she heard of his embarkation; and many and many a lonely moment was filled up with tears of storm and tempest; of fever and climate, of the lion and of the Caffre.

7

None

"Child of the town! for thee, alas! Glad nature spreads nor tree or grass; Birds build no nests, nor in the sun Glad streams come singing as they run. Thy paths are paved for five long miles, Thy groves and hills are peaks and tiles, Thy fragrant air is yon thick smoke, Which shrouds thee like a mourning cloak." ALAN CUNNINGHAM. And so Edmund was gone! But he had bequeathed to Marian a purpose and an object, which gave her a spirit to try hard and feel out a way for herself in this confused tangle of a world around, her. She was happier, though perhaps more anxious; for now it was not mere vague dislike and discontent, but a clearer perception both of the temptations around and of the battle required of her. In January the whole family went to London, the object of many of Marian's terrors. Caroline and Clara were both sorry to go, and the boys lamented exceedingly; Lionel saying it was very hard that the last two months before his going to school should be spent boxed up there, with nothing to do. Indeed the life of the schoolroom party was here more monotonous than that at Oakworthy; for besides the constant regularity of lessons, there was now no variety in the walks; they only paced round the square, or on fine days went as far as the park. And then there were the masters! Marian was in a state of great fear, under the anticipation of her first lessons from them; but the reality proved much better than she had expected. To be sure, she disliked the dancing with all her heart, and made no great figure in music; but people were patient with her, and that was a great comfort; and then she thoroughly liked and enjoyed the lessons in languages and in drawing. There were further advantages in the London life, upon which she had not calculated, for here she was nobody, less noticed than Caroline, seldom summoned to see visitors, and, when she went into the drawing-room, allowed to remain in the back-ground as much as she pleased; so that, though her eye pined for green trees and purple hills, and her ear was wearied with the never-ceasing sound of wheels, London so far exceeded her expectations, that she wrote to Agnes, that, "if there were no smoke, and no fog, and no streets, and no people, there would be no great harm in it, especially if there was anything for the boys to do." The boys were certainly to be pitied; in a house smaller than Oakworthy, and without the occupations out of doors to which they had been accustomed, edicts of silence were more ineffectual than ever, and yawns became painfully frequent. Every one's temper fell into an uncomfortable state of annoyance and irritation; Miss Morley, instead of her usual quiet, piteous way of reproving, was fretful; Caroline was sharp; Clara sometimes rude like the boys, sometimes cross with them; even Marian was now and then tormented into a loss of temper, when there was no obtaining the quiet which she, more than the others, needed in order to learn a lesson properly. Each day Lionel grew more unruly, chiefly from the want of occupation, leading the other two along with him; and each day the female portion of the party grew more inclined to fretfulness, as they felt their own helplessness. It even came to consultations between Miss Morley and Caroline whether they must not really tell of the boys: but the evil day was always put off till "next time." Gerald was riotous when Lionel and John made him so, but not often on his own account; and he had more resources of his own than they had. His drawing was a great amusement to him, though rather in a perverse way; for he would not be induced to take lessons of the master, seldom drew at the right time, or in the right place, and frequently in the wrong ones. "I never can learn except when I am drawing," he said, and his slate was often so filled with designs, that the sums were jostled into the narrowest possible space, while his Latin grammar was similarly adorned. There sat the Muse in full beauty, enthroned upon Parnassus, close to _musa musæ; magister_ had a wig, and _dominus_ a great rod; while the extraordinary physiognomies round _facies faciei_ would have been worthy of any collection of caricatures. Moreover the illustrations of the verb _amo_ commemorated the gentleman who was married on Sunday, killed his wife on Wednesday, and at the preter-pluperfect tense was hanged on Saturday. Other devices were scattered along the margin, and peeped out of every nook--old men's heads, dogs, hunters, knights, omnibuses; and the habit of drawing so grew upon him, that when he was going to read any book where scribbling was insufferable, Marian generally took the precaution of putting all pencils out of reach. She often warned him to take care of the school-room Atlas; but, incited by Lionel, he could not resist the temptation of putting a pipe in the mouth of the Britannia who sat in a corner of the map of England. This pipe she carefully rubbed out, but not till it had received from the others a sort of applause which he took as encouragement to repeat the offence; and when next Marian looked at Britannia, she found the pipe restored, and a cocked hat on the lion's head. Again there was much merriment; and though Miss Morley, more than once, told Gerald this would never do, and he really must not, she could not help laughing so much, that he never quite believed her to be in earnest, and proceeded to people the world with inhabitants by no means proportioned to the size of their countries. John-o'-Groat and his seven brothers took possession of their house, Turks paraded in the Mediterranean, and in the large empty space in the heart of Africa, Baron Munchausen caused the lion to leap down the crocodile's throat. It was about this time that Marian was one day summoned to the drawing-room at an unusual time, and found Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell both there looking exceedingly gracious. "Here is a present for you, Marian," said the former, putting into her hands a large thin parcel. "For me! O thank you!" said Marian, too much surprised and embarrassed to make much of her thanks; nor did her wonder diminish as, unfolding the paper, she beheld a blue watered silk binding, richly embossed, with the title of "The Wreath of Beauty," and soon there lay before her, in all the smoothness of India paper and mezzotint, a portrait, beneath which she read the name of Selina, Viscountess Marchmont. "Selina!" repeated she, in the extremity of her amazement. "Yes," said Mr. Lyddell, resting there in expectation of renewed and eager acknowledgements; but all he received was this--"Can that be Selina?" "It is said to be a very good likeness," said Mrs. Lyddell. "O!" cried Marian, and there she checked herself. "Mr. Lyddell was quite struck with the resemblance to you," added Mrs. Lyddell. The astonishment of Marian's glance was greater than ever, but here she bethought herself that Mr. Lyddell had intended to give her great pleasure, and that she was very ungrateful; whereupon the room seemed to swim round with her in her embarrassment, and with a great effort she stammered out something about his being very kind, and her being very much obliged to him; and then, perceiving that she ought to add more, in order to satisfy that judge of politeness, Mrs. Lyddell, she said that it was a long time since she had seen Lady Marchmont, and that she could not so well judge of the likeness; and then she bore it away to sigh and wonder over it unrestrainedly with Gerald. No wonder the Lyddells were surprised, for Lady Marchmont's portrait was incomparably the most beautiful in the book; the classical regularity of the features, the perfect form of nose and chin, the lovely lip, and the undulating line of the hair, all were exquisite; the turn of the long neck, the _pose_ of the tall graceful figure, and the simple elegance of the dress, were such as to call for great admiration. But all that Marian saw was an affectation in that twisted position,--a straining round of the eyes, and a kind of determination at archness of expression in the mouth. Where was the merry, artless, sweet-looking Selina she remembered, whose yet unformed though very pretty features had faded from her memory, and left only the lively, good-natured expression which, here she sought in vain? "O Selina, Selina, can you be like this'?" exclaimed she; "and to think of their saying I am like it! I am sure I hope one is as true as the other." Gerald drew his face into a horrible caricature of the expression in the portrait, and set his sister laughing. "I hope I shall never see her If she has grown like it," said she, sighing. "I should take the stick to her if she was," said Gerald. "I am afraid it must be too true," said Marian, "or she would never allow herself to be posted up in this absurd way. I wonder Lord Marchmont allows it!" "I'll tell you, Marian," said the sympathising Gerald, "if I had ten beauties for my wife--" "Ten beauties! O, Gerald!" "Well, one ten times as beautiful as Selina, I mean; I would cure her of vanity well; for I would tell her that, if she chose to have her picture drawn in this Book of Beauty, it should only be with a ring through her nose, and two stars tattooed on her cheeks." "And a very good plan too," said Marian, laughing; "but I am afraid poor Selina cannot be in such good hands. See, here are the impertinent people writing verses about her, as if they had any business to ask her what she is thinking about. Listen, Gerald; did you ever hear such stuff?" "Lady, why that radiant smile, Matching with that pensive brow, Like sunbeams on some mountain pile Glowing on solemn heights of snow? "Lady, why that glance of thought, Joined to that arch lip of mirth, Like shade by fleecy cloudlet brought Over some paradise of earth? "Yea, thou may'st smile, the world for thee Is opening all its fairest bowers; Yet in that earnest face I see These may not claim thy dearest hours. "But for thy brow, thy smile we deem The gladsome mirth of fairy sprite; But for thy smile, thy mien would seem Some angel's from the world of light. "Yet laughing lip and thoughtful brow Are depths and gleams of mortal life; Angel and fay, of us art thou, Then art a woman and a wife!" "What would they have her to be? a husband?" said Gerald. Here Caroline and Clara came hastily in, eager to see the portrait and read the verses, and very far were they from being able to imagine why she did not like the portrait. Caroline owned that there might be a little affectation, but she thought the beauty very considerable; and as to Clara, she was in raptures, saying she never _did_ see any one half so lovely. And as to the verses, they were the sweetest things she ever read; and she carried them off to show to Miss Morley, who fully sympathised with her. Marian found no one to share her opinion but Gerald and Lionel, and their criticisms were unsparingly extended to Lady Marchmont's features, as well as her expression, "Such mincing lips! such untidy hair! Hollo! who has given her a black eye?" till they had not left her a single beauty. Marian hoped the subject was quite forgotten, when she had hidden away the book under all her others: but the nest time there was a dinner-party, Mrs. Lyddell desired her to fetch it, to show to some one who knew Lady Marchmont. She took it up stairs again us soon as she could, but again and again was she obliged to bring it, and condemned to hear it talked over and admired. One day when she was going wearily and reluctantly up stairs, she was arrested by a call from Lionel, who was creeping up outside the balusters in a fashion which had no recommendation but its extreme difficulty and danger. "Eh, Marian, what, going after beauty again?" "I wish it was Beauty and the Beast," said Marian, disconsolately. "There are different tastes in the world, that is certain; but don't break that neck of yours, Lionel." Lionel replied by letting go with one hand and brandishing that and his foot over the giddy space below. Marian frowned and squeezed up her lips, but did not speak till it pleased him to draw himself in again, and throw himself over the balusters before her, saying, "That is a reward for you, Marian; Clara would have screeched." The next time Marian was desired to fetch the book, it was for a morning visitor,--a broad, stately, pompous old lady, who had had the pleasure of meeting Lady Marchmont, and thought Miss Arundel very like her. "Are you going after beauty?" said Lionel, again meeting Marian on the stairs. "Yes," said Marian, with a sigh. "Well, I hope she will be pleased, that's all," said Lionel. Marian thought there was a meaning in this speech, but she was in haste, and without considering it, ran down stairs again. As she was opening the drawing-room door, she saw Gerald on the top of the stairs, calling to her, "Marian, have you that book? O, wait--" "I cannot come now, Gerald," said she, entering the room, and shutting the door after her. She laid the book on the table, and the page was opened. "O beautiful!" exclaimed the old lady, "How exact a likeness!" "Why, Marian!" broke involuntarily from Mrs. Lyddell, and Marian, looking at the print, could, in spite of her dismay, hardly keep from laughing; for the elegant Lady Marchmont now appeared decorated with a huge pair of mustachios, an elaborate jewelled ring in the nose, and a wavy star on each cheek, and in the middle of the forehead; while over the balustrade on which she was leaning there peeped a monster with grotesque eyes, a pair of twisted horns, a parrot's beak, vulture's claws, and a scaly tail stretching away in complicated spires far into the distance. No one could for a moment doubt that this was Gerald's work, and Marian felt sure that he had been thereto incited by Lionel. Extreme was her consternation at the thought of the displeasure which he had incurred; but in the mean time there was something very amusing in the sight of the old lady beginning to perceive that something was wrong, and yet not able to make it out, and not choosing to own her difficulties. Mrs. Lyddell, though vexed and angry, carried it off very well. "Ah! some mischief of the boys," said she, decidedly. "I am afraid it is not fit to be seen." And so saying, she closed the book, and changed the conversation. As soon as the visitor had taken leave, the scene was changed; Mrs. Lyddell walked hastily to the table, threw open the book, and began to examine into the degree of damage it had suffered. "I suppose you know nothing of this, Marian?" said she, surveying her with one of her quickest and most formidable glances. "O no," said Marian; "I am sure I am very sorry." "Well, I must inquire about it," said Mrs. Lyddell, taking up the book, and hastening towards the school-room, followed by poor Marian, trembling with all her heart for her brother, and somewhat for Lionel, even though she could not help being angry with him for having got Gerald into such a scrape. There stood the boys, looking partly exulting, partly frightened; Lionel a little more of the first, Gerald a little more of the second; for this was Gerald's first desperate piece of mischief, whereas Lionel had survived many such. Besides, Gerald's handiwork was too evident to be mistaken, while his companion's part in the folly could be known to no one; and though it might be guessed at by Marian, Lionel thought she might be trusted. The book was spread upon the table, and the expressions of horror from the three ladies of the school-room were as strong as could reasonably be expected. "Indeed," pleaded Miss Morley, in her deplorable tone, "I am continually ordering Sir Gerald not to scribble in books, but he never will obey." "That is not true!" cried Gerald, in a loud, startling voice. "Gerald," said Mrs. Lyddell, "that is no proper manner of speaking; you have behaved very ill already--do not add to your fault. Before any more is said, beg Miss Morley's pardon." There was a silence, and she repeated, "I desire that you will ask Miss Morley's pardon directly--still silent? what is the meaning of this?" Gerald stood bolt upright, and very rigid; poor Marian glancing appealingly, first at him, then at Mrs. Lyddell, then at Miss Morley, all equally without effect. She saw it all--that he might have been brought to own that be had done wrong about this individual case; but that the sweeping accusation of disobeying orders, which, as they all knew, were never given with anything like decision, had roused a proud, determined sense of injustice, and that he was ready to suffer anything rather than apologise. She was wild to speak, to do something; yet what could she attempt? Mrs. Lyddell would not begin upon the book-scribbling subject till she had conquered the spirit of defiance, and continued to insist on his begging Miss Morley's pardon; but the more she ordered, the more determined he grew. There he stood, his proud, dark eye fixed on a picture on the wall, his lip curled with a sort of disdain, and an expression in his whole motionless figure that, had his cause but been good, would have been resolution, whereas it now was only indomitable self-will and pride. At any rate, it was an expression that showed that he was not to be conquered by woman, though he might have been won over by her: and Mrs. Lyddell had tact enough to give up the battle without owning herself defeated, and without further discussion said, "Go to your own room, Gerald; I shall give you time to reflect and get the better of your obstinacy. You may come here again when you are ready to ask Miss Morley to forgive you for your very improper conduct towards her." Without turning to the right or left,--without one look towards his sister, Gerald walked out of the room, and even shut the door after him gently. Poor Marian, who could guess all that she felt? "This is very extraordinary," said Mrs. Lyddell, "so well-behaved a boy as he is in general." "Ah! boys of his age always get quite beyond ladies' management," said Miss Morley. "Such determined obstinacy!" said Mrs. Lyddell. "Perhaps he did not understand you," said Marian, unable to keep from saying something, though she could not in her agitation think of anything to the purpose. "Understand? that is nonsense, Marian. What was there to understand? He spoke very improperly, find I desire him to apologise; and if he is obstinate, it is very wrong of you to defend him." Marian was silenced, though her heart was swelling and her temples throbbing. In another minute Mrs. Lyddell was summoned to some more company, and Marian had nothing worse to hear than her companions' commiseration for the book, and declarations that India rubber would do it no good. The afternoon passed away, and nothing was heard of Gerald: indeed, Marian understood him well enough to expect that nothing would be heard. As she was on her way to her own room, looking wistfully at his door, Lionel overtook her; and thumping her hard on the back, exclaimed, "Isn't it a jolly beast, Marian?" "O, Lionel, it was very naughty of you. How could you make Gerald behave so ill?" "Never mind, Marian, he will get out of it soon enough. Come, don't be savage; we did it all for your good." "My good! how can you talk such nonsense?" "Why, I'll bet you anything you like, that mamma will never be for having the little beastie down to show the company." Marian half smiled; it was pleasant to find that, towards her at least, the boys' intention had been anything but unkind, but still she hardly knew how to be placable with Lionel when he had led her brother into mischief, and then left him to bear all the blame. "It was very wrong," she repeated. "Come, don't be cross, Marian. You don't mean that you really cared for that trumpery picture?" "I did not care for it so much," said she, "but it was a valuable book, and it was very kind of your papa to give it to me, so I was sorry to have it spoilt." "Won't it rub out?" said Lionel. "No, of course not." "I thought pencil always did." "And then, Lionel, why could you not have thought what disgrace you were leading Gerald into?" "You don't think, Marian, I was going to be shabby enough to leave Gerald alone in the scrape? No, if I do, I'll give you leave to tell of me or do whatever you please; but you see now he is not in disgrace for drawing that pretty little beast, but for giving poor unfortunate a bit of his mind, so what use would there be in my putting my neck into the noose before my time? No, if Gerald is the fellow I take him for, and stands out about begging her pardon, the whole business of the book will blow over, and we shall hear no more of it." Marian shook her head. "O, Lionel, if you would only think whether a thing is right before you do it!" "How can you wish me to be so stupid, Marian?" "I am sure, Lionel, the funniest, merriest people that I know, think most about what is right." "Well, that may do in Devonshire perhaps," said Lionel, stretching himself, "but it won't here except with you. Indeed there is nobody else that I know of that does make such a fuss about right and wrong, except Walter, and he hasn't got an atom of fun to bless himself with." "But, Lionel, what good will all the fun in the world do us when we come to die?" said Marian, whispering. The boy looked full at her, but would not show that he felt any force in her words. "I don't mean to die just yet," he said, and by way of escaping from the subject he mounted on the balusters, and was sliding down as he had often done before, when by some hitch or some slip he lost his balance, and slid down without the power to stop himself. Marian thought him gone, and with suspended breath stood, in an agony of horror, listening for his fall on the stones of the hall far beneath; but the next moment she saw that he had been stopped by the turn of the staircase, and the instinct of self-preservation had made him cling fast to the rail with both hands, though he was unable to recover his footing on the narrow ledge of the steps beyond it. She did not scream or call, she ran down to the landing place--how she did it she knew not--but she threw her arms round him and succeeded in lifting and dragging him over the rail, which was not very high, till he stood on the safe side of the balusters, Her heart beat, her head swam, and she was obliged to sit down on the step and pant for breath; Lionel leant against the wall, for his nerve was not restored for a moment or two, after his really frightful peril. Not a word was spoken, and perhaps it was better that none should pass between them. Mr. Lyddell's step was heard ascending, and they both hurried away as fast as they could. No one was told of the adventure, it was not Marian's part to speak of it, if indeed she _could_ have done so, and it did not appear that Lionel chose to mention it. Perhaps it was that he did not like to enter upon it seriously, and it had been too much of an answer to his light speech to be made a laughing matter. At any rate he was silent, and Marian was very glad of it. Mr. Lyddell was coming up to visit the prisoner and try if he could bring him to reason, but it soon transpired that all his attempts had been in vain, even though he came to a threat that unless Gerald made his submission before the next day was at an end, he should be sent to school with Lionel at the end of another fortnight. Marian's distress increased, she was equally wretched at her brother's increasing misbehaviour and at its punishment, It was provoking to see Johnny walking about in all the grandeur and self-consequence of being quite out of the scrape, and evidently rejoicing that Gerald was in it; it was provoking to hear Miss Morley and the girls wondering, even Saunders' pity was provoking, and there was nothing that gave her the least comfort but the perception that Lionel was certainly graver and more subdued. She was allowed to go to her brother for a little while that evening, with some hope that she might prevail with him. She found him leaning against the window in the failing light, listlessly watching the horses and grooms in the mews, which his high window overlooked. He turned his head as she came in, but without speaking, and then looked back at the window, till she came up to him, put her arm round his neck and turned his face towards her. It was a sullen, dogged countenance, such as she had seldom or never seen him wear before. "Gerald, dear Gerald, what is the meaning of this? You never used to behave so?" "I never was served so before," muttered he. "You have drawn it on yourself. Why will you not submit and ask her pardon?" "What should I ask pardon for? I said nothing but the truth." "How can you say so. Gerald? Did you not know that you ought not to scribble in books? Can you say that Miss Morley has not often spoken to you about the Atlas?" "If you call 'O Sir Gerald!' and 'O you sad boy,' desiring me in a rational way, I don't," said Gerald, imitating the tones, "laughing and letting me go on; I thought she liked it." "Now seriously, Gerald." "Well, I mean that she did not care. If people tell me a thing they should make me mind them." "You should mind without being made, Gerald. "I would if I thought them in earnest. But now, Marian, was it not a horrid shame of her to speak just as if I had been always disobeying her on purpose, making Mrs. Lyddell go into a rage with me for what was entirely her own fault?" "No, no, Gerald, you cannot say it was her fault that you spoilt the picture." "I think she ought to beg my pardon for telling such stories about me," repeated Gerald sullenly. "Recollect yourself, Gerald, you know she meant that she had put you in mind that you ought not; and don't you think that, true or not, your speech was very rude?" "If I was to beg her pardon it would mean that she spoke the truth, which she did not, for she never took any pains to prevent me from drawing in the map-book, or any where else." "It would not mean any such thing if you were to say, 'Miss Morley, I misunderstood you, and I am sorry I was so rude.' I am sure you must be sorry for that, for it was not at all like a gentleman. Will you come and say so?" "You're like the rest," mumbled Gerald, turning his back upon her, and sitting like a stock. "Don't you think it would be the best way? Would it not make you happier? O what is the use of being obstinate and disobedient? Think of going to school in disgrace. O! Gerald, Gerald, what is to be done?" Still she spoke with earnest pauses and anxious looks, but without the least effect, and at last she said, "Well, Gerald, I must go, and very much grieved I am. How would dear mamma like to see her little boy going on in this way?" She went to the door and looked back again there, and beheld Gerald, with his hands over his face, striving to suppress a burst of sobbing. She sprung to him, and would have thrown her arms round his neck, but he pushed her off roughly, and with strong effort, drove back the tears, and put on an iron face again. Again she entreated, but he would not open his lips or give the least sign of listening, or of attending to any persuasion, and she was obliged to leave him at last without hope of subduing his obstinacy. How far he was now from being the gentle, good child that he once had been! and by whose fault was it? Her spirit burned with indignation against those who, as she thought, had worked the change, and O! where was the influence from which Edmund hoped so much? The next day was long and miserable, for Gerald gave no sign of yielding, but remained shut up in his room, maintaining an absolute silence, when, at different times, Mrs. Lyddell went to visit him, and assure him that Mr. Lyddell was fixed in his determination to send him to school if he did not yield before the time of grace was up. The time of grace was at an end the next morning, and at nine o'clock, Gerald was summoned to the dining-room, where Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell were at breakfast. He wanted to carry it off with a high hand, but his long day of solitude had dulled him, and he looked pale and weary. "Gerald," said Mrs. Lyddell, "I am sorry you have so persisted in your misbehaviour to oblige us to punish you, as we threatened to do. Are you now willing to own that you did wrong?" "I ought not to have spoilt the book," said Gerald boldly, "and I was rude to Miss Morley." "There is a brave boy," said Mr. Lyddell, very much relieved. "Well, Gerald, I am glad you have given, in at last; I hate obstinacy, as I told you yesterday, but that is over, and we will say no more about it; only you know we told you that you should be sent to school, and we must keep our word." "Yes," said Gerald, trying not to let a muscle of his face relax; though now the die was cast, his consternation at the thought of school was considerable. "Well, you may go," said Mr. Lyddell, "and remember that obstinacy must be got out of a boy some way or other." Gerald went, and soon entered the schoolroom, where he walked up to Miss Morley, saying, "I am sorry I was rude to you the day before yesterday." "Ah! Sir Gerald, I was sure your better sense--your generous spirit--but I hope your submission--I hope Mr. Lyddell forgives--overlooks--" "I am to go to school when Lionel does, if that is what you mean," replied Gerald, and then he came up to his sister, and looked earnestly, yet with an inquiring shyness into her face. Marian might have been hopeful, for his manner showed that it was for her opinion that he really cared; but she was sad and unhappy at seeing his pride still so far from being subdued, and though her heart yearned towards him, she shook her head and looked coldly away from him to her book. Gerald was chilled and went back to Lionel, who had plenty of ready sympathy for him; a story half caught from his mamma's report, half guessed at, that the old lady had looked full at the beast's curly tail, and had said she had never seen anything so like Lady Marchmont; the assertion of his own certainty that Gerald would never give in nor own that poor unfortunate had spoken the truth, and Gerald felt triumphant, as if his self-will had been something heroic, and his imprisonment and going to school a martyrdom. It did not last, Gerald's nature was gentle and retiring; he dreaded strangers, and his heart sank when he thought of school. He wanted his sister to comfort him, but he would soon be out of her reach. No Marian--all boys--all strange, and there was no help for it now. Gerald rested his forehead against the window and gulped down rising tears. But when he found himself on the point of being left alone with Marian, his pride rose, and he would not confess that he had been wrong or that he was unhappy, so he ran down stairs to find the other boys and to get out of her way. So it went on, Marian was very unhappy at this loss of his confidence; but the more she attempted to talk to him, the more he avoided her, being resolved not to show how great his dislike and dread of school was. "Gerald," said Lionel, the last day before they were to go, "I have been thinking I should like to give Marian something instead of that book." "So should I," said Gerald, delighted with the idea, for he was feeling all the time that he was vexing his sister, and wishing to do something by way of compensation. "I did not mean you," said Lionel, "for it----for you would never have been sharp enough to think of the beast for yourself. I only told you because you could tell me what she would like best. Papa has just given me a sovereign." "He has given me another," said Gerald, "and we will put them together, and do it handsomely." "Well, what shall it be? Not that stupid book over again." "O no, no, she has had enough of that already, and there are plenty of other books that she wants." "No, don't let it be a book," said Lionel; "I can't think how anybody can like reading, when they can help it." "Well, I do like some reading, when it is a shipwreck, or a famous bloody battle," said Gerald. "Yes, but then it makes one's eyes ache so." "It does not mine." "Well, if I go on long it always makes mine ache," said Lionel. "And don't the letters look green and dance about, when you read by candle light?" "No," said Gerald. "How funny that is, Lionel. But I'll tell you what, we will get Walter to take us out, and we shall be sure to see something famous, in some shop-window or other." Walter was at home for the Easter vacation, and under his protection the boys were allowed to go out. Very patient he was, and wisely did he give his counsel in the important choice which, if left to the boys themselves, might probably have been really something famous. Marian would have been grateful to him, had she known all that he averted from her, a stuffed fox, an immense pebble brooch, a pair of slippers covered with sportive demons. At every shop which furnished guns, knives, or fishing tackle, they stopped and lamented that she was not a boy, there was nothing in the world fit for girls; they tried a bazaar, and pronounced everything trumpery, and Walter was beginning to get into despair, when at last Lionel came to a stop before a print shop, calling out, "Hollo, Gerald, here's Beauty and the Beast itself!" It was the beautiful engraving from Raphael's picture of Saint Margaret in meekness treading Upon the dragon 'neath her spreading. And Walter, rejoicing that their choice was likely to fall on anything which a young lady might be so glad to possess, conducted them into the shop, and gave all the desired assistance in effecting the purchase. It was a fine impression, and the price was so high as to leave the boys' finances at rather a low ebb; but Walter, in his secret soul, thought this by no means to be regretted, since it was much better for them that it should be generously spent at once in this manner, than that it should be frittered away in the unaccountable and vain manner in which he had usually seen schoolboys' money wasted. So S. Margaret was bought and rolled up, and so afraid were the boys that she should not be rightly sent home, that they insisted on carrying her themselves, and almost quarrelled as to which should have the first turn. Marian, on coming into her room, found both the boys on the top of the chest of drawers, trying to pin the print up against the wall, and though her arrival caused them some discomfiture, it was on the whole a fortunate circumstance, since it saved the corners from extensive damage. "O Lionel! O Gerald! how beautiful! how very nice! What a lovely face! Is it really for me? How I do thank you, but I am afraid you have spent all your money." "It is a better Beauty and the Beast than the old one," said Gerald, "Isn't it, Marian?" "A better beauty, but not a better beast," said Lionel. "It is very beautiful indeed," said Marian; "I shall get a frame for it, and it will always put me in mind of you both." "Yes, you will always think of me when you look at the beauty," said Lionel, "and of Gerald when you look at the beast." "S. Margaret and the dragon! I wish I knew the story," said Marian; "but I suppose it is an allegory like that of S. George. How good and innocent she looks! Yes, see, Gerald, she is walking pure and white through the park forest, and conquering the dragon. You see the palm in the hand for victory. So innocent and so fearless." "I thought it would be one of those funny Roman Catholic stories, like what Caroline was reading one day," said Lionel. "I don't like making fun of those," said Marian. "They often mean a great deal, if you don't laugh at them, and tell them properly. I am sure this print is to put us in mind of how we are to overcome temptation, and I do like it very much. Thank you both." Lionel was here called away, but Gerald remained, and proceeded to a more minute examination of the beauties of the print, of which he was very proud. "O, Gerald, dear, if we could be like it," said Marian. "Like it? That you'll never be, Marian; your hair is too black." "Yes, but like it within. Pure and clear from sin in the midst of a bad world. I shall look at it and think of that very often, and you must think too, Gerald." "I mean to be good at school," said Gerald. And leaning against his sister, he let her talk to him as in times of old, advising him with all her might, for he really liked it, and was comfortable in having it so, though he would have been ashamed to own that he did. Her advice was at once childish and wise; sometimes sensible, sometimes impracticable. Let any sister of fourteen think what counsel she would give a brother of nine if he would but listen to her, and she will have a very fair idea of it. Gerald listened and promised earnestly, and she thought, hoped, and trusted that his promises would be kept: she reminded him of all that could strengthen his resolution, and talked of the holidays with what cheer she might. She had copied out a morning and evening prayer from her own treasured book, rather than give him such another, because she thought he would perhaps heed them more in her handwriting, and she now gave them to him, folded up in a neat little silk case, which he could keep without observation. How she put her arm round him and pressed him towards her as she gave them into his hand, and felt that she was doing what her mother would have done, so earnestly, so tearfully, so much more impressively. O was she watching them now? The brother and sister were interrupted at last, and called down to tea. The evening passed away heavily, spent as it was for the most part in the drawing-room; and the last thing before the boys went to bed, Lionel pushing Gerald roughly off, held Marian fast by the hand, and whispered in her ear, "I say--you've written out something for Gerald." "Yes," she answered, horrified that he should have found it out. "Would you mind doing it for me? Don't tell any one." Was not this a pleasure? Marian sat up in her dressing-gown that night to write the prayers in her very clearest writing, for she knew Lionel never liked to read what was not large and clear, and she guessed that late in the evening, after all his lessons, he would have too many "green and blue monsters," as he used to call them, before his eyes, to be willing to give them more work than he could possibly help. She thought her mamma would have been very uneasy if she had heard of those green and blue monsters, and she wondered whether Mrs. Lyddell knew or cared about them, but Lionel was one of the least regarded of the family, and nobody but Johnny ever thought it worth while to make a trifling complaint to her. It was far worse that Lionel should be left to obtain a form of private prayer by such a chance as this. Alas! alas for them all! She was too unhappy to think more of Lionel, and in the midst of earnest prayers for Gerald, she cried herself asleep. Poor child, she was too miserable all the next day to give us any pleasure in contemplating her.

8

None

"Too soon the happy child His nook of homeward thought will change; For life's seducing wild; Too son his altered day-dreams show This earth a boundless space, With sunbright pleasures to and fro, Coursing in joyous race." _Christian Year_. A couple of weeks had passed away, and Marian was beginning to feel rather more accustomed to the absence of Gerald and Lionel, and to find pleasure in the letters which spoke of her brother taking a good place, and from which it did not appear that he disliked school so much as she had feared. Still she could not but miss him grievously, and feel the want of some one to cling to her, bring his troubles to her, and watch for moments of private conference. Her days seemed to follow each other without animation or interest; and if it had not been for some of her lessons, and for his letters and Agnes Wortley's, she felt as if she could have done nothing but yawn till the holidays. One day, as the young ladies were returning from a walk in the park, they saw a carriage standing at their own door,--too frequent an occurrence, as Marian thought, to call for such warm interest as Clara expressed. Yet even Marian grew eager when she heard her cousins exclaim that there was a coronet on it,--a Viscount's coronet. They were now close to the house, just about to ring, when the door opened, the visitor came out, and at that moment Marian sprang forward with a joyful face, but without a word. The lady held out both hands, and standing on the top of the steps of the door, she drew Marian up to her, and kissed her on each cheek with great eagerness, completely regardless of the spectators. "Marian, dear little Marian herself! I was afraid I had quite missed you, though I waited as long as I could. You look like your own self, little pale cheeks! Well, I must not stay; I have arranged with Mrs. Lyddell for you to spend to-morrow with me. I will send the carriage for you, and you know how much I have to show you--my husband and my son! You will come, Marian? Not a word? Ah! your own way. Good-bye; you will find your tongue to-morrow. Good-bye." She let go the hands and sprang into the carriage, giving a smile and nod as she drove off, that filled Marian's soul, almost to overflowing, with a rush of memories. It was as if she was no longer standing on the hard steps, with black streets, and tall, dingy yellow houses bounding her view, and carriages thundering in her ears; no longer lonely among numbers, but as if she was on the bright green grass-plat by the Manor-House door, the myrtles and sycamore nodding round her; the shadows of the clouds chasing each other in purple spots over the moors; her father at the window; her mother, Gerald, Edmund, Agnes, all standing round; that sweet voice, with, that same bright smile, that same arch little nod, repeating the "good-bye," and speaking of meeting next year; and Marian herself thinking how very long a year would be. And now two years had passed since that time, and such years! How much older Marian felt! But there was Selina--Selina herself, not the Beauty--that was enough for joy! Marian was roused from her dream by exclamations of delight and admiration from her cousins, "How very beautiful!" "O, I never saw anything so lovely!" "Marian, how could you say that she was not like her picture?" "I don't know," said Marian, gradually waking from her trance. "Don't you think her the most beautiful creature you ever saw?" "I don't know." "Don't know!" cried Caroline, impatiently. "Do you know whether your head is on or not?" "I don't--nonsense," said Marian, laughing heartily, "The fact was, I never had time to look or think whether she was pretty; I only saw she was just like herself." "Well, Marian; so you met her?" said Mrs. Lyddell's voice in its most delighted tone, at the top of the stairs. "I never saw a more charming person. So very handsome, and so elegant, and so very agreeable. You have heard of her invitation?" "Yes; thank you for letting me go," said Marian. "O yes, of course! I am delighted that you should have the advantage of such an acquaintance. I hope it will be quite an intimacy. I am sure whenever--Well, certainly, I never met with anything more fascinating. She spoke of you with such affection, my dear; I am sure she must be the most delightful person!" Marian was not suffered to proceed up stairs till she had been told all the particulars of Lady Marchmont's visit, and had answered many questions respecting her; and, when she went up to the school-room, it was the same thing. The party there seemed to look upon their good fortune, in having had a sight of her, something as if they had seen the Queen, or "the Duke;" and it was with a sort of awe that Clara pronounced the words "Lady Marchmont," as she talked over every particular of her dress and deportment. All this in some degree perplexed Marian. Titled ladies were by no means unusual among Mrs. Lyddell's visitors, and did not create anything like this sensation; and she had not been used at home to hear Selina Grenville talked of as anything more than a wild, gay-tempered girl, whose character for wisdom did not stand very high. To be sure she was now married, and that might make a difference; but then Edmund had since spoken of her as giddy, and as if he had not the highest idea of her discretion. Moreover, it struck Marian herself that she had spoken of her husband and child just as if they were two playthings, to be shown off. Of course that was only in fun, but Marian's was the time of life to have great ideas of the requisite gravity of demeanour in a married woman. Altogether, much as she loved Selina, and clever and engaging as she thought her, it astonished her not a little to find that the relationship conferred upon herself such distinction in the eyes of her cousins; and she spent the evening and the next morning alternately in speculations of this kind, hopes of a home-like day, and fears that Selina after all might prove the affected Viscountess of the Wreath of Beauty. The time came, the carriage was sent punctually, and in due time Marian was being marshalled up the broad staircase by the tall servants, in all the trepidation of making her first visit in state on her own account, and feeling at every step as if she was getting further into the Wreath of Beauty. Across a great drawing-room,--such a beautiful grand room,--a folding door is opened; "Miss Arundel" is announced, and there she stands in all her stiffness. There was a little table near the fire, and beside it sat Lady Marchmont, writing notes, in the plainest and most becoming of morning dresses,--a sort of brown holland looking thing, with a plain, stiff, white collar, and a dark blue ribbon, her only ornament, except one large gold bracelet. Her hair was twisted in glossy sunny waves behind her ear, as in some Greek statues; her blue eyes were bright and lustrous, and nothing was ever clearer and more delicate than the slight tinge of red on her cheeks. Lord Marchmont was standing leaning on the mantelshelf, apparently in consultation with her. As soon as Marian entered, Selina's pen was thrown down, and she flew forward, throwing her arms round her little cousin, and kissing her repeatedly. Then, her arm round Marian's neck, and her hand on her shoulder, she led her towards Lord Marchmont, who stepped forward to receive her, saying, "Yes, here she is, here is your little cousin; and hero, Marian, here is your great cousin. Now I would give five shillings to know what you think of each other." "I suppose one part of that pleasure will only be deferred till I am out of the room," said Lord Marchmont, as he shook hands with Marian in a kind, cordial, cousinly manner. He was a brown, strong-featured man of three or four and thirty, hardly young enough, and far from handsome enough, in Marian's very youthful eyes, to be suited to his wife, but very sensible and good-natured looking. "No, Marian is a safe person, and will get no further than 'I don't know;' at least if she is the Marian I take her for," said Lady Marchmont. "Very prudent," was his answer, smiling at Marian; and then, in compassion to her confusion, gathering up his papers, and preparing to depart. "Are you going?" said his wife. "Well, I do you the justice to say that, under the circumstances, it is the wisest proceeding in your power; for I shall not get three words out of Marian all the time you are here." After a few more words of consultation on their own affairs, he left the room, and then Selina caught hold of Marian again, and said she must have a thorough good look at her all over, to see how much of dear old Fern Torr she had brought with her. Selina Grenville was the youngest daughter of a sister of Sir Edmund Arundel, who had, like the rest of her family, died early. She had been a good deal abroad with her father and a married sister. Her uncommon beauty and engaging manners gained her, when she was little more than eighteen, the affection of Lord Marchmont, a more distant connection of the Arundel family; and happily for Selina, she appreciated him sufficiently to return his love so thoroughly, as to lay aside all the little coquetries which had hitherto been the delight of her life; and to devote herself to him even as he deserved. It might have been that the poem had said too much in pronouncing her to be a woman as well as a wife; for Selina Marchmont was almost as much of a child as Selina Grenville had been, and only now and then did those deeper shades of thought pass over her face, which showed how much soul there was within her as yet only half developed. Her manners were almost more playful than suited her position, though they became her perfectly; her husband delighted in them; but it was this that had given her grave and saddened cousin, Edmund, an impression that her sense was not of a high order. She was very warm-hearted. She had been exceedingly attached to her uncle and aunt at Fern Torr; and now it seemed as if she could never fondle Marian enough. The first thing was to show her baby, but she premised that she did not expect Marian to go into raptures about him; she never did expect any one to like babies. "In fact, Marian," she whispered, "don't betray me, but I am a wee bit afraid of him myself. It is such a very little live thing, and that nurse of his never will let me have any comfort with him, and never will trust me to get acquainted with him in a _tête-à-tête_, poor little man! O, here he comes! the Honourable William James Bertram Marchmont--his name nearly as long as himself." In came a broad, tall, dignified nurse, large enough to have made at least four Selinas, carrying a small bundle of long white robes. Selina took the little bundle in her arms rather timidly, and held it for Marian to see. Pew babies were ever looked at more silently; he was a small, but pretty, healthy-looking child of between two and three months old,--a very wax doll of a baby, with little round mottled arms moving about, and tiny hands flourishing helplessly, he looked just fit for his mamma. She held him with the fond, proud, almost over care with which little girls take for a moment some new brother or sister; and as she gazed upon him without a word, the earnest intensity of expression gathered upon her beautiful face. After about five minutes thus spent, she roused herself, and began gaily to tell Marian not to trouble herself to seek for a likeness in him to anybody, or to say anything so wild as that he in the least resembled her or his papa; and then she nodded and smiled at him, and seemed as if she would have talked to him and played with him, if his nurse had not been standing close by all the time, looking as if she was being defrauded of her property. "It is time Master Marchmont should be taken out before the sun goes off, my Lady," said she, authoritatively. "Very well, I suppose he must," said Selina, reluctantly giving him back again after a timid kiss. "There goes my lady nurse and her child," said she with a sigh, hidden even from herself by a laugh. "I am sure he seems a great deal more hers than mine; but there, I should never know what to do with him. Come, Marian, now for all about yourself, my poor child. How do they use you?" Much indeed there was to hear; and much to tell on either side, and scarcely for a moment did the two cousins cease from talking as they sat together in the morning, and drove together in the afternoon. Selina was one of those people who have a wonderful power of dispelling reserve, chiefly by their own frankness; and when she had told Marian all the history of her first sight of Lord Marchmont, and the whole courtship, and all that she had thought "so very noble" in him, and tried to make her understand how very happy she was, Marian's heart was open in her turn. Not the depths of it,--not such things as by a great effort she had told to Edmund, and might possibly tell to Mrs. Wortley, but much more than she could ever have said to any one else; and free and abundant was the sympathy and pity she received,--pity even beyond what she thought she deserved. She was surprised to observe that Selina spoke of the Lyddells with a sort of contempt, as if they were wanting in refinement; whereas she herself had never thought of their being otherwise than lady-like, and certainly very fashionable; but she supposed Lady Marchmont knew best, and was pleased to find herself considered superior. Gerald was of course one of their subjects of conversation, and gradually Marian, with her strict regard to truth, from a little unguardedness, found herself involved in a tangle from which there was no escape, without telling the whole story of the Wreath of Beauty. She need not have been afraid; Selina laughed as if nothing would ever make her cease, and insisted on Marian's bringing the portrait the next time she came to visit her. She vowed that she would patronise Lionel for ever for his cleverness; and when Marian looked sorrowful about the consequences, she told her that it was much better for Gerald to be at school, and she was very glad he was gone; and then she patted Marian's shoulder, and begged that she would not think her very cruel for saying so. Marian was very glad to be able to acquit her of vanity, when she heard the history of the insertion of the engraving, which had been entreated for by persons whom Lord Marchmont did not like to disoblige. The engraving both he and Selina disliked very much; and when Marian saw the original portrait, she perceived that the affectation did not reside there, for it was very beautiful, and the only fault to be found with it was chiefly attributable to the fact that miniatures always make people look so pretty, that this did not give the idea of a person so surpassingly lovely as Selina. Lord Marchmont came in several times to speak to his wife, but Marian did not see much of him till dinner-time, and then she liked him very much. He was certainly rather a grave person, and she wondered to see how Selina could be so merry with him; but he was evidently amused, and Marian had yet to learn how a clever and much occupied man likes nonsense to be talked to him and before him in his hours of relaxation. He behaved to Marian herself very kindly, and just as if she was a grown-up person,--a treat which she had scarcely enjoyed since she left Fern Torr; and though she was silent, as usual when with strangers, it was with no uncomfortable shyness: she was more at ease already with him than with Mr. Lyddell. Selina told him the history of Gerald's works of art in so droll a manner, that Marian herself saw it in a much funnier aspect than she had ever done before. He was much diverted, and turning to Marian, said, with seriousness that would have alarmed her, but for Selina's laughter, and a certain sub-smile about the corners of his mouth, that he hoped he was not to take the Beast as anything personal. Selina told him that she wanted him to convince Marian that it was a very good thing for Gerald to be sent to school, and he set to work to do so in earnest with much kindness, and by asking sundry questions about her brother's attainments and tastes, he so won her, that she was ready to do him the honour of acknowledging him as one of her own cousins. The evening came too soon to an end, though the carriage had not been ordered to take Marian home, till ten o'clock. It had all been like one dream of brightness, and Marian, when she awoke the next morning, could hardly believe that it was the truth that she had enjoyed herself so much, and that a house containing such happiness for her could be in London or so near her. The schoolroom looked very black and dull after the bright little sitting-room where she had parted with Selina; the lessons were wearisome, her companions more uncongenial than ever; she felt actually cross at the examination to which Clara subjected her about every trifle she could think of, in the house of Marchmont. She could have talked of its delights if there had been anybody to care about them in her own way, but that was the great if of Marian's life. She was conscious that her day's pleasure had unhinged her, and made her present tasks unusually distasteful, and she thought it the fault of the Lyddells, and in a great fit of repining blamed Edmund for injustice to Selina in not letting her house be their home. Her great hope was of another day there, the only thing that seemed to give a brightness to her life, and she looked forward to an intercourse between Lady Marchmont and Mrs. Lyddell, which would produce continual meetings. However, time passed on, and she did not see Selina. Mrs. Lyddell took her when she went to return the visit, but Lady Marchmont was not at home. It was not till after more than a fortnight that she received a little note from her, saying that they were going to a show of flowers, and would send for Marian to go with them. There was quite a commotion in the house on the occasion; not that all were not willing that Marian should go, but that Mrs. Lyddell thought her dress not at all fit; the plain straw bonnet which Marian _would_ buy, in spite of all that could be said to the contrary, and that old black silk dress which did very well just for going to Church in, with a governess, but---- Mrs. Lyddell and Saunders were for once in their lives agreed; and Marian, who thought her money would have served her this time to fulfil her grand scheme of buying Tytler's History of Scotland, was overpowered, and obliged to let them have their will, and wear it outside her head, in white silk; instead of inside, in Robert Bruce's wanderings. She was quite ready, in new bonnet and mantle, by the time Lady Marchmont's carriage was at the door, and very happy she was to find herself by her side again. Perhaps there was a little consciousness of newness in the manner in which she wore them, for Lady Marchmont remarked upon them, and said that they were very pretty, as in fact they were. Marian looked disconsolate, and Selina laughingly asked why. She told her former wishes, and was further laughed at, or rather Mrs. Lyddell was. Selina said the old bonnet would have done just as well; "it was so like such people to smarten up for a great occasion." Such people! Marian wondered again, and disliked her white bonnet more than ever, resolving for the future to trust her own taste. She soon forgot all this, however, in the pleasure of seeing green grass and trees, and the beautiful, most beautiful flowers, with their delicious perfume. This was real delight, such as she had never imagined before, and she thought she could have studied the wonderful forms of those tropical plants for ever, if it had not been for the crowds of people, and for a little awe of Lord Marchmont, who had given her his arm, and who did not seem to know or care much even for the dove orchis or the zebra-striped pitcher-plant. She wished she could turn him into Edmund, and looked at every plant which she fancied a native of the Cape, almost as kindly as if it had been a primrose of Fern Torr. It was another delightful day. Marian went back with her friends, and sat by while Selina was dressed for an evening party, heard a description of her home in the country, and gave a very unflattering one of Oakworthy, gained somehow or other a renewed impression of her own superiority to the Lyddells, and went home to indulge in another fit of discontent. Such were Marian's visits to Lady Marchmont, and such their effect. Mrs. Lyddell did much indeed that was calculated to give strength to the feeling by the evident pride which she took in Marian's familiarity with Lady Marchmont, and even in the cold, distant, formal civility with which she herself was treated. There was danger around Marian which she did not understand, the world was tempting her in a different way. She disliked what she saw among the Lyddells too much to find their worldly tastes and tempers infectious, but her intercourse with Selina was a temptation in a new form. She loved Selina so heartily as to see with her eyes, and be led by her in opinions: especially when these were of a kind according with her own character. It was from her that Marian imbibed the idea that she was to be pitied for living in her present home, not because Mrs. Lyddell's mind was set on earth and earthly things, but because she did not belong to those elite circles which Marian learnt to believe her own proper place. Edmund had told her she might stand on high ground, and she believed him, but was this such high ground as he meant? The danger did not strike Marian, because it did not seem to her like pride, since the distinction, whatever it was, did not consist in rank; she would have had a horror of valuing herself on being a baronet's daughter, but this more subtle difference flattered her more refined feelings of vanity; and though she was far from being conscious of it, greatly influenced her frame of mind, and her conduct towards her cousins. It was not without reason now that Caroline thought her proud. It must not, however, be supposed that this was Marian's abiding frame of mind; it was rather the temper which was infused into her by each successive visit to Selina during the next three years. Of course, every time it was renewed, it was also strengthened, but it was chiefly her London disposition, and used in great degree to go off when she was taken up with the interests of Oakworthy, and removed from the neighbourhood of Lady Marchmont. Oakworthy was so preferable to London, except so far as that she was there out of Selina's reach, that she began to have a kindness for it. She knew some of the poor people there, in whom Caroline had kept up an interest ever since Miss Cameron's time; the smoky streets of London had taught her to prize the free air and green turf of the Downs; and, thanks to Edmund, her own dear Mayflower awaited her there, and she enjoyed many a canter with Caroline and Walter. She began for the first time to become acquainted with the latter, and to learn to look upon him with high esteem, but to obtain a knowledge of him was a very difficult matter. He was naturally diffident and bashful, and his spirits were not high; he had been thrown more and more into himself by his mother's hastiness of manner and his father's neglect. His principles were high and true, his conduct excellent, and as he had never given any cause for anxiety, he was almost always overlooked by the whole family. Nor was he clever, and the consciousness of this added to his timidity, which being unfortunately physical as well as mental, caused him to be universally looked down upon by his brothers. Even Marian began to share the feeling when she saw him turn pale and start back from the verge of a precipitous chalk pit where she could stand in perfect indifference, and when she heard him aver his preference for quiet horses. Mayflower's caperings were to him and Caroline so shocking, and it appeared to them so improper that she should be allowed to mount such an animal, that but for her complete ease, her delight in the creature's spirit, and her earnest entreaties, a complaint against Mayflower would certainly have been preferred to the authorities. In spite of all this, there was satisfaction in talking to Walter, for he saw things as Marian did, right and wrong were his first thoughts, and his right and wrong were the same as hers. This was worth a great deal to her, though she was often provoked with him for want of boldness in condemnation. A man grown up could, she thought, do so much to set things to rights, if he would but speak out openly, and remonstrate, but Walter shrank from interfering in any way; it seemed to cost him an effort even to agree with Marian's censure. Yes, she thought, as she stood looking at the print of S. Margaret, Walter might pass by the dragon, nay, fight his own battle with it, but he would never tread it manfully under, so that it might not rise to hurt others. He might mourn for the sins around him, but would he ever correct them? Marian thought if she was a man, a man almost twenty, destined to be a clergyman, she had it in her soul to have done great things; then she would not be shy, for she should feel it her duty to speak. In the meantime, Marian had a trouble of her own, a sore place in her heart, and in its tenderest spot, for Gerald was the cause. The first holidays had been all she could desire; he was affectionate, open, full of talk about home and Edmund, with the best of characters; and with the exception of all the other boys being "fellows" and nameless, there was nothing like reserve about him; but the next time, he had not been three days in the house, before she perceived that the cloud had come down again, which had darkened the last few weeks before his going to school. He avoided being alone with her, he would not let her ask him questions, he talked as if he despised his governors and teachers, and regarded rules as things made to be eluded. His master's letter did not give a satisfactory account of him, and when Marian tried to fish out something about his goings on from Lionel, she met with impenetrable silence, Lionel himself seemed to be going through school pretty much in the same way, with fits and starts of goodness, and longer intervals of idleness, but he made his eyes a reason, or an excuse, for not doing more. They were large, bright, blue, expressive eyes, and it was hard to believe them in fault, but strong sunshine or much reading by candle-light always brought the green and purple monsters, and sometimes a degree of inflammation. It was said that he must be careful of them, and how much of his idleness was necessary, how much was shirking, was a question for his own conscience. Every time Gerald came home, Marian saw something more that pained her. There was the want of confidence that grew more evident every time, though it was by no means want of affection; it was vain to try to keep him away from the stables; he read books on Sunday which she did not approve, she did not think he wrote to Edmund, and what made her more uneasy than all was, that Elliot was becoming the great authority with him. Elliot had begun to take a sort of distant patronising notice of hint, which seemed to give him great pleasure, and which Marian who every year had reason to think worse of Elliot, considered very dangerous. She could not bear to see Gerald search through, the newspapers for the racing intelligence, and to see him orating scientifically to Lionel and Johnny about the points of the horses; she did not like to see him talking to the gamekeepers, and set her face, more than was perhaps prudent, against all the field sports which were likely to lead him into Elliot's society. In her zeal against this danger, she forgot how keen a sportsman Edmund himself was, and spoke as if she thought these amusements wrong altogether, and to be avoided, and this, together with the example of Walter, gave Gerald a very undesirable idea of the dulness of being steady and well conducted. That he spent more money than was good for him, was also an idea of hers gathered from chance observations of her own, and unguarded words of the other boys; but this was one of the points on which his reserve was the strictest, and she only could be anxious in ignorance. The holidays, anticipated with delight, ended in pain, though still she cherished a hope that what alarmed her might be boyish thoughtlessness of no importance in itself, and only magnified by her fears. She was encouraged in this by finding that Lord Marchmont, when he saw him once in London, thought him a very fine, promising boy, and that Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell did not seem to see anything seriously amiss. But then Lord Marchmont had not seen enough of him to be able to judge, and would not have told her even if he had thought there probably was anything wrong; and she could not trust to Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell. It was very painful to imagine herself unjust to her only brother, and she drove the fears away; but back they would always come, every time Gerald was at home, and every time she looked and longed in vain for a letter from him. Thus passed, as has already been said, three years, spent for the most part without event. Caroline, at eighteen, was introduced; but though her evenings were given to company, her mornings were still spent in the schoolroom, of which indeed she was the chief brightness. Marian, though she had the offer of coming out at the same time, was very glad to embrace the alternative of waiting another year. She was now a little past her seventeenth birthday, which emancipated her from being absolutely Miss Morley's pupil. She breakfasted with the rest of the family, dined with them when there was not a large party, learnt more of masters, and studied more on her own account than she had ever done before; and only depended on Miss Morley and Clara for companionship in walking and meals, when Caroline was otherwise engaged. She was more with the Marchmonts than ever during this spring. She rode with them, kept Selina company when her husband went out without her; went about with her wherever a girl of woman's height, though not yet come out, could be taken; and was almost always at any of her dinners or evening parties, where she could have the pleasure of seeing anything that was distinguished. It was a very pleasant life; for she was new to the liberty of being loosed from schoolroom restraints, and at the same time the restraints and duties of society had not laid hold upon her. Among Selina's friends she was not expected to talk, and could listen in peace to the conversation of the very superior men Lord Marchmont brought around him; or if she chanced to exchange a few words with any of them, she remembered it afterwards as a distinction. Selina, with all the homage paid to her beauty, her rank, her fascination of manner, and her husband's situation, was made much of by all, and was able to avoid being bored, without affronting any one; and a spoilt child of fashion herself, in her generosity and affection, she made Marian partake her pleasures, and avoid annoyances as far as she could, like herself. It was a pleasant life, and Marian thoroughly enjoyed it but was it a safe one?

9

None

"So too may soothing Hope thy leave enjoy, Sweet visions of long severed hearts to frame; Though absence may impair or cares annoy, Some constant mind may draw us still the same." _Christian Year_. "Here are two letters for you, Marian," said Mrs. Lyddell, meeting the girls as they came in from a walk; "Lady Marchmont's servant left this note." "An invitation to dinner for this evening," said Marian opening it; "ah! I knew they were to have a party; 'just recollected that Lady Julia Faulkner used to know Fern Torr, and I must have you to meet her, if it is not a great bore.'" "Then, my dear, had you not better send an answer? James can take it directly." "No, no, thank you; the carriage will call at seven. Who can this Lady Julia be? But--" by this time Marian had arrived at her other letter, and, with a sudden start and scream of joy, she exclaimed, "They are coming!" "Coming? Who?" asked Caroline. "Agnes--and Mr. and Mrs. Wortley! O! All coming to stay with their friends in Cadogan Place. I shall see them at any time I please." "I am very glad of it," said Caroline. "Tell them that their earliest engagement must be to us," said Mrs. Lyddell. "When do you expect them?" "Next week, next week itself," cried Marian, "to stay a whole fortnight, or perhaps three weeks. Mr. Wortley has business which will occupy him--" Few faces ever expressed more joy than Marian's in the prospect of a meeting with these dearest of friends; Mrs. Lyddell and Caroline smiled at her joy as she flew out of the room to make Saunders a partaker in her pleasure. "Strange girl," said Caroline; "so cold to some, so warm to others; I shall be glad to see these incomparable Wortleys." "So shall I," said Mrs. Lyddell; "but I expect that Marian's opinion of them will soon alter, she has now become used to such different society. However we must be very civil to them, be they what they may." In the meantime Marian penned a letter to Agnes, in terms of delight and affection twenty times warmer than any which had ever passed her lips, and then resigned herself to Saunders' hands to be dressed, without much free will on her own part; too excited to read as usual during the operation, sometimes talking, sometimes trying to imagine Agnes in London, a conjunction which seemed to her almost impossible. The carriage came for her, and in due time she was entering the great drawing-room, where Selina, looking prettier than ever in her evening dress, sat reading a novel and awaiting her guests. "O Selina, only think," she began; "the Wortleys are coming!" "What say you? Why, Marian, you are in a wild state. Who are coming?" "The Wortleys, Selina, my own Agnes." "O, your old clergyman's daughter! You constant little dove, you don't mean that you have kept up that romantic friendship all these years?" "Why, Selina!" "Yes, yes, I remember all about them now: the daughter was your great friend." "She was more yours," said Marian, "when you were at Fern Torr, because you were more nearly the same age. Don't you remember how you used to whisper under the sycamore tree, and send me out of the way?" "Poor little Marian! Well, those were merry times, and I rather think your Agnes promised to be very pretty." "And shall not you be glad to see her?" "When do they come?" "Next Monday, to--Cadogan Place." "Close to you. Well, that is lucky; but now, my dear, if you can come down from the clouds for a moment, I want to tell you about Lady Julia." "Who is she?" said Marian, bringing back her attention with an effort. "A tiresome woman," whispered Selina, with a sort of affectation of confidence; "but the fact is, Lord Marchmont used to know her husband, or his father, or his great grandfather, sometime in the dark ages, and so be wants me to make much of her. She is one of the people that it is real toil to make talk for; but by good fortune I remembered that I had heard some legend about her once knowing my uncles, and so I thought that a cross-examination of you about Gerald and Fern Torr would be a famous way of filling up the evening." "O!" said Marian in a not very satisfied tone, "so she has a husband, has she? I fancied from your note that she only consisted of herself," "She consists of a son and daughters," said Selina. "Her husband is dead, but the rest of the house you will presently see." "Eh?" said Lord Marchmont, coming out of the other room where he had been writing, and greeting Marian. "You don't mean that you have invited that young Faulkner?" "You would, not have me leave out the only agreeable one of the party--something to sweeten the infliction." Lord Marchmont smiled at the arch, bold, playful manner with which she looked up in his face, as if to defy him to be displeased; but still he was evidently vexed, and said, "It is hard upon Marian only to take her from Elliot Lyddell's society to bring her into Mr. Faulkner's." "Indeed! but that is hard on Mr. Faulkner," said his wife. "As to worth, I suppose he and Marian's cousin are pretty much on a par, but it is but justice to say that he has considerably the advantage in externals." "It cannot be helped now," said Lord Marchmont; "but I wish I had told you before, Selina. The esteem I had for that young man's father would make me still more reluctant to cultivate him, considering his present way of going on." "Well, one invitation to dinner is not such a very agricultural proceeding, that you need waste such a quantity of virtuous indignation," said Selina; "I daresay he will not grow _very_ much the faster for it." The arrival of some of the party put a stop to the conversation, and presently Lady Julia Faulkner, Mr. and Miss Faulkner, were announced. The first was a fair, smooth, handsome matron, who looked as if she had never been preyed upon by either thought or care; her daughter was a well-dressed, fashionable young lady; and her son, so gentlemanlike and sensible looking, as to justify Lady Marchmont in saying that in externals he had the advantage of Elliot Lyddell. Marian sat next him at dinner, and though she meant to dislike him, she could not succeed in doing so; he talked with so much spirit and cleverness of the various exhibitions and other things, which are chiefly useful as food for conversation. Something too might be ascribed to the store of happiness within her, which would not let her be ungracious or unwilling to let herself be entertained, for on the whole, she had never been so well amused at a dinner party. In the drawing-room the examination took place with which she had been threatened, but she had grown hardened to such things with time, and could endure them much better than she used to do. It was always the custom for her to outstay the guests, so as to talk them over with her cousins; and, on this occasion the first exclamation was, how very agreeable and clever Mr. Faulkner was. "So much the worse," said Lord Marchmont gravely; "I think worse of him than I did before, for I find he has taken up Germanism." Marian had some notion that Germanism meant that the foundations of his faith were unsettled, and she looked extremely horrified, but she had not time to dwell on the subject, for the carriage came to the door, and she was glad to be alone to hug herself with delight. The gas lamps looked as bright to her eyes as if there were an illumination specially got up in honour of her happiness, and the drive to Mr. Lyddell's was far too short to settle a quarter of what Agnes was to see and do. It was almost four years since she had parted with her, but the correspondence had scarcely slackened, nor the earnestness of her affection and confidence diminished. There was no one, excepting Edmund, to whom she could look for counsel in the same manner, and the hope of long conversations with Mrs. Wortley was almost as delightful as the thought of seeing Agnes once more. She had begged them to call the first thing, and accordingly soon after breakfast one fine Tuesday morning, a loud double-knock caused her heart to leap into her mouth, or rather her throat, and almost choke her. Mrs. Lyddell, Elliot, and Caroline were all present, and she wished them forty miles off, when the announcement was the very thing she wished to hear! There they were, Mrs. Wortley giving that fond, motherly kiss, Agnes catching both hands, and kissing both cheeks, Mr. Wortley giving one hearty squeeze to her hand! There they really were, she was by Mrs. Wortley's side, their own familiar tones were in her ears! She hardly dared to look up, for fear Agnes should be altered, but no, she could not call her altered, though she was more formed, the features were less childish, and there was more thought, though not less life and light than of old, in the blue eyes. Indeed it came upon Marian by surprise, that she had not known before that Agnes was uncommonly pretty as well as loveable. She was surprised not to see her friend more shy, but able to answer Elliot's civilities with readiness and ease; whereas she who still felt stiff and awkward with a stranger, had supposed that such must be doubly the case with one who had lived so much less in the world. That day was to be devoted by the Wortleys to visits and business, but they reckoned on having Marian to themselves all the next, and were to call for her early on their way to some of the sights of London. Mrs. Lyddell made them fix an early day for coming to dinner, and they took their leave, Marian feeling as if the visit had not been everything that she expected, and yet as if it was happiness even to know that the same city contained herself and them. No sooner were they gone than the Lyddells began with one voice to admire Agnes, even Elliot was very much struck with her, and positively gained himself some degree of credit with Marian, by confirming her opinion of her friend's beauty. It was delightful indeed that Agnes should be something to be proud of; Marian would not have loved her one whit the less if she had been a plain, awkward country girl, but it was something to have her affection justified in their eyes, and to have no fear of Agnes being celebrated only for her cricket. They called for Marian early the next morning, and now she received the real greeting, corresponding to her parting, as Mrs. Wortley's second daughter. Then began the inquiries for everything at Fern Torr, animate or inanimate, broken into by Agnes's exclamations of surprise at everything new and wonderful in the streets, a happy, but a most desultory conversation. At last they got into a quiet street where Mr. and Mrs. Wortley went to choose a carpet, and the two girls were left to sit in the carriage. "O Marian!" began Agnes, "so you have not quite lost your old self! I am glad to see how it all is at least, for I have something tangible to pity you for." "I wonder what it is," said Marian, too happy for pity at that moment. "O, my dear! that Mr. Elliot Lyddell!" "He is hardly ever in my way," said Marian. "And his sister! Her dress! What study it must have taken! In the extreme of fashion." "Caroline's dress is not exactly what she would choose herself," said Marian. "That must be only an excuse, Marian; for though you have a well-turned-out look, it is not as if you were in a book of fashions." "I am not Mrs. Lyddell's daughter, and though I do expect a battle or two when I come out, it will not be a matter of obedience with me, as it is with Caroline." "Is it very painful obedience?" said Agnes laughingly; "well, you do deserve credit for not being spoilt among such people." "In the first place, how do you know they are 'such people?' and next, how do you know I am not spoilt?" "You must be the greatest hypocrite in the world, if you are spoilt, to write me such letters, and sit so boldly looking me in the face. And as to their being 'such people,' have not I seen them, have not I heard them, and, above all, has not Mr. Arundel given me their full description?" "But that was three years and a half ago," said Marian. "And have they changed since then?" asked Agnes. "I don't know." "O how glad I am to hear that!" cried Agnes. "Never mind them; but to hear you say 'I don't know' in that old considering tone is proof enough to me that you are my own old Marian, which is all I care for." "I don't--" began Marian; then stopping short and laughing, she added, "I mean I was thinking whether it is really so. Can any person live four years without changing? Especially at our age. What a little girl I was then!" "Yes, to be sure, you have grown into a tall--yes, quite a tall woman, and you have got your black hair into a very pretty broad braid, and you wear a bracelet and carry a parasol, and don't let your veil stream down your back; I don't see much more alteration. Your eyes are as black and your face as white, and altogether you are quite as provoking as ever in never telling one anything that one wishes to know." Marian gave a stiff smile, one which she had learnt in company, and grew frightened at herself to find that she was treating Agnes, as she treated the outer world. She did not know what to say; her love was deep, strong and warm within, but it was too soon to "rend the silken veil;" and this awkwardness, this consciousness of coldness was positive suffering. She was relieved that the return of Mr. and Mrs. Wortley put an end to the _tête-à-tête_, then shocked that it should be a relief; for, poor girl, her extreme embarrassment overpowering the happiness in her friend's presence, made her doubt whether it could be that her affection was really departing, a thought too dreadful to be dwelt upon. Who would have told her that she should endure so much pain in her first drive with the Wortleys? They went to call on Lady Marchmont that day, and, as Marian expected, did not find her at home. Agnes renewed the old lamentation that Marian could not live with her and thus avoid Mrs. Lyddell's finery and fashion. "Now why do you laugh, Marian? you don't mean that Selina Grenville can have turned into a fashionable lady? she was the simplest creature in the world." "She is what she was then," said Marian; "but as to being fashionable--. My dear Agnes, you don't understand." "We have not to reproach Marian for want of knowledge of the world now, Agnes," said Mr. Wortley, smiling at his daughter's bewildered look. "Ah!" cried Marian, and there stopped, thinking how grievously she must be altered, since this was the reproach that the Lyddells used so often to make her. Some wonderful sight here engaged Agnes, and Marian's exclamation fell unheeded. She spent a good many hours with the Wortleys while they were in London, but usually in the midst of confusion and bustle: Mr. and Mrs. Wortley were busy, and Agnes almost wild with the novelties around. Marian's heart ached as she recollected a saying which she had read, that a thread once broken can never be united again. Her greatest comfort was in the prospect of a visit to Fern Torr; for Mrs. Lyddell willingly consented to her accepting Mrs. Wortley's invitation to return with them, and to stay even to the end of her brother's holidays, which he was also to spend at _home_. She should know better there whether she was really changed; she could take it all up again there, and now she could afford to wait, and not feel the necessity of saying everything that would not be said in so short a time. One thing was certain, she did not like to hear Agnes talk against the Lyddells. She could have done it herself; nay, she did so sometimes when with Lady Marchmont, but then that was only about "nonsense." She had lived with them too long, had shared in too many of their conversations and employments, was, in fact, too much one of the family, to like to hear them condemned. She thought it very strange, and she could not tell whether it was from having grown like them, or from a genuine dislike to injustice; at any rate it was this which convinced her that she had come to regard them in some degree as friends. She wished them to appear to as much advantage as possible, but this they really seemed resolved not to do, at least not what was in her eyes and those of the Wortleys, to advantage. Mrs. Lyddell _would_ have a grand dinner party to do honour to her friends, and the choice of company was not what she would have made. To make it worse, Elliot sat next Agnes, Walter was not at home, and the conversation was upon religious subjects, which had better not have been discussed at all in such a party, and which were viewed by most present, in the wrong way. All this, however, Marian could have endured, for she did not care to defend Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell or Elliot, individually, only when considered as forming part of "the Lyddells," but she really wished Agnes to like Caroline and Clara. She did not know whether Agnes was not perverse about Caroline, whom she continued to call a mere fashionable young lady, not being able to find any other reproach than this vague one; but as to Clara, Marian herself could have found it in her heart to beat her when she made sillier speeches than usual in Agnes' hearing, and, above all, for having at this time a violent fit of her affection for Marian herself, whom she perseveringly called a dear girl, and followed about so closely as to be always in the way. Marian would have been still more provoked with Clara, had Agnes not had forbearance enough to abstain from telling her all that Clara had said, when once, by some chance, left alone with her for ten minutes. After a great deal about her extreme friendship for "dearest Marian," she said, "Some people think her pretty,--do you, Miss Wortley?" "Not exactly pretty," said Agnes, "but hers is a fine face." "Ah! she has not colour enough to be pretty. She is much too pale, poor dear, but some people say that is aristocratic. And she is like her cousin, Lady Marchmont, the beauty. Do you know Lady Marchmont?" "I used to know her as a girl." "Ah! she is very handsome, and so much the fashion. It is such an advantage for Marian to be there, and I hope she will slyly bring us acquainted some of these days. But then all the Arundels are proud; Marian has a good deal of pride in her own way, though she is a dear girl!" "Marian!" exclaimed Agnes. "O yes! She is a dear girl, but every one in Wiltshire speaks of her pride; all our friends do, I assure you. I always defend her, of course, but every one remarks it." Agnes was wondering whether simply to disbelieve anything so preposterous as that all Wiltshire should be remarking on poor Marian's pride, or whether to explain it by her well-known shyness, when Clara made another sudden transition. "Do you know Mr. Arundel?" "O yes." "Is not he a fine, distinguished looking man? We did admire him so when he was here. I assure you we are all quite jealous of Marian. Miss Morley says there can be but one _dénouement_." Here Marian came into the room, and Agnes proceeded to question within herself which was most wonderful,--the extreme folly of Clara, or of the governess. Another vexation to Marian was the behaviour of Lady Marchmont. She herself was invited as often as usual to come to her cousin, but she could not spare a minute from her dear friends, and only was surprised and vexed that they were not included, and that Selina had not yet called upon them. She knew that one of her parties consisted of persons whom Mr. Wortley would have been particularly glad to meet, and she watched most anxiously for a card for him; she even went so far, as in her own note of refusal to give a very far distant hint, thinking that Selina only required to be put in mind of his being in London. At last, only two days before they left town, Lady Marchmont left her card for Mrs. Wortley, but without asking if she was at home; and Marian, who was in the house at the time, felt the neglect most acutely. Mrs. Wortley saw the bright glow of red spread all over the pale check, and was heartily sorry on her account. Agnes broke out into exclamations that there must be a mistake,--the servants must have misunderstood, and she would have asked questions; but Marian said, in a voice of deep feeling, "No, Agnes, it is no mistake. You understand me now when I say Selina Marchmont is more of a fine lady than Mrs. Lyddell. But O, I never thought she would have neglected you!" "Say no more, my dear," said Mrs. Wortley; "Lady Marchmont must have too many engagements to attend to us dull country folks. Indeed, it gives me no pain, my dear, except to see it grieve you. You know she has done her duty by us." "Her duty by herself, she may think," said Marian, "in not doing what would be called rude, but not her duty by you; you, to whom all who ever--who ever loved _them_, owe so much." The tears glittered in Marian's eyes, and her cheek was flushed. "Marian, my dear, cool down a little," said Mrs. Wortley; "think how long it is since Lady Marchmont knew us, and recollect that the--the causes, which you think you have for caring for us, may not appear the same to her. She only thinks of us as dimly remembered neighbours of her cousin's, coming to London for a little while; she is full of engagements, and has no time for us, and just follows the fashions of other people." "That is it," said Marian. "How shall I ever wish her good-bye in charity?" They were interrupted; and it was not till Marian was gone that Agnes had the satisfaction of a full outbreak of indignation at all fine ladies, and of triumph in the impossibility of their ever spoiling her own dear Marian. Marian had to spend the evening with the Marchmonts, and she was more constrained with them at first than she had ever been before. Yet it was not easy to continue constrained with Selina, who was perfectly unconscious that she had given any offence; and the feeling was quite removed by half an hour's play with little Willy, who was now promoted to be a drawing-room child for various short intervals of the day. He was under a nursery governess, who let his mamma have a little more property in him. Selina asked about the intended journey, and thus renewed Marian's feeling of the wrongs of the Wortleys; but when Selina scolded her for not coming oftener, supposed she had been very happy, and envied her for going to dear old Fern Torr, Marian began to forgive, and did so quite when she wished she could have seen them, and lamented that she had been so much engaged. Three times she had gone out, fully meaning to call on them, and have a good long chat, but each time something delayed her; and the last, and fourth, she really was obliged to be at home early, and could not possibly make a call. The charm of manner made all this appease Marian; but when the immediate spell of Selina's grace and caressing ways was removed, she valued it rightly, and thought, though with pain, of the expressive epithet, "fudge!" Could not Selina have gone to her aunt's old friends if she would? Had not Marian known her to take five times the trouble for her own gratification? Marian gained a first glimpse of the selfishness of refined exclusiveness, and doubted whether it had not been getting a hold of herself, when she had learnt of Selina to despise and neglect all that was unpleasing. O the joy of knowing that she should turn her back on the great wicked world again, and measure herself by the old standard of home! And yet she trembled, lest she should find that the world had touched her more than she had thought.

10

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"Yes, friends may be kind, and vales may be green, And brooks, may sparkle along between; But it is not friendship's kindest look, Nor loveliest vale, nor clearest brook, That can tell the tale which is written for me On each old face and well known tree." R. H. FROUDE. It was a happy day for both Agnes Wortley and Marian Arundel when they again entered Devonshire. Agnes seemed to feel her four weeks as serious an absence as Marian did her four years, and was even more rapturous in her exclamations at each object that showed her she was near home. They walked up the last and steepest hill, or rather bounded along the well known side path, catching at the long trailing wreaths of the dogrose, peeping over the gates which broke the high hedge, where Marian, as she saw the moors, could only relieve her heart by pronouncing to herself those words of Manzoni's Lucia, "_Vedo i miei monti. _" ("I see my own mountains.") She beheld the woods and the chimneys of the Manor House, but she shrank from looking at it, and gazed, as if she feared it was but a moment's vision, at the rough cottages, the smoke curling among the trees, the red limestone quarry, and the hills far away in the summer garb of golden furze. It was home, her heart was full, and Agnes respected her silence. Down the hill, along the well-known paling, past the cottages, the dear old faces smiling welcome; the Church, always the same, the green rail of the Vicarage garden, the paint was the only thing new; the porch, with roses hanging thicker over it than ever; Ranger, David Chapple, Jane, the housemaid, all in ecstasy in their different ways. That first evening was spent in visiting every nook of the garden with Agnes, and hearing the history of each little innovation; then, after a slight interval of sleepiness, came those fond, cordial "good nights," which dwell no where but at home. She woke to the reality of a Fern Torr Sunday, not to shake off with disappointment and wearinesss, the dream of such a day. There was the pinkthorne, dressed in all its garlands, before her window, the dew lying heavy and silvery on the grass; the cart-horses enjoying their holiday in the meadow, the mass of blossom in the orchard, the sky above, all blueness, the air full of a delicious quietness, as if the sunshine itself was repose, Marian leant out at her window, and wondered if it was possible she should have been so long away, so familiar, so natural did it all seem. The hurried breakfast, the walk to school, the school itself, how well she knew it all, and within the school how old a world it was, and yet how new! The benches, the books, the smiles, the curtsies, the very nosegays, redolent of southernwood, were unchanged, but all the great good girls of her day, the prime first class, where was it? Here was the first class still, Agnes' pride; but, behold, these are the little ones of her day, and the babies for whom she had made pink frocks and frilled caps, now stared up in her face responsible beings, who could say more than half the Catechism. Her own little pets of school-days were grown out of knowledge into the uninteresting time of life, the "old age of childhood," and looked as if they found it equally difficult to recognize "little Miss" in a lady taller than Miss Wortley. Next followed the walk to Church, full of meetings and greetings, admiration of her growth, and inquiries after Sir Gerald. Yes, Marian did feel like the old self: her four years' absence was like a dream that had passed away, and was nothing to her; she could think only of home, home thoughts and home interests; the cares and the teasings, the amusements and the turmoils of Oakworthy and London, were as things far distant, which had never really concerned her, or belonged to some different state of existence. She was at home, as she continually said to herself; she felt as if she was in some way more in the presence of her parents, as if their influence was sheltering her, and shielding her from all external ill, as in the days of yore. Happy they who can return after four years' trial as Marian did. She was preparing for Confirmation; for, to her great joy, she was in time to form one of Mr. Wortley's own flock, He gave her half an hour every other morning; and now it was that all the difficulties raised in her mind in arguments with Caroline, doubts with right or wrong, or questions why and wherefore, were either solved or smoothed down. Her principles were strengthened, her views were cleared up; she learnt the reasons of rules she had obeyed in ignorance, and perceived her own failures and their causes. These were her graver hours. At other times she read, drew, and studied German with Agnes, who gladly availed herself of the aid of one well crammed by London masters, and who could not but allow, even to the credit of her enemies, that they had made Marian very accomplished. There were long walks to every well-remembered hill and dell, with further expeditions planned against the return of the boys, and numerous visits to old friends at the cottages to present Marian's gifts, which had fairly overpowered Saunders' powers of packing. Delightful walks, how different from the parade on the chalk roads, over high hedges, through gaps doubly fenced with thorns, scrambling, at the risk of neck us well as of dress, over piles of fern and ivy-covered rocks, or hopping across brooks on extemporised stepping-stones, usually in the very thick of some _mauvais pas_, discussing some tremendous point of metaphysics or languages and breaking off in it to scream at the beauty of the view, or to pity a rent muslin. Marian and Agnes talked considerably now, and, allowing for the difference in age, just as they used to do. Marian's fears of her own coldness and doubts of her confidence in Agnes had all melted in her native atmosphere, and were quite forgotten. She could speak of the Lyddells now, though still she did not find fault with them, nor make complaints; indeed, it was Agnes' abuse of them that made her first discover that she had a regard for them. This prejudice, as she began to call it, seemed to her unaccountable, since she had never written complainingly, until she found at last, (which made her inclined to treat it with more respect,) that it was founded on what Edmund had reported. He had come to Fern Torr immediately after his visit to Oakworthy, very much out of spirits, and had poured out his anxieties to his friends, talking of Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell with less caution than he had used with Marian, and lamenting over the fate of his poor little cousins like something hopeless. Marian thought of Gerald, and her heart failed her, then she hoped again, for Gerald was coming home, and then she understood what Edmund had thought of it all, and knew that it was perfectly consistent with his last conversation with her. So she said that was four years ago, and that Edmund was very kind. The time of Gerald's arrival came. Charles and James Wortley preceded him by about a fortnight, and all that Marian saw of them made her rejoice in such companionship for him. Mr. Wortley drove her to meet him at Exeter, and never was greeting more joyful. Lionel had sent her a message that Oakworthy would be as dull as ditch water without her, and if she did not come back before the end of the holidays, he should certainly be obliged to go back to Eton again to find something to do. Having delivered this message, Gerald made both his companions laugh by gazing about as if surprised to find Exeter still in the same place, and wondering at reading all the old names over the shops. Marian was delighted that he recognised all the torrs on the drive home, and very proud of his height, his beauty, and his cordial, well-bred gentlemanlike manners, which gave the Wortleys general satisfaction. The first thing he did was to go out and visit his old pony in the paddock, patting it very affectionately, though he seemed much surprised that it was so small. In the evening they went to the Manor House. Marian had spent many hours there, sat in the empty rooms, wandered in the garden, and mused on past days, or dwelt on them with Agnes, and she had looked forward with great pleasure to having her brother there. She wished to have had him alone, but he asked Agnes and the boys to come, and they all set out together up the rocky steps, Gerald far before the rest, and when Marian came up to him he was standing on the lawn, at the top of the steps, looking at the house. "I thought it was larger," exclaimed he. "But, Gerald, see how high the magnolia has grown, and how nice and smooth old Lapthorn keeps the lawn. Does it not look as if we had gone away only yesterday?" "Yes, and there is the little larburnum that we planted. How it is grown! But how very small the house is." By this time the door had been opened by the old housekeeper, and Marian, running up to her, exclaimed, "Here he is, Mrs. White! Come, come, Gerald, come and speak to Mrs. White!" Gerald came, but with no readiness of manner. His "how d'ye do?" was shy and cold, and not at all answerable to her eager, almost tearful, "Pretty well, thank you, Sir. It is something to see you at home again, Sir Gerald; so tall, and looking so well. 'Tis almost old times again, to see you and Miss Marian." He stood silent, and Agnes spoke, "Yes, Mrs. White, is not he grown? It does not seem to be so very long before we shall really have them here for good." "Ah! Miss Wortley, that is what I have always wished to live for; I have always said, let me only live to see Sir Gerald come back, and find things in order as he left them, and then I would die contented." "No, no, live to keep his house many more years," said Marian. "It is four years less now you know, Mrs. White; only eight more before we shall be able to live here. For, I suppose you would like to have me back too." "I don't know Miss Marian; you will he married long before that, such a fine young lady as you are grown to be." Marian laughed and passed on into the house, sorry that Gerald had taken no part in the conversation. They went into the drawing-room, that room where he had wept so bitterly the day before his departure. Again his observation was, "I thought this room was twice the size. And so low!" "You have been looking in at the large end of a telescope lately, Gerald," said his sister with some sorrow in her tone, as she sat down on one of the brown holland muffled sofas, and looked up at her father's portrait, trying to find a likeness there to the face before her. There was the same high brow, the same dark eyes, the same straight features, the same bright open smile. Gerald was more like it, in some respects, than he had been, but there was a haughty, impetuous expression now and then on eye, brow, and lip, that found no parallel in the gentle countenance which, to Marian's present feelings, seemed to be turned towards him with an air of almost reproachful anxiety. Perhaps he saw some of the sadness of her expression, and; always affectionate, wished to please her by manifesting a little more of the feelings which really still existed. He came and stood by her, and whispered a few caressing words, which almost compensated for the vexation his carelessness had occasioned. He looked earnestly at the picture for a few moments, then, turning away, suddenly exclaimed, "I should like to see the old dressing-room." This was Lady Arundel's morning room, where many a lesson had been repeated, many a game played, and where, perhaps, more childish recollections centered than in any other part of the house. The brother and sister went thither alone, and much enjoyed looking into every well-known corner, and talking of the little events which had there taken place. This lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour, when they rejoined their companions to make the tour of the garden, &c. All was pleasant here, Gerald recollected every nook, and was delighted to find so much unchanged. "Let us just look into the stable yard," said he, as they were coming away. It was locked, but a message to Mrs. White procured the key, and they entered the neat deserted court, without one straw to make it look inhabited, though the hutch where the rabbits had lived was still in its place; and even in one corner the reversed flower-pot, which Gerald well remembered to have brought there to mount upon, in order to make investigations into a blackbird's nest, in the ivy on the wall. He now used the same flower-pot to enable him to peep in at the hazy window of the stable, and still more lamentable was his exclamation, "Can this be all! How very small!" "Nothing but low and little, you discontented boy," said Agnes. "Why, really, I could not believe it was on such a small scale," said Gerald. "Marian, now is it possible there can be only six stalls here?" "Why, what would have been the use of more?" said Marian. "Ah! why to be sure, there was no one to ride much," said Gerald. "But yet I can hardly imagine it! What could my father have done in his younger days? Only six stalls! And no loose box. Well, people had contracted notions in those days! And the yard so small! Why, the one at Oakworthy would make four of it." "And you had really managed to persuade yourself that this was a grander place than Oakworthy?" said Marian. Gerald made no answer; but after walking backwards till he had a full view of the stable and surrounding regions, broke out into the exclamation, "I see what is to be done! Take down that wall--let in a piece of the kitchen garden--get it levelled--and then extend it a little on the right side too. Yes, I see." "You are not talking of spoiling this place!" cried Agnes, in dismay. "Spoiling! only making it habitable," said Gerald. "How can a man live here with a stable with six stalls, and nothing like a kennel?" The utter impossibility of such an existence was so strongly impressed on the mind of the young baronet, that as soon as tea was over he commenced a sketch of his future stables, adding various explanations for the benefit of Charles and James. There was almost a daily quarrel on the subject with Agnes, and much laughing on each side; but Marian, afraid of making him more determined, took no part in it. Much might happen in eight years to make him change his mind, and this stable in the clouds might be endured, if everything else had been fully satisfactory. Very happy were the boys next morning, setting off to the woods to study the localities of the game; very happy were they fishing and rabbit shooting; very happy, galloping over the country by turns on the two ponies; very happy were the whole party in pic-nic expeditions, and in merry evening sports; but these could not take up every hour and every minute; and Marian could not help observing, that while Charles and James could always find some work on which to be employed in the intervals, Gerald was idle and listless. There were hours in the morning when they had their Latin and Greek to study, while Gerald was usually loitering in the drawing-room. That he should voluntarily touch Latin or Greek in the holidays was perhaps more than mortal could expect; but that he should not read anything was disappointing. The vicarage afforded no periodical novels, no slang tales of low life, no manuals of sporting. The Waverley novels he had read long ago, and nothing of a more solid description would he touch; so his mornings were chiefly spent in drawing caricatures, and chattering to his sister and Agnes. He was indeed very amusing, but this was not all that could be desired. Now and then there were stories of feats which did not seem likely to be those of the best and wisest set of boys; and his idea of the life of a boy, if not of man, was plainly that it was to be spent in taking pleasure and shirking work. Then he took in a sporting paper, and used to entertain them with comments on the particulars of the races, and of bets, which no one in the house understood but himself; but these were never in the presence of either Mr. or Mrs. Wortley, where he was on his guard. In these intervals of idleness, Marian tried to persuade him several times to write to Edmund, who would be glad to have a report fresh from home. He always said he would soon set about a letter, but the time never came, though she more than once arranged pen, paper, and ink in readiness for him. He had recently received a letter from his cousin, but he had torn it up, and could not remember anything about the contents. Something between bashfulness and pride produced conduct which could not but appear like arrant haughtiness to the villagers, who had looked forward eagerly to seeing their young landlord. If Marian tried to bring him to speak to some poor old man, his answer was, "Give him this half-crown, then, that will do just as well!" and he walked off out of reach, while she remained to present the gift, and hear in answer, "Thank you kindly, Miss; I should like to see the young gentleman himself, but I daresay he does not like poor people." If this was the feeling where there was half-a-crown to sweeten the neglect, what was it where such a propitiatory offering was out of the question, and where the original connection had been closer, among the old servants, the dependants and tenants? His lofty acknowledgment of their bows,--his short, reluctant "Good morning," when forced to speak,--and his willingness to escape from their presence, contrasted ill with the cordial greetings with which his cousin Edmund had always hailed each Fern Torr person as a friend. Indeed, "that nice young gentleman, Master Edmund," began to be recollected with regrets, which, had the Manor been a kingdom, might have amounted to treason towards the young heir. Marian grieved at this behaviour, and would have attempted to argue him out of it, but he gave her scarcely any opportunity of a serious conversation; and Mr. Wortley gave him more than one hint, which, though be took it with perfect courtesy, never mended matters. Yet with all this, he was so agreeable, so good-natured and gentlemanlike, so pleasant a guest, and so affectionate a brother, that Mr. and Mrs. Wortley could not help liking him very much; and if they saw anything amiss, they did not pain his sister by speaking of it. Her misgivings were too vague and undetermined for her to be willing to consult Mr. Wortley; if she thought at one time that she would, she grew so frightened and reluctant whenever an occasion came, that she let it pass by; and she was divided between blame to herself for doing nothing, when a few words might be the rescue of her brother, and self-reproach for doing him cruel injustice. Nay, she even defended him more than once, when Agnes was shocked. She protected a shirt, illustrated by his own hand, in marking-ink, with cricketers, which caused infinite scandal to the washerwomen of Fern Torr. She defended slang words, which Agnes, from not understanding them, fancied worse than they really were; and she never failed to say he did not mean to be unkind, whenever he was neglectful of the poor people. She was displeased with herself afterwards for speaking in favour of these things, for she well knew them to be only parts of the whole system which grieved her; but still she could not help it. These thoughts were suspended by the solemn time approaching. Her confirmation-day came, and she stood among the maidens of her own home and village, who had been baptized in the same font, and shared with her the same instructions. Simultaneously with them she pronounced her vow; and perhaps it was a repining thought which crossed her mind,--"Why am I not like these, to remain in this peaceful nest, not sent forth to be wearied and tried by that glittering world of unrest, which I thus renounce?" She knelt to receive the blessing, which brought with it the trust that the peace of that moment might dwell with her, refresh her, and shield her "as oft as sin and sorrow tire." And when her eye fell on her brother, it was with more hope, for now she could better pray for him. Whatever might happen, it could never hurt the memory of that awful yet soothing hour, nor of that first Communion when she knelt near her parents' graves between Mrs. Wortley and Agnes; the whole air filled with the prayers of those on earth and in heaven who loved her best; nor of her walk in the garden afterwards with Mr. Wortley, when he plainly spoke to her of her life as one of peculiar trial and temptation, and warned her how to be in the world, and yet not of the world. The nest event of the visit to Fern Torr was Saunders' wedding. Saunders did not love Oakworthy, still less Mrs. Lyddell, and least of all Mrs. Price, the ladies' maid; and when she found herself at Fern Torr again, and heard Mr. David Chapple renew his tender speeches, the return thither became more and more difficult; and one day, while plaiting her young lady's hair, she communicated to her with a great gush of tears, that, though she could not bear to think of leaving her, and would not on any account cause her any inconvenience, she began to think it was time to think about her marriage. It was a stroke to Marian to hear of losing any old familiar face, and her look of dismay was a great satisfaction to Saunders; but she could bear it better than she could once have done, and there were reasons which made a change not so very much to be regretted even by her. The quarrels between Saunders and the rest of the household were not agreeable, and what she now felt to be a serious evil, was that habit of complaining to her, and telling her stories against the family, of which Edmund had warned her long ago. She had tried to discourage it, but, once begun, it had never been entirely discontinued; and Marian felt it to be wrong in every way. She made up her mind, therefore, with greater philosophy than could have been expected, to the loss of Saunders; and was further consoled by finding it gave hey an opportunity of promoting a nice young Fern Torr damsel, too delicate for hard work, who had been taught dressmaking, and whom Saunders undertook to instruct in the mysteries of the hair, quite sufficiently to carry her on till they went to London, and she could take lessons from some grand frizeur. Mrs. Lyndell was written to, and gave her consent to the hiring of Fanny, and Marian and Agnes were so delighted at the opening thus made for her, that Saunders would have been jealous if she had not been too happily engaged in her own preparations. As to Gerald he made a dreadful face when he first heard of Saunders' intentions; but as her going made no difference to his comfort, he soon became resigned. David was an old acquaintance, whom he liked because he belonged to the genus groom; so he made no objection to his sister's attending the wedding. He presented the bride with a tea-set, splendid with gilding, and surprised every one by walking into Mr. Wortley's kitchen in the midst of the bridal entertainment, and proposing the health of the happy pair. Marian was to return under Gerald's escort, at the end of the holidays. He was to go on to Eton, leaving her at the railway station, where she was to be met by the Lyddells' carriage. The last letter arrived, in which arrangements respecting time and train were to be finally confirmed. It was, as usual, from Caroline; and as she opened it, Marian gave a sudden start. "Eh?" said Gerald, "whose mare's dead? Not Elliot's Queen Pomare, I hope!" "No, but Miss Morley is going." "O!" cried Gerald, "I hope she has been reading some more letters." "Not quite," said Marian smiling. "Well, but is it directly? I suppose you did not think she was to stay there for life? Has she been in any mischief, that you look so shocked?" Marian really could not help discovering that she was not without tenderness of feeling for Miss Morley, and did not like to proclaim, in Caroline's strong and rather satirical language, across the breakfast table, that Mrs. Lyddell had discovered by accident that she and her pupil were in the habit of amusing themselves with novels which were far better unread. After reading quickly to the end of the letter, she answered, "O, she has been reading books with Clara that Mrs. Lyddell did not approve." "A triumph! a triumph!" cried Agnes. "Now Marian will never attempt to defend Miss Morley again." "What, not the poor unfortunate faithful? How can you think me so base?" returned Marian. "Besides, poor thing, she really is very kind-hearted, and has very little harm in her. I dare say it was more Clara's fault than hers," "Well done, Marian, striking right and left!" observed James Wortley. "How long has Miss Morley been at Oakworthy?" asked Mrs. Wortley. "She came about a year before we did," replied Marian. "Her predecessor, Miss Cameron, must have been a very different person; Caroline and Walter always speak of her with such respect." "Poor unfortunate!" broke out Gerald. "Well, if it had not been for Marian's letters, I should not have hated her so much. When one was making a row, she never did anything worse than say, 'Now Sir Gerald!'" which he gave with her peculiarly unauthoritative, piteous, imploring drawl. "There was something in that title of 'poor unfortunate,' peculiarly appropriate," said Marian, laughing, "as I am afraid that it is now, poor thing. She is to leave Oakworthy immediately, and I do not know that she has any relation but an old aunt." Mr. and Mrs. Wortley agreed with Marian that it was a melancholy case, but the others were too triumphant to be compassionate; and Gerald amused Agnes half the morning with ludicrous stories of her inefficiency. Marian was thoughtful all day; and at last, when sitting alone with Mrs. Wortley and Agnes, exclaimed, "Poor Miss Morley! I really am very sorry for her; I did not know I liked her so well." "Absence is the great charm with Marian," said Agnes, laughing; "we learn now what makes her so affectionate to us." "No, but really, Agnes, when one has been living in constant intercourse for four years, and often receiving kindness from a person, is it possible to hear of her being sent away in disgrace and poverty without caring about it?" "O yes; I know; after having lived in the same house with a kitchen poker for four years, you get so attached to it that it gives you a pang to part with it. No, but the comparison is no compliment to the poker; that is firm enough, at any rate,--a down cushion would be better." "An attachment to a down cushion is nothing to be ashamed of, Agnes," said her mother. "And Miss Morley did deserve some attachment, indeed," said Marian. "She was so ready to oblige, and she really did many and many a kind thing by the servants; and I believe she quite denied herself, for the sake of her old aunt. She was not fit for a governess, to be sure; but that was more her misfortune than her fault, poor thing." "How do you make that out?" said Agnes. "Why, she was obliged to got her own living; and what other way had she? She was educated for it, and had everything but the art of gaining authority." "And high principle," said Mrs. Wortley. "But," said Marian, growing eager in her defence, "she really did know right from wrong. She would remonstrate, and tell us things that were every word good and true, only she did it with so little force, that they were apt not to mind her; and then it was no wonder that she grew dispirited, and sunk into poor unfortunate." "Yes," said Agnes, "I can understand it all; she was in a situation that she was not fit for, and failed." "She would have been very different in another situation, most probably," said Mrs. Wortley, "where she and the children were not so much left to each other's mercy." "Yes; Mrs. Lyddell never mended matters," said Marian. "She did not back up or strengthen her, but only frightened her, till she was quite as ready to conceal what was amiss as her pupils. And that intimacy with Clara was a very unlucky thing; it drew her down without drawing Clara up." "I suppose that was the origin of the catastrophe," said Mrs. Wortley. "I should think so; they have been more alone together lately, for I am sure this could never have happened when Caroline was in the schoolroom. And her making a friend of Clara was no wonder, so forlorn and solitary as she must have been." And Marian sighed with fellow-feeling for her. "An intimate, not a friend," said Mrs. Wortley. "And I could better fancy making a friend of Miss Lyddell," said Agnes. "I can't say my tête-à-tête with Miss Clara made me desire much more of her confidence." "Clara is more caressing," said Marian. "I think I am most fond of her, though Caroline is--O! quite another thing. But what I wanted was to ask you, Mrs. Wortley, if you thought I might write to poor Miss Morley, and ask if there is anything I can do for her. I can't bear to think of her going away without wishing her good-bye, or showing any feeling for her in her distress." "How very right and kind of you, Marian," exclaimed Agnes, "after all her injustice--" "I do not think it would be advisable, my dear," said Mrs. Wortley; "it would seem like putting yourself in opposition to Mrs. Lyddell, and might be pledging yourself, in a manner, to recommend her, which, with your opinion of her, you could not well do." "O, no, no, except in some particular case. Yes, I suppose you are right; but I don't feel happy to take no notice." "Perhaps something may occur on your return, when you understand the matter more fully; or, at any rate, if you are writing to Oakworthy, you might send some message of farewell, kind remembrances, or love." "Those are so unmeaning and conventional that I hate them," said Marian. "Yes, but their want of meaning is their advantage here. They are merely kindly expressions of good will." "And they will mean more from you," added Agnes, "as you never have the civility to use them on ordinary occasions." "Well, I will take your advice," said Marian, "and thank you, Mrs. Wortley; I only wish--" The wish ended in a sigh, as Marian sat down to commence--"My dear Caroline."

11

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"But we are women when boys are but boys; Heav'n gives us grace to ripen and grow wise, Some six years earlier. I thank heav'n for it: We grow upon the sunny side of the wall." TAYLOR. It certainly was quite involuntary on Agnes Wortley's part, but when the time came for returning to Oakworthy, Marian was conscious of more kindly and affectionate feelings towards it and its inhabitants than she had ever expected to entertain for them. She did not love Fern Torr or the Wortleys less; she had resumed her confidence and sympathy with Agnes, and felt the value of Mrs. Wortley more than ever; and it quite made her heart ache to think how long it would be before she saw another purple hill or dancing streamlet, and that she should not be there to see her dear old myrtle's full pride of blossom. But, on the other hand, her room at Oakworthy, with its treasures, was a sort of home; and she looked forward to it gladly, when once she was out of sight of the moors. The train had stopped and gone on again from the last station before that where they were to leave it for Oakworthy, when Gerald, coming across to the seat by her side, said, "Marian, I say, can you lend me a couple of pounds?" "Why, Gerald, what can you want with them?" "Never mind; only be a good girl, and let me have them." "You had plenty of money when you came to Fern Torr. How could you have got rid of it all?" "Come, come, Marian, don't be tiresome. Haven't I had to give to all the old women in the place?" "But do you really mean that you have no money?" "O yes, I have some, but not what I want. Come, I know you keep California in your pocket. What harm can it do you?" After all Marian's presents at Fern Torr, it was not quite as convenient, as Gerald fancied, to part with two pounds; but that was not the best motive to put forward, nor was it her reason for hesitating. "I don't know whether it is right; that is the thing, Gerald." "Right! why where is the right or wrong in it?" "I am afraid it may do you harm," said she, in a trembling, doubtful voice. "Stuff! I'll take care of that!" "If you would only tell me what you want it for?" "I tell you, Marian, I can't do without it; I don't know what I shall do, if you won't give it to me." "Debts! O Gerald, you have not got into debt?" "Well, and what do you look so scared about? Do you think they will kill me?" "O, Gerald, Gerald, this proves it all." "It? what?" said Gerald. "Come, don't be so like a girl! I have not been doing any thing wrong, I tell you, and it is all your fault if I can't get clear." "With such an allowance as you have, O Gerald, how could you? And how could you throw about money at home, when you knew you were in debt?" "You talk as if I had been ruining my wife and ten small children," cried Gerald, impatiently. "A fine fuss about making a few pounds stand over till next half. But you women go headlong at it, never see the rights of a thing. So, you won't? Well, it is your doing now!" "I can't see any end to it," said Marian, reflectingly. "If I thought you would make a resolution--but you will be without money at all, and how are you to get through this half? O, Gerald! better write to Mr. Lyddell at once, and he will set you straight, and you can begin fresh." Gerald made a face of utter contempt. The steam whistle was heard; they were stopping. "There is an end of it, then" said he, angrily. "I did not think you had been so ill-natured; it is all your fault, I tell you. I thought you cared for me." This was dreadful; Marian's purse was in her hand, and she began "O Gerald dear, anything but that!" --when they found themselves close in front of the station, and Lionel pulling at the door of their carriage, and calling fiercely to the porter to unlock them. Caroline was standing on the platform, and there was a tumult of greetings and inquiries for luggage to be taken out and put in. Gerald ran to see that his goods were separated from his sister's; Lionel shook hands with Marian, and scolded her for staying away all the holidays; roared to the porter that his portmanteau was for Slough, then turned again to say, "You've heard of poor unfortunate, Marian?" The bell rang; Gerald ran back; Marian knew she was weak, but could not help it,--she squeezed the two sovereigns into his hand, and was comforted for the moment by his affectionate farewell. Lionel and he threw themselves into their carriage, and were whisked off. "There!" said Caroline. "Now come along. O, I am so glad you are come; I have so much to say." Marian could not dwell on Gerald; she put her arm within Caroline's, looked back to see Fanny safe under the care of an Oakworthy footman, and soon was in the carriage. "Well, Caroline; and how is every one?" "Pretty well, considering the revulsion of ideas we have all undergone. Poor Miss Morley left plenty of farewells for you. You can't think haw pleased she was with your message." "Poor thing! Where is she?" "At her aunt's; she went on Monday. Mamma was impatient to have it over. You know her ways." Marian knew that this intimated that Caroline thought her mother had not been kind; and she doubted whether to continue her inquiries; but Caroline was too eager to tell, to wait for questions, and proceeded:--"There had been dissatisfaction for a long time, as I believe you may have guessed; mamma thought Clara backward, and wanting in what Miss Morley calls 'the solid;' and at last, coming suddenly into the schoolroom at twelve o'clock one fine day, she found reason good, for they were very comfortably reading M. Eugene Sue." "O, Caroline, impossible!" "Too possible," said Caroline, "though I would not believe it at first. However, they did not know what it was when they began, and were afterwards too much bewitched with the story to leave off; and as they felt it was wrong, they read it the more constantly to get it over faster." "But how in the world could they get such a book?" "From the circulating library. It appears that they found the evenings rather dull in London this spring, when we were all out, and so began a little secret hiring, which was continued at Oakworthy, and with a worse choice of books." "That she should be so little to be trusted!" "Nay, Marian, who could live with her half-an-hour in the schoolroom, and think she could?" "Certainly, she often puzzled me when first I came." "And you never saw the worst. You always kept order, after you came." "O, Caroline, what nonsense!" "Yes, indeed you did. I do assure you that, scores of times, the knowledge that your great eyes were wondering at me has kept me from bullying Miss Morley into letting me do what I knew to be wrong. I could persuade her and deceive myself, but I could not persuade you; and then all the rest went for nothing, because you were sure to be right." "It is very easy to see the right for other people," said Marian, with rather a sad smile. "Yes, only other people don't mind that, unless you do the right for yourself; and that is the thing in you, Marian. If you had said anything, I should not have minded it half so much; but your 'I don't know,' cut me home." "I am sorry--" "No, don't be sorry, for I am glad. If you had not come before all the good of Miss Cameron had gone off from me, what should I have been? O, Marian, I am very glad you are come back; I did not know I liked you half so well till you were gone." "I am sure I might say the same" almost whispered Marian, in a choked tone, under her bonnet. Caroline caught it up eagerly, and seizing her by both hands, exclaimed, stooping forward to peep at her face, "Marian, Marian, do you say so? And are you really not so very miserable at coming back to us?" A tear, one of Marian's very reluctant tears, actually rushed from her eye, and with a hard struggle to speak, she said, "Miserable! how can you say so? You are so very kind to me." "And do you not hate us?" said Caroline, with, an arch look of delight, then softened into something of mournfulness. "Nay, I did not mean that; but you can bear to be with us after your own Agnes,--after those good people,--after such a home as Fern Torr?" "O, Caroline, this is very unlike my first coming to you!" "Yes, I know we were not kind; we were not as we ought to have been to you." "No, no, no; I was stiff and disagreeable; I would not be pleased," said Marian, forgetting all coldness but her own. "No wonder. O, Marian," and Caroline's voice trembled, "no one knows better than I do how much there is to be lamented in our ways of going on,--how different our house is from Fern Torr." Marian could not say no. "You were too good for us; you are still, I would not see you like us; but if we could make you comfortable enough to think Oakworthy not an exile, but something like a home, how glad I should be!" Marian laid her hand on Caroline's arm; and, with an effort that cost her a spasm in her throat, she said, "You have!" Not another word could she get out; but this was enough. Caroline kissed her for the first time in her life, except at the formal partings at bed-time, and there were tears on both their faces. After a time, Caroline broke into the flood of thoughts in her cousin's mind, by saying, playfully, "When folks are missed, then they are mourned, people say; and I am sure you deserve the compliment, for till you were gone, I never knew your value. How many silly fancies of Clara's have flourished, for want of your indifference to put them down! How stupid it has been not to have you to read with, or talk to! How lonely the drawing-room has been, and nothing but nonsense if I went to the schoolroom. And then the boys,--Lionel has been so unruly there was no bearing it, and grumbling for you every day; and Johnny,--O, Marian, do you know it is settled that Johnny goes to sea, after all?" "Johnny! I know he wished it, but I thought Mrs. Lyddell never would make up her mind to it." "Ah! there have been storms in the higher quarters," said Caroline, with would-be gaiety. "You are very lucky to have been away all this time, for it has been by no means a serene sky. You know," she proceeded with gravity, "they say the times are bad; well, in the midst of papa's vexation at the tenants asking for a reduction of rent, in came a whole lot of Elliot's long bills, which made papa lecture Walter and me one whole evening on economy, and caused him to be extremely annoyed with everything and everybody, and to say mamma must give up her opposition to Johnny's being a sailor; and I never saw mamma take anything so really to heart. It has been very uncomfortable; and in the midst came this business of poor Miss Morley, who had rather harder measure in consequence." "Poor little woman! Well, she was very good-natured," said Marian, glad to turn the conversation from this account of family matters, not given in the pleasantest style, but rather as if Caroline was trying to conceal her real feelings by an air of satire. "She was like a child in authority. You see, we, who know her well, never think of blaming her as if she had originated the mischief; while mamma, who never did know her, cannot be persuaded that she simply yielded to Clara." "That is not exactly the object one desires in a governess," said Marian. "Well, poor thing! and how is Clara? is she very sorry?" "I really can hardly tell. I have been vexed with Clara myself, to tell you the truth; for I thought she acted shabbily. The blame passed over her, and lighted on Miss Morley; and she did not stretch out a hand to help her. Now Clara knew that it was wrong to read those books, just as well as you or I; indeed, it was all her doing; and I could not bear to see, her thinking herself innocent, and led into the scrape by Miss Morley. She did cry excessively, and was very unhappy when she found Miss Morley was really going, and the parting was heart-rending; but then the very next day, in spite of their confidential friendship, she began to disclose the poor woman's follies one after another, till I am quite tired of hearing of them. They must have grown much worse than they were in our time. I never knew then that she was always fancying people were in love with her." "T wonder what she will do!" "She would not be a bad governess where the mother looked after the children. Well, I hope she will soon get another situation, poor thing!" "Yes, indeed, for I am afraid she never saved anything." "O, no, she frittered all her money away, and always was poor at quarter-day; and she has only that old aunt to take care of her." "Poor thing, poor thing! If she would but have been firmer. And is Clara to have another governess?" "No, mamma thinks her too old; but I am sure I hope she is to develope more. I do not think you or I were like her at fifteen." "I think," said Marian, meditatively, "that Miss Morley and Clara helped what--was not wise in each other." "Yes, that is my hope,--that when Clara is out of her influence, she may grow wiser. People's minds do grow at different times, you know. Poor little Clara! I want Walter to talk to her, but it is hard to bring about; for they seem to have no common subject. Ours is a very odd household; we all go our own ways in our own worlds. Papa and mamma each have their way; and Elliot his way. Walter stands alone too; then I am a sort of connecting-link between the schoolroom set and mamma,--yes, and with Walter too: while the three boys are a party by themselves. O, Marian, no wonder you did not like us." "Say no more of that, pray, Caroline." She made no answer, but after a pause, suddenly exclaimed, "Nothing would matter, if it was not for Elliot. He is the root of all that has gone wrong." "Is he at home?" "No; he went last week, and the storm lulled then. O, Marian, I am weary of it all! But it is one comfort that you are come." Caroline certainly looked very much harassed, and her words showed that every one had been out of temper, and she had been obliged to bear it all. Marian was very sorry, and felt quite fond of her, as she answered, with a kind tone, "Thank you." "Walter has been the only comfort; but then he has been very unhappy too. I am afraid he knows more and worse of Elliot than he chooses to tell me. And then he is so busy,--going up for his degree, you know, after the vacation, and so nervous about it, that I have not liked to talk to him about anything tiresome, because, poor fellow, he is quite worried enough already. Well, but now tell me about pleasanter things--your pretty Agnes, how is she? and Gerald? --I wanted to have seen more of him. Was not he in glory?" "O, yes," said Marian, as a pang shot through her at this recall of her anxieties. "And tell me the whole story of Saunders' wedding." The two cousins had so much to say, that the long reaches of white chalk road and the bare downs had hardly time to pain Marian's eye; and she was surprised so soon to find herself in the well-known street of Oakworthy. It was not a hopeful prospect with which to return, after so happy a summer as she had spent; and yet a degree of trouble gave Marian a kindlier feeling towards the Lyddells. If it had not been for Gerald, she would have arrived at Oakworthy in a bright temper. Even now the discontent had been expelled by the dispositions fostered by Mr. Wortley; and if there was a weight on her, it was not a burthen of selfish repining,--the worst burthen of all. That Caroline had really missed her,--that Caroline loved her,--was a discovery that warmed her heart, and inclined her more than all before to look kindly on Oakworthy, when she drove up to the door, and met Clara in the hall. Clara hung upon her, and overwhelmed her with kisses; Mrs. Lyddell received her just as she had done before; and Walter shook hands cordially, as if he was very glad to see her again. The talk went on about visits and engagements, and each moment made Marian feel that her Sunday world had passed from her, and her workday world begun again. Clara came to her room with her, partly to see her new maid, and partly to talk with her about Miss Morley; but Marian, not wishing to have Fanny immediately astonished by her random way of talking, gave a sort of stern look and sign, which silenced poor Clara on that subject. There were plenty more, however, and she talked on fast; indeed, Marian had not two minutes alone that whole evening, till, somewhere towards half-past eleven, her cousins bade her a final good-night. She had time at last to think over that parting with Gerald, which had hung heavily on her all this time, without her being able to enter upon the subject with herself. What did it mean? Was it so very bad a sign? Did it really confirm all her fears? or was it not possible that he might have got into some chance difficulty? Might he not be careless and extravagant, without being seriously in fault? Yes; but this was but of a piece with other things which she had observed. Alone, it might not have been so alarming; but even apart from this, she could not be quite happy about him, after all she had observed. And had she been weak? had she done what was bad for him? O, for some one to consult! --some one under whose charge to put him! Was it her own fault that she had missed the opportunity with Mr. Wortley! To pray for him was all that could be done, and it in some degree stilled that aching feeling in her heart. Yet, whenever she woke in the night, she seemed to hear Caroline saying, "If it was not for Elliot!" with a foreboding that "If it was not for Gerald!" might be on her tongue in the same manner, for the rest of her life. Every time Gerald's name was mentioned, there was a pang; every time she thought of him in solitude, the fear and anxiety gained strength. Consciousness of ignorance added to its poignancy; and young as she was, it would be hard to describe how much suffering she underwent in secret, night after night, as she lay awake, in her perplexed musings on that one absorbing thought. Yet they were like those vague nightly terrors of wolves, darkness, or mysterious horrors, from which little children often suffer so much, without revealing them, and entirely shake off by day; for Marian awoke in the morning to cheerfulness and activity, with spirits undepressed, full of interest in things around; and only when reminded of her fears, secretly wincing at the sudden throb of pain. Marian's days were more at her own disposal than formerly. She might do as she pleased all the morning,--sit in her own room, and choose her own occupation; and she was just beginning to think over two or three bright plans of usefulness. She would make a series of copies, from prints, of Scripture subjects, for the Fern Torr children; she would translate some stories for them, and she had devised many other things to be done; when Caroline one day said to her, "Marian, I don't know if it is asking a great deal, but if you could sit with us sometimes in the morning, it would be a great gain. Mamma wants me to read with Clara. Now, you know I have no authority; and doing it for a lesson, as if it was for Clara's good, will only make her hate it, and pay no attention at all. But if we read together, as if it was for our own benefit, she will join in, and think it a womanly thing." Marian smiled at the ingenuity of the scheme, such as she would have been a great deal too awkward, as well as too straightforward ever to devise. It was a case where "no" could not have been said, but there were many ways of acting a no; and Marian was so sorry to give up the Scripture drawings, the idea of which had greatly delighted her when proposed by Agnes, that she had it in her heart to have backed out of it as often as she could. A little thought, however, convinced her, that to help Caroline's plans for her sister's good was the foremost duty, that to avoid it would be positive wrong and unkindness; so she resolved to lend herself to it with all her might, even though Agnes might be disappointed. And pray, why should Agnes be disappointed? Why were the drawing and reading incompatible? Marian had taught herself to think it impossible to do anything for Fern Torr, in public, for fear of being laughed at, or observed upon; and these drawings, which were of sacred subjects, and further involved some alterations of her own, would, she thought, be worse than any. She mused a long time whether this was right feeling or foolish bashfulness, and decided at last that it was a little of the former trying to justify a great deal of the latter, and that Caroline and Clara were not the same thing as Miss Morley and all the boys; so with an effort, which, considering the occasion, was almost absurd in its magnitude, she brought her portfolio down, began to draw, and did not experience anything unpleasant in consequence. It was one of her first practical lessons in the fancifulness of her shyness. Her cousins took interest in what she was about, admired, and helped her to hunt up subjects to make her series complete; indeed the three girls were exceedingly comfortable together, and a pleasant, mutual good-feeling constantly grew between them. Clara was certainly becoming less childish and silly when no longer nominally under the authority of Miss Morley, and the confidante of all her follies, but the companion of two sensible girls, young and bright enough to enter into all the liveliness about her that was not silliness and a great deal that was, and to drive away some of her nonsense by laughing at it. The mornings were thus pleasant and satisfactory, the afternoons were less certain to be agreeable. If there was a ride, it was delightful, if a walk, it was all very well; but there was a third contingency, to which Marian had become liable, of being carried forth with her green card-case on a morning visiting expedition by Mrs. Lyddell, and this was one which required all her powers of resignation, though the misfortune was much more imaginary than real. There were three chances of the way of spending the evening too. The first, the family party alone, this was pretty well, and though not charming, was by far the best; Mrs. Lyddell's talk was agreeable, and to sit with Caroline, and perhaps with the addition of Walter, at the small table, working, reading, and talking, was as quiet and comfortable a way of passing the time as might be. A dinner party at home was next best, for she had her own quiet corners of conversation, and Walter would sometimes come and take shelter there too, and get into a talk, as well as if the room were empty of company, sometimes better, because his mother could not hear him, and he was never so backward in telling his real mind, as in her hearing. Worst of all was a party from home, where she knew few persons, and disliked all she knew. Unhappily, this was generally her feeling towards all the neighbourhood; and though it may seem to be a strong expression, it is scarcely too much to say that in Marian's habitual frame she looked on every one that could be considered as company in the light of natural enemies, leagued to prevent her walks and rides, to tease her, and to spoil her evenings. This was partly the result of her constitutional shyness, but it would have gone off, by this time, if she had not fostered it by imbibing Lady Marchmont's exclusiveness. Marian would have been shocked to realize how she despised and scorned her acquaintance--why? the answer would have been hard to find--because they were company--because they were the world--because they were Mrs. Lyddell's society--because she was superior? How or why? She disdained them all, without knowing it, and far less knowing why. She complied scrupulously with every rule of formal politeness, and had become a tolerable mistress, by rote, of such common-place small talk as served to fulfil her part, and make her not feel herself absurd, but this was all; she would not let herself be pleased or amused, she would not open her eyes to anything good or agreeable about the people, except a very few favoured ones, chiefly clergymen or their wives. It was very wrong, it was Marian's one great fault at this period of her life, and it had the effect of making her almost disliked. Clara had scarcely said too much in telling Agnes that her pride was often remarked, for Mrs. Lyddell's neighbours were just the people to fancy pride where it was not, especially where the rank was superior to their own. Tall, handsome, and outwardly self-possessed, Miss Arundel did not gain credit, from superficial observers, for shyness, and was looked upon as a very haughty ungracious girl, while it was whispered that Mrs. Lyddell had had a great deal of trouble with her. The autumn passed on in this manner, and towards its close, Elliot returned from shooting in Scotland, and announced that his friend, Mr. Faulkner, was coming to Oakworthy, to look at an estate, which was for sale in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Lyddell was pleased, and questioned her son about Mr. Faulkner's thousands a-year; then turning to Marian, said, "Surely, Marian, you know him; I heard of your meeting him and Lady Julia at Lady Marchmont's." "Yes," said Marian, with her face of rigidity. "Ah! yes, to be sure, he told me so," said Elliot. "Any one but Marian would be impatient to know what he said of her," said Caroline. "Do you want to know yourself, Caroline?" said Elliot; "shall I tell you?" "Yes, do," said Caroline, in her curiosity, forgetting that Marian might be pained. "Ah! you ought to be warned if you want to set your cap at him, for she has forestalled you. Let me see, what was it he said? O, that Lady Marchmont would scarcely be alone in her glory long, for, for such as liked the style of thing, her cousin was as perfect a piece of carving in white marble as he ever had seen." White marble was certainly not the comparison for Marian's cheeks at that moment; it was pain and horror to her even to hear that she had been spoken of between Elliot and Mr. Faulkner, and to be told it in this manner, in public, was perfectly dreadful. She could neither sink under the table nor run away, so with crimson face and neck, she kept her post on the sofa, and every one saw she was intensely annoyed. Elliot, who had told it in a mischief-making spirit, fancying he should make his sister jealous, walked away, amusing himself with the notion that he had sown the dragon's teeth; Caroline was very sorry to have caused such painful blushes, yet was proud to hear of Marian's being admired; and Mrs. Lyddell said not a word, but worked on with a jerk at her thread, trying to persuade herself that she was not vexed that, as Elliot said, her daughter had been forestalled. Marian did not recover herself sufficiently to say one word about Mr. Faulkner till she was in her own room, and then when Caroline came, to pity her for her blushes, and apologize for having occasioned them, she said, "O! how I wish he was not coming!" "Why, don't you like him in return for his admiration?" "He is a horrible man!" said Marian. "Horrible, and why? What has he done to you? I am sure you are very ungrateful." "Don't talk of it," said Marian, blushing furiously again, then recollecting that she might give rise to a suspicion that he had already said something to her, she added, "I don't--I don't mean anything about that nonsense." "Well, but what do you mean? Is it really anything more than his being Elliot's friend, and having dared to--." "No, but Caroline, don't say anything about it; it was what I heard about him at the Marchmonts." "O what?" "It does not seem fair to tell how they talked over their guests, so don't repeat it again, pray." "You seem to find it like having a tooth drawn. Well! I am sworn to secrecy. I won't tell a living creature." "I am sure I know hardly anything, only that Lord Marchmont thinks very badly of him, and was quite sorry he had been asked to dinner. And he spoke of his having taken up Germanism, and oh! Caroline, for a man's faith to be unsettled is the worst of all, for then there is nothing to fall back upon." Caroline stood by Marian's fire, looking thoughtful for some moments. "Yes," she said, "you and Walter are in the same mind there, but it is not like what I was brought up to think. Miss Cameron used to teach us that the being in earnest in believing was the thing rather than the form of faith." "O, Caroline, that cannot be right. We have been commanded to hold one form of faith, and it must be wrong to set up another and hold it." "Yes, but if people are not clear that only one was given to every one, and that just as we say it is?" "Then it is very bad of them!" said Marian indignantly, "for I am sure the Bible is quite clear--one faith--the form of sound words--the faith once delivered to the saints." "I am quite clear about it," said Caroline. "O, of course," said Marian, looking at her with a sort of alarm at her speaking of the possibility as regarded herself of not being clear. "But if people are not clear, what are they to do?" "I don't know," said Marian, quickly; "only I hope I shall never have anything to do with such people; I can't judge for them; I had rather not think about them; it is of no use." "Of no use--what, not if you could do such a person good?" "Only in this way," said Marian, taking up her Prayer Book, and turning to the Collect for Good Friday. "Yes, but trying to convince?" "I should be afraid." "Afraid! Marian, I am sure nothing could hurt your faith." "I would not try," said Marian, shaking her head sadly. "But at that rate no one ever would be converted?" "You forget that there are clergymen." "Yes, but other people have done good." "O yes, but not women by arguing. O no, no, Caroline, we never ought to put our weakness forward, as if it could guard the truth. You know the wrong side may find stronger arguments than we are able to do--mind I don't say than can be found--of course truth is the strongest of all, but we may be overpowered, though the truth is not. We women should not stand out to argue for the truth any more than we should stand out to fight as champions in the right cause." "And is this the reason you never would argue?" "I don't know--I mean no, it was only because I had nothing to say; I knew when a thing was right, but could not tell why, and the more you asked, the more I did not know." "And do you know now?" "Sometimes," said Marian, "not often, but Mr. Wortley taught me some things, and one grows up to others. But I could never explain even when I know." "For instance--" said Caroline, laughing. "O that came, I don't know how. Have I said so much?" "A great deal that is very nice. Good night, Marian."

12

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"She seemed some nymph in her sedan, Apparelled in exactest sort, And ready to be borne to court." COWPER. Mr. Faulkner came at the time appointed, and Caroline, who had kept Marian's counsel, according to promise, was very curious to see how they would behave towards each other. As to Marian, she was just what might be expected,--more cold, distant, and stately than she had ever been to the most vulgar of Mrs. Lyddell's acquaintance. She gave a chilling bend to repel his attempt at shaking hands, made replies of the shortest when he tried to talk to her, and would not look up, or put on the slightest air of interest, at all the entertaining stories he was telling at dinner. The others were all extremely pleased with him. Elliot had never before brought home so agreeable a friend; a person who could talk of anything but hunting and racing was a new thing among his acquaintance, and every one was loud in his praise. Caroline, from having been prejudiced against him by Marian's history, was more surprised than the others: and scolded Marian, in the evening, for not having told them how very agreeable he was. "I never can think any one agreeable when I know there is hollowness within," said Marian. "I suppose Lord Marchmont knows," said Caroline, in a tone of annoyance and of a little doubt; and there the conversation ended. Few people were ever more agreeable than Mr. Faulkner. He had read everything, travelled everywhere, and was full of conversation suited to every one. If Marain had not heard Lord Marchmont's account of him, she must have liked him; but knowing what she did, she could and would not: looking at him something as Madame Cottin's Matilde first looked at Malek Adel, and not suffering herself to lose any of her horror. For the first day or two her frigidity was something wonderful, as she found him inclined to make attempts to cultivate her acquaintance; but she thoroughly succeeded in repelling him. He left off trying to talk to her; and one day when they were obliged to go in to dinner together, only exchanged the fewest and most formal of words with her, and positively neglected her for his other neighbour. After this, Marian did not quite so much overdo her stateliness. She could afford to be like herself with the others, even when he was in the room, though she never voluntarily took part in a conversation in which he was engaged, and her coldest air came over her whenever he approached. And it was well for her she could be so; for he stayed more than a fortnight, decided on buying the estate of High Down, and was asked to come again and make his head-quarters at Oakworthy, while superintending the alterations. All were sorry when he went; even the boys, whose first holiday week had been rendered very agreeable by his good nature. Johnny and Gerald vied with each other in his praise, heaping together a droll medley of schoolboy panegyrics; and Marian, not wishing to tell them of her objections, allowed that he had been very kind to them. The Christmas holidays passed, and left no change in the impression on her mind regarding Gerald; only she heard no news of her two sovereigns, and he did not so much as give her the opportunity of speaking to him alone. The heartache was growing worse than ever, and she was beginning to have a sort of desperate feeling that she would--she would--do she knew not what--write to Mr. Wortley--write more strongly to Gerald than she had ever yet dared to do--when one morning, a foreign looking letter arrived, in handwriting she knew full well, though it had never before been addressed to herself. There was company staying in the house, and Marian was not sorry it was impossible to read it at the breakfast table. She did not know what she was eating or what she was saying, and ran away with it as soon as she could, to enjoy it in her own room. A letter from Edmund! Could it be possible, or could it--O disappointing thought! --be only some enclosure for her to forward. In alarm at the idea, she tore it open. A long letter, and quite certainly to herself; for there stood the three welcome words, "My dear Marian." She glanced hastily down the first page, to make sure that there was nothing the matter; but no, it was all right--he wrote in his own lively style. He began by saying it was so long since he had heard from England, that he was growing afraid he was forgotten, and felt very small when the post came in, and brought something for every one but him; and he was going to try a fresh person, since he was growing desperate, and had sent appeals in vain to all his correspondents. He asked many questions about home friends, and about Marian herself; and then told much to interest her about his own doings, his way of living, and his hunting expeditions, with all the strange wild beasts with which they had made him acquainted, and he concluded thus:--"I hope you will write soon, and that you will be able to give me a flourishing account of Gerald. His silence may mean nothing, but it may also mean so much, that to hear he is going on particularly well would be double satisfaction just at present. Therefore with a view to what passed in our last walk at Oakworthy, tell me if you are completely satisfied with regard to him." It was a ray of light upon all Marian's perplexities; showing her what course to take, and filling her with hope. Her confidence in Edmund's power of setting everything right was still unchanged, and when Gerald's case was fully before him, he would know how to judge, and what to do; it would all be safe and off her mind. She felt sure that this had been the very reason of his writing; and full of gratitude, and infinitely relieved, she opened her desk, as if to answer was the easiest and most comfortable thing in the world. She did not, however, get on quite as fast as she expected; she dreaded equally the saying too much, or too little,--the giving Edmund actually a bad impression of her poor Gerald, or letting him think that there was no cause for anxiety. Then she thought the best way would be merely to give the facts, and let him draw his own conclusions; but these facts were in themselves trifles light as air, and it seemed unkind to send them across half the world. She left off trying to write, and resolved to give herself time for consideration; but time only made her more perplexed. She waited a week, wrote at last, and as soon as her letter was fairly gone, thought of forty different ways of saying the thing better and more justly, dwelt again and again on each line that could convoy a false impression one way or the other, and reproached herself by turns for having spoken disadvantageously of her dear affectionate brother, and for not having let her cousin fairly see the full extent of the mischief. On the whole, however, she was much happier now that it was all in Edmund's hands; so much so, that when Mr. Faulkner came again, she could not be quite so stiff; and being entirely relieved from the fear of his taking notice of her, could do him the favour of laughing when he told anything amusing. Winter and early spring came and went; the Easter holidays brought Gerald home, and she tried again in vain to get him to write to Edmund; but she could bear it better now that she had hopes. They went to London, and Marian was carried into the midst of all the gaieties supposed to befit her age and situation. Mrs. Lyddell would have thought herself very far from "doing her justice," if she had not taken her to all the balls and parties in her way; and Marian was obliged to submit, and get into the carriage, when she had much rather have gone to bed. She put off the expectation of much enjoyment till Lady Marchmont should come, and her arrival took place unusually late that season. She had not been well, and little Willie had been somewhat ailing; so that the bringing him into London air was put off as long as possible. It was not till the latter part of May that she came, as she had always promised to do, in time for Marian's presentation at court, on which both she and Mrs. Lyddell were bent; and Marian ready to endure it, by the help of a few romantic thoughts of loyalty. The day after Lady Marchmont arrived, she called at Mrs. Lyddell's and came in, as she generally did once in a year. After her visit was over, she asked Marian to come and take a drive, and no sooner where they in the carriage, than she exclaimed, "A nice looking girl, that Miss Lyddell! Is she the one who is to marry Mr. Faulkner?" "O, Selina! how could you have heard such nonsense?" "What, is it to be denied? It is not settled, then?" "No, nor ever will be." "Why, surely the man has been spending months at Oakworthy." "Only weeks; besides, he was buying a house." "A very proper preliminary to a wife." "O, no, no it is impossible!" "But why? Perhaps you know some good reason to the contrary; for I heard he admired you very much when he met you last year." "Don't say such things, Selina. How could you fancy it possible, after all the horrid things Lord Marchmont said of him!" "What is impossible, my dear? That he should think you very handsome?" "Don't, Selina, pray don't! That any body good for any thing should ever marry him!" "Any body good for any thing!" repeated Selina. "Well, granted,--and it is a considerable grant,--does that make the supposition out of the question?" "Yes, as regards Caroline. O, Selina! you do not know Caroline, or you would not look so incredulous!" "Time will show," said Lady Marchmont, gaily. "I reserve to myself the satisfaction of having known it beforehand." "It never will be," said Marian. "And how is little Willie?" "Very well, poor little man, if he would only grow, but he is so small, that I am fairly ashamed to show such a hop-o'-my-thumb. But he is coming out quite a genius; he reads as well as I do, and makes the wisest speeches." And the history of his wise speeches occupied them for some time, with other matters, until just as their drive was nearly concluded, Selina exclaimed, "But all this time I have never asked you if you can throw any light on this extraordinary step of Edmund Arundel's?" "What do you mean?" cried Marian. "Have you not heard that he has exchanged, and is coming home? The most foolish thing,--just as he might have been sure of promotion. It is not likely to be health, for the climate agreed very well with him." "Yes," assented Marian, wrapt in her own thoughts; "but did he write to you?" "Not a word; we only saw it in the Gazette, and Lord Marchmont would hardly believe it could be he; but it was but too plain,--Lieutenant Edmund Gerald Arundel. It is very strange; he was not wont to do foolish things." "No," said Marian, mechanically. "And you know nothing about it? You know him better than we do. Ho seemed the very man for the Colonies, with no ties at home, unless--no, it is impossible--unless there could be a lady in the case." "O, no!" replied Marian colouring so much at the secret consciousness of his motive, that Selina laughed, saying, "I could almost suspect you, in spite of your demureness, of being the very lady. However, I am glad you think there is no truth in my surmise, for he could not do a more absurd thing than marry. Only when a man gives up all his prospects in this way, there is nothing too preposterous to be expected to come next." By this time they were at Mrs. Lyddell's door, and Marian gladly escaped, feeling stunned at the effect her letter had produced. How noble, how kind, how generous, how self-devoted Edmund was! this was the prominent thought. She knew him to be very fond and very proud of his regiment, to be much attached to several of his brother officers, and to have given them more of his affection than persons with home interests generally do; indeed, they had served him instead of home. All his success in life, and his hopes of promotion, given up too,--sacrifices which she could not estimate; and it was she who had caused them. She had thoughtlessly led him to do himself all this injury, out of his kindness and affection, and his sense of duty towards her and her brother. She was very unhappy when she thought of this; then came the bright ray of joy and relief in hope and confidence for Gerald,--Gerald saved, saved from corruption, ruin, from being like Elliot, from breaking her heart, made all that his father and mother would have made him, her pride, her delight, the glory and honour of Fern Torr,--O, joy, joy! And the mere seeing Edmund again,--joy, joy! Yes, the joy far predominated over the pain and regret; indeed, be the injury to himself what it might, who could be sorry that he had acted so nobly? Yes, Marian was happy; her eyes were bright, her smile frequent; she laughed with Clara, she romped with little Willie Marchmont, she was ungracious to none but Mr. Faulkner who came to the house so much, that she began to fear that Caroline might have the annoyance of an offer from him, more especially since he had made his mother and sister call on Mrs. Lyddell, and Miss Faulkner seemed to intend to be intimate. The day of the drawing-room had come; Mrs. Lyddell and Caroline were going, and Marian was of course to go with Lady Marchmont. She had just been full dressed, and had come down stairs to wait for Lady Marchmont's carriage, when a step was heard approaching. She thought it was the servant, to announce it; it was the servant, but the announcement was not what she expected. It was "Mr. Arundel,"--and Edmund stood before her, browner, thinner, older, but still Edmund himself. She could not have spoken; she only held out her hand, and returned his strong pressure with all the force her soft fingers were capable of. Mrs. Lyddell spoke, he answered, explanations were given and received, and still she stood as if she was dreaming, until he turned to her, and said, "Well, Marian, these are transformations indeed?" "I can't help it," said Marian. "Do you think I want you to help it? I suppose I need not ask if the Marchmonts are in town?" "Lady Marchmont presents Marian," said Mrs. Lyddell; "we expect her carriage every minute." And just then the announcement really came. "Her carriage, not herself?" said Edmund. "Well, I think I might go with you to her house, Marian, if your feathers are not ashamed of such shabby company." "O, pray come!" "And you will return to dinner, I hope, Mr. Arundel," said Mrs. Lyddell, "at half-past seven? Mr. Lyddell will be so glad to see you." Edmund accepted the invitation, and the two cousins went down stairs together. As soon as they were in the carriage, Edmund said, "A lucky moment to come in. It is something to have seen you in all your splendour. You have grown into something magnificent!" "All this finery makes me look taller than I really am." "Nevertheless, however you may try to conceal it, I am afraid you have turned into the full grown cat. I saw it in your letter." "O, Edmund, I am so sorry I wrote that letter." "Why? Are you happier about Gerald?" "No, I don't know that I am," said Marian, sighing; "but--but I little thought it would make so much difference to you. I did not know what I was doing." "I am glad of it, or you would not have written so freely; though after all you could not have helped being like a sensible straightforward person." "O, it is untold relief that you are come; and yet I must be sorry--" "I won't have you sorry. No one should regret having told the honest truth. The fact is, I ought never to have gone. And poor Gerald?" "I have no more to say, only vague fears. But now you are come, it is all right." "Don't trust too much to me, Marian. Remember, it will be a generous thing in Gerald if he attends to me at all. He is not obliged to do so." "You will--you must do everything. Gerald is as fond of you as ever, I know he is, though he would not write. O, I am glad! You heard of our delightful going home, I hope?" "Yes. All well there?" said Edmund, hurriedly. "Very well. Agnes is grown so tall, and it is so very nice there. The old Manor house--" "Well," he broke in suddenly; "and how do you get on with Selina Marchmont." "She is very, very kind. But O! here we are in her street, and I shall have no more of you to-day." "Not at dinner?" "O; it is a great, horrid party, as Mrs. Lyddell should have warned you." "Could not I take you in to dinner?" "I am afraid not. Mrs. Lyddell will never treat me as if I was at home, and I am afraid there is an honourable man that I must be bestowed on." They had reached Lady Marchmont's door, and going up stairs, found her looking like a princess in a fairy tale, in her white plumes and her diamonds; and Willie, the smallest, most delicate, and prettiest of little boys, admiring the splendours of his papa's yeomanry uniform. In spite of being considerably provoked with Edmund for having come home, Lord and Lady Marchmont welcomed him with as much warmth as if it was the most prudent thing he could have done. They insisted on his coming to stay at their house, and as it was full time to set off, left him to see about his worldly goods being transported thither. "Has he told you his reason, Marian?" asked Selina, as soon as the two ladies and their trains were safely disposed of, in the carriage. "I know them," said Marian, her colour rising, "and most noble they are; but I had rather let him tell you himself." "Marian's discretion again," said Lord Marchmont, smiling. "Only set me at rest on one point," said Selina; "it is no love affair, I hope?" "No, indeed," said Marian; "or do you think he would have told me?" Probably there were few young ladies who played their part that day in the drawing-room, that last remnant of the ancient state and majesty of our courts, with happier minds, or less intent on their own appearance, than Marian Arundel. She was very glad when the bustle and crowd were over, and she could be alone to enjoy the certainty that Edmund was really at home again. He came according to promise that evening, but she could not have much conversation with him, as he was placed at a distance from her, the greater part of the time. He was not sorry to be thus able to watch her, though he did not see her in the point of view in which she pleased him best. She looked better now, he thought, than in the court dress; for the broad, simple, antique braids of her dark hair, only adorned by two large pearl pins, suited better than the plumes and lappets, with the cast of her classical features. All that he had thought promised beauty, as a child, had fulfilled the promise, and the countenance, the expression, would have been fine, seen on a much plainer face, and as she eat there, her black, shady eyes cast down, her dark pencilled eyebrows contrasting with her colourless cheek, and her plain white drapery in full folds, flowing round her, she might have been some majestic lady in a mysterious picture, who had stepped from her frame into a scene belonging to another age. She looked as if she was acting a tableau; she moved, indeed, and smiled, and spoke occasionally; but the queen-like deportment of her neck did not relax; her lips resumed their statue-like expression; there was no smile about the eye, no interest in the air. She was among the company, but not of them; neither shy nor formal, but as if she belonged to some other sphere, and had only come there by mistake. Edmund could have counted the times, for they were few enough, when her head bent forward with eagerness, and there was animation in her face. How different from Caroline! her brightly coloured, blooming face sparkling with life and light; flowers among her light, shining hair; her dress of well-chosen, tasteful, brilliant tints, ornament, lace and ribbon, all well assorted in kind and quantity, her alert, lively movements carrying her from one group to another, with something pleasant and appropriate to say to all, bringing smiles and animation with her wherever she went. Not that Edmund did not prefer his cousin's severe simplicity, and admire it as something grand; but that stern grandeur was not all that fitted the place; and though he thought her beautiful, he was not satisfied. Edmund had some talk with Mrs. Lyddell, who spoke of Gerald with great warmth; more, he thought, than she showed in the mention of Marian. He stayed till the last, and saw the relaxation of her grand company-face, before he wished them good night. "Well," said Mrs. Lyddell, as the door closed behind him, and she lighted her candle, "Africa has not robbed Mr. Arundel of all his good looks. How old is he?" "Nearly twenty-eight," said Marian. "I am always forgetting that he is so young," said Mrs. Lyddell. "Well, good night. I wonder what brought him home?" "I do not wonder, for it is plain enough," said Caroline, as the girls turned up their own staircase. "Marian tries to look innocent," said Clara, laughing violently. "I am sure I don't understand," said Marian. "Now I am sure that is on purpose to make us explain," said Clara. "It is too bad, Marian; when he came straight to you, instead of going to Lady Marchmont." "And the tête-à-tête in the carriage," said Caroline. "Don't be so ridiculous," said Marian; "but I believe you like such jokes so well, that you would make them out of anything." "I don't make a joke of it at all. I always thought it was with that very view, he was made your guardian." "You very absurd persons, good night!" said Marian, shutting her door, and laughing to herself at such a very ludicrous idea as such a scheme on the part of her father. These kind of jokes, of which some people are still very fond, may be very hurtful, since a young girl's inexperience may found far more upon them than the laughers ever intended. Caroline and Clara were not acting a kind part, though they were far from any unkind meaning. Marian had great susceptibility and deep affections; and had her mind been less strong, her happiness might have been seriously injured. Even if their observations had no real meaning, and no effect on her heart, yet they could not fail to occasion her many moments of embarrassment, and might interfere with her full, free confidence in her best and earliest friend. In some degree they had this result. Marian began to be aware that her situation with Edmund was not without awkwardness,--that he was still a young man, and that she was now a young woman; and whilst shocked at herself, and disliking the moment that had opened the door to the thought, was obliged to consider how far there might be truth in the suggestion. She was quite sure that she had influenced him strongly, quite sure that he regarded her with warm affection; she wished she was equally sure it was with a brother's love. Yes, she wished, for to think otherwise would lower him in her estimation. He was her first cousin, and if first cousins had better not marry he would never think of it; besides, the merit of his sacrificing all for Gerald's good would be lost, and his return would have been an act of self-gratification instead of self-devotion. No, she would not, could not believe any such thing; she was certain Edmund never would be so weak as to wish to do anything only doubtfully right, and thus, strangely enough, her full trust in the dignity of his character, prevented her from imagining him in love with her. Still she knew her cousins were watching her, and this prevented her from ever meeting him in thorough comfort at Mr. Lyddell's; and even when at Lord Marchmont's, her maidenly reserve had been so far awakened as to make her shrink back from the full freedom of their former intercourse. This, however, was more in her feeling than in her manners, which, if they differed at all from what they were formerly, only seemed to be what naturally arose from her growth in years. She observed that he was not in good spirits. It was not what others, not even Selina, could perceive, but Edmund and Marian had known each other too well and too long, not to read each other's faces, and know the meaning of each other's tones. She did not expect him to be as merry as in olden days at home, nor did she desire it; but there was more depression about him than she thought comfortable, and she was sure that it was an effort to him to talk in the lively way that had once been natural to him. She was afraid he felt the separation from his friends in his old regiment very severely, or else that he was very anxious about Gerald, and yet she had found out that the tenderest point of all was Fern Torr, for he either would not or could not speak of that, but always contrived to turn the conversation as soon as it was touched upon. She grieved over his unhappiness a great deal, and yet would not enter on any questioning, from an innate feeling, that it would not be becoming. He was only to stay a very short time in London, before joining his regiment at Portsmouth, and he meant to go and spend a day at Eton to see Gerald, but Lady Marchmont suddenly proposed that they should all go together; she said she must inspect Eton before Master Willie was ready to go, and that it would be a charming scheme to take Marian and surprise Gerald. Marian had a few secret doubts whether this was exactly the most suitable way of fulfilling Edmund's intentions, but it was so delightful a treat that she laid aside her scruples, and Selina coaxed her husband into finding a day to accompany them. So one fine June morning, the day before Edmund's departure, they set off, Selina's high spirits and Marian's happiness giving the party a very joyous aspect. Father Thames looked as stately and silvery as ever, the playing fields smiled in the sunshine, and Windsor Castle looked down on them majestically. Marian felt it a holiday to have escaped from London into so fair a scene, and even if she had come for nothing else, would have been happy in beholding some of the most honoured spots in the broad realm of England. She had many questions to ask, but Lord Marchmont was taken up with showing his old haunts to his wife, and she was walking some distance in front, with Edmund, on whose face there was an expression of melancholy thought that she would not disturb. He was an Etonian, and how fall of remembrances must all be around him. Presently two or three boys met them running, and were passing them, when Marion exclaimed, "There is Lionel!" "Lyddell!" called Edmund, and one of them stopped, so taken by surprise that Marian was for a moment horrified by thinking she had mistaken him; but the next glance re-assured her, for she knew Lionel's way of standing, and his hat pulled far over his forehead. "Lionel," said she, "where is Gerald?" "Hallo! You here!" said he, wheeling round so that the light might not be in his eyes, and shading them with one hand while he tried to make out Edmund, and gave his other hand to Marian. "How did you come here? Are any of the people at home here?" "No, this is my cousin Edmund. I am come with the Marchmonts." "You have quite forgotten me," said Edmund, shaking hands. "Not if I could see you," said Lionel, frowning at the light, as he looked up. "O, Lionel, how bad your eyes are!" exclaimed Marion. "I have just been reading, and there is such a _hideous_ sunshine to-day," said Lionel. "And where is Gerald?" "I'll go and fetch him." "Where is he?" "I'll find him," and off he ran, with a fresh pull of his hat over his forehead to keep off the hideous sunshine. The Marchmonts came up at the moment, and were told who he was, and that he was gone to find Gerald. Edmund asked what was the matter with his eyes. "They are never very good," said Marian. "Reading and strong light always hurt them." "Has he had any advice?" "The surgeon at Oakworthy looked at them last Christmas, when the snow dazzled them, but he did not think there was much amiss with them. It was always so. But where can Gerald be?" In the space of about five minutes, Gerald and Lionel appeared, and the former came up to them alone, with a look which had more of shyness than of pleasure, and his greeting, while more courteous, was less open and cordial than Lionel's had been. They all went together to the house of the boys' tutor, who had also been Edmund's; there was a great maze of talking and introductions: Lady Marchmont made herself very charming to the mistress of the house: Edmund and the tutor disappeared together, and did not come back till the others had nearly finished a most hospitable luncheon; after which the visitors set out to see all that there was time to see, and Marian caused Gerald to fetch Lionel to accompany them. Lionel walked with Edmund and Marian, but Gerald on the other hand attached himself to Lord and Lady Marchmont, talking to them freely and pleasantly, answering Selina's questions, much to her amusement and satisfaction, and Lord Marchmont comparing notes with him, as old Etonians delight to do with "the sprightly race, disporting" for the time being, on the "margen green" of Father Thames. A particularly lively, pleasant, entertaining, well-mannered boy was Gerald, but, all the time, Marian was feeling that he was holding aloof both from her and Edmund, never allowing either of them the opportunity of speaking to him alone, for even a minute; and his manner, whenever Edmund either spoke to him or looked at him, was such as to betray to her that he was ill at ease. Thus it was while they viewed the chapel, the court, with what Selina was pleased to call "Henry's holy shade," the upper school, the hundred steps, the terrace, and beautiful S. George's, with its gorgeous banners and carved stalls, and blazoned shields, that glimpse into the Gothic world of chivalry and romance; and in the midst of it that simple flat stone, which thrills the heart with a deep feeling at once of love, sorrow and reverence; that stone which recalls the desolate night which, in darkness and ruin, amid torn banners, and scutcheons riven, saw the Martyr king go white to his grave. Marian entered into all these things, in spite of her anxiety, for her mind was free enough to be open to external objects, now that her brother was in Edmund's hands, and she was relieved of that burthen of responsibility which had so pressed on her. Such was their Eton day, and with no more satisfaction from Gerald did they part at the Slough station. The Marchmonts were loud in his praise, Marian sought the real opinion in Edmund's eyes, but he was leaning back, looking meditative, and when first he roused himself to enter into conversation, it was of Lionel and not of Gerald that he spoke. "Do you say that any one has looked at that boy's eyes?" "Yes, Mr. Wells, the Oakworthy apothecary." "Do you know what is thought of him?" "I don't know," said Marian considering. "He attends a good many people, I believe he is thought well of; but no one ever is ill at home, so I have no experience of him. Yes, he was called in once when we all had the measles, and last winter about Lionel's eyes. I am sure I don't know whether he is what you would call a good doctor or not; all I know is, that he is not at all like Dr. Oldham." Edmund smiled. "Has Mrs. Lyddell not been uneasy?" "O no!" said Marian. "No one ever troubles their head about Lionel, besides it was always so." "Always how?" "His eyes were always weak, and easily tired and dazzled, from the very first when I knew him. They don't look as if there was anything amiss with them, and so people don't suspect it." "I think they do look very much amiss," said Edmund. "Do not you observe an indistinctness about the pupil, between it and the iris? Can you tell whether that was always the case?" "I don't know, I see what you mean. I should say it had begun of late. Do you think it so bad a sign?" she asked anxiously. "I am not sure; I only know if he belonged to me, I should not like it at all." Marian pondered and feared, and considered if it would be possible to stir up Mrs. Lyddell; she herself was much startled, and rather indignant; but she doubted greatly whether poor Lionel was of sufficient importance in the family for any one to be very anxious on his account. In the meantime, she was extremely desirous of hearing what account Edmund had received from the tutor respecting her brother, but she had no opportunity till late in the evening, when he came and sat by her on the sofa, saying, "Now, Marian, I will answer your anxious eyes, though I am afraid I have nothing very satisfactory to tell you. I don't know that there is any positive harm--it is only the old story of a clever boy with too much money, and too much left to himself. Idleness and thoughtlessness." "And what shall you do?" "I don't know--I must think." Whereupon they both sat silent. "I shall see you again in the summer," said he. "O yes--perhaps you will come in Gerald's holidays." Another silence, then she said, "Do you think very badly of poor Lionel's eyes?" "No, I don't say that, for I know nothing, only I wonder his family are not more anxious." "I shall see if Mrs. Lyddell will believe there is cause for alarm." The carriage was announced, she wished him good-bye again, thanked her cousins for her pleasant day, and departed, wondering to herself how it could have been a pleasant day, as after all it had been, in spite of doubt and anxiety and care. She told Mrs. Lyddell when she came in, that she had seen Lionel. "How were his eyes?" asked Caroline. "I am afraid they were more dazzled than usual." No one said anything, and after a pause she went on. "Edmund remarked a sort of indistinctness about the pupil, which he said was not a good sign." "What was that?" said Mr. Lyddell looking up, and Marian, startled, yet glad to have attracted his notice, repeated what she had said. "Did not Wells look at his eyes last winter?" he said, turning to his wife. "Yes, he said he could not see anything the matter with them--they must be spared--and he sent a mixture to bathe them. Lionel has been using it continually." "How would it be to have him up here to see some one?" said Mr. Lyddell. "Better wait for the holidays," answered his wife. "It would be the worst thing possible to set him thinking, about his eyes in the middle of the half-year. Little as he does now, it would soon be less, and his eyes have kept him back so much already that he really cannot afford to lose any more time." There it ended, Mrs. Lyddell was not to be alarmed; she had been too long used to prosperity even to contemplate the possibility that harm should come nigh to her or to her dwelling. Mr. Lyddell, who left all family matters to her, forgot all about it, and though Marian talked Caroline into some fears on the subject, Caroline could do no more than she could herself.

13

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"_Benedict_. What, my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?" " _Beatrice_. Is it possible Disdain should die while she has such meet food to feed her?" _Much Ado about Nothing. _ The Lyddell family did not continue in London much longer; it had been a short season, and though the session of Parliament was not over, most of the ladies were taking flight into the country, before the end of June,--Mrs. Lyddell among the rest,--and her husband went backwards and forwards to London, as occasion called him. The girls were glad to get into the country, but Marian soon found that she had not escaped either from gaieties, or from the objects of her aversion; for Mr. Faulkner brought his mother and sisters to High Down House, gave numerous parties there, and made a constant interchange of civilities with the family at Oakworthy. Archery was pretty much the fashion with the young ladies that year; it was a sport which Marian liked particularly, having often practised it with Edmund and Agnes, and her bow and arrows were always the first to be ready. One day when Marian, Caroline, and Clara were shooting on the lawn at Oakworthy, Mr. and Miss Faulkner rode from High Down, came out on the lawn, and joined them. From that moment, any one could see the change that came over Marian. Instead of laughing and talking, teaching Clara, and paying only half attention to her own shooting, she now went on as if it was her sole object, and as if she had no other purpose in life. She fixed her arrows and twanged her string with a rigidity as if the target had been a deadly enemy, or her whole fate was concentrated in hitting the bull's eye; and when her arrows went straight to the mark, or at least much straighter than those of any one else, she never turned her head, or vouchsafed more than the briefest answer to the exclamations around. The others were talking of archery in general and in particular,--just what, if it had not been Mr. Faulkner, would have delighted her; but she would not hear him. He might speak of the English long-bow, and the cloth yard-shaft, and the butts at which Elizabeth shot, and the dexterity required for hitting a deer, and of the long arrow of the Indian, and the Wourali reed of South America,--as long as he spoke it was nothing to her, let Caroline smile and answer, and appeal to her as much she would. Then came a talk about archery meetings and parties, in which at last they all grew so eager, that they stood still round the return target, and Marian could not shoot back again without perilling them; so she unstrung her bow, and stood apart with a stern face, which made her look a great deal more like Diana, than she by any means suspected or desired. Two days after, there came a note from Miss Faulkner,--Julia, as she had requested to be called,--saying that her brother was so delighted with the archery schemes that had been discussed, that he could not give them up, and intended to give a grand fête at High Down,--archery in the morning, a ball in the evening, and all the ladies who liked, to be in costume. She ended by begging Caroline to come to luncheon that day, or the next, to enter into council on the subject. There was great delight; such an entertainment was quite a novelty in the neighbourhood, and the costume seemed to make it all the more charming in the eyes of Caroline, Clara, and their mother; all were talking at once, and wondering what it could or should be, while Marian went on reading imperturbably without one remark. "It ought to be in Robin Hood's time, if only for the sake of Maid Marian," said Caroline. "She will be quite sure to win the prize." "O yes, that she will," said Clara; "she shoots so much better than any one else." "I shall not shoot in public," said Marian, looking up for a moment, and then going on with her book. "You will do nothing to make yourself particular," said Mrs. Lyddell: "it will be very silly to set your face against this fête, when every one knows how fond you are of archery." "We don't know anything yet about what is to be," said Caroline, quickly; and at that moment Elliot, coming in, offered to ride with her to High Down, whereupon she hastened to get ready. Such an obliging offer from her brother was certainly too uncommon a thing to be neglected, in spite of the unwonted graciousness and amiability which Elliot had for the last few weeks assumed towards her. When she was gone, Marian and Clara resumed their ordinary occupations, and one of them at least troubled herself no more about the fête, until, shortly before dinner time, Elliot, Caroline, and Mr. Faulkner all rode up to the front door. Mr. Faulkner, it appeared, was come to dinner, and to carry on the consultation, since he was extremely eager about the scheme, and no time was to be lost in sending out the invitations. The Sherwood Forest plan had been talked over, and abandoned as too common-place. It was to be a Kenilworth fête; eight young ladies of Lady Julia's especial party were to appear in the morning in a pretty uniform dress, a little subdued from the days of the ruff and farthingale; and in the evening there was to be a regular Kenilworth quadrille, in which each lady or gentleman was to assume the dress of some character of Queen Elizabeth's court. In fact, as Mr. Faulkner said;-- "Gorgeous dames and statesmen bold In bearded majesty appear." Amy Robsart, Katherine Seymour, Anne Clifford, Frances Walsingham, Mildred Cecil, and other ladies of the time were mentioned, and then came the counting up of their eight living representatives,--the two Misses Faulkner, Caroline, yes, and Clara herself, who started and danced with ecstasy, then glanced entreatingly at her mother, who looked doubtful; Marian, two cousins of the Faulkners, who were always ready for anything, and a Miss Mordaunt, were reckoned up, and their dresses quickly discussed; but all the time Marian said not a word. She was thinking of the waste of time and consideration, the folly, levity and vanity, the throwing away of money, all this would occasion, and enjoying in her own mind the pleasure of resisting it _in toto_. She supposed she must go to the archery meeting, though why people could not be contented to shoot on their own lawns, instead of spoiling their pleasure by all this fuss, she could not guess; but make a show of herself and her shooting, be stared at by all the world,--that she would never do. Nor would she make a figure of herself at the ball, and spend the money which she wanted very much for her poor people and her books, now that her court dress and London finery had eaten up such an unconscionable share of her allowance. Increased as it was, she had never felt so poor as at present; she wanted Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art" for herself, and there were all the presents to be sent to the old people at Fern Torr; and should these be given up for the sake of appearing as the fair Anne Clifford, or some such person, for one evening, during which she would be feeling most especially unnatural and uncomfortable? No indeed! and she trusted that she had a very good and sufficient defence against all such foolery, in the slight mourning which she was wearing for one of the Marchmont connection. True, she had thought of leaving it off next Sunday, but no matter; it would be such armour as was not to be lightly parted with; and if she went to the ball at all, it should never, never be as the heiress of the Cliffords, but as the faithful mourning relation of old Mr. Thomas Marchmont, her second cousin once removed, whom she had never beheld in her life, and who would have been dead at least nine weeks by the time it took place. She said nothing about it in the drawing-room; but when they went up stairs, she told Caroline not to reckon upon her, for she should be in mourning, and could not wear a fancy dress. Caroline looked much vexed. "It was a great pity," she said, "and Julia Faulkner wished it to be all their own set. Besides, would not Marian shoot,--she who did it so well?" "O, no, no, I could do no such thing with all those people staring." "Not even for a silver arrow? You would be sure to win it." "I should be ashamed of the very sight of it ever after. O no! I should like--at least I should not mind seeing it all as a spectator, but as to making a part of the show, never, never, Caroline!" "Well, I know it is of no use to try to persuade you!" said Caroline, with a little annoyance in her tone. "Good night." Lady Julia, with her son and daughter, came to call the next day. Marian thought herself fortunate in not being in the drawing-room. She put on her bonnet, slipped out at the garden door, and walked away with a book in her hand, to the remotest regions of the park, where she sat down under a thorn-tree, and read Schiller's Thirty Years' War with a sort of exemplary diligence and philosophy, till it was so late that she thought herself perfectly secure of the Faulkners' being gone. Yet she only just missed them, for their carriage was driving off at one door, as she reached the other. "Where have you been, Marian?" was the first greeting. "I have been walking to the old thorn." "O, have you? We hunted for you everywhere in the house: we would hardly believe Fanny when she said you were gone out, for I knew you meant to walk with us." "I thought you would be engaged so long that it was not worth while to wait for you." "Well, but did you know you had missed the Faulkners?" said Clara. "I knew they were here." Every one understood this except Clara, and very little did it please Mrs. Lyddell or Caroline. "Marian," said Mrs. Lyddell, "you really must not be so absurd about this matter. Your mourning is nothing. You need not be wearing it even now; and it will annoy Lady Julia, and put her to serious inconvenience, if you continue to refuse." "I am sure I do not wish to inconvenience her," said Marian; "but there must be many young ladies who would be only too happy to take the part." "Of course," said Mrs. Lyddell, "any one else would rejoice to be asked; but the point is, that it is so unpleasant to admit any thing of a stranger into the intimacy these things occasion." "I am almost a stranger to them." "Yes, but not to us, Marian," said Clara. "You have known them as long, or longer than we have; and you would look so very well. Lady Julia said herself that such a distinguished face and figure as yours would set the whole thing off to advantage." Caroline well knew this was but the way to make Marian still more determined against it. She held her tongue through all the persuasions of her mother and Clara; and trusting a little, but not much, to the superior influence which she knew herself to possess, she followed Marian to her room, and began,--"Marian, are you still resolute against this unfortunate archery? because, if you do not really think it a matter of right and wrong, I should be very much obliged to you if you would only yield." It was not so easy to withstand Caroline speaking in this way, as Mrs. Lyddell almost scolding and Clara talking nonsense; but Marian had made up her mind, and would not let herself be shaken. "I don't think I can," was her answer. "Will you say whether you really think it wrong?" "I don't know." Not her considering "I don't know," but the dry, provoking end-of-the-matter answer of half sullen days gone by. "If you really thought it positively wrong," proceeded Caroline, "not another word would I say: but I don't see how you can without condemning all gaeties, and that I know you do not." "I only think it a--a waste of time--a great deal of nonsense," said Marian, faltering for an answer; "and really I have spent so much money; I do not like to throw away any more." "O, you do not know how we have settled that," said Caroline, beginning to be hopeful now that she had something tangible to attack. "The dresses for the morning will be nothing,--only a white skirt and green polka, which will do to wear for ever after, and a little ruff, very pretty, and no expense at all; and a little alteration will make our court dresses perfectly suitable for Queen Elizabeth's ladies. You need not be at all afraid of being ruined." Marian saw that, though there would be many a little expense to make a mickle one, yet it would still only cost her Mrs. Jameson, instead of the gifts to the poor people; but as this was what chiefly justified her in her own eyes, she would not admit the conviction, and answered, "Those things that are altered and adapted really are as costly in the end as if they were new altogether. Besides, I could not, I really could not shoot before such an assembly." "I should so like to see you get the arrow." "O Caroline, that would be worse than anything!" "Well, then, don't get it; shoot as badly as you please: only do be kind and make one of us, or you will spoil the whole concern." "How can that be? What difference can my dressing up or shooting make to any one?" "Why, for one thing, if you are not one, as you must be, living with us and all, Julia will be obliged to ask that Miss Grimley; don't you know her?" "What, that old young lady who has been figuring in the newspaper so long as getting all the archery prizes?" "Yes, the veteran archer, as Elliot calls her; and Mr. Faulkner says, if she appears in character at all, it must be as Queen Elizabeth herself dancing a stately pavise to the sound of the little fiddle. She is some connection of theirs, and must be asked, if you will not take it; and she is almost as bad as Queen Elizabeth herself, and will give none of us any peace about the dresses, O Marian! Julia said she should esteem it as a real kindness from you if you would be Lady Anne, if only for the sake of keeping her out!" "I think it would be very absurd for a person who hates the whole concern to be dragged in, for the sake of keeping out one who likes it!" "Then you are still resolved? Well, I had not much expectation, but still I was half inclined to hope you would relent, if you did not think it a point of principle, when you knew that it would be a real favor to me." "To you, Caroline! you do not care for such trumpery." "I do care about seeing my friends mortified and vexed," said Caroline, mournfully. "Your friends!" exclaimed Marian, in a voice of contempt. "Yes, as much as kindness can make them." "And esteem? O Caroline!" "Kindness--readiness to oblige," repeated Caroline. "They are my friends, and I am very fond of them." Caroline went away without another word, and Marian felt that her words implied that she preferred readiness to oblige, to rigid, unbending superiority in goodness. Marian felt it, and was disappointed in Caroline, and pleased to have kept her determination, without asking herself how far it was satisfied pride in obstinacy. This was the last time for many weeks that Caroline lingered talking in Marian's room. The old chill had come on again. Both knew, though neither said so, that it was not so much because it was a display and expense that Marian refused, as because it was the Faulkners' party. If it had been Lady Marchmont's, it would have been very different. Now Caroline liked the Faulkners; they were all good natured, and much more agreeable than any others in the neighbourhood--than any, indeed, with whom she had yet been brought into close intercourse. She thought Marian was unjust and ungracious, both to them and to her; that she had been prejudiced from the first, and now was very decidedly making herself disagreeable by a rigidity in trifles, which was almost positive unkindness. Caroline's home, as has been shown, was neither a very happy, nor a very satisfactory one; so that of late she had learnt to look upon her brother Walter and Marian as her chief comforts, and was now much more hurt and disappointed at Marian's conduct than she was willing to show. It was particularly unfortunate just at this time, when there was so much to invite and gratify her at High Down, when she was in especial need of a true and affectionate friend and counsellor, and when Walter was absent, being engaged in preparing for his ordination, which was to take place in the course of the autumn. Mrs. Lyddell was much displeased with Marian, and showed it by her coldness and formality; and Marian began to live more alone with herself, and at war with the outer world, than she had done even before Edmund's first visit five years ago. Caroline and Clara were a great deal with the Faulkners, either at High Down or at home. Clara was in a perfect transport at being admitted into the number of the archeresses, and had struck up one of her eternal friendships with Louisa, the second Miss Faulkner; and Marian might very fairly be provoked at seeing how entirely her mind was diverted from all the rationality which she and Caroline had been endeavouring--and as they had hoped, not without success--to infuse into her during the past year. To get Clara to settle quietly down to anything was an utter impossibility; her wisest employment was the study of Elizabethan costumes, her most earnest, the practice of archery. Now Marian always maintained that archery, on their own lawn, and among themselves, was a very pretty sport; and for the sake of consistency with her own principles, she very diligently shot whenever the Faulkners were not there, and did her very best, by precept and example, to make Clara fit her arrows to the string in her own direct and purpose-like way, draw the bow-string to her ear with a steady effort and aim, instead of a fitful jerk or twitch; and in fact shoot, if she was to shoot, like a sensible woman, who really intended damage to the target. Clara was very much obliged, and made some progress; but Marian thus did herself little good with any one else, for her love of the sport, and her excellence at it, made her spirit of disdain all the more marked. Clara, was again, as in former times, her chief friend in the family; for Marian, after the first vexation, held her sense too cheap to blame her for her folly. It was the fault of the others that she had been put in the way of what could not fail to turn her head; so she listened, without showing many tokens of contempt, to her endless histories of dear Louisa, and all the plans at High Down,--of the witticisms that were perpetrated, the anticipations of amusement and admiration, and of the tracasseries which Miss Grimley had not failed to occasion. Marian was often entertained, and Clara more than once hoped she was on the point of regretting that she was not one of the favoured eight; but nothing could be further from Marian's mind. She did not intend to absent herself either from the archery or from the ball, but she must wear her own character, and no other; and people were allowed to assume fancy dresses or not, just as suited their inclination, so that she was in no fear of rendering herself remarkable. Caroline and Clara were to go to High Down two days before the great occasion, and stay till the day after; Marian to remain at Oakworthy. Just before they went, Clara danced into her room, saying, "Marian, do you know some of the officers at Portsmouth have been asked to the ball? You know there is a railroad all the way. I wonder if Mr. Arundel will be there?" "Decidedly not," replied Marian. "What, not when he knows what an attraction there will be?" "Don't talk such nonsense, Clara; the idea of thinking a man would take such a journey for a ball! Well, I hope you will be very happy." "O do come and see my dress, Marian, before it is packed up; it is on mamma's bed, and it is so beautiful!" Marian came, and admired. Caroline was to be Amy Robsart, and Clara, Janet Foster; a part her mother had chosen for her, as more appropriate to a girl not yet come out. Certainly, Tony Foster would scarcely have recognized his demure little Puritan under the little lace hood, the purple bodice, and white skirt, at which Clara looked with such exultation; and Janet was further to be supposed to have taken possession of the Countess's orient neck-pearls, and was to wear them as the only ornament that could with any propriety be bestowed on her. It happened that Marian had a remarkably fine set of pearls. She had few jewels of any kind; but these had been her grandmother's, and there was some tradition belonging to them which no one ever could remember. Janet's necklace was so much less pretty, that Marian could not help exclaiming that Clara had better wear hers. Clara demurred, for she knew Marian relied on these pearls to help out a dress which had seen more than one London party; but it ended in Marian's having her own way, and being contemptuous at the gratitude with which her loan was received. Yet she was surprised to find that it was a relief to her that Mrs. Lyddell departed a little from her cold politeness, and showed herself really pleased and obliged. Certainly, if Mrs. Lyddell had not in some degree relaxed, those two days would have been very forlorn. As it was, it was very odd to sit down to dinner with only Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell and Elliot, and to have no one but Mrs. Lyddell to speak to in the drawing-room. She was glad when the day came, to have it over; and she was not sufficiently hard-hearted to regret that it was as fine as could be wished. To High Down they went, and everything was just as Marian had expected,--every one walked about and idled, and wondered when the shooting would begin; and when it did begin, no one paid much attention to it except those who were interested in some of the competitors. Marian watched her pupil anxiously, and Clara, between excitement and nervousness, shot much worse than if she had been in the garden at home, and went so wide of the mark, that Marian was ashamed of her. Caroline did better, but not well; and the prize was of course borne off by Miss Grimley, who was popularly reported to have arrows enough to stock the quivers of two or three cupids. Clara ran up to Marian, and walked with her a little while; telling her all that had come to pass during the last two days,--a great deal of bustle, and merriment, and nonsense, which Clara seemed to have enjoyed excessively, and of which Marian could have said, "Every one to his taste." Of Caroline she saw little or nothing; and after wandering about in the rear of Mrs. Lyddell, and exchanging a great many cold salutations, and colder sentences of small-talk, she was very glad to find herself once more in the carriage, though it was only to go home, dine and dress for the ball, and then High Down again. She wore white, with jet ornaments, and a row of pearls round her hair,--the only thing that saved her from being rather shabbily dressed than otherwise. However, Mrs. Lyddell had long since announced that she had done saying anything about Marian's dress, and Fanny had not been a ladies' maid long enough to grow into a tyrant; so that she had her own way, and no one repeated to her, what she knew full well, that her white silk was yellow where it swept the ground, and the lace did not stand out as freshly as once it did. Mrs. Lyddell and Elliot talked and laughed all the way, quizzing the company very sociably, and both appearing in the highest spirits. Mr. Lyddell was asleep in his corner; Marian with her forehead against the window, and her thoughts with Gerald. They reached High Down in the midst of a stream of carriages; and Marian, in her plain white, had to walk into the ball-room with Elliot, who had completed his offences in her eyes, by daring to assume the dress of Sir Philip Sidney. She soon, however, was free of him, for he liked her as little as she liked him, and moreover had to go and perform his part in the noted Kenilworth quadrille. Marian was left standing by Mrs. Lyddell, as she usually did, through the greater part of a ball; for as she never waltzed, there were few dances in which she could take a part. She had made half the Oakworthy neighbours afraid of her; and Mrs. Lyddell, having found that all activity in the way of being a useful chaperon was thrown away, had acquiesced in leaving her to herself, "doing her justice" sufficient by taking her to the ball. Marian was entertained by the pageant, as she deemed it. It was a very pretty scene, with so many gay dresses, in the bright light; and it was amusing to recognise her acquaintances in the wonderful costumes some of them had seen fit to assume. She would have liked some one to laugh with, at a shepherdess dancing, crook and all; and she highly appreciated a good-natured old gentleman, who was willing to do anything, however absurd, that could please his friends, and had come out as my grave Lord Keeper himself, with "His bushy beard and shoe-strings green, His high-crowned hat and satin-doublet." Caroline looked more like a beauty than she had ever seen her before. Her fair ringlets and white neck had a peculiar elegance, set off by the delicate fan-like ruff, and graceful head-gear of the Countess Amy. The only fault that Marian could find was, that poor Amy never could have looked as if she had so much mind as Caroline's countenance expressed. As to her partner, Marian did not behold him with very different feelings, from those with which she would have regarded the real Earl of Leicester, could she have had one peep at the actual pageant of Kenilworth, with its outward pomp, masking the breaking hearts beneath. Thereupon she fell deep into musings on "Kenilworth," which she had read at home, when, so young and unlearned in novels as not to have a guess at what would happen, when it was all a wonder and fairy-land of delight, and when poor Tressilian's name of Edmund had been his first charm in her eyes, even before she loved him for his deep character and melancholy fate. She thought how unlike all this common-place world was to the world it aped--how far these Raleighs and Sidneys were from being worthy to usurp the name even for one evening! and as to Tressilian, how impossible to see any face here that would even shadow her idea of him! And yet she did not know; she might have to change her mind. There actually was a countenance handsome, thoughtful, almost melancholy enough for Tressilian himself, with the deep dark eyes, pale, clear, sun-burnt, brown complexion, and jetty hair that befitted her hero; a short beard and dark dress would have completed him, but she almost thought it a pity that such a face should appear above a scarlet coat and gold epaulettes. However, Tressilian had been moving towards the end of the room where she was standing, and was coming so near that she could not study him after the first; so she turned to speak to Miss Faulkner, who had finished her quadrille, and just as a polka was commencing, she was surprised by finding Tressilian himself standing by her, and asking to have the honour of dancing with her. "Thank you, I don't dance the Polka," she replied; and as she spoke quick flashes of thought crossed her thus--"I have not been introduced to him--I have met him before--how horrid of Tressilian's face to talk of polkas--ha! it is Edmund!" Edmund Arundel's eye it was that was glancing at her with a look of great amusement at her bewilderment. "The next quadrille," he proceeded, in the same ceremonious voice. "O Edmund, Edmund, I did not know you in the least! Who would have thought of seeing you here?" "Why not? Did you not know we were asked?" "Asked? yes; but who would have come who could have helped it?" "I wanted particularly to see you." Then, after speaking to Mrs. Lyddell, he turned to her again, and resumed, "But am I not to have the pleasure of dancing the next quadrille with you?" "If it is any pleasure to you, I am sure you are very welcome." "In the mean time, what is the meaning of your not being amongst the performers? You used to be a capital shot." "I? O, of course I could not shoot before all the world." "Well, I was in hopes my pupil had been doing me credit; so much so, that I tried very hard to make that lady with the silver arrow into you, and--" as Marian looked at Miss Grimley's thin, freckled face, and reddish, sandy locks, and could not help smiling, he continued, "when that would not quite do, I went on trying to turn each maid of honour into you, till, just as I gave you up, I saw young Dashwood fixed in contemplation; and well he might be, for there was something so majestic as could be nothing but Zenobia, Queen of the East, or Miss Arundel herself." "Majestic! nonsense! nothing can feel less majestic." "Then decidedly you are not what you seem." "I was trying all the time to make you into Tressilian, only your red coat was in the way. You know I never saw you in it before." "And so you have given up archery?" "O, no! I shoot at home; only I cannot make a spectacle of myself,--I hate the whole thing so much." "And you would not wear a fancy dress?" "You see I am in mourning." "Why, who is dead?" "Don't you know? Old Mr. Thomas Marchmont." "Yes, and his great-grandfather likewise! Well, you certainly are inclined to make the most of your connection with the peerage," "Edmund!" and for the first time Marian felt as if she had been making herself more foolish than magnanimous. He gave his arm and they walked along together. He presently began abruptly, "What I came here for was to consult you about a plan for Gerald. You see I shall never get at him unless I have him alone. Now I don't like to take him away from you for the holidays, but I do not see how it is to be managed otherwise." "I don't do him any good now," said Marian sadly. "What I thought of was this; I find I can get leave for two months this summer. Now suppose I was to take him to Marchmont's grouse shooting place in Scotland, and about among the Highlands and Islands. Perhaps the pleasure of that excursion would make up for the being carried off by an awful guardian, and those scrambles might bring him to the old footing with me." "O it would be very nice to have him with you," said Marian; "but----" "Well, what is the but?" "I don't know, only would not taking him home be more likely to revive old associations than anything else?" "No," answered Edmund most decidedly; then in a more hesitating manner, as if casting about for reasons, he added, "I mean he was at home last year--it would not appear so inviting as this expedition--it would be giving every one a great deal of trouble." "To have the Manor House set to rights--yes--but just a week at the Parsonage--just to revive the old feelings with you. For you to teach him how to behave to the Fern Torr people." "No," repeated Edmund, "it would not do." He spoke in a manner that made Marian look up in his face with surprise, and exclaim as if hurt, "Then you are really casting off poor old Fern Torr." The next moment she was sorry she had said so, for his namesake in "Kenilworth" could never have worn a more melancholy aspect than he, as he answered in a very low voice of deep feeling, "I am the last man in the world to be reproached with too little affection for Fern Torr." Marian was grieved, surprised, confused, but she had no time to find an answer, for the quadrille was forming, Edmund began a search for _vis à vis_, and she found herself dancing before she had made up her mind what she should have said if she could have replied at once; but it was too late to return to the subject, and she thought it best to begin entirely another, by asking, the next time they were standing still, how he liked the officers of his new regiment. "Very much, most of them," replied Edmund; "one or two are particularly nice people." "Do you like any as well as Captain Gresham or--" "New friends are not old ones," quickly answered Edmund. "O no, but if you knew them as well, are there any equally worthy to be liked? I want you to be comfortable there very much, as it is all our fault." "Don't say any more of that, Marian. Thank you, I am very comfortable--they are a very pleasant set." "Are there any of them here?" "Yes, three of them." _L'Eté_ cut short his speech, and when they paused again he began, "I mean you to dance with Dashwood--there that rosy tall boy standing partnerless behind the lady in a Swiss fly-away cap." "O I see," said Marian. "Yes, and don't be high and mighty with him." "High and mighty, when I am only shy." "Effects are seen, causes are not equally on the surface." "O Edmund!" "Well, he is a very nice right-minded boy, very shy himself; so don't be grand, for I have a great regard for him, and I want him to have a pleasant evening." Marian was considerably frightened by being told to be agreeable, the thing which of all others she thought the most difficult; but she would attempt anything for the sake of obliging Edmund, and making no answer, consoled herself with thinking how far off the next quadrille was. In the mean time, whilst she danced in the most business-like and least pleasure-like way possible, she was pondering on what she had to say on her own account to her cousin, and when the quadrille was over and he took her to the supper room in quest of ices, she eagerly began, "Then you think me wrong about my fancy dress?" "Shall I give your own favourite reply?" "Don't you think it a good thing to avoid all this folly and expense?" "And to prove Miss Arundel's lofty contempt for finery and foolery?" "I do not want to set myself up, but how am I to help thinking all this nonsense?" "A hard question, since no one attempts to say it is far otherwise; but after all, everything in this world is nonsense, except as a means of doing right or wrong." "And you do not think I made this nonsense a means of doing right?" "If it had been any body else, I should have admired, but I do not trust _you_. However I know nothing about it, I cannot judge of the amount of sacrifice. Cream ice or water ice?" They could not converse any more just then, and in the next polka, Clara, who not being come out, was not well off for partners, was extremely honoured and delighted by being asked to dance by Mr. Arundel. When the turn of a quadrille came round again, Edmund, as good as his word, introduced to Marian his youthful ensign, and she, dreadfully afraid of not obeying Edmund by being agreeable to his friend, set herself to talk with all her might; told him what some of the costumes were intended to represent, speculated as to the others, found him very pleasant, and ended by making him consider his friend's cousin as delightful as she was handsome, and he had been very much impressed with her countenance. She saw Edmund was well pleased to see him looking animated and gratified, and the consequence was that she had to dance with another of his brother officers, and after all it had not been by any means such hard work to be amiable as she was apt to imagine. At any rate she never liked a ball so well, but then she had never met Edmund at any other, which might account for it. After the last quadrille, Mrs. Lyddell summoned her to come home, they took their leave of Caroline and Clara, whom Mrs. Lyddell promised to fetch to-morrow: Lady Julia was particularly full of empressement and affection, delighted that dear Caroline had been looking so lovely. She even came out with them to the cloak-room, where her son was assiduous in shawling Mrs. Lyddell, and all manner of civilities seemed to be passing among them in a low voice, while Edmund having disengaged Marian's shawl from the surrounding drapery, said, as he put it round her, "Then it is settled that I take Gerald and try to do for the best?" "O if you are so kind--" "Don's trust too much to it. I will try, which is all I can do." "No one can do him any good if you cannot." "Hush! And I must thank you for taking my scolding in such good part." "I deserved it." "I have since been thinking you are probably right. I am sure you are in the principle of the thing. It was the particular application that startled me." Mrs. Lyddell moved on, the carriage was at the door, they were all in it, Elliot of course last, and as he threw himself back in his corner and the door was shut, he exclaimed in a satisfied tone, "Well! he is coming it pretty strong!" Who was coming what? thought Marian, but her suspense did not last long, for Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell both chimed in with exclamations of satisfaction which left no doubt that they were delighting themselves in the prospect of seeing Caroline mistress of High Down. Marian had been in some slight degree prepared for this, she knew Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell would highly approve, nay, consider such a marriage as fulfilling their highest expectations, such an establishment as all that could be wished; and depending as she did on Caroline's principle and right feeling, she was sorry to think how much vexation and worrying was in store for her. As she sat disregarded and forgotten through that long dark drive, hearing all the eager gratulations and anticipations of her three companions, regarding a marriage which she could not think of without a sort of horror, how did she despise them, feel imprisoned, and long to make her escape. She had not the least doubt as to what Caroline would do; her rejection of such a man was a matter of certainty; but Marian was vexed with her for having allowed herself to become so intimate with the Faulkners, and thought she had brought on herself all the annoyances that would follow. Tired, irritated, excited, Marian was very glad to escape from the carriage, wish the rest good night, and run up to her own room. She sat before her glass, slowly brushing out her long dark hair, and trying to bring home her feverish thoughts, and dwell on what had passed, especially with Edmund, on whom she had not yet had time to think, and of all those hints of his, as to her behaviour in this matter. Had he approved it or not? or would he if he had known all the circumstances? There was something that struck her a good deal in his saying "I cannot judge of the amount of sacrifice." Had it been a sacrifice to wear a plain dress, to abstain from archery? It would have been, to Clara, but was it to her? and as she looked at the two grey volumes, with their store of pretty engravings and pleasant reading which lay on her table, and thought that they were her own for life, and that Anne Clifford's dress would now be laid aside and useless for ever after the archery prize, if she had won it, would be worthless, and the admiration, had she valued it, passed from her ears, she could not feel, for one instant, that it had been a sacrifice. Then again came his words, "every thing in this world is nonsense, except as a means of doing right or wrong." Yes, pretty books, pleasant pictures, taste and intellect were in themselves as little precious as dress and finery, things as fleeting when compared with eternity, except so far as they trained the soul and the higher faculties which _might_ endure for ever. She thought of "Whether there he prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." All was a shadow except that charity which never faileth, a beautiful picture, even as a costly dress! the way we treat these things alone enduring. Her head throbbed as she tried to be certain as to whether she had acted right. If the dress had required the money set apart for the poor she would have been perfectly clear about it, but she knew it need not have done so. Would her vanity have been gratified? Decidedly not--admiration of her face was so distasteful to her proud shrinking bashfulness, that she felt it like an insult when reported to her, and could almost have wished not to be so handsome, if it had not been more agreeable to an artist-like eye to see a tolerable physiognomy in the glass, when obliged to look there, and besides she would not but be like the Arundels, and was well satisfied with the consciousness of having their features, as indeed she would have been if their noses had been turned up and their "foreheads villainous low." If _her_ vanity was gratified, it was by standing apart from, and being able to look down on the rest of the world; and as Marian became conscious of this, her mind turned from it with the vexation of spirit, the disgust and sensation of dislike, and willingness to forget all about it, that every one is apt to feel with regard to a vanity passed away--something analogous to the contempt and dislike with which we turn from the withered shreds of tangible vanity, faded and crumpled artificial flowers, and tumbled gauze ribbon when disinterred from some dusty and forgotten corner. No feeling is much more unpleasant than the loathing of an old vanity; and though this of Marian's was not yet old, yet that touch of Edmund's which had shown her how he regarded her "high-and-mightiness," had made her very much ashamed of it. Then came the question whether it was, after all, self-will that had actuated her, pride and self-will, leading her contrary to every one's wishes, where she was not sure that she was fulfilling a duty. Again, on the other hand, there was this point about the Faulkner family, her dislike to them was founded on principle; indeed it was not dislike, for she allowed their agreeableness of manner, it was disapproval; it was determination not to enter into anything approaching to intimate acquaintance with a man whom she believed to be little better than an infidel. If Edmund knew this, would not he think her right? But then to be consistent, she should not have accepted his hospitality in any degree; she ought not to have gone to the ball, nor ever to have dined at his house. How far was she called on to set her face against him, how far was she independent, how far was obedience to the Lyddells a duty? This must be for a question for Edmund another time, and she hoped that Caroline's refusal would put an end to the intercourse. Nor were these all her reflections. She thought of Edmund and his kindness to Gerald, and the hopes, nay the confidence which it revived in her, setting her mind fully at rest about her precious brother, for in spite of Edmund's despondency, she could not help trusting entirely to the renewal of his influence; for who was like Edmund? Who so entirely treated, as well as spoke of, the world as nothing except as a means of doing right or wrong? But then that he should be out of spirits, as she had more plainly than ever perceived to-night, in spite of the gaiety he had at first assumed, his manner of replying when she pressed him to go to Fern Torr, and his absolute avoidance of it, struck and puzzled her much as well as grieved her. She knew his loneliness, and could understand that he might be melancholy, but why he should shrink from the home he so loved was beyond what she could fathom. She knew Clara would laugh at her for his having come so many miles on her account. Yes, quite sure that it was nonsense. Edmund had talked of coming to see her, so openly, he had laughed at and blamed her so uncompromisingly, that she had no doubt that he had not the least inclination to fall in love with her. She had the best of elder brothers in him, and he would take care of Gerald, and, happy in her confidence she fell asleep.

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"What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? Every door is barr'd with gold and opens but to golden keys. * * * * * "Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager hearted as a boy when he first leaves his father's field." TENNYSON. Marian was not up much later than usual the next morning, but she had a long time to wait for the rest of the party. She read, wrote, drew, tried to busy herself as usual all the morning, but whether it was that she was tired with her ball, or that she was anxious about Caroline, she did not prosper very much, and grew restless and dissatisfied. She wished she knew whether she had done right, she wished she could feel that she had been kind and accommodating. Her head was dull and heavy from the struggle to occupy herself when her mind was full, and after luncheon she tried to drive her stupidity away by a very long ride. Groom and horses were always at her service, as a part of Mrs. Lyddell's justice to her, and off she set, in search of breezes, to the highest and furthest downs, by her attainable. On she went, cantering fast, feeling her power over her spirited pony, letting the summer sun shine full on her face, and the wind, when she had ridden where she could meet it, stream in a soft ripple round her head, like the waves of the summer tide. She rode far enough to attain the object she had proposed to herself, namely, to look down on Salisbury spire, pointing up in its green valley with the fresh meadows around it, giving a sense of refreshment, repose and holy influence, which her eye carried to her mind. Good men had raised that pile, had knelt there, sung in praise there, and now lay asleep within its grey walls and shady cloisters; men and women who had been to the full as much wearied and perplexed with sin and worldliness around them as she could ever feel; they had struggled through, their worn and fainting hearts had rested there, and now their time of peace was come. Why should it not be so with her? Ah! but things were changed; in their time there was energy; there were great crimes indeed, but the Church was active. The bad was very bad, but the good was very good, there were real broad questions then of right and wrong, not the coldness and frivolity, where all was so worthless that there was scarce a possibility of caring or seeing which part was the right. No, Marian would not accuse the time in which she was born, and the station to which it had pleased God to call her. Mr. Wortley had warned her against that. She had a Church, the one true holy Catholic Church, as surely and truly, nay, the very same that those men of old had, and was as much bound to love it, serve it, fight for it in her own way, as ever they had felt themselves. Life, truth, goodness, there was still, she saw it, knew it, felt it in some; and though there was little of it in her immediate home, so little as to make her heart faint, she knew that "Israel yet has thousands sealed Who to Baal never kneeled." If there was this frivolity, this deadness and chilliness about these present days, she knew it was a temptation long since prophesied of, as about to grow on the world "when, the love of many should wax cold," but the help and the hope were never to fail, and while she might but grasp after them, she had enough to do, and need not feel faint and weary. Her ride had done her good, her sensation of bodily lassitude and mental stupidity had been driven off by the active exercise which had produced a more wholesome kind of fatigue, and the temper which tended to discontent had partly gone with them, partly been chased away by reflection in a right spirit. As she was entering the park, Elliot, also on horseback, came up in time to profit by the same opening of the gate. "Are you but just come home, Marian?" said he, "I thought I was very late." "I don't know what o'clock it is, but I see the sun is getting low." "Have not you been at High Down?" "No, I have been to Beacon Hill." "To Beacon Hill! That _is_ a ride! And you have not seen any of them since they came home?" "No, I have been out all the afternoon." "Well, I have a notion you will have something to hear. I dare say you have some idea. Catch a young lady not up to a thing like that." A cold horror and disgust came over Marian, and she would not make a single inquiry, but Elliot went on. "So you will ask no questions? I believe you are in the secret the whole time." "No, I am not." "No? You will never persuade me that you are not. Why, what else can you ladies sit up half the night talking about in your bed rooms?" Marian despised him too much to deny. "Then do you really mean to profess," said Elliot, turning full towards her, so as to look her in the face in what she deemed an impertinent way, "that you cannot guess the news that is waiting for you?" For once in her life she could not say "I don't know," and her answer was a very cold "I believe I do;" while in the meantime she was almost feeling, and quite looking, as if she could have cut off his bead. His disagreeableness was the one present pain, but behind it was undefined consternation, for she perceived that, at any rate, he did not think Caroline had refused Mr. Faulkner. "You keep your congratulations till it is formally announced," said he maliciously, still looking at her, though few save himself could have failed to be abashed by the firm, severe expression of her dark eyes, and lips compressed into all the sternness of the Queen of Olympus. Happily they were so close to the house that Marian, who would not deign a reply, could avoid him without absolute rudeness. She threw her rein to the groom, and sprung to the ground before Elliot had time to offer his assistance, then ran hastily across the hall just as Clara was coming out of the drawing-room. "Why, Elliot!" cried Clara meeting her brother, "you have not been riding with Marian?" "With Marian? No, I thank you! I only met with her at the gate, and have been spoiling your market." "You don't mean that you have been telling her?" cried Clara; "O I wanted to have been first." "Precious little thanks you'll get!" said Elliot; but Clara, without attending to him, flew up stairs after Marian, who had reached her room, and while Fanny was endeavouring to get her dressed in time for dinner, was trying to collect her dismayed thoughts. She would not believe Caroline so foolish, nay, so wicked as to accept him, yet if it could possibly be true, what in the world should she say or do which way should she look, or how should she answer? In the midst of her first confusion in danced Clara, with a face full of delight at having something to tell, then looking blank at Fanny's presence. "Marian--my dear Marian--what do you think?" was her first eager beginning, then changing into "How--how late you are--where have you been! I really thought you had been out with Elliot," and she laughed. "I only fell in with him at the gate. I have been to Beacon Hill." "Have you indeed? O I wish you had come with mamma! So Elliot has been provoking, and told you," she added, stopping there, and looking significant. Marian glanced at Fanny, and shook her head. She was very glad she had such a protector, to give her time to collect her thoughts, but this was not easy, for Clara went rattling on in an eager discursive way about all sorts of things, the archery, the dancing, the partners, the dresses, hardly knowing what she said, nor Marian either, fidgeting about, trying to expedite the dressing, and looking most impatient, till at last Marian, anxious to know what had really taken place, pitying her eagerness, and willing to have it over, hurried the fastening of her dress, and arranging of her lace, and told Fanny to leave them. "O Marian! Marian! what a shame of Elliot to have told you all about it. Did you expect it?" "He only half told me," replied Marian, "but make haste, Clara, let me hear. Is Caroline really engaged?" "Yes--yes--O yes! and every one is so delighted, Lady Julia, and Julia and Louisa, and all!" "And she has accepted him?" "O yes to be sure--at least--yes, only you know it is too soon to settle when they will be married. What a charming wedding it will be, won't it, Marian? --you and I find Julia and Louisa, and their cousins will be bridesmaids O! how delightful it will be. And then I shall come out." "But Clara, Clara, don't be wild, do tell me all about it." "Ah! you see you missed something by not coming to stay there as we did. And to tell you a great secret, Marian, Louisa says she really believes that it was you that her brother thought of, when he first accepted Elliot's invitation to come and stay here." "Nonsense," said Marian, though her colour would rise. "And he had not seen Caroline then, Louisa says," proceeded Clara, but there she got into an inextricable confusion, and was not speedy in stammering out of it, having suddenly remembered that it was no great compliment to tell Marian that Louisa had said how glad they all were that it was not Miss Arundel. Marian cut the hesitation short by saying, "You have not told me when it was settled, or how you heard it." "It was settled last night after you were gone--in the conservatory-- such a pretty place for a love affair, as Louisa says--at least I mean he asked her, but I don't think she gave him any real regular answer-- no, certainly she did not." "Did you know of it that evening?" "O yes, Louisa and I had great fun in watching him all day, and all the day before, we saw it all quite plain." "But did Caroline tell you that night?" "Yes, of course she did. She could not have kept it from me, you know, for I began to laugh at her the minute we came up, and asked her if she had not been delightfully employed, and you should have seen what a colour she grew directly." "And what did she say?" asked Marian very anxiously, almost hoping it might prove that Caroline's acceptance might have been taken for granted without having been really given. "I don't exactly remember what she said, she was very grave and said it was no laughing matter, or something of that kind, and she walked up and down and begged me to be quiet and let her think." "Well!" "Then I begged her only to let me know if he had proposed, and what she had said, and she told me she had said nothing--she could not tell--she must have time, and then she leant her head against the side of the bed, and said she wished she knew what to do! And when I tried to cheer her up, and said how delightful it would be----" "O Clara, how could you?" broke from Marian. "Ah! I know you can't bear the Faulkners, but you must now, for they will be your cousins, you know, Marian. And I assure you I did not say anything silly, I said it was not only that Mr. Faulkner is handsome and rich, that would not be anything, you know, but he is so sensible and so agreeable, and kind, and good tempered, and we are all so fond of him, and the Faulkners all so fond of her, and it would be so very nice to have her close to us, and mamma would be so charmed. Well, poor dear girl, she did not sleep at all that night, and this morning she only wanted, if she could, to have sent a note for us to be sent for to come home to breakfast, but that could not be, you know, and when we came down, Lady Julia was so kind and affectionate, and kissed her and said she was tired, and took her to lie on the sofa, in the little boudoir. Lady Julia sat with her there first, and then Mr. Faulkner came, and stayed with her a long, long time." "O!" sighed Marian, "was it settled then?" "Not exactly settled, but somewhere about three o'clock, Mr. Faulkner ordered his horse, and rode out to find papa, and then Caroline ran up to our room, and bolted the door, and said she could not let me in, but just then mamma came and went up to her, and it was all joy and congratulation through the whole house. Mr. Faulkner came back and papa with him. But dear me, there is the second bell! Come, Marian! O, I do so wish you had been there." If Marian had been there, perhaps things would not have been exactly as they were at present, though this was very far from what Clara intended by her wish. Marian had done infinite mischief by the severity which had weakened the only home influence excepting Walter's which held Caroline to the right. Caroline respected her extremely, but the confidence and affection which had been growing up slowly but surely out of that root of esteem, had been grievously dulled and blighted, and at a most critical time. It had in fact been almost killed down to the ground, and though the root was a healthy one, and might yet shoot forth again, the opportunity had been missed when it might have been turned to good account. Caroline knew Mr. Faulkner not to be a religious man, and her better principles warned her against him; but on the other hand she really liked his manners extremely, her heart was warmed towards him by his preference and expressions of affection, and she did not know whether she loved him already or not, or whether she should allow herself to love him, as he was sure she could do. She had been used to a world where the service of GOD was not the first object; she had always lived with men whose thoughts and time were otherwise engrossed, and though she might regret what she saw, her standard had been lowered, and she was far less inclined to hold aloof front one whom her conscience did not approve, than if she had been accustomed to see everything desirable in her own family; in those whom nature and duty obliged her to love and respect. By the Faulkners she was greeted with such kindness as to win her heart, and she thought the power she would enjoy at High Down would enable her to set things on a footing there, on which she could never place them at home; she could not fail to be happy with Mr. Faulkner; she might work upon his mind, if he loved her as he said he did. Still there stood the great unanswerable obstacle, the three words, "It is wrong!" If she stood alone, if there was no family on either side, she could, she would refuse, but dismay seized on her when she thought of the displeasure, the persecution at home if she rejected him; on the other hand she shrank from ingratitude for the kindness of the Faulkners. There was Clara putting her in mind of all that could bias her in his favour, rejoicing already, saying how all the family would rejoice. O that interval, that night! if Marian had but stood there with the grave, earnest, heartfelt voice that repelled all sophistry with the wonted "I don't know," if the dark eyes had been there to look with contempt on all but the "right," and to fill with tears, the more touching because so rare, as her tenderness, her deep feeling would have been called out by the sensation of seeing and aiding a friend to struggle nobly against a temptation, if Caroline had felt and seen the superiority, the loveableness of real, true, uncompromising regard for right, and right alone, if she had been by one touch made to partake of the horror Marian felt of any failure in faith, then all the innate strength and nobleness of her character might have been awakened, and she would have clung to "the right" at any cost, supported, carried through by Marian's approval and sympathy, keeping her up to feel that higher approval was with her. But alas! alas! Marian was at a distance, and her image had at present connected itself with harshness and haughtiness. She might be good; but such goodness did not invite imitation; she did not appear half as agreeable as the Faulkners. Caroline turned away from the recollection of her, was all night and all the morning distressed, undecided, and vacillating; then came Lady Julia's affection, her lover pressing his suit, she hardly knew what she had said, but she found her consent was assumed, both families were rejoicing in it, she found herself considered to be engaged, and she returned home bewildered at all that had passed, flattered, almost intoxicated with the attention of various kinds paid her by every one, at High Down, and when her wonted dread of Marian's disapproving eye would return, hardening herself against it with the thought that Marian could not make every one as Utopian as her own Edmund and Fern Torr, that she was proud and determined in prejudice, and after all what right had she to interfere? Of Walter, Caroline did not dare to think. Marian came down with Clara, wearing a rigid company countenance, expressing more of indifference than of anything else; she would not look at Caroline lest her eye should seem to judge her, and only by furtive glances perceived that she looked pale, worn and wearied. There was talk about the ball going on all dinner-time, but Caroline hardly put in a word, and Marian's were not many. Directly after dinner Caroline said she was tired, and should lie down till tea-time; she went and Mrs. Lyddell, taking Marian by the hand, exclaimed, "Now, Marian, I must be congratulated. I suppose Clara has told you all about it." "Yes, Clara told me," said Marian, resolved not to offend except where she could not avoid it without sacrificing truth. "You could scarcely be surprised," said Mrs. Lyddell. "It has been evident for a long time. Dear Caroline! Well, I am sure this is a satisfaction! Settled so near home, and family and connection exactly what could be wished; and so extremely fond of her." "Yes, Lady Julia is very fond of her." Mrs. Lyddell was too much rejoiced herself not to take sympathy for granted. The point, on which Caroline's scruples were founded, and which caused Marian's dislike, had never even occurred to her: she lived little, or rather not at all, in Marian's confidence, and really did not know that she disliked the Faulkners more than any one else, since her manners were so universally distant, that a little ungraciousness more or less was not very visible to a casual observer like Mrs. Lyddell. That same ordinary coldness and undemonstrativeness which had never thawed to Mrs. Lyddell was the reason that the entire absence of any expression of gladness or congratulation was not remarked, or at least only taken as her way, and besides at the bottom of her heart, Mrs. Lyddell was very much obliged to Marian for the repelling manner which had left the field to her daughter. So Marian got very well through half an hour's interview, without giving offence; but she feared the _tête-à-tête_ with Caroline, and resolved as much as possible to avoid it, since she could do no good, and did not think it right to express her sentiments unless they were positively called for. Disappointed in Caroline, grieved, giving her up for lost, yet loving and pitying her, she had rather never meet her again, certainly not have any confidential intercourse with her. She need not have feared: Caroline was quite as much inclined to avoid her as she could be to avoid Caroline; by mutual consent they shunned being left alone together, and talked of indifferent matters if they were, for there was not familiarity enough for silence. When with the others Caroline was the same as usual, lively, agreeable, obliging; perhaps, and Marian thought it strange, a shade gayer than her wont. In her behaviour to Mr. Faulkner every one agreed that she was exactly the right thing, quiet and sensible, and, as people said, "evidently so very much attached to him." Marian would have given worlds to know what was passing in her secret soul, but the right of reading there was gone. What did Walter think? To this also there was no answer; if he wrote, Marian heard nothing about his letter, and he did not come home. He was to be ordained in the autumn to a curacy in a large manufacturing town in the north of England, and in the meantime he was staying there with one of the other curates, helping in the schools, and learning something of the work before him. There was not a doubt in Marian's mind that his sister's engagement must be a great sorrow to him, and that this was the reason why he would not come home, even for a short visit. For Caroline, so really good, right thinking and excellent as she was, so far above the general tone of her family, wilfully to place herself in such a situation, to cast away all the high and true principles with which she had once been imbued, was too sad and grievous to be borne by one who loved her as Marian, did all the time, and how much worse it must be for her brother? Yes, little did most of those who saw Marian's unmoved, marble countenance, and heard her stiff, formal words, guess at the intensity of feeling beneath, which to those who knew her best was betokened by that very severity; how acutely she was suffering for the future before Caroline, how strong were the impulses to plead with her once more, how sick and loathing her heart felt at the manner in which this hateful connection was treated by all around. If that reserve could, or ought to, have been broken, Marian would have astonished them all. If her former anxieties about Gerald had been as of old, she really did not know how she could have endured them in addition to all this; but while she was at ease about him nothing could quite overwhelm her. And she was very happy about him; Mr. Lyddell had readily consented to the Highland plan, and Gerald was so enchanted that he forgot all his former fears of Edmund, saw in him only a fellow-sportsman, and when he wrote to tell his sister of the project, decorated his letter with a portrait of the holidays, every one of the thirty-seven days represented in a sort of succession of clouds one behind the other, in each of which Gerald was doing something delightful,--boating, shooting, bagging his game, and enjoying an infinite variety of sports, the invention and representation of which did considerable credit to his ingenuity. On the very day after the Eton election, he met Edmund in London, and they set off together to spend the time before the ecstatic twelfth of August in visits to the Trosachs, to Fingal's cave and every other Scottish wonder of note. Lionel returned alone, and the first thing he said as he skimmed his hat across the hall table was, "There! thank goodness, I shan't touch a book again these five weeks!" Every one asked after his eyes, but they told their own story, for they were considerably inflamed, and so evidently out of order that Mrs. Lyddell herself grew anxious, and the apothecary, Mr. Wells, was sent for. He spoke of their having been over tried by the school work, advised complete rest, and sent his mixture to bathe them, which in a day or two reduced the inflammation, made them comfortable, and restored them to their ordinary appearance, so that all anxiety passed off again. Marian, like the others, dismissed the fear, though a flash of apprehension now and then crossed her mind. She was more with Lionel than the others, they had always been great allies, and at present were more thrown together than had ever been the case before. Johnny had been appointed to a ship which was to sail from Plymouth in a very short time, and he only came home for two or three days, from the school where he had been prepared. Mr. Lyddell took him to London for his outfit, and then on to Plymouth; Mrs. Lyddell was extremely overset, more so than Marian had thought her capable of being, for Johnny was her favourite, she regarded him as a victim, and could not bear to expose him to all the perils of sea and climate. Johnny however went to Plymouth, and then there was nothing to be desired but that he should soon sail, that his mother might settle her mind, for in the mean time she was nervously anxious and restless, and could scarcely give her attention to anything, not even to the Faulkners, far less to what Marian was observing from time to time about Lionel's eyes. Now that John and Gerald were away, Lionel was deprived of his wonted companions: Elliot did not patronize him, and was besides too busy about the races to occasion on his own account any home sports in which Lionel might have taken a share, so that there was no companionship for him excepting with the young ladies. Caroline's and Clara's time was a great deal taken up with the Faulkners, and Marian and Lionel were thus left out by all and almost obliged to make a coalition. Lionel haunted the drawing-room in the morning, either talking in the half-rhodomontade, half-in-earnest fashion of boys of sixteen, or listening if there was any reading aloud going forward. Clara's readings with Marian and Caroline had well-nigh fallen to the ground now, and Caroline almost always spent the morning in her own room, but Marian now and then caught Clara and managed to get her to do something rational. More often, however, the reading was on Marian's part to Lionel; he liked to hear her read scraps of any book she might have in hand, and she was very merciful to him in the selection, not being by any means too wise. She read him likewise the new numbers of the periodical tales, as well as the particulars of the rowing matches and cricket matches, overcoming for his sake her dislike to touching Elliot's sporting newspaper. Indeed she had not so forgotten her cricket as not to be very much interested, to enter into all his notes and comments, and to be as anxious for the success of Eton as he was himself, so that if she had been called to give an account of her whole morning's work for three days, she could have said nothing of it but that she had been studying the matches at Lord's. In the afternoon, if Marian could escape from the drive in the carriage, they walked or rode together, the latter when it was not too bright a day, for Lionel avoided the sunshine like an owl; and when in their walks a sunny field, or piece of down had to be passed, he drew his hat down and came under the shelter of Marian's parasol, as if he fairly dreaded the glare. He was very apt too not to recognise people whom they met, and now and then made such strange mistakes about small objects near at hand, that though they were laughed at just at the moment, Marian thought them fearful signs when she recollected them afterwards, in that half-waking half-sleeping time when she had learnt to entertain herself with anxieties. Chess or backgammon was the great resource in the evening, when there was no dining out, and no grand dinner party, and the number of games Marian played with him were beyond all reckoning. He played, she thought, more by the touch than the eye, often feeling the head of a piece to satisfy himself whether it had the king's crown or the queen's round head, the bishop's mitre or the knight's ears, but he was so quick and ready that it was impossible to tell how far the defect of sight went, and she could not bear to ask or awaken his fears. She did not think he had any; she did not believe that he had ever seen quite as well as other people, and therefore trusted to sight less than most; and his eyes had been so often ailing, and then better, that he was not likely to take alarm now. If he had, she believed he would have told her, for he was very confidential with her, and she often thought it a great pity that no one else had thought it worth while to enter into him enough to find out what a right-thinking, sensible boy he was, and how affectionate he would be if they would only let him. One day, when they had been taking a long ride together, he began talking about his intentions for the future. It arose out of some observation about the value of a tree in a new and an old country. Marian had been lamenting that no modern houses were ever built with the beautiful patterns of dark timbers, as we see them in old farm-houses; and Lionel answering that so much wood could never be afforded in England now. "No, you must go to a primeval forest for that," said Marian; "and very stupid it is of the people in the colonies to build houses as bad or worse than ours, when they have all the materials for nothing." "Well, I will build a famous house when I emigrate," said Lionel; "a regular model of an old English farm-house it shall be,--stout, and strong, and handsome,--just to put the people in mind that they do belong to an old country, after all." "When you emigrate, Lionel?" "Yes, I really have a great mind to do so, seriously, Marian," and he rode nearer to her. "I do think it would be the best thing I could do. Don't you think so?" "I don't know," said Marian, considering, while his eager face was turned towards her. "You see," Lionel continued, "we must all do something for ourselves; and I am sure my eyes will never be fit for study. To be a clergyman is out of the question for me, even if I was good enough; and so is the law--" "Yes, yes, certainly." "Well, then, there is only the army, and there one can't get on without money. Now you know Elliot has been a monstrous expense to my father of late, and the times have grown so bad, and everything altogether has gone wrong; so that I think the only thing for it would be for me to go off to some new part of the world, where, when I once had a start, my own head and hands would maintain me,--no thanks to anybody." "I dare say it would," said Marian, rather sadly, "I am sure these are right grounds, Lionel; but it is a terrible severing of all home ties." "O, but I should come back again. I should be an Englishman still, and come back when I had made my fortune." "O, Lionel, don't be in a hurry to make a fortune; that spoils every one." "No, no, I am not going to grasp and grub for money; I hate that. Only if the fortune comes, one does not know how, with cattle, or horses, or lands--O, Marian, think of being an Australian stockman, riding after those famous jockeys of wild bulls--hurra!" Lionel rose in his stirrups, and flourished his whip round his head, so as greatly to amaze his steed. "There is a life to lead in a great place bigger than all Europe, instead of being stifled up in this little bit of a poky England, every profession choke full of people!" "Well done, Lionel, you do want a field indeed!" "So I do. I hate to be fenced up, and in, every way. I should like to break out in some fresh place, and feel I had all the world before me! Then I'll tell you what, Marian," and he spoke with infinite relish, "suppose matters got a little worse here, and they were all of them really in distress!" "O Lionel!" "Well, but listen. Then I should like to come home with all this fortune that I had made somehow, and get them all on their legs again; buy back the estate, perhaps, and give it to papa again; and then--and then"--his voice quivered a little, and his eyes winked, as if the sun had dazzled them--"see if mamma would not think me worth something, after all!" This was the only time Lionel had ever said a word to show that he was conscious of his mother's disregard of him; and the feeling it called up made Marian's heart so full that she could not reply. But he wanted no answer, and went on. "Would not that be worth living for, Marian? But, after all, that is all nonsense," he added, with a sigh; "at least it is all a chance. But what I really think is, that I should do much better for myself and every one else, in one of the colonies; and I have a great mind to speak to my father about it. By the by, I wish Mr. Arundel would come here when he has finished his journey with Gerald; I should like to talk to him about the Cape. I rather fancy the Cape, because of the lions; and one might have a chance of a row now and then with the Caffres." Marian began telling all she could about the Cape, and from that time her _tête-à-têtes_ with Lionel were chiefly spent in discussions upon the comparative merits of the colonies. One thing Lionel was resolved on. "I will go somewhere where there is a Church within a tolerable distance,--say twenty miles; that is a short one for a colony, you know, Marian; for I know I am such a wild fellow, that I should very soon forget everything good, if I had not something to put me in mind of it. Or, by the by, Marian, what would be jolly would be to get Walter to go; I dare say he would, if it was some place where they were very badly off indeed, with plenty of natives, and all very savage." Marian understood quite well enough, to agree that it must be some place "very badly off indeed" to invite Walter, and Lionel greatly enjoyed the further arranging of plans for taking care of his intended chaplain, whom he meant to save from roughing it as much as possible. However, this might be regarded as a very aerial pinnacle of his castle, the first foundation of which was yet to be laid, by broaching the subject to his father. Lionel talked over the proposing it many times with his counsellor, and at length resolved upon it, with some slight hope that it might save his eyes from the suffering of another half year at Eton, which, as the holidays came nearer to an end, he began to dread. "You see, Marian," he said, "I do not like to give out, when I can help it, for they think it shirking, and there was a time when I did shirk; but a great many times last half, I was nearly mad with the aching and smarting of my eyes after I had been reading. And all I did was by bits now and then; for if I went on long the letters danced, and there was a mist between me and them." "I wish you would tell Mr. Lyddell; I am sure it is not fit to go on in such a way." "I have told Wells," answered Lionel. A pause--then Lionel said, "I believe papa is in the library; I'll go and speak to him about the emigration." Marian was very anxious to hear the result of the conference, but she could not find out anything just at first as she had to drive out with Mrs. Lyddell and Caroline to make calls. In the evening, over the game at chess, Lionel told her that his father said he should talk to his mother about it; and two days after he came to her in the hall, saying, "Come and take a turn in the plantation walk, Marian; 'tis nice and shady there, and I have something to tell you." The something was as follows: "Well, Marian, my father was very kind, paid something about its being a sensible notion, and that he would see about it." "But are you to go back to Eton?" "Yes, that must be; and I must scramble on as best I may. It will be better at first, after all this rest. It is something gained that the whole plan is not knocked on the head at once." "Then he gives his consent?" "Why, he says it will be time to think of it in a year or two, and I am too young as yet, which is true enough; only, I wish I was to be learning farming, instead of torturing my eyes with what will be no good out there. Then he said, as to giving up the army, I need not think that was necessary, because it was only that he did not want to have two sons in it, and now Johnny is otherwise disposed of; and, besides Mr. Faulkner had behaved in such a handsome way about Caroline's fortune.' "O!" said Marian. "Yes, I don't like that at all," said Lionel. "Johnny always was crazy to be a sailor, so he is all right, and that is not what I care for; but I don't want to be beholden to Mr. Faulkner. I had rather Caroline had her own money, and not that we should all profit by her making this grand marriage." "I should quite feel with you." "Marian, we have never talked that over; but I know you cannot bear the Faulkners." "What is the use of asking me, Lionel?" "O, I know you can't, as well as if you had said so; and I want to know how you could let Caroline go and do such a thing?" "I? How could I help it?" said Marian smiling, at the boy's assuming that she had power of which she was far from being conscious. "Besides, I thought you liked Mr. Faulkner; you, all of you, did nothing but praise him at Christmas." "I did at first, not at last," said Lionel. "Besides, liking a man to go out shooting with is not the same as liking him to marry one's sister." "By no means!" cried Marian, emphatically. "But what made you think ill of him?" "Things I heard him say to Elliot when we were out together." "Did Gerald hear them?" asked Marian, very anxiously, as she remembered what a hero Mr. Faulkner was in her brother's estimation. "No, I don't think he did. He certainly was not there the worst time of all,--the time that gave a meaning to all the rest. Don't you remember that day when Mr. Faulkner drove Elliot and me in his dog-cart to look at that horse at Salisbury? I am sure I never praised him after that day. He said what Elliot never would have said himself--never." "How?" Marian could not help asking, though she doubted the next moment whether it was wise to have done so. "Things about--about religion--the Bible," said Lionel, looking down and mumbling, as if it was with difficulty that he squeezed out the answer. "Now, you know, I have heard," he added, speaking more freely, "I have heard people make fun with a text or a name out of the Bible many a time; and though that is very bad of them, I think they don't mean much harm by it. Indeed, I have now and then done it myself, and should oftener, if I had not known how you hated it." "It is a very wrong thing," but I see what you mean,--that some people do it from want of thought." "Yes, just so; but that is a very different thing from almost quizzing the whole Bible,--at least talking as if it was an absurd thing to accept the whole of it, I do declare, Marian, he was worse when he began to praise it than he was before; for he talked of the Old Testament as if it was just like the Greek mythology, and then he compared it to Homer, and Æschylus, and the Koran. To be sure he did say it was better poetry and morality; but the idea of comparing it! I don't mean comparing as if it must be better, but as if it stood on the same ground." "And did Elliot listen to all this?" said Marian, thinking the poison must have been in rather too intellectual a form for Elliot. "He listened," said Lionel. "I don't think he would ever set up to say such things for himself; but I believe he rather liked hearing them said. I am quite sure this Faulkner will make him worse than he is already, for all this talk is a hundred times worse than going on in Elliot's way." "To be sure it is--a thousand times!" "But what I want to know is this, Marian? has Caroline got any notion of what sort of a man she has got? Because if she does it with her eyes open, it can't be helped; but if not, I think she ought to be warned; for I don't suppose the man is fool enough to talk in this way to her. Indeed, I think I heard him say that believing is all very well for women." "Why don't you tell her, then?" "That is the very thing I had on my mind all these holidays; but I know no one would ever listen to me. If Walter was here it would be a very different thing, for he is worth attending to, and Caroline knows that; though she thinks I have no sense at all but for mischief." "She could not think so, if she heard you speak as you do now." "Then there is another thing, Marian, and what makes it quite--at least very nearly out of the question; I don't believe they in the least reckoned on my hearing all this. You know the man is very good-natured; well, he took me up to go instead of his servant, and I was sitting back to back with them. I sometimes think my bad eyes have made my ears sharper, for I know I often hear when other people don't; and so I should not expect they supposed in the least that I was attending, though I did not miss a word, for I could not help hearing. Now, you see, I could not possibly go and betray him; and if you were not the safest person in the world, I would never have told you: only, if somebody could just give Caroline a hint that she is going to marry an infidel, it would be a pleasant thing." "A pleasant thing!" repeated Marian. Then she paused, considering, and Lionel waited patiently while she did so, "I see," she said at last, "that you could hardly tell her of this conversation; and after all, Lionel, I believe we knew what was quite as bad of him from the first: this only proves it a little more fully." "Did you?" "Yes, Lord Marchmont told me something of it; and I mentioned it to Caroline before he came here at all." "O, that is right!" said Lionel, greatly relieved, "then it is no concern of mine; though what can possess Caroline, I can't think. Is it love, I wonder?" "I suppose so," said Marian, sighing. "Well, it is a queer thing," said the boy. "I should have thought Caroline was one to care about such matters more than I, but perhaps she means to convert him. So! I did think Caroline was good for something, but it is no affair of mine; and I shall be all the more glad to get off to New Zealand to be out of the sight of it all." "It is very sad indeed!" said Marian. "I am sure it will be nothing but wretchedness. Caroline can blind herself now, but that will not go on." "And why can't you speak to her, and stop her? She used to mind you. Does she come and talk about this man as if he was perfection?" "No," was the sorrowful reply. "She knew from the first my opinion of him, and we never have any talks now. We never have had one since she was first engaged." "Whew!" whistled Lionel. "Then she does mean to go and do it, and no mistake! Then I've done with her, and shan't think about her any more than I can help. If she won't be warned, she must Lave her own way, and may marry the Grand Turk, if she likes it better." He whistled again, proposed a ride, and went to order the horses; while Marian, walking slowly to the house to prepare, did not so much grieve for Caroline, for that was an old accustomed sorrow, as marvel at the manner in which Lionel had spoken, and wonder where he had learnt the right views and excellent sense he had displayed. Far was she from guessing the value of such a steady witness to the truth as she had been from the first hour when Lionel had perceived and maintained "that she had no humbug in her;" how her cares for her brother had borne fruit in him; how he learnt from her to reverence goodness, and cleave to the right; and how he looked up to her, because her words were few, and her deeds consistent. More right in theory, than steady in practice was Lionel; very unformed, left untrained by those whose duty it was to watch him; but the seeds had been sown, and be his future life what it might, it could not but bear the impress of the years she had spent in the same family. She knew nothing of all this; she only thought, as she watched his quick, bounding run, that he, the least regarded, was the flower of the flock, with principles as good as Walter's, and so much more manly and active. For Marian, with all her respect for Walter, could not help wishing, like the boys, that he had more life and spirit, and less timidity. A little mental courage would, she thought, have brought him to expostulate with Caroline, instead of keeping out of the way, and leaving her to her fate. Edmund would not have done so.

15

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"It's hame, and it's hame, and it's hame." Cunningham. Edmund and Gerald had promised to spend a few days at Oakworthy, before the one returned to Portsmouth and the other to Eton; but their plans were disconcerted by an event which, as Clara said, placed Marian in mourning in good earnest, namely, the death of her great aunt, old Mrs. Jessie Arundel, who had always lived at Torquay. For the last four or five years she had been almost imbecile, and so likely to die at any time, that, as it seemed for that very reason, every one took her death as a surprise when it really happened. Edmund thought it right that both he and Gerald should attend her funeral. Lord Marchmont, whose wife stood in the same relationship to her, met them in London, and they all went together to Torquay, instead of making the intended visit to Oakworthy. Gerald was obliged to return to Eton on the following day, without coming to Oakworthy; but, to make up for it, he wrote to his Writer from Torquay, and his letter ended thus,--"Now I have a capital bit of news for you. Old aunt Jessie has done what I shall venerate her for ever after--left every scrap of her property to Edmund, except a legacy or two to her servants, a picture of my father to me, and some queer old-fashioned jewels to you and Selina. The will was made just after I was born; so it was to make up to Edmund for my cutting him out of Fern Torr. You may suppose how Lord Marchmont and I shook hands with him. It is somewhere about £20,000; there is good news for you! He is executor, and has got to be here a day or two longer; but Lord Marchmont and I set off by the first train to-morrow. I shall look out for Lionel, tell him, in case he is too blind to see me. Can't you come with him to the station, and have one moment's talk?" This proved to be possible; and Marian, in the interval between the coming of the post and the setting off, had time, all the hurry of her dressing, to wonder if she ought to be very much rejoiced. She did not believe, that even wealth could spoil Edmund, but she did not think all this would be of much use to him. It did not give him a home, and in fact she thought it rather a creditable thing to be as poor as he had hitherto been. She had rather have heard of something to make him look less like Tressilian, than he had done the last time she had seen him. She had a pleasant drive with Lionel, who was very glad of any good luck befalling Mr. Arundel, and presently, after some meditation, broke out as follows:--"My eyes! what miles and miles it would buy in Australia" and then proceeded to talk all the rest of the way about Australian bulls. The meeting at the station was a bright one, though so short, as scarcely to be worth the journey, if the value of such moments were to be reckoned by their number. There was Lord Marchmont to be spoken to, as well as Gerald, which broke into the time. Gerald looked very happy and pleasant. He said Edmund was the best fellow in the world, and that he had been very happy--shot lots of things--he wished he could stop to tell about it. Then Marian hurried what she had to say, while Lionel was looking after his luggage. "Gerald, would you just try if you can do anything to spare Lionel's eyes? When you have the same things to do, could you not read to him, or something? they seem so much worse, and I am so afraid." "I'll try," said Gerald, "but I don't think I can do much, and he will never give in." The bell rang--Lionel ran up--she wished them good-bye, and drove home, happier than when last she parted there from Gerald, wondering what had happened in his journey with Edmund, and re-assured, by his free cordial tone. She took up a book and read all the way home. The next thing that was heard of Edmund was in a note to Mr. Lyddell, saying that he should come and spend one night at Oakworthy, on his way to Portsmouth; that he hoped to arrive about one o'clock, and that he should bring Marian her aunt's legacy of the jewels. This was communicated to her by Mrs. Lyddell, and she could not discover from whence he wrote; she supposed from London, unless he was still detained in Devonshire. She looked forward greatly to his coming, as there was so much to hear about Gerald; and she felt, as if she wanted something pleasant, very much indeed; for, now that Lionel was gone, she found what a companion, interest, and occupation he had been, and missed him very much. The constraint with all the others, except Clara, was wearisome: and Clara, though never ceasing to talk, and very affectionately, was anything but a companion, while poor Caroline kept more than ever aloof, and had a flightiness of spirits--a sort of gaiety of manner--which, to Marian, seemed to be assumed. This was more especially the case, after there was an idea of fixing the marriage for some time in the autumn, and arrangements were talked over. Marian began to have little doubt that she was secretly unhappy, and grew more and more tender in feeling towards her; while, by an effect of contraries, her manner became more frigid and severe, in proportion to the warmth within. Clara wondered a little what Mr. Arundel was coming for, and laughed and looked significant when Marian said she knew perfectly well; but Marian thought she knew so thoroughly as not to be in the least disconcerted, though Clara's glances were full upon her when he was announced. In he came, just at luncheon time; he shook hands with Marian with all his might, and one glance convinced her that he had not Tressilian's face--nay, that though the sun of Africa had left its traces, he was more like the Edmund of the olden time, than she had ever seen him since her father's death. There were a good many people at luncheon that day. Mr. Faulkner was there, and there were some visitors staying in the house. Edmund was a good way from her, and she could only hear his voice now and then in the buzz; but it was a very pleasant sound to hear, and when he laughed, it was his own natural, free, gay laugh, such as it used to be. She was sure he was very happy, and wondered if it was possible Aunt Jessie's fortune could have made him so, or whether it could all be the satisfaction of having set Gerald to rights. As they rose to leave the dining room, he came to her, saying, "Marian, can you have a walk with me?" "Oh, yes, I should like it of all things; I will be ready in one minute." And away she bounded, saying to Caroline, in the boldest and most innocent manner in the world, as if on purpose to show that she expected nothing, and would not be laughed at, that Edmund had asked her to walk with him. He waited for her in the hall, and they went out, she scarcely pausing till they were on the steps, to say, "Well, how did you get on with Gerald? I am sure you made him very happy." "We got on famously. He is a very nice fellow; he only wanted a little stimulus the right way. He is thoroughly open and candid, and I have no fear but that he will do very well." Marian could not speak for joy, and for gratitude to her cousin; and her heart throbbing with delight, she walked on, waiting for him to say something more on this most precious of all tidings. But when he spoke again, it was if he had done with the subject of Gerald. "Marian, I have something to tell you," He paused--she stood in suspense--he began again. "Marian, I am going to be married!" "O!" and the inquiring, joyful, wondering, confident tone of that O, is what nothing can ever convey. Her eyes were turned full on him with the same eager curiosity, the same certainty, that he could not do other than the best. He did not speak; but the half smile on his lip was a full though mute reply to her confidence, that she had only to hear, in order to rejoice with all her heart; and he held out a note directed to her, in Agnes' writing! Marian took it, but she was too wild, too delighted, too eager to look at him, and hear him, to be able to open it. "O Edmund!" was what she said now, and she caught hold of his hand for an ecstatic shake. "Yes, thank you, yes. I said I must tell you myself, Marian--my sister." "O, I never heard anything more delightful in my life," said Marian, with a sort of gasp, as soon as the overwhelming delight gave her breath. "O, Edmund, Edmund!" "You have not read her note yet." Marian tore it open, but there was scarcely any thing to read; it was only-- "Dearest Marian,--He will have a note to carry you, but I can't say anything for bewilderment. I know he will tell you all about it, so it is of no use my writing. Are not you sorry he should have a wife so far from good enough for him? "Your affectionate and most amazed "AGNES." Marian held it up to him, smiling. "But of course you have seen it?" "No, I have not; I suppose she thought I should not carry such nonsense." "Well, I am sure there is no other person in all the wide world that I could have thought good enough for you. Agnes! Agnes! O, Edmund, I wish there was any way of not being quite choked with gladness!" Edmund smiled, and perhaps he was "choked with gladness" beyond the power of speech; for the two cousins only proceeded to shake hands again. The next thing that was said was after an interval. "Marian, you remember our bargain six years ago? Have you grown so very fond of the Lyddells as to repent of it?" "O, Edmund, you have not thought of that?" "Have not we? It was one of the first things we did think of." "I don't think I can bear to hear of much more happiness," said Marian, in almost a crying voice. "I am so glad for you that I can't be glad for myself yet. I can't take it all in; it is too good to be true!" "Indeed it does seem so. But you agree? Agnes said I must make you agree first of all." "Don't I? Only I want to enjoy it for you,--it is so beyond everything!" "Well, wasn't I a wise man to say I would not miss the pleasure of telling you myself?" "Then do tell me; do let us be rational, if we can. Then you came here from Fern Torr?" "Yes. Did you not know that?" "No. I did not hear where you wrote from. How long were you there?" "I only went on Wednesday." "Then it was only one whole day! How much you must have had to settle!" "So much, that we settled scarcely anything." "Then you don't know when it is to be?" "No, and Mrs. Wortley talks of having time,--poor Mrs. Wortley, but I don't think I shall take her away far; I have some notion of looking out for some place close at hand." "Just what we settled long ago. But O! begin and tell me all, Edmund,--as much as you like to tell me, at least. I want to know how you first came to think of it." Then, as he smiled, she added, "I mean, how long you have been thinking of it." "If you mean how long with any hope, only since I knew of good aunt Jessie's consideration for me. How long it has been in my mind I cannot tell; certainly before I went to Africa. You see, Marian," he continued, as if he was apologising, "it was this which made me think it advisable for me to go, though, as I see now, it was not at all good for Gerald." "What,--you mean--I am not sure that I understand--" "Don't you see, Marian, feeling as I did, and knowing how out of the question it was for a penniless man like me, to think of marrying,--Agnes so young too, and I with everything to draw me to what had been my only home,--there was nothing to be done but to keep out of the way, to guard me against myself; and that was easier with seas between. I don't know whether I did right or not, but I hoped I did, because it cost me something; yet it was a forsaking of Gerald which might have done much harm, though I hope it has not, as it has turned out." "I see it all!" said Marian, resting there, because she had not a word with which to express her honour of his noble conduct. "You will forgive me now," he added, with a smile, "for what you thought my neglect of home." "I am only afraid I must often have given you a great deal of pain," she almost whispered. "Never, except when I thought it right to silence you. It was only too delightful to hear their very names. You might well tell me that she had grown prettier than ever." On talked and walked the cousins, over the downs, which had certainly never been trodden by happier people. At last they recollected that they must return, if they wished to be in time for the post, and retraced their steps, talking as eagerly as ever. As they were coming near the house, Marian said, "Does Gerald know?" "Not yet; I shall write to him to-morrow." "Is it to be a secret? Of course I should say nothing about it while you are here, but may I mention it afterwards?" "They said nothing about secrecy," said Edmund; "in fact I think attempting it, only results in making one look foolish. Yes, you are welcome to tell whom you please as soon as I am out of the way. I had rather the Lyddells know." "Very well; indeed, I don't think I can keep it to myself, it is too much joy." "Do you expect them to participate in your pleasure at making your escape from them?" "There is no one to miss me, except, perhaps, Lionel, a little, when his eyes are bad. Caroline would once have cared, but that is over now, poor thing! There never was a time when I should have been more glad to get away. O, Edmund, if you would do one thing to oblige me, it would be, to have your wedding the same day as Caroline's, that I might not be obliged to be at it." "At which?" "O, you know!" "Is it such a very bad affair?" "O, I am very much grieved about it. The man has no religion at all, you know; at least, if he has any, it is all natural religion,--anything but the truth." "Do you really mean that the family have accepted him, allowed this to go on, knowing such things of him?" "I don't know how far they see it. I don't think they allow it to themselves, and I don't think they would understand some of it; as, for instance, when I heard him talking the other day as if he assumed that Christianity was only a development of people's tendency to believe,--as fleeting as other forms of faith. It was not very broadly stated, and I don't think I should have seen it, if it had not chimed in with something I had read; and, besides, I knew what was in the man." "How do you know? Not from your own observation?" "O, no, no; I liked him at first. I could have liked him very much, if Lord Marchmont had not told me about him, and then I had the key to him." "And this poor Miss Lyddell?" "She knew what I did," said Marian, sadly. "But he is very agreeable,--at least he is thought so,--and they all admired him so much, and paid such court to him, that--Yet I did think better things of Caroline. Lionel is the only one who has found him out, and he thinks of it just as I do, O, Edmund, I am sure you would like Lionel." "How are his eyes?" asked Edmund, as they were coming under the portico, and could not talk of any of the more delicate subjects. "I thought Gerald gave a very bad account of them; indeed, I scarcely expected that he could have gone back to Eton." "I sometimes think," almost whispered Marian, "that it is not he, poor boy, whose eyes are the worst in the house; but Mrs. Lyddell's head has been so full of Johnny, and Caroline, and all she has to do, that she will not see anything amiss with Lionel." "He must be a boy of a great deal of resolution and principle, to have struggled on as he has clone, by Gerald's account. Ah! I meant to have told you about Gerald, but all our time is gone." "Never mind, we can talk of him in the evening. There is a corner of mine where I always get out of the way of the people, and where I have had many a nice talk with Walter, or Lionel, under cover of Miss Grimley's music. Now where do you like to write your letter? If you had not rather do it in your own room, there is a nice quiet place in the old school-room, where I write mine, when the drawing-room is uninhabitable." Edmund accepted the invitation, partly because he was just so shy of letting his own handwriting be seen in the address, that he meant to avail himself of Marian's cover. Just as Marian had finished a note, too joyous to have any sense in it, and containing a promise to write more sensibly to-morrow, had directed the cover, and told her cousin that he must wind up if he meant to catch the post, Clara opened the door, gazed, laughed, and was retiring in haste, when Marian, without a shade of the confusion Clara had hoped for, called her back. "Edmund came here to write a note," she said, "don't go away." Edmund made some demonstration about intruding, and wrote the conclusion, at which nothing but some interruption would have made him arrive, put it into the envelope, gave it face downwards to Marian, and departed. Now Mrs. Lyddell and Clara were both persuaded that Mr. Arundel had come for no other purpose than to propose to Marian; and they had been entertaining themselves during their drive with conversing on the subject; so that Clara was never more surprised and puzzled in her life than by seeing Marian stand there, smiling, and with beaming eyes, brighter than ever she had looked before, but without one particle of a blush,--white-faced as ever, only dancing first on one foot, then on the other, balancing her bonnet on one hand, and with the other holding the precious letter. "Well, Marian!" "Well!" Marian made a pirouette. "I must run and put this letter in the box." And so saying, away she ran down stairs, up again in a second; then meeting the astonished Clara at the head of the stairs, she took her round the waist, and fairly waltzed her to her own door, opened it, threw herself into a chair, exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, Clara; you'll think me mad, but I'll tell you all about it to-morrow." Fanny was present, so Clara could do nothing but stare; and lateness, and a dinner-party necessitating a hasty toilette, she retreated, while Marian contained her raptures as best she could, and meditated on the delightful life she was to lead with Agnes and Edmund, in some cottage on the borders of Fern Torr. O happiness, such as she had never known, which seemed to bring back as much of her home as could ever return,--which would be everything for Gerald! Every care gone, Edmund happy, Gerald satisfactory, her own exile at an end. Her head almost swain round with happiness, and she wanted to turn to the glass, to persuade herself that she could be the same Marian Arundel, wide awake, and yet so very, very happy. However, it was all future, as far as concerned herself; and that cares were in the world she was convinced, by her own pang at seeing Caroline, whom she overtook on her way down stairs. She had no disposition to whirl _her_ round; but there was a softened feeling, belonging perhaps to the fulness of her own joy, that made her, as she came up with her, put her arm round her, as she had now and then walked with her in former days. Caroline looked in her face, and drew the arm closer without speaking. Their faces had always been unlike, but the contrast was stronger than ever. Marian, with those pale, regular features, plain dark hair, black eyes and eyebrows, with her mourning dress, and yet with a radiant, irrepressible joy and buoyancy all round and about her; while Caroline, with her small pretty features, rosy colour, blue eyes, glossy curls, her pink dress and gold bracelets, was in general air very different, and in countenance how much more; for the eyes were restless, the smile came rather as if it was called, than as if it resided naturally on her lip,--the colour of her cheeks, though bright, looked fixed and feverish; and now and then, there was a quiver about the whole face. How different from the secure expression of happiness, now and then illuminated, as it were, with some sudden flash of secret joy, which sat on Marian's broad, serene brow. They entered the drawing-room together, and from that time Marian was outwardly her own stiff, distant self, till the promised time in the evening, when Edmund made his way to her in her corner, where he was greeted by a most sunny look. "Now for Gerald," said she. Edmund had a great deal to tell about Gerald. He thought him, on the whole, a very nice, amiable, right-minded boy, who only wanted more training and watching than Mr. Lyddell would or could give. He had, after a time, been brought to be entirely open and confiding; and this, for which Edmund seemed to be really grateful to him, and to admire him, was the great point, he had made Edmund a friend, instead of looking at him as a guardian,--found that he could sympathize, and had ended by trusting and consulting him. Marian, though wondering how the reserve had ever been, conquered, felt the relief of knowing that all was safe now, and was not hurt by his confiding in any one but herself. Edmund really thought it was safe. "I believe I know the worst of him now, poor fellow," he said, smiling, "and the worst is not much. He has been going on in a careless, thoughtless way, out of high spirits and imitation, a good deal, and the consciousness made him keep back from you; he owns that, and is very sorry." "Does he? dear Gerald!" "He seemed to feel deeply that he had neglected you; but he said, and very truly, how much there had been against him,--no one, as he said, to make him mind; and the fellows would have laughed at him, if they had found out that he attended to his sister." "Ah! Johnny sowed that mischief long ago!" "I hope it is not weakness. I do not think it is; for there was manliness in confessing all, and he seemed to feel the folly strongly." "Did he tell you about the debts?" "Yes, and of his own accord. They are nothing in themselves; but he has been allowed too much money, has had little warning, and his title was against him too. So if we can break off the habit of extravagance, there is no great harm done. After all, you know, he is very young, and there is plenty of time to form his character. I am sure he has good dispositions of every kind, and if he has but resolution, he will be sure to do well," "I think there is resolution in his temper. Nothing shakes him when his mind is once made up." So Marian was very well satisfied on the whole about her brother, and she might justly be so by Edmund's account. There was nothing to disturb her happiness, and she only doubted whether she should be able to sleep for it. Her brother restored, as well as everything else! When bed-time came, Mrs. Lyddell looked at her, as if expecting something more to be said than "good night," but nothing came,--nothing but the dancing light in the eyes. Clara followed her to the room, and stood gazing at her. "Why, Marian," at last she said, "can't you tell me anything about it?" "No; not till to-morrow." "O, that is too bad, Marian, when you heard all I had to tell directly." "I can't help it; I am not at liberty to tell other people's affairs." "Don't look so grand, Marian, pray. I am sure I thought this was your own." "So it is in a way." "In a way? Why, Marian, what an extraordinary girl you are! not your own affair! Well, if you are impenetrable, I can't help it; but it is not kind, when we all want to congratulate you." "Stop, stop, Clara!" exclaimed Marian, and now she did blush, "will you be satisfied if I tell you that it is not what you suppose? You shall hear what it is to-morrow, and then you will see what nonsense you have been talking." "What?" cried Clara, "you are not--" "Don't say it, pray don't! Never was any one further from it. Now do go to bed, Clara, for I cannot tell you a word more, and keep your curiosity at rest for to-night." Marian took care not to be caught alone by Clara before breakfast the next morning, and almost immediately after breakfast, Edmund departed. Marian had been out into the hall with him to exchange some last words, and Mrs. Lyddell, meantime, was observing to Caroline that she never knew anything so strange; she thought it was due to herself, however unpleasant it might be, to claim some confidence from Miss Arundel, on such matters, while living under her care. Marian came back, however, with her innocent look of delight,--a look so unlike the bashfulness of a damsel in love, that Mrs. Lyddell felt again doubtful; and before she could speak, Marian had turned to Clara and said, "Now I will tell you what makes me so happy. Edmund and Agnes Wortley are engaged, and I am to go and live with them." "Miss Wortley!" at once exclaimed Mrs. Lyddell and her daughters, in the extremity of surprise; and then Mrs. Lyddell and Clara asked all the usual questions in haste and eagerness, wondering within themselves most of all at Marian's full rejoicing, for till now they had never been able to see that Edmund was really to her only like an elder brother. Caroline scarcely spoke, only went on nervously with her work. At last, when some interruption had caused her mother and Clara to leave the room, she laid it down, looked at Marian for a moment or two, then said, in a trembling voice, "Dear Marian, I am glad you are so happy! I am glad you are to live with them!" then kissed her, and hastened away before she could answer or return the caress. Her handkerchief was raised as she closed the door. Marian sat and grieved, for well did she know all poor Caroline conveyed by that "I am glad you are to live with them." It meant that Caroline felt that she had given up the esteem and friendship in which they had lived,--that she thought her own home unfit for one brought from such a sphere as Fern Torr,--that she resigned all those plans for Clara's good, everything that had been valued between them,--that she looked not for happiness for herself, and though she had forfeited such affection as once had been hers, yet she still loved Marian. How could Marian rejoice so much, when such a fate was waiting for Caroline? Poor Caroline! she contrasted her feelings with those of Agnes, grieved again over her, and ended by blaming herself for all the coldness and severity of the last six weeks, requited as it was by so much kind, fond affection. Yet Caroline was weakly, wilfully doing wrong. How should she behave rightly towards her? O, why would nothing happen to save her, and break off this mockery of a marriage? But as of this there seemed little hope,--as the Faulkners were at Oakworthy more than ever, and Mrs. Lyddell was talking in good earnest of wedding clothes, and bridesmaids, it was a comfort to have these better hopes to occupy herself with. Especially did she enjoy the idea of Gerald's rejoicing, and it was very eagerly that she watched for his first letter of delight. It came as soon as heart could wish; but so mixed are joy and grief in this world, that even Gerald's letter could not convey unalloyed pleasure, but filled her with a fresh anxiety,--or more properly, strengthened and realized what had hitherto been but a vague terror. "Eton, Sept. 14th. "My dear Marian,--Never was anything better in this world than Edmund's plans. I give him infinite credit for them; and, as head of the family, he has my full consent. I wish they would go and live at the Manor House till I am of age,--that would be jolly! Lionel desires me to tell you that it is all very well, except your going from Oakworthy, and he shall go about the house like a mad fury," (here followed his portrait in the character,) "if you go before he is off after the blue wild beestes at the Cape. His eyes are very bad, and I wish you would tell Mrs. Lyddell about them; for I don't believe it is a bit of use his staying here, and though I am very glad to help him, doing all his work and my own too is more than I can stand. It is much worse than last half; then he could see to read, though it hurt him; now Greek or small print beats him entirely, and he cannot look out a word in the Lexicon. He does just manage to write, and he never forgets anything; so another fellow and I have dragged him through, this week. But it cannot go on so; and as he won't give up or complain, I will have something done about it, or he will blind himself outright before he has done. I cannot think how it is my tutor has not found it out, but I suppose it is that Lionel is so sharp, and has such a memory. Do speak to Mrs. Lyddell. "Your affectionate brother, "E. GERALD ARUNDEL" Marian carried the letter at once to Mrs. Lyddell's dressing-room, but she found that Gerald had been mistaken in supposing the tutor had not observed Lionel's failing sight: for the same post had brought a letter from him, which had at length completely alarmed Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell, and the former was going at once to write to his son to meet him in London, where he intended to consult one of the first oculists. This was a great relief. Mr. Lyddell set off, and the party at home comforted themselves with predictions that all would soon be remedied; Marian and Clara agreeing that it would be very pleasant to have Lionel at home to walk with them, and to be nursed. Mr. Lyddell had been gone about two days; Caroline and Clara were at High Down, and Marian was returning from a solitary ramble in the park, enjoying her last letter from Agnes, when, as she crossed the lawn, she was startled by finding Lionel stretched on his face on the grass, just at the turn where some bushes concealed him from the windows. He lay flat, without his hat, his forehead resting on one arm; while with his hand he tore up daisies and grass, and threw them hastily over his shoulder, while his whole frame quivered in a convulsive agony of distress. "Lionel! Lionel! you come home? What is the matter?" exclaimed she. "Matter! matter enough, I think," said, or rather muttered Lionel; "There is an end of the Cape, or anything else." "How are your eyes?" asked Marian, in consternation. "Only I am blind for life!" answered Lionel; still hiding his face, and speaking in a sullen, defiant tone. Marian, dreadfully shocked, almost beyond all power of speaking or moving, could only drop down sitting on the grass beside him, and take his hand. "All neglect, too," he added; then vehemently, "I don't believe, no I don't, there is any pauper's son in the parish that would have been so used!" Her voice was low with fright: "But, Lionel, what has happened? Let me see you. Is it worse? can't you see?" "O yes, I can see now, after a fashion, at least, but that is soon to go, they say, and then--They have done it themselves, and they may have that satisfaction!" added he, with a fearful bitterness in his tone. "Elections, and parliament, and dinners, and that Faulkner,--that is what they have given my sight for." He withdrew his hand, and turned his shoulder from Marian, as if resolute not to be comforted; and again he shook with agony. "O, don't say such dreadful things, dear Lionel! O, if I could but do anything for you!" she cried, in a tone of heartfelt grief, which seemed to soften the poor boy a little; for he twisted round, so that his face, still pillowed on one arm, was half raised to her, and she could see how flushed it was, and that the eyelids were inflamed, though not with tears, and the eyes themselves had not altered from their former appearance. " 'Tis not your fault," he said. "If my mother had cared for me one quarter--" "Don't blame anybody, pray!" interrupted Marian: "it only makes it worse. Only tell me all about it. Did the occulist say--" "Not to me," answered Lionel; "not the worst, at least. He examined my eyes very closely, and asked me all manner of questions about what I could see, and what I could not, and what things hurt them, and how long it had been going on, and how I had been using them. Then he told me that it was impossible for him to do anything for them as yet, till the disease had made more progress; that most likely I should quite lose my sight this winter, and then I must come to him again. So that was bad enough, but I could have made up my mind to that, and they sent me away. Then it seems that, after I was gone, he went on about it to papa, and told him that the mischief had been brewing time out of mind, and some time ago it might have been stopped; but all that straining of my eyes at Eton, last half, had done immense harm, and confirmed the disease; and it is of a kind that--that--there is no cure for!" He buried his face again. "Did Mr. Lyddell tell you this?" "No, he only told me we were to go home directly, and wrote to Gerald to send my things from Eton. He hardly spoke a word all the way,--only led me about, and poked me in and out of the carriage, as if I was blind already; it put me almost in a rage. Then as soon as we came home,--about half an hour ago, I should think,--he told it all straight out to my mother, did not mince matters, I assure you: indeed, I believe they both forgot I was there. They are apt to forget me, you know. He regularly stormed about the neglect, and told her it was all her fault; and while this was going on, I found I had heard the worst, and I did not want to be pitied, so I came out here. And so there is the whole story for you, Marian, and a pretty one it is! A fine sort of life I shall have instead--" "Well but, Lionel," cried Marian, eagerly, "are you sure that be said _for certain_ that it was hopeless? for it seems so odd that he should have told you one thing, and Mr. Lyddell another." "Pshaw! I suppose he had got some consideration, and did not want to knock me down with the worst at once." "I should think it was more comfortable to know the worst at once!" said Marian, meditatively, "so as to be able to settle one's mind to it." "A pretty thing to settle one's mind to," said Lionel, "to know I must be a good-for-nothing, dependent wretch all my days! As well be a woman, or an idiot at once! There, I shall never see that tree green again; no, and spring--I have seen my last of that! and I may look my last at all your faces. Johnny I shall never see again." Ho was crying bitterly now,--almost choking with tears; and Marian's were flowing too. She was much distressed at the present moment; for though the weeping was likely to relieve him, she feared it might be doing harm to his eyes, and she did not know in the least whether it ought to be checked, or, indeed, how to check it. Grieved and in great consternation she was, in truth, for she was very fond of Lionel, and full of such strong sympathy and compassion, as to be perfectly incapable of expressing it, in the slightest degree. But he knew her; she had been the only person who had ever been uneasy about his sight, and this went for a great deal with him: so that, with all her undemonstrativeness, there was no one whom he could have liked so well to have near him in that moment of dire despair. "O, I am so sorry!" expressed infinitely more than the simple words. "You see, Marian," said he, raising himself, and struggling with the sobs of which he was ashamed, "I could bear it better if I had not had such a scheme for my life, and my father consenting too. Australia, and those wild cattle, and that glorious Bush life, always galloping in the plains; and now to be condemned to be moping about here, for ever, in darkness and helplessness. O, to think of the plans we have made, all come to an end for ever!" and again he was weeping violently. "They might have been stopped otherwise," said Marian, catching at any possible idea that might answer, or seem to console him; "you know you might have been ill, or met with an accident, and had a great deal to suffer." "I would suffer anything rather than lose my eyesight! You don't know what you are talking of." "Then just suppose this complaint had come on, in some lonely place out in the wilds, with no one to take care of you." "It would not, I should have had no Greek to put my eyes out." "And after all, dear Lionel, you know----;" there she was choked--"you know that--" and she was choked again--"you know where it comes from." "I know what you mean," he said; "and if it did--But it is my mother's neglect; there is the bitterness of it. Why, you and my father tried to stir her up to it in the spring, and she would not; and then, when for very shame she must attend, what does she do but let me go muddling on with that old woman Wells! She has regularly thrown my sight away, as much as if she had pulled my eyes out and thrown them over the hedge." "No one could ever have guessed--" "I tell you she might have guessed. Any other mother in the world would have been frightened years ago, long before I went to school. If it had been Elliot or Johnny, wouldn't she have had half the doctors in London? but what did she ever trouble her head about _me? _" "Now, Lionel, that must not be said. You know it is wrong, and I am sure you will see how sorry she is, and how it was really not having time." "I dare say she is sorry--I should hope so--now it is too late, and she has done it." "But why will you accuse any one?" said Marian, sorely perplexed, and secretly sharing all his indignation against Mrs. Lyddell. "You know it only embitters you and makes it all worse; and after all, even if man had actually done the mischief, it still would ultimately be sent from Heaven." "I don't see that that makes it any better," murmured Lionel. "O don't you, Lionel?" said she earnestly; "doesn't it make you sure it is for the best?" "I don't know what I have done to be so punished," went on Lionel to himself; "I have not always been good, but I have tried, and more lately, to do right; there are many much less steady than I, who--" "Yes, yes, Lionel, but perhaps it is not as good for them to be prosperous. Indeed, indeed I am quite sure, though I don't understand it all, or see the way, that if you will but bear it rightly, you will be glad, if not before, yet at least when you die, even of this terrible affliction." "I almost wish I was dying now!" said Lionel gloomily, "if I could but die the last day that I am to see the sky and everything, instead of droning on in the dark, a burthen to myself and every one else, for I don't know how long, forty, fifty, sixty years perhaps. You know, Marian, I am only sixteen--" There was a burst of tears again, and Marian felt herself an unsuccessful comforter, nor did she wonder at it, for she could not fancy that anything could relieve the sense of such a misfortune as poor Lionel's, except the really high source of consolation, and that as yet only by faith, which might make him take it on trust as the best in the end, though for the present he must feel all the misery. She had no time to answer him again, for the garden door opened, and at the sound he dashed away his tears, sprang to his feet, and assumed a firm, cold, would-be indifferent look, as Mrs. Lyddell came out and advanced towards them. Marian thought her looking flushed and agitated, and her voice certainly betrayed more emotion than had ever been shown in it, except when bidding Johnny farewell. "Lionel, my dear, sitting on the damp grass? You will certainly catch cold! I have been searching for you everywhere, but I am glad you were with Marian. I wanted to ask you, my dear, whether you would like to have your own room or Walter's," added she, wandering on as if anxious to say what was kindest, yet dreading to come to the subject nearest their hearts. "My own, thank you," bluntly answered Lionel, "I'll and unpack." He brushed hastily by her, and ran into the house up stairs, his roughness contrasting with her affectionate tone. She looked at Marian, and saw the trace of tears on her eyelids, and her own lip quivered while her eyes filled, and she said in a trembling voice, "Poor dear boy! has he been telling you? Does he know it all?" "Yes," said Marian, anxiously, "but is it really so very bad? Is there no hope?" "No hope? Who said so?" exclaimed Mrs. Lyddell quickly. "He did," said Marian; "he said Mr. Lyddell told you so." "Was he there?" exclaimed she: "Ah! that was Mr. Lyddell's strong way of putting things! So unfortunate--forgetting all about him. Poor fellow! I must go to him directly, and tell him it was no such thing." "What? how? O do tell me!" cried Marian, turning and hurrying with her, and speaking with, such earnestness that Mrs. Lyddell could not doubt of her sympathy now. She slackened her pace, and explained that what the surgeon, had said was, that there was confirmed disease, and of a very serious character, but the precise nature could not be ascertained till it had made greater progress, and it was then possible that it might prove capable of removal. Mrs. Lyddell was resolved that neither herself nor any one else should believe anything but what was most hopeful. She could not have borne it otherwise. She really was far from being indifferent to any of her children, though multiplicity of occupation, and thoughts, engaged on what she considered the welfare of the family, had prevented her from being properly attentive to all, and she was so accustomed to uninterrupted prosperity, as to have almost forgotten that there was such a thing as anxiety or misfortune. Lionel, neither the eldest nor the youngest, healthy, and independent, neither remarkable for beauty nor grace, just unruly enough to be provoking, and just steady enough to be no cause of anxiety, had been as much a cipher in the family as a One lively boy could be; but though slow to be roused into anxiety, she felt it with full force when it came, all the motherly affection, which while secure had appeared dormant, revived, she was dreadfully shocked, and would have been utterly overwhelmed by the accusation of neglect, had it not been for her sanguine spirit. In this temper she represented all to Marian in the most cheering light, and hastened up stairs to do the same to Lionel. Marian, relieved and hopeful, was waiting to collect some properties of hers, to carry to her room, when she met Mr. Lyddell. She went up to greet him, and thinking that he looked very mournful, there was more cordiality and fellow-feeling in her way of addressing him than ever there had been before, though she simply said "Good morning" and shook hands. "You have heard about it, Marian?" said he. "Has he been with you, poor fellow?" "Yes," said Marian, "he is in his own room now." "Ah! you spoke long ago," said Mr. Lyddell; "I wish we had attended to you." "It was Edmund who remarked it," said she. "Ay, ay, and senseless it was not to attend. Then it seems that something might have been done, at any rate he would not have gone on injuring them with his work at Eton, but now it is as good as a lost case. Poor fellow!" "O!" exclaimed Marian, thrown back again, "I thought there was a hope that it might not prove to be the worst." "There is just a shade of chance that it may turn out otherwise, and that, your mother--Mrs. Lyddell I mean--takes hold of, but I have not the slightest hope. The surgeon said, it had all the appearance of a confirmed case, such as cannot be removed." Marian stood aghast, and Mr. Lyddell, with a sort of groan, most painful to hear, passed her, and shut himself into his study. The only thing she could think of doing, was to pour out her dismay and compassion in a letter to Gerald, and she repaired to the schoolroom for the purpose of writing, but she had not been there long, before Lionel came in, and sat down astride on the music-stool, just as he used to do, but with a very different expression of countenance from the wild, reckless spirit of merriment which used to possess him. He sat and meditated for a little while, then exclaimed, "Marian, whom have you seen since I left you?" "Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell." "Did you hear papa say anything about it?" "Yes, a little." "Did he say what the doctor thought of it?" "Yes." "Tell me the very words," and he leant his elbows on the table, looking at her fixedly. "Ah! Lionel, can you bear it? They are so very sad." "Tell me them, I say." Marian looked down, as if she could not bear to meet his countenance, and faltered as she repeated them. "Ay!" said Lionel, springing up, and flinging himself round passionately, "I knew it was humbug all the time!" "What? How? O Lionel, what have I done?" "As if I was a fool or a baby, to be fed with false hopes," proceeded Lionel, sitting down, and hiding his face on his crossed arms on the table; "she might have let that alone, she has done me mischief enough already." "Lionel," said Marian, firmly and gravely, for she was really shocked at his tone, "you must not come to me, if it is to speak in such a manner of your mother." "Very well," said Lionel coldly, rising up to leave the room, then pausing just as his hand was on the door, "I thought _you_ did feel for me, Marian." "O Lionel, dear Lionel," and she sprang to him, to lead him back to his seat, but he still retained his hold of the lock and would not move; "you know"--her tears were flowing--"you know how I grieve for you; but if you are in trouble, that ought not to make you do wrong," He was turning the lock, and hardened his face, but Marian went on, "Don't go, Lionel, only hear me. Mrs. Lyddell is very unhappy about you, and I am sure you must see yourself, that if she blames herself for any want of care, her only comfort must be in hoping for the best, making the most of this little ray." "Then _you_ think there is a ray!" interrupted Lionel. "So far as that nothing is certain, but I am afraid it is so slight, that you had much better not trust to it, but settle your mind to bear whatever may come." "Very easy talking! If you had but to do it!" cried Lionel, impetuously wrenching the door open in spite of her gentle resistance, and running off determinately, leaving her, poor girl, in great despair, at having so completely failed either in comforting, softening, or bringing him to any kind of resigned feeling, having besides vexed him, made him think her unkind; and though this was unintentional, and might be better for him, just contradicted what his mother wished him to believe. Her distress was too great even for writing to Gerald, and she walked up and down, thinking what to do, longing to find him some better comforter, and offering up many a prayer for him, till at last she heard Caroline and Clara come home, and remembering that happen what might, she must dress for dinner, up she went, heavily and sorrowfully. As soon as she was dressed, she went to Clara's room, feeling that this would be but kind. Clara was not there, and she hesitated whether to go on to Caroline's, once her frequent resort. At that instant, however, both sisters came up together, and hastened to her. "O Marian Marian!" exclaimed Clara. "You know all about it, I suppose," said Caroline. "Yea, indeed I do." "Come in here," said Caroline opening her door; "I want to know about him, poor fellow, and how he bears it. Have you seen anything of him?" Marian told all she could, without betraying what was confidential, and did her best to soften Lionel's conduct, by which his sisters evidently had been disappointed, saying that he had scarcely chosen to speak to them. Marian explained what was on her mind, how she had, without intending it, flatly contradicted Mrs. Lyddell's cheering assurances, regretting it much, as injustice towards Mrs. Lyddell, but of this, Caroline thought little. "Mamma is always sanguine," she said, "and it was only her colouring that made Lionel think her account hopeful. It must be better for him, poor fellow, to know the truth, than to have his mind unsettled with vain hopes. O dear! O dear! how sad it is, and at his age too! It breaks one's heart to think of it." All coldness and distance had left Caroline's manner in speaking to Marian, and this was a great comfort, in the midst of their troubles. A very uncomfortable time it was, which thus commenced. Lionel was a good boy on the whole, with right principles, and some seriousness of mind, but he was far too undisciplined to meet patiently such a trial as this. He had pride, and a high spirit, and this made him assume a bearing, which was a good deal admired in the family, trying to carry it off with a high hand, never openly uttering a word of complaint, and seeming as if he would rather die than directly express the miserable despairing feelings within, though, poor boy, he little knew how evidently they showed themselves in his gloomy silence, his outbreaks of temper, and his almost desperate, defiant spirit of independence. His father and mother, not understanding him in the least, managed, in the revulsion of feeling which made him now the first object in the family, to try his temper perpetually. He had in former times, missed their demonstrations of affection, though healthy, high-spirited, and by no means sentimental, the craving had been only occasional, he had done very well without them, and had gained habits of freedom incompatible with being petted. He had never been used to be interfered with, and could not understand it at all; and that remembrance of past neglect embittered all his feelings. Mr. Lyddell had just found out, as Marian had thought long ago, that Lionel was the flower of his flock, the one of his sons, who alone united spirit and steadiness, for the emigration scheme had shown a degree of sense, enterprise, and consideration which had at the time pleased and surprised him, and now added much to his sense of the promise lost. He laid all the blame of the neglect on his wife, but he did not lament it the less keenly. His extreme kindness and solicitude for the boy, were, to those who compared them with his general character, quite affecting, but unluckily they displayed themselves is a way which harassed Lionel very much, for he treated him as if he fancied him completely blind already, cautioned him, guided him, and looked anxious, if he did but walk across the garden alone; whilst Lionel, who could see quite well enough for all ordinary purposes, was teased, reminded of his troubles, and vexed above measure by having notice attracted to his defect of sight. In the main, however, he owned that his father was kind, and sorry for him, though each particular instance annoyed him; but it was much worse with his mother, for her petting was more minute, more constant, and such as would have been worrying to any boy in full health, even if it had not, as in poor Lionel's case, been connected with the dark future, and with a past, which had sadly soured him against her. He was always rough and morose with her, rebelling against her care, never wakening into affection, or showing pleasure in what she proposed, though she continued to press on him her attention, with uunwearied assiduity. His sisters were treated much in the same manner; Clara made him cross with over care, and Caroline, though showing better judgment, and much real tact and affection, was also kept at a distance, and often harshly answered. Marian too, was quite sufficiently like a sister to come in for many an unreasonable fit of rudeness, and temper when it was perfectly impossible to find any means of pleasing him. Indeed such unoccupied days as his were in themselves a trial of good humour. Idleness was very pleasant in the holidays, but his was too active a spirit to bear it for long together, especially when it left room for such anticipations as those for which his hopes of a Bush life were exchanged, Yet he treated offers of reading to him as insults, and far less would he endure to learn any occupation that might serve him when his sight should be quite gone; he professed to hate music, and lounged about disconsolately in the house or garden. Now and then, if he found the young ladies reading on their own account, he would be beguiled into listening and being amused, and their ingenuity was often exercised in appearing to be doing it naturally, and he sometimes took part in conversation, and thus had his attention withdrawn from his misfortune; but it was not often that his moodiness of manner could be charmed away, unless strangers were present, when he thought it a point of honour to seem at his ease and merry. After luncheon, he liked best to ride, but against this, Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell set their faces, persuaded that it must be very dangerous. This, Lionel thought the height of unkindness; he could ride just as safely as in the holidays; and it was too cruel to make him give up the one pleasure he best liked, while he was still able to enjoy it, and though not sufficiently familiar with them to attempt any remonstrance, he became doubly discontented and sullen. He would not walk with the girls, but wandered far away over the downs by himself, often not coming back till very late, and till both his parents had been in some alarm. At last, after about a week, Marian ventured to expostulate; she prevailed, and he was allowed to resume his rides, under a restriction that it must never be alone. Now, taking a servant with him was an avowal of his misfortune which he never would endure; so Marian, who never in her life was afraid of what any horse could do, became his companion, and rode out with him a good deal, feeling him indeed a charge, but not nearly so heavy a one as her cousins fancied. Still, though not afraid of accidents to him or to herself, these rides were almost a subject of dread to Marian, daily as was their occurrence, for it was then that poor Lionel made up for the reserve he exercised with all the rest. If she could have done him any good, it would have been a different thing, but surely, the world did not contain, as she thought, a worse comforter than herself; for day after day, answer as she would, came the same sad strain of regrets, and laments over vanished plans, repelling every attempt at leading him to resignation, and only varied by the different moods in which he would sometimes look on his case as hopeless, and sometimes be angry with her for assuming that it was so. Still worse were the complaints of his parents, in which he would indulge after each fresh provocation, or rather, what he thought so, though she never gave him the least encouragement to talk in this manner, argued for them, and often blamed him; yet do what she would, he never was convinced. The same battle on some other ground was sure to recur, often the next day, and Marian, right as she knew she was, never felt as if she had the victory; for five times out of six, it was in a surly, impatient manner that he turned away from her, as they dismounted. She often wondered whether she ought to let him go on thus, whether it was right in her, if it did him harm, by confirming all his unpleasant feelings, or whether it might not be worse for him to let them rankle in his heart instead of pouring them out. It seemed too unkind to silence him, when he fancied such talk a comfort, and she was the only person in his confidence, yet what was right? what was good for him? Her head ached with the self debate; she felt positively worn and depressed, with the continued useless, harassing conversations; she knew he was beyond her management, yet, with all her doubts, she was too tender-hearted to vex him; she let him go on and only combated each point, instead of refusing to listen. Why would not Walter come home, the only true comforter Lionel was likely to find, whom he really respected and loved? Walter was by this time ordained, yet he did not propose coming home; indeed Marian had not even heard whether he had written, and she was inclined to think he could not have been informed of the state of things at home. At length, when Lionel had been at home nearly a month, there came one morning a letter directed to him. His mother and Clara both offered to read it for him, but he gruffly refused, glanced it over, and put it in his pocket. He loitered through the morning, and rode with Marian in the afternoon. As they happened to meet with some entertaining subject of conversation, the ride was more cheerful than usual, and she hoped she had escaped the ordinary discussion; but when he helped her to dismount under the portico, he said, "Don't go in just yet. Come and take a turn in the plantations." Her heart sank at the task that was coming, but she would not disappoint him, and gathering up her habit, she followed his quick steps. As soon as they were out of sight of the house, he produced the letter, saying, "Here, read me this." "O! I was in hopes that you could." "I thought I could at first, but it was only 'my dear Lionel,' that I could read. It was all haze after that. There is a step In these three weeks," he added in a voice meant to be manly and careless. "Come, let us hear. 'Tis from Walter, is not it?" The letter had been written on first receiving intelligence of Lionel's condition, which had been communicated by his father when he had to write about something else. Marian, as she read, rejoiced in the letter, it was so exactly what she wanted to have said, and yet never could venture on, about regarding the affliction as a cross, and bending to bear it patiently. She had often felt that here was the best relief, but she had never dared to set it openly before Lionel, fearing that her awkwardness, and his waywardness, might lead to his saying something scornful, which would be worse than all. Here it was put before him in just the right way, and one to which he must attend, and she watched eagerly for some token of the way in which he took it. He made no remark, however, seeming to hear it as a matter of course that Walter would say something of the kind. After asking if she was certain she had read all, and pointing to a few crossed lines at the head of the first page, to make sure that she had not missed them, he only said, "Then there is not a word about coming. Well, I do think he might come when he knows that after this time I shall never be able to see him." "I don't suppose he thinks of that," said Marian--"I mean perhaps he would not think of your caring for the mere _sight_ of him as a pleasure." "He does not know then," said Lionel, "I am trying to learn all your faces, and I don't think I shall forget them." "I am sure if he guessed you wished for him he would come that instant." "I am not going to ask him," said Lionel proudly. "What, I really think, is the reason of his stayin away," said Marian, hesitating, "is about Mr. Faulkner. I think more especially now he is a Clergyman, he will not have anything to do with him." "Ay, ay," said Lionel, "that is a reason good for something. I only should like to do the same, except that if I was Walter I would have done more long ago, instead of just keeping out of the way, and told Caroline it was a regular shame, and she ought not to be taken in with his fine speeches, and balls, and stuff." "I don't know--" said Marian. "What don't you know?" "How far even Walter would be authorised to interfere about what Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell approve." "Don't talk nonsense, Marian. If a thing is right, it is right, if it is wrong, it's wrong, and all the world ought to try to prevent it. I know I would, if anybody would mind me, for it makes me sick to see that man come into the room, and the fuss mamma makes with him. I think he grows worse. I declare I'd as soon see her marry Julian the Apostate! I am so glad he is gone to those races. I should like to ask Caroline what sort of happiness she expects with a man that talks of the Bible as if it was no better than the Iliad! I only wish he would talk so to her, perhaps that would shock her." "I don't think she is very happy," said Marian. "I am sure she ought not to be," was the answer. "The more talk there has been of fixing the day the more unhappy she has looked," said Marian. "You know she has begged the Faulkners to let it be put off a little longer, because she could not bear that it should be while you are in this doubtful state." "I did not know it," said Lionel, "and much good does it do me! A nice life I shall have with no one but Clara to speak to! And when is your marriage, Marian? Mr. Arundel's, I mean, for that is as bad." "O that will not be till next summer," said Marian: "Mrs. Wortley wishes Agnes to be twenty-one first, and Edmund has to build a house." And Marian was ready to forgive them for the delay when she saw how glad it made Lionel look. Yes, rejoiced as she must be to escape from Oakworthy, she could not go without a chequered feeling. If she was adroit at managing people, she would make Clara take the place she held now with Lionel, which would be good for both, but she was far too clumsy to bring that about; and O! what a refuge Fern Torr would be after all this harassing life! It would be better for Lionel not to have her to divert his confidence from his own family, and at any rate she should be there to help him through this sad autumn of uncertainty. Then would come the peace, rest, and guidance she had longed for all her life, in her own home, and that hope might well cheer her through life.

16

None

"The brass, by long attrition tried, Placed by the purer metal's side, Displays at length a dingy hue, That proves its former claim untrue; So time's discerning hand hath art To set the good and ill apart." Lionel's affliction had certainly tended to lessen the gulf which the engagement with Mr. Faulkner had made between Caroline and Marian. Caroline was very anxious about her brother, and knowing that Marian had his confidence, was continually coming to her for reports of his state of mind and spirits, and with despairing questions as to what was likely to please him,--questions which Marian was quite unqualified to answer, and which were curious, since she had no tact, and Caroline had a great deal. Thus it came to pass, that nightly sittings by each other's bed-room fire were renewed, and long consultations took place, always at first about Lionel, but sometimes branching to things in general, even as in the olden time. Caroline was, however, very unlike what she had been a year ago, when as Marian full well remembered, they had first talked of Mr. Faulkner's visit. She was gayer in public, but her spirits were very low when alone with Marian; and now and then the conversation flagged, till she sat for full half an hour, her head on her hand, without a word. At first she would try to excuse such a reverie, by calling herself very tired; but as days went on, and it recurred, she smiled as she woke from it, and told Marian "it was such repose to be with a person who would let her be silent." There was much confidence in such silence. Marian began to grow even more sorry for her than at first, because it was impossible to continue to be angry; and tried in every way to show her kindness, becoming, unconsciously, much more demonstrative in affection than ever she had been before. On the day on which Lionel received the letter mentioned at the end of the last chapter, Caroline came into Marian's room at dressing-time; and after lingering about a little, she said, "Could Lionel read that letter to day?" Marian shook her head sadly. "He brought it to you, then?" sighed Caroline, "Ah! I saw who it came from." She looked wistfully at Marian, as if longing to hear something of the letter, though she would not ask; and Marian, though much touched, was determined against saying one word about it, however indifferent, as she felt that, without Lionel's consent, she ought to be as mute as the paper it was written upon. Caroline paused, then continued, "Do you think he will ask you to write his answer for him?" "No, I think not. You know he wrote a note to Gerald in one of my letters the other day. I dare say he will always be able to write; Mrs. Wortley has a blind friend who does." Caroline did not answer, but gazed at the fire for almost ten minutes. At last she said, "Poor Walter! I wonder what he is doing." "I am sure he must be making himself very useful," said Marian. "That is one thing we may be sure of," said Caroline, smiling mournfully. "Walter is excellent wherever he is; but O, Marian," continued she, in a voice of inexpressible sadness, "who would have told me, a year ago, that all I should hear of Walter's ordination would be in the newspaper?" Marian could make no answer but some sound expressive of sorrow. "He has only written to me once since--since June!" proceeded Caroline, in the same utterly dejected tone. Then Walter had remonstrated, which was a great comfort to Marian, by restoring him to his place in her estimation. Still she maintained her expressive silence, and Caroline went on after another interval. "You and he have been consistent from the first, Marian." At that moment Fanny came in, and no more could be said, for Marian was obliged to dress for dinner in a hurry. She took an opportunity of saying to Lionel that evening, something about the pleasure it would give Caroline if he would tell her about his letter. "What! you have been telling her about it?" said he, in a tone of great vexation; "that is always the way with women--no trusting them!" "No, indeed, Lionel, I said not one word; but she saw it was Walter's writing." "And you went and told her I could not read it?" "If she asked me, what could I do but speak the truth?" said Marian gently; but he only made an impatient exclamation. "I gave not the least hint of what it was about," added Marian, pleadingly. "Of course I could not think of that, nor she either; but she looked as if she did so long for some news of Walter: she has not heard from him since the summer." "That is her own fault," said Lionel, in his surly voice. "That only makes it the worse for her. She is so much out of spirits, Lionel; and if you would only tell her that part about his schools and his lodging, I am sure she would be so much obliged to you." "I shan't do any such thing," was his reply; "I always keep my letters to myself, and I wish you would not talk about me." He turned sharply away, and crossed the room; but his temper was not improved by the consequences of his stumbling over a footstool which had been left full in the way, and in rather a dark place, where it would have been a trap for any one. He recovered in an instant without falling; so that it would not have signified if Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell had not both been startled. The former issued an edict that no stumbling-block should be left in the way, and the latter entered upon an investigation as to who had been the delinquent in the present case, so as to make a great deal of discussion of the very worst kind for Lionel. Thenceforth the evening was uncomfortable. Marian felt as if she was guilty of all, and was extremely provoked with herself for that blundering way of driving at her point, which made things worse when she most wanted to set them right. She had not comforted Caroline, and she had led poor Lionel to fancy his confidence betrayed, and himself discussed and--as he would call it--gossiped about. No wonder he looked as if she had been injuring him; yet, unjust as it was, she had only her own mal-adroitness to blame. A person of tact would have smoothed it all at once, instead of ruffling everything up. The tact Marian longed for is a natural talent; the consideration, the delicacy of feeling, that she really had, were a part of her sterling goodness, such as may be acquired by all; and her thorough truth, trustiness, kindness, and above all her single-mindedness, had a value, where she was really known, which weighed down, in the long run, all that was involuntarily against her in manner, and won her not only esteem, but such warm affection, such thorough reliance, as neither she herself, nor those who felt it could fathom. Tact is an excellent thing, but genuine love to our neighbour, seeking to show true kindness, delicacy, and consideration,--striving in fact to do as it would be done by,--is as much more precious, as a spiritual gift is than a natural quality. That very night, as Marian was sitting in her own room in her dressing-gown, pondering on these unfortunate blunders, there was a knock at her door, and in came Caroline. Sitting down by the fire, she held out a letter on two or three sheets of closely written notepaper. "Read that, Marian," said she, turning her face straight, to the fire as she gave it. It was from Walter, and the date showed that it had been written, immediately on receiving the announcement of Caroline's engagement. It was grave, earnest, and affectionate; not accusing Mr. Faulkner of anything, not positively objecting to him, but reminding Caroline of the solemnity of the duties she was about to undertake, and of the extreme danger of allowing herself to be so attracted by agreeableness of manner, or led on by the opinion of those around her, as to forget that the connection she was about to form was to last for life, and that she must be responsible for the influence her husband would exercise on her life here, and therefore on her life hereafter. He said he was sure she could not enter lightly on such an engagement, and therefore trusted that her own mind was thoroughly convinced that she had chosen one who would be a guide, an aid, and a support in the path that all were treading. It was exactly Walter's way, as Marian well knew, to manage to say, in his simple, and as he thought, guarded manner of representing things, what to sharper people had very much the air of irony; and as she gave back the letter, her observation, as the first that would occur, was, "It is very like Walter." "Very," said Caroline. "Did you answer him?" "I wrote again, but--but"--her voice began to fail--"it was not an answer. I would not seem to understand him. I wrote a lively, careless sort of letter, and only said papa and mamma were delighted, or something of that kind. And O, Marian, Marian, he has never written to me again, and I have deserved it." She burst into tears. "But why don't you write now? He must be very anxious to hear of Lionel, and there is no one to tell him." "I cannot," she replied; "I cannot, while--while he thinks of me as he must--as he ought!" She wept bitterly, and Marian stood by perplexed and distressed. "Dear Caroline," was the utmost that she could say. "Marian!" cried Caroline, looking up for a moment, then hiding her face again--"I would give anything in the world that he had been at home last summer; or that you had slept at High Down that night." A flash of hope and joy came across Marian. "If you think so," she began, but Caroline cut her short. "I know what you mean, but that it? impossible, quite Impossible--decidedly so," she added, as if these assurances were to strengthen her own belief in its impossibility, and not arguing, from a consciousness that her friend would overthrow every one of her arguments. "I don't know what made me come to you, and tease you," said she, rising and taking her letter; "good night." "Tease me! O, Caroline, Caroline, you know--" What she knew was lost in a most affectionate embrace; but Caroline would not stay any longer, and left Marian as usual, regretting everything that had passed. The nest night, however, Caroline came again, as if there was some irresistible spell that drew her to Marian. It was Sunday, and Marian had long since observed that on such days Caroline was always most out of spirits. She sat down, and let a long time pass without talking; but at last she said, "Marian, it is very kind in you to let me come and sit here. You cannot--no--you will never know how wretched I am." "My dear, dear Caroline, if I could but do anything for you! but," she proceeded, gathering resolution from her day's reflections, "you are the only person who can do anything for yourself." "Impossible!" repeated Caroline. Marian was not exactly silenced, but involved in deep considerations as to the propriety of interfering, and whether attempting to persuade Caroline would be doing evil that good might come. Before she had made up her mind,--as, indeed, how could she in five minutes come to a conclusion to which hours of previous perplexity had failed to bring her? --Caroline spoke again, "If it had but never begun! but now it has, it must go on." "I don't know--" "It must, I tell you!" repeated Caroline. "If it had all to begin over again, it would be very different. O, if it was but this time last year!" "But Caroline, Caroline," repeated Marian, carried away by the thought that rose to her lips, "only think; you say now if it was this time last year--now, while you can escape. Shall not you say so all the more when it is really too late,--when you will wish you had drawn back now?" "You have no right to say I should wish, that!" said Caroline, offended. "You don't know what the love is that you are holding so cheaply." "I beg your pardon, Caroline," and Marian was thrown into herself again; but she thought a little longer, and seeing that Caroline was still waiting and musing, she ventured on saying, in a timid voice, "Somehow, I think, it would seem to me that the more affection there was, the more painful it would all be." "You are right there, Marian," exclaimed Caroline, in a voice of acute feeling. It was a strange question that Marian next asked abruptly, on an impulse sudden at the moment, though it was what she had long eagerly desired to know. "Do you love him after all?" Caroline did not seem vexed by the inquiry, but went on speaking rather as if she was examining herself as to the answer,--"Love him? I don't know; sometimes I think I do, sometimes I think not. It is not as people in books love, and--and it can't be as your Agnes must love Mr. Arundel." A most emphatic "O no!" escaped from Marian, she hardly knew how, as if it was profanation to compare Mr. Faulkner to Edmund; and perhaps the strongest proof that Caroline's was not a real attachment, was that she let it pass. "But then," pursued she warmly, "I am sure he is attached to me--yes, very much--and--well, and I am glad to see him come into the room; I like to walk with him. There is no one--no--no one in the whole world whom I like so well. All my doubts and fears go away at the first sound of his voice, and I am quite happy then. O, Marian, that surely is love?" "I don't know," said Marian; "I can't fancy love that has not begun with esteem, with looking up," "I do look up!" said Caroline, eagerly. "He is so clever, so sensible, has such a mind." "I did not mean looking up intellectually," "Ah! you can live in that way," said Caroline, quickly; "your own people are all of _that sort_. But you know I should never have had any one at all to love, if I had begun looking for _that kind of thing_, even at home." Too true, thought Marian, while she answered, "It is a different thing where you have to begin afresh, and take it voluntarily upon you." "Voluntarily!" repeated Caroline; "I am sure my will had very little to do with it. I found myself in the midst of it, without knowing how, before I had made up my mind one way or the other. O, Marian! if you had but been with me that morning." "Would that have prevented you?" "I do really believe it would. You would have looked as if you thought it so impossible, that I should have been strengthened up to do something they could not have taken for consent. I'll tell you all about it, Marian, from the beginning, and you will see how little free will I had in it, and how distracted I am now." Caroline went through the whole story, incoherently, and often only half expressing her sentiments, and passing over what Marian knew already. It seemed that she had been pleased with Mr. Faulkner's agreeableness, flattered by his attention, and entered upon the same sort of intercourse with him as with any other pleasant acquaintance. It would never have been her way, brought up as she had been, to shrink from him with such shuddering aversion as Marian did, simply from what she had heard of his opinions. He was so agreeable, that it was just as well quite to forget that, or only half to believe it. Then came the growing perceptions of his intentions towards her, and of her mother's triumph in them. But this was not till the archery arrangements were so far advanced, that she could not have drawn back from them; and she was, besides, in a whirl of gaiety and excitement that left little time for serious thought: that she put off till his offer should be made, if it was really coming. It came, and when she did not expect it. She knew not what to do she was too confused for consideration. The next day was bewilderment, and in the evening she found herself engaged. The new sensation given her by her lover's affection, her genuine admiration of his personal superiority, and wonder at herself for having attracted such a man,--her gratitude to his family for their kindness, the triumph of her parents,--all formed such a mixture of pleasurable, almost intoxicating feelings, as at first to giddy her, (or, as the French will express it, _l'ètourdir_,) as to what she had done, and what she was about to do. Marian's grave, still face, and omission of one congratulatory, even of one sympathetic word, were indeed witnesses; but the impression of her unaccommodating ways was then recent, and Caroline thought of her as one who showed goodness to be unpleasing and impracticable, and looked on her silent disapproval as part of that system of severity in which, she was consistent, but which her conduct only proved to be absurd and unreasonable. In the same spirit Caroline disregarded Walter's letter,--only a letter, which could therefore be laid aside, and which, in truth, did not say all he meant as forcibly or as well as it might have been said, since, as every one knew, Walter was more good than clever. A tenderness of feeling, reminding her that Walter loved her, would not let her destroy the letter, or be offended; but she intrenched herself in her parents' satisfaction, and being resolved not to attend to it, she would not seem to understand it. So time passed; at first she was really not exactly happy, but possessing what passed very well for happiness with herself and every one else; then came a time when an effort became necessary to persuade herself that she was so. It was not that Mr. Faulkner showed his character more openly, or startled her with any such plain expressions as had so much shocked Lionel; for he held that most subtle and perilous of all views partaking of unbelief,--that Christianity was the best and most beautiful form of religion yet promulgated, that it was all very well now for women and weak-minded people, and it was a step to some wonderful perfectibility, which was a sort of worship of an essence of beauty and intellect. He did not say such things to her, but they were the principles on which all his sentiments were founded: and as she knew him mire and more intimately, compared and discussed their tastes and likings, and the grounds on which they were formed, there were tokens, which could not help now and then showing themselves, of those opinions of which Marian had warned her. Very slow was she to admit the conviction, for she was growing much attached to him; and whenever he praised the beauty, the poetry, the morality, the majesty of anything belonging to religion, she caught at it and silenced all her doubts with it,--hoped she had silenced them for ever,--but the perception would return that it was only the beauty that he praised, because it was beauty, and struck him as such. Shade upon shade, imperceptible in itself, but each tint adding to its depth, the cloud of misgiving darkened, and though she tried to fight it off,--though she told herself it was too late,--though she was very angry with herself for it, there it still hung; and the ever-present consciousness of Marian's disapproval heightened it, till in impatient moods she began to dislike Marian, and wish her out of the house, Then came the news of Edmund Arundel's engagement, rousing Marian into such a glow of warm-hearted delight, as to waken Caroline to a complete sense of her power of affection, as well as of the contrast of the manner in which she regarded the prospects of her two friends. Caroline grew more unhappy, and strove both against her own growing wretchedness, and an almost magnetic attraction, which drew her to impart it all to Marian, in spite of the chill with which it would be first met, and of the advice which could never be taken; whilst a yearning, longing desire for the long-suspended intercourse with Walter, and a sense of his displeasure, formed no slight portion of her miserable feelings. The arrangements for her marriage she looked on as part of her destiny,--at any rate, they occupied her mind; and there would be an end, after that, of these dreadful and vain doubts. In the midst of all this, poor Lionel's threatened misfortune gave Caroline, as it were, a glimpse down a long dark road, where nothing had ever yet caused her to look; yet who could say whether it might not be her's to tread it? Affliction, sickness, sorrow, death, certain at last,--there was but one stay in them; and what if she should lose it,--if she was losing it already? I She thought of bearing them with _him_,--of the hollowness, the fallacy, the utter misery of trying to be sustained by aught that had not its foundations firmly fixed beyond the grave,--of not looking as sorrow as fatherly chastisement. (Caroline hardly yet entered into its still higher claim,) or at death as the gate of life. And O! if she loved him as her husband, what would it be to see him die, thinking, or even having thought, as he too surely did? All the train of fallacies about sincerity rather than forms of faith,--all the hopes that he might yet be brought to see the truth, and that she might be the means, were only soporifics for a moment, which failed to still the ever growing agony. She knew there was nothing in them, and that they were only extenuations; but still, amid all her unhappiness, there was a resolution to persevere, a want of moral courage which determined her to go on, and enter on such a life as this, rather than go through all that would ensue on an attempt to break off the match. Thus, though her reluctance was increasing, and she now sought to put off the decisive day, instead of precipitating it, as at first, all she attempted was to have the wedding deferred in consequence of her brother's condition; and though, logically taken, there was no great reason in the request, every one agreed it was a very amiable feeling, and so her desire was complied with. She would have avoided Marian more than ever, but this could hardly be, now that her cousin was in fuller sympathy, with all the family than she had ever been before; and little as was her immediate power with Lionel, Caroline would have given worlds even for that. Thus, as has been shown, the old sympathy grew up again; the root, blighted months ago, shot out once more, and at last accident and impulse led Caroline to do what she had little expected ever to have done,--to pour out all her griefs, cares, and doubts to Marian, knowing all the time what she would say, and resolved against her advice, yet irresistibly impelled to go on, as if talking would relieve her of her burthen, and resting on the solid, firm truth of that deep love, which manifested itself by few tokens indeed, but those were of extreme worth. The confession was a perplexity and a sorrow to Marian while it was being made, though she was very glad it had been done; and how intense were the affection and compassion for Caroline that filled her heart is beyond all power of narration. She answered with earnest sympathy, at each step helped out the broken words, and showed her comprehension of the pauses. She was a perfect listener in all but one respect; she would not give the counsel Caroline wanted; and she would not have been Marian, she would not have had her own reality and bracing severity, if she had. She could not cheer Caroline up, bid her banish fear, and look forward to happiness; she could not even tell her there was no help for it: she only said, "I don't know," and sat considering whenever Caroline reiterated that it was impossible, and too late. Some power those "I don't knows" had beyond eloquence; for when Caroline had seven times fully proved how entirely out of the question any attempt to escape from her destiny would be, she ended by asking, in quite a different tone, "What would you have me do?" The reply was, of course, "I don't know;" but this was immediately followed by a repetition of the former counsel, "Write to Walter." Caroline could not--would not; it would be of no use: poor Walter should not be tormented. If, in his strict sense of right, he chose to come and try, as he would think, to save her, there would be nothing but uproar and confusion in the family; and to think of him, with his timidity, bringing his father's anger on himself for her sake, seemed to her at the moment beyond all things dreadful. No, no, no, it was utterly impossible; and therewith the fire being out, and the clock striking two, Caroline thanked Marian for her kindness, said it was all of no use, kissed her, and bade her good night. Marian thought no good was done, and only made herself very unhappy at seeing her led, by weakness, to sacrifice herself against her better judgment. The next night, Caroline came again, and the conversation was resumed, or rather gone over again, with no more satisfactory result than before; and so it was the next, and the next. To be comforter and adviser sounds like a delightful privilege, and so, thought Marian, it would be, if one could only do it; but to have all the opportunity,--to have people coming for comfort, and not in the least be able to afford it, neither to relieve them, nor to be sure that she had not done them harm was to the highest degree painful and unsatisfactory. And from Lionel's repinings to Caroline's doubts, she went, suffering for each, equally unable to console either, and wondering which was the saddest case. Lionel's was, she thought, far the best, if he would but perceive it; but then Caroline's might yet be remedied, if she had but strength for one struggle. All that Marian could do without mistrust, was to pray for them both, and to pray that she might not be the means of doing them harm. She saw how wrong it would be in her, personally to interfere between Caroline and her parents' wishes; and it was this that made her adhere to that one piece of advice, that Walter should be written to, since on his judgment and sense of right there was the most absolute reliance; and, both as brother and Clergyman, he was by far the most proper person for Caroline to consult, or to act for her. For three days, however, it was all in vain, Caroline would not write; and she began to despair, and to grow angry with the feebleness that would not take one step in the right direction. On the fourth, Caroline, who the night before had seemed as averse as ever, showed her, as she crossed the hall on the way to luncheon, a letter directed to the Reverend Walter Lyddell. Her heart leapt, but as she smiled satisfaction, she saw Caroline's face so wan, dejected, and miserable, that she could not make herself too happy. There were other doubts, now that this point was gained, as to how Walter might be able to manage Caroline,--whether he would lead her to the right, or unconsciously turn her to the wrong, by his want of skilfulness; what might be his idea of her duty to her parents, or to her promise; whether he might think it right to take upon himself to advise, or whether either he or his sister, when it came to the point, would have nerve enough to excite their father's displeasure. The only thing Marian thought at all favourable, was that Elliot and Mr. Faulkner were both at Newmarket, and there was no present appearance of their coming home. Elliot was likely to make more opposition than any one else, and Mr. Faulkner's influence was of course to be dreaded. Indeed, had he been at hand, believing, as Caroline did, in his affection for her, it was most probable that she would never have spoken of her misgivings at all, and very possibly have hardly acknowledged them to herself. Caroline's letter had been written on Thursday. It was Monday, and no answer had come, which caused her to look more worn and dispirited than before, unable even to keep up the appearance of cheerfulness which she had hitherto assumed when with the rest of the family. It was a cold, gloomy, wintry day, with gusts of sleety rain, and no one chose to attempt going out, except Marian and Lionel, the former of whom was a systematic despiser of weather, and never was hurt by anything but staying in-doors, while the latter would rather have done anything than idle away a whole afternoon as well as a morning in the drawing-room. Even they thought it too bad for riding; so after making the circuit of the park, they went into the town, where Lionel wanted to buy a silk handkerchief. He had been told the day before that his neck-tie was growing unfit to be seen, he did not choose to ask any one to get one for him, and it was against his will that he was obliged to take Marian to secure him from buying "any thing awful," as he expressed it. The purchase prospered very well, Lionel hoped that the shopman had not found out how entirely he trusted to his companion for the choice, and was proud that his old precaution of substituting a key for a slider at the gold end of his purse, had saved him from making any mistakes about the money. They were walking away, arm in arm; it was not yet necessary to guide him, but Marian thought, beginning now would soften the first commencement of dependence. And, indeed, even in the holidays Lionel, in his first tail-coat, had been well-pleased to find himself man enough to have his arm taken by a young lady. A carriage was passing. "There is Walter!" joyfully exclaimed Marian, as she saw the well-known spectacled face peering from the window of one of the carriages from the Great Western Station. "Walter! what, come at last?" cried Lionel, looking up and frowning in that painful way that had become habitual to him when he strained his eyes to see distinctly. Walter had at the same moment spied them, stopped, thrown the door open, sprung out, and was shaking hands with them, but scarcely speaking. He turned again to order the driver to go on and set his things down at the house, and then joined his brother and cousin, looting very anxiously at Lionel, whose arm Marian had quitted, and still keeping silence. Marian on her side was very glad; but at the same time almost overcome by the thought of what this return home must be to Walter, and feeling a strange, solemn sensation at first meeting her cousin and companion, after he had become in an especial manner the servant of the Most High. He was Walter still, Walter with his near-sighted eyes, and nervous manner, yet he was so much more, and his clerical dress would not let her forget it for a moment. Lionel was the most unembarrassed of the three, he was very glad to meet his brother, and wishing to show that he could bear his troubles manfully, he spoke joyously, "So you have thought better of it and come at last, Walter; I hope it is for a good long time." "Only till Saturday," was Walter's answer. "Well, that is something, only I can't think why you did not come before." Walter murmured something about having been much occupied, and then seemed to be watching Lionel too intently to say any more. Marian thought the brothers would get on much better without her, and, coming to a cottage, said she wanted to speak to somebody in it. "O Marian, we will wait for you," said Walter, with a pleading look, and she saw from his agitated, fidgeting manner, that he was excessively nervous at the notion of being left to take care of Lionel back to the house. "Very well," she said, "I will not be a moment;" and delivering her message, which had been only devised as an excuse, she walked on with them, in a sort of despair as to Walter's being of any use. "If he is afraid to walk home with Lionel," thought she, "what will it be about stirring up his father? Why cannot people have a little courage?" She consoled herself by remembering that Walter could not know the degree of Lionel's blindness, and probably thought it worse than it yet was; but even if it had been total, she could not see that he need have been afraid of guiding him in the street and through the park. If it was the additional nervousness, of disliking to begin on so painful a subject, that she thought worse than all. Marian being by no means troubled with nerves herself, had little toleration for women who had them; and none at all for men. She thought the case lost, and half repented of her advice to write to Walter, yet she did not know what else she could possibly have said. Lionel talked on, told who was at home, and what every one was about, and when Johnny had last been heard of, all in a bright, lively tone, not exactly assumed, for he was much cheered by his brother's arrival, and yet partly from the wonted desire of showing himself happy. Walter did not make much reply, but when Lionel after saying Elliot was at Newmarket, added, "And Mr. Faulkner is there too, so you won't have the pleasure of an introduction," he started, and Marian saw the trembling of his lips. Thus they reached the house, and Lionel dashed forward In his own headlong way before them, to announce Walter's coming. Then Walter looked at Marian, saying, "Then it is not so bad yet?" "O no, it is only that he cannot see anything distinctly; he cannot bear not to be independent." They were entering the hall by this time, and his mother and sisters had come out to meet Walter, Caroline very white and trembling, and holding by the back of a chair instead of coming forward; Mrs. Lyddell kissed him, and seemed more affectionate than usual, for it had been a great pleasure to her to see Lionel rush in with that animated face, and a shout such as he used to get into disgrace for. Nothing came to pass that evening, there were no private conferences, and there was nothing remarkable, excepting that Lionel was quite merry and talkative, and Caroline more silent than ever, seeming hardly to attend even when Walter was sitting between her and Clara, talking to Marian and Lionel about the beautiful arrangements of Church and school in his new curacy. At night she was in such a terrible agitation, walking up and down the rooms so restless and wretched that Marian, seriously afraid she would be quite ill the next day, persuaded her with great difficulty, to go to bed, and did not leave her till very late at night, when she had read her to sleep. It was a, great relief to find her pretty well in the morning, at least with nothing worse than a headache. She and Walter both disappeared after breakfast, and did not come down till luncheon time, when she looked so ill that Mrs. Lyddell was alarmed and insisted on her lying down and keeping quiet. Then Mrs. Lyddell said that Walter ought to go and call on Lady Julia Faulkner, and offered to take him there. Marian looked at him by stealth, and could have gasped for breath, for by what he did now, she thought she could see what line he would take. "Thank you," he said, or rather hesitated, "but don't let me interrupt your plans. I thought I heard something about--about. Salisbury. I have something to do there." "The girls did talk of wanting to go," said Mrs. Lyddell. "Did not you, Marian or Clara, which was it?" "My watch wants to have something done to it," put in Lionel, whose father had given him a repeater, which of course began its career by doing anything but going properly. "Well, perhaps it will he as well to go to Salisbury to-day, as Caroline has this headache. She never likes going there, and she may be able to go with us to High Down to-morrow." So it was settled, and they left the luncheon table. Marian happened to be the last lady, and whether it was fancy or not she was not sure, but she thought she heard on Walter's lips, a self-reproachful whisper of "Coward." The expedition to Salisbury, in which Marian was obliged to take part, prevented her from seeing anything of Caroline till the evening, and then as soon as Clara was out of the way Caroline rose up, caught hold of her hand, and exclaimed, "O, Marian, what have you made me do?" then walked about in a paroxysm of distress, almost terrible to witness. "Caroline, dearest, O don't!" cried Marian quite frightened; "do try to be calm! O what is it?" "O it will all be misery!" said Caroline, sitting down and clasping her hands over her face, "I little knew what it would be when you made me write to Walter. He says it would be wickedness--yes, those were his words--he called it wickedness in me to go on with it, as I feel now!" "And you mean to--" "I cannot tell--I don't know--he must do as he pleases; O it will make me wild! He must do as he pleases, for I must be wretched either way," "Dear Caroline--but O! how much better to be unhappy for the sake of doing right than when--" "Yes, yes--so he said--but O! the horror. It kills me even to think of what it will be! O, Marian, Marian--" "It will be over in time," said Marian; "but O! I am glad you have made up your mind--" "No, I have not--at least I must, I suppose--for after what Walter said I can't go on. Walter's words would be a dagger--O! I don't know what they would be, all the rest of my life if I did. No--you and Walter must have your own way; I am too wretched already to care what becomes of inc. But he--O Marian, I never can--" "If it is right you can," said Marian. "You can, but you don't know what you say to me," said Caroline. "Right has never been to me what it is to you." "Yes, indeed it has, dear Caroline, or you would not be making this struggle now. Indeed there must be strength in you, or you would have gone on without faltering." "Walter said he should never have spoken one word after that first letter, if I had not begun," said Caroline; "but when he saw my mind misgave me, and I wanted help, he thought it his duty to come and set it all before me. O, Marian, he said dreadful things; I did not think Walter could have been so cruel. O, such things! He made me look at the Marriage Service, and say how I could answer those things; and he talked about death and the Last Day. He said it would be a presumptuous sin, and a profaning of the holy ordinance for me to come to it, knowing and thinking and feeling as I do. O what things he said! and yet he was very kind to me." "Well, and--" "I left it all to him. I knew it would be misery, and I did not care in what way; but then, Marian, O! worse than all, he said it must be my own doing." "I suppose it must." "He said he would help me; but I was the only person who had a right to do anything! O, Marian, Marian, I wish I could die." "It will be over in time!" repeated Marian. "Yes, but it will not be over. Mamma, papa, O I shall be reproached with it for ever; I shall know I have made _him_ unhappy. O would that I could begin all over again!" "You will have comfort at last in having been strong. The greater the effort the nobler it is! O, Caroline, do only hold out nobly. It is so glorious to have something to suffer for the sake of doing right!" "Glorious!" murmured Caroline, her desponding gaze raised to contemplate the grand head, fine brow, firm lips, and dark glancing eye, turned up for a moment in the enthusiastic spirit of self-devotion. That look, unknowing as was Marian that she wore it, penetrated into Caroline's soul, and warmed her too with the temper of martyrdom. "Glorious;" she repeated a second time, and the tone was not so broken and hopeless as before. "To be sure it is!" said Marian, going on with her own thoughts, "and it is so seldom people can ever partake of it, in ever so slight a degree, in these days; I always think it so beautiful where the account is given of the Apostles' great joy when they found a persecution was really going to begin." "Persecution--yes, real persecution." "And every suffering for the sake of the truth, for conscience' sake, must partake a little of that, I suppose," said Marian reverently. There they were interrupted by Clara, who came to call Marian down stairs. Caroline came too, which the others had not expected. She was more calm and composed, and her headache was supposed by her mother to account for her want of spirits. She went to bed early, begging Marian to come and visit her when she came up. Marian contrived to do so as soon as possible, and found her already in bed, quiet and comfortable. "Marian," she said, "I have made up my mind. Now read to me, if you please." She was worn out with agitation and sleeplessness, and soothed with having come to a determination, she soon fell asleep, and Marian went to her own room, wondering over the part Walter had acted, and what he might be going to do next, whether he had led or driven his sister, and how far the courage of principle would avail to subdue natural timidity. Caroline was pretty well the next morning, but the time was broken up in various ways, so that it was not till the afternoon that she could see Walter again in private. Lionel was considerably disconcerted when he found himself left to Marian. He had no notion of what was going on, had believed Walter's return to be entirely on his account, and was much disappointed at not having more of his company; for though both had been of the party to Salisbury, one had been outside the carriage and the other inside, so that they had not seen much of each other, and this morning had been interrupted. He was so much vexed and inclined to be hurt, by what he felt as a slight on his brother's part, that Marian could not resist telling him what she knew would console him. "I don't think you will mind it, Lionel, when you know why it is that Caroline wants him." "Ha?" said Lionel, "you don't mean that she has thought better of it, and is going to send Julian the Apostate to the right about. Eh? You don't say so. Well, then there is some good in Caroline after all! But then what should she want of Walter?" "To help her, to advise her." "Well, if she likes, but I can't see what advice she wants. She has only got to make him a curtsey and say, 'Very much obliged to you, sir, but I had rather be excused.'" Marian could not help laughing, in spite of her deep feeling on the matter, and Lionel, who had acted the voice and the curtsey, laughed too, and then perhaps ashamed of making fun of such an affair, added, "It is the best news I have heard this long time. What, and that is what she has been so dismal about these last few days, is it?" "Yes, she has been very unhappy indeed. It is a terrible struggle." "What? she likes him, does she? Poor Cary! After all I am glad she is coming right again, she is very good natured, and a great deal too good for Ju--. Ah! you won't have him called so, I know. They have taken a good time for it now he is away and Elliot too, but what a tremendous row there will be about it. Mamma thought it was such a speculation for Caroline." "Yes, I am afraid she will have a great deal to go through." "Yes," said Lionel, pondering gravely for some minutes; then asking "What is going to be done?" "I don't know in the least; I believe she is settling with Walter to-day." "Then nobody knows about it yet?" There was no more to do but to have the satisfaction of talking over the engagement together, an occupation which put Lionel into particularly good spirits, and made their walk very pleasant. In the next glimpse which Marian had of Caroline, she learnt that Walter had undertaken to speak to his father that very evening. Caroline looked ghastly white as she said so in a whisper, but her dreadful agitation seemed to have left her; she had evidently quite made up her mind, though she said she believed it would never have been done if it had rested with her to begin by telling either of her parents. Both she and Marian knew that nothing but a spirit of moral heroism could have braced Walter to bear the first brunt of his father's wrath, and she was very much shocked at her own weakness in suffering it, but still it was much in her to allow it to be done. That the conversation had taken place at night, when all the rest had retired, was evident to Marian when they met the nest morning from the very dark, severe loots of Mr Lyddell, from his wife's impatient angry manner, and sharper, louder voice. Walter was almost absolutely silent, Caroline went through the forms of breakfast as if she was in a dream, Lionel frowned, fidgeted, and tried with all his might, poor boy, to scan the faces which were daily growing more obscure to his vision; even Clara saw something was wrong, and glanced from one to the other in a puzzled, alarmed manner When they left the dining-room, Marian heard Mrs. Lyddell say, "Caroline, I want you." She flew up to her own room, and hiding her face, as she knelt down, she entreated earnestly that her poor Caroline might have steadfastness to go through this fearful trial. She was interrupted by Clara, begging to know what was the matter, if anything was wrong about Mr. Faulkner; she thought Lionel knew, but when she him be would do nothing but crow like a cock. Marian would have been glad if she could have made any equally convenient demonstration instead of an answer, but she could only say that she had heard nothing of Mr. Faulkner, and could not tell Clara anything about the matter. "Do you know anything?" said Clara. "I do know." "Ah! you are in all Caroline's secrets now, and that is very odd; you who used to hate the Faulkners. Well, but are not you coming down?" In spite of his cock-crowings, Lionel was very anxious, and when in the course of that long desultory forlorn morning he was left alone with Marian, he earnestly asked her what she knew. "Nothing" was her answer. "O if Caroline will but hold out!" he exclaimed, "that will be what I call being good for something! I hope mamma won't be desperately angry, for that I could stand less than anything, it goes on so much longer with her than with papa." "She will be very much disappointed. O how I wish I knew what is happening!" It was a long time before any intelligence could be gained: Mrs. Lyddell was very much flushed, and looked extremely displeased when she came down, hardly speaking to any one but Lionel, and glancing most sternly at Marian, Caroline did not come down at all, and when Marian was going up stairs after luncheon, Mrs. Lyddell said with extreme coldness, "Do not go to Caroline, if you please, I wish her to be left quiet." Marian was in great consternation, since it was evident that Mrs. Lyddell perceived how her influence had been exerted, and was very much offended, indeed it was no wonder that she should be. Nothing but "very well" could be said so she quietly prepared to go out. Lionel had his brother this afternoon and did not want her, so she had only Clara for her companion full of surmises and of excitement. When she came in and was on her way to her room, Caroline opened her door. "Marian! O will you not come to me?" cried she imploringly. Marian could not but comply, indeed she had no hesitation, for she thought Mrs. Lyddell's injunction only applied to the time before she went out. "O, cheer me up, comfort me, Marian!" said Caroline, drawing her cousin's arm round her waist, "I do want it so much!" "You are going on bravely then!" said Marian, caressing her. "Bravely!" sighed Caroline; "No, indeed, but I have held firmly so far! I could not but stand by poor Walter, you know, when he confronted it all for me! I could not say much--I could only cry--but I took care they should not think I consented again." "And is Mrs. Lyddell very much displeased?" "O, don't speak of it, Marian. I cannot bear it." The door opened and Mrs. Lyddell entered, and the air of indignant surprise on seeing Marian called for an answer: "I beg your pardon, I thought you only meant me not to go to Caroline just after luncheon," said Marian. "I wish matters, such as we have been discussing, to be confined entirely to our own family," replied Mrs. Lyddell, too angry not to say something, yet too much afraid of Marian not to say it very courteously. "Mamma!" said Caroline eagerly, "only hear me. I assure you that not one word did Marian ever say to me till I voluntarily went to her a week ago, because I was so very miserable I could bear it no longer." "I should have thought your mother the proper person to go to in such a case. Miss Arundel's sentiments had so long been visible, that you could have no doubt of the advice you would receive from her." "Mrs. Lyddell," said Marian, collecting herself, and speaking slowly, "I am very sorry I have appeared to act a part which I know must seem unjustifiable. I never spoke to--to Caroline" (the remembrance of Lionel prevented her from saying to any one) "of my opinion of this engagement, after it was formed, till she came to me for advice, in her distress. I could not speak against my conscience, and I tried not to forget what was due to you. I only begged her to write to her brother as the fittest person to help her, as being a clergyman. I beg your pardon for having acted against your wishes." So saying, Marian went out, surprised and alarmed at finding herself in open opposition to Mrs. Lyddell, and bewildered as to how she ought to have acted. Her comfort was in looking forward to the refuge at Fern Torr, and she smiled as she compared Mrs. Lyddell with her other guardian's future wife. Mrs. Lyddell wished her at Fern Torr fully as much as she did. She had already become jealous of Lionel's preference, and it was too galling to find the affection of her children stolen from her by that cold, pale, proud, unprepossessing girl. Had the love been on the part of Elliot or Walter, Mrs. Lyddell would hardly have regretted it, considering Miss Arundel's large fortune and high connexions; but nothing was less probable than this, and Marian's influence over Caroline was at present, in Mrs. Lyddell's eyes, only a source of mischief. Lionel was alone in the drawing-room, and met Marian eagerly inquiring "What news?" "I have hardly seen her. Has Walter told you nothing?" "No; he thinks I don't know, and I was not going to let on that you told me. Is she steady?" "Yes, so far." "That is right," said Lionel, thoughtfully, "I am very sorry for her, but I shall think the better of her ever after." "Have you been out with Walter?" "Yes, we have had a very nice talk." Here Walter came down, and began to talk to Marian about schools and lending libraries. It was a strange state of things, with all those different pairs of confidential friends. Both Marian and Walter were the stay and support of Caroline and Lionel; yet, though acting in concert, and perfectly agreed, not saying a word in confidence to each other on either head. Neither did Walter speak of Caroline to Lionel, nor Lionel, though much interested for her, speak to her of his affairs or her own. Clara indeed bestowed her communications on every one, but she got nothing in return that was satisfactory. Marian was the central point with all except Walter, but the fulness of her heart was bestowed elsewhere. And, alas! none saw so little of those young hearts as the parents, who had never earned their confidence; so that when they turn to them, it was from duty, as to rulers, not as to counsellors and friends. Very sore was Marian's heart that night, when she felt it her duty to bid Caroline good night in Mrs. Lyddell's hearing, in spite of the piteous, imploring glance turned upon her. Might not her support make all the difference now? she thought. No; shame on her for thinking that she could do more good than He to whose hands Caroline was trusted! Folly, to dream that her awkward, blundering words could be more help than the prayers she could pour out alone! Yet all these consolations could not prevent poor Marian from being very miserable, under the dread that Caroline thought her unkind, and felt herself deserted, after being involved in all this suffering. And O, should she fail! Walter must go on Saturday, and then she would be left to fight her battle alone. On the Friday the whole house knew what was going on. Mr. Lyddell himself had a conversation with Caroline, but nothing of it transpired. It only was evident that she still continued in the same mind, and she looked more wretched than ever. Marian was anxious to show her affection and sympathy in her manner, but her anxiety only made her cold, and dry, and awkward. Clara was excited and puzzled, Walter was hardly spoken to by father or mother; and when at breakfast on Saturday he spoke of his departure, the silence that he encountered seemed to express that he had much better not have come home at all. Marian felt fierce with indignation, and Lionel, perhaps by way of effusion of the same feeling, dashed his chair away from the table, and called out, "Mind you come back again as soon as ever you can." But the dead silence that followed was more painful and marked than it had been before.

17

None

"The flowers do fade, and wanton fields, To wayward winter reckoning yields, A honey tongue, a heart of gall Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall." SIR W. RALEIGH. The Sunday after Walter's departure was a very uncomfortable and melancholy day. It was very sad to see poor Caroline looking wan and suffering, and turning now and then a wistful appealing glance at Marian, as if intreating for the help which must not be afforded to her; and then at each meeting and parting, Marian was dissatisfied with herself for having been rendered stiff and dry instead of tender and consoling, by the very wish to be affectionate, which prevented her from being at ease. She heard from Clara that Caroline's great desire was to be allowed to write to Mr. Faulkner on the subject before she saw him again, whilst he was still in London, and that it was this which her parents so strongly opposed, convinced that a meeting with him would renew all her feelings of attachment. Marian dreaded the same, for she could not think Caroline's resolution sufficient to hold out in sight of his affection, and of his prepossessing qualities, and at the same time, every day that the engagement continued made it more difficult to break it off. One comfort was, however, that Lionel's anxiety and interest in Caroline's affairs, were drawing his attention from his own trouble, and he was much less irritable and unhappy than before. Perhaps this might have been in part owing to his conversations with Walter, who could venture on giving him more lessons on the right principle of endurance than Marian had ever dared to put before him. She was more pleased than she had been for a long time, when as they were walking together in the plantations, after evening service, he said with some abruptness and yet with some hesitation, "Marian, didn't you once read something with Gerald in the morning?" "Yes," said Marian, sure of what the something meant. "Do you do it still by yourself?" "Yes." "Then I wish----. Would you mind reading to me?" "The Psalms and Lessons? O, Lionel, I should be so glad I Only could you get up in time? for I don't know when to do it except before breakfast." "To be sure I could get up in time. I only lie in bed because there is nothing to do, and nobody to speak to." "Well then, will you meet me in the schoolroom at eight o'clock in the morning?" "Very well." No more was said, but Lionel kept his appointment. It was, as Marian guessed a recommendation of his brother's. Walter had asked him to get one of his sisters to read to him, and Lionel had made the request to Marian, as his real sister, though he had never told Walter whether he meant to take his advice. The next Sunday, Marian, on coming down after dressing for dinner, was surprised to find Elliot standing by the fire. He just inclined his bead, and moved his lips by way of greeting. "When did you come home?" said she drily. "Half-an-hour ago." The answer was brief and with no encouragement to say more. She thought he looked dark and moody, and, taking up a book, was silent. The next time the door opened, it was Lionel who entered. He frowned and gazed up, perceiving the figure but not able to make it out. "Ha, Lionel! How d'ye do?" said Elliot in a short, gruff, indifferent voice; without moving or attempting to shake hands, without any token that he thought of Lionel's misfortune. Lionel's equally indifferent tone, "How d'ye do?" was sign enough to Marian that he was hurt. He came and sat by her, talked fast and low, and laughed several times in the constrained manner he used to put on by way of bravado; Elliot all the time taking no notice. The others soon made their appearance. Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell had seen him before, and to his sisters his greeting was much in the same style, hardly vouchsafing any recognition of Caroline at all. The cloud was thicker and darker than ever all dinner time. Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell tried in vain to talk, he answered them in a short snappish way which he was apt to assume whenever his father made any attempt to check his extravagance. The ladies and Lionel were glad to get into the drawing-room, and leave him and his father to themselves. Tea came and they did not appear, ten o'clock struck, half-past, and they came not. The ladies were putting away their books, and thinking of wishing good night when suddenly the door was thrown open, and in tramped Mr. Lyddell, red with passion, while behind him came Elliot, with less of violence, but with a dark scowl of resentment on his downcast and always unpleasant face. "Caroline!" began Mr. Lyddell, in a voice of thunder, and great was the alarm of all, for her sake, as she turned pale and trembled. "Caroline! You have my full consent to do as you please. You may break with Faulkner to-morrow, if you like!" Some discovery! thought Marian, transfixed with wonder and hope; Caroline sat still but for her trembling, her face bent down, and her hands nervously clasped together. "Now, sir," proceeded Mr. Lyddell, turning round on Elliot, "you see if I am the tyrant you would make me. You see if I am going to force my daughter into a marriage against her wish--sacrifice my whole family because I have an ill-conditioned scamp of a good-for-nothing son. You see." "I do see, sir," muttered Elliot; "and you'll see whether you like the consequences." Marian thought she had better be out of this family scene, and had her hand on the door, but Mr. Lyddell called out "Stay here! Marian! I don't care if all the world heard me. He thinks he can threaten me into tyranny over her inclinations, and I tell him she is as free as air! I vow----." "Mr. Lyddell! do consider, do think," expostulated his wife; "I daresay Elliot was a little too vehement a partizan for his friend----." "Friend! Pshaw! He care for his friend!" said Mr. Lyddell scornfully. " 'Tis for himself he is a partizan, I tell you. Nothing else does he care a straw for. 'Tis for nothing but the saving of her fortune that he would have me persecute his sister into this marriage! Aye! he has the face to tell me so! and what more do you think he comes and says to me! Why! that Lionel will be nothing but a burthen for ever! A pretty pass things are come to when he speaks after that fashion of his own brother! He cared for his friend, indeed!" "No one ever thought of compelling Caroline," pleaded Mrs. Lyddell. "But I tell you he did," interrupted her husband. "I told him I was very sorry, but I could not help it; if she would have her own way, I could not make her marry the man against her will, and he answers in his sneering way that it is all nonsense, he would be bound to make her give up in no time--any man could bring a girl to reason. As if I was to persecute my daughter to force her into what she tells me is against her conscience. Better too much conscience than none at all, I tell you, Master Elliot." "We had better bring this scene to an end, sir," said Elliot sullenly. "We understand each other." So saying, he took up his candle and flung out of the room. The girls were but too glad to escape, and Lionel followed them, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell to themselves. Caroline and Clara both were trembling like aspen leaves, each threw an arm round Marian's waist, and leant against her as soon as they were out of the room. She had been startled and trembling before, but their fright seemed to give her firmness; and it was well, for Caroline's knees shook so much, and she was so nervous that she could hardly have reached her room without support. Clara began to exclaim, but Marian stopped her, made her fetch some camphor julep, helped Caroline to undress, and put her to bed. Caroline hardly spoke all the time, but as Marian bent over her to kiss her, and wish her good night, she whispered, "I may soon be able to have you again, dear Marian!" Marian went to bed, wondering at all that had passed, indignant with Elliot, pleased with Mr. Lyddell, hopeful for Caroline, and cheered by finding that she had not been thought unkind. She heard doors opened and shut, and the trampling of feet the next morning, and when Lionel met her in the schoolroom for their reading, he told her that be had been overtaken by Elliot running down stairs at full speed; and had only just time to clear out of his way. "And hark! is not there something at the front door? Look out, Marian." Marian looked from the window. "Yes! It is his dog-cart. Can he be going away, Lionel?" "Going off in a rage!" said Lionel, looking grave; "I thought there was mischief in his voice last night." "Yes, there is his portmanteau," said Marian, in a tone of consternation; for little as she liked Elliot, it was too shocking to see a son thus leave his father's roof. "It is a pretty piece of work," said Lionel. "He has been coming it a little too strong for my father, it seems! Well, poor Caroline will be let alone, that is one good thing; but I am afraid he will go and get into some tremendous scrape, if it is only for the sake of spiting my father." "It is very dreadful!" said Marian, sighing. "I am very glad my father was so angry, though!" said Lionel. "Wanting him to drive poor Caroline into it by unkindness! That was a little too bad!" "Yes, indeed," said Marian. "But O! here he comes out of the door with his cigar. He is getting in! There he goes! O, Lionel!" They both were silent for some little time. Then Marian took up the prayer-book, and began the Psalm, and when she heard Lionel's voice join in the Doxology, a thrill came home to her, making her feel that blindness might yet be indeed the blessing to him that faith taught her to know it must be. How much better to be thus than like his brother. When they met the others at breakfast, it proved that they alone knew of the departure; Mr. Lyddell interrogated Elliot's servant, and heard from him that he had orders to follow his master to Paris as soon as he had packed up his goods. This was all that could be learnt, and all that Marian could make out as to what had passed, was that he had been strongly averse to Caroline's engagement being broken off, that he had tried to induce his father to insist upon it, and to drive her to overcome her reluctance by what could be only understood as domestic persecution, and that in short he had allowed his unfeeling selfishness to appear to such a degree, that it had positively revolted his father, whose displeasure had long been excited by the extravagance that had been causing serious inconvenience, and who instantly, while under the influence of his first indignation, resolved to show that he would not be domineered over, nor sacrifice the rest of the family to the extravagance which he had already too freely supplied. Mr. Lyddell had given his consent while angry, and he could not retract it when he was cool. Caroline therefore might write her letter as soon as she pleased. She had nothing to dread from him; indeed, as if out of opposition to Elliot, he was kinder to her than he had ever been before, called her "my dear" more than once, and observed on her pale looks. Her mother spoke little to her, and that little was cold and unkind, while she looked so vexed and unhappy that even Marian had some feeling for her, and what must it have been for her own daughter? However, all open opposition was withdrawn, and Caroline had only herself to struggle with. There was no reason why she should not once more seek comfort from Marian, yet all that day she kept at a distance, and it was not till the next evening that she came into Marian's room, and sinking into a chair, murmured, "I have done it." "Written your letter?" "Sent it." "O, I am so glad!" "Glad?" "Yes, but you will be glad when it is over." "O!" sighed Caroline, incredulously. "You know nothing about it. Marian." "Every one must be glad to have done right," said Marian, firmly. "O what a week it has been! And I have sown dissension in the family! And no one can tell what may be the consequence with Elliot! And he will be unhappy! O! Marian--I wish--I wish you had let me go on my own way and be miserable alone," added she with a kind of anger. "It was your own doing," said Marian gently; "you felt it to be right. Only worse misery could come of your going on, for that would have been positive wrong; now it must and will get better." "I don't know," sighed Caroline. "I never knew till now how much I cared for him! O, Marian!" and she burst into a hearty fit of crying. Marian was perplexed, as she always was when any one cried, and stood without a word till Caroline had relieved herself by tears, and began to speak again. It was very sad and melancholy, and it was very difficult to find anything to answer; Marian could see no consolation but that "it was right," and that did not seem to have much effect on Caroline; while, added to the former trouble of renouncing the man who loved her, and of grieving her parents, there was the dread of what Elliot might do in his anger. However, the being able to pour everything out to so true a friend was more of a comfort than anything that, could have been said to her. She told Marian that she had gone through the conversations with her father and mother better than she could have thought possible. She could not desert poor Walter, that was one thing that helped her, she must stand by him, and papa was not half so angry as she expected. It seemed as if her strength had grown with each occasion for it. The first effort of writing to Walter had cost her most of all, then the allowing him to break the matter to her father had been dreadful; but after all, the conferences with her parents, singly and together, had not been as bad as the fear of them, and Marian tried to persuade her that it would be the same when she saw Mr. Faulkner, but poor Caroline shook her head, and said Marian knew nothing about it. And Marian was much of the same opinion, and held her peace, but before the end of the conversation she had the great pleasure of hearing Caroline say, "The thought of being able to have you again has been the one great help to me through all!" Two days after this, as Marian and Lionel were going out riding together, Marian exclaimed, "I do believe that is Mr. Faulkner!" "Where?" "Riding on the Salisbury road," said Marian; "I am sure it is his horse." "Don't let us meet him! can't we get out of the way?" said Lionel. "Aren't we somewhere near the thorny lane?" "No, but we might ride off on the Down. Only take care, Lionel; you had better keep close to me," said Marian, much more unwilling to meet Mr. Faulkner than to conduct Lionel through the ups and downs of the green, chalky common. She watched and guided his pony up the bank and upon the Down, and on they trotted fast, for Marian was actuated by a very undignified fit of terror lest she should meet Mr. Faulkner, towards whom she felt positively guilty, nor did she wish to be seen fleeing from him. "We must be out of sight of the road by this time, aren't we?" said Lionel. "I don't know," Marian turned her head to see. At that moment Lionel's pony stepped into a hole, stumbled, and when she looked back again, there was Lionel on the ground. Her head swam with fear, but the next moment Lionel was on his feet and laughing. "Not hurt, Lionel! are you sure?" "Not a bit! Is that Sorrel?" Sorrel was rushing off with his bridle loose, and Marian began to dread having Mr. Faulkner's assistance in catching him. "Stand still, Lionel!" she called, and then riding between Sorrel and the road, she managed to turn him towards a long hedge that crossed the Down, saw him stop to eat a tuft of grass, made a grasp at his bridle, but failed, while he dashed off across the Down, happily not towards the road. She called to Lionel, told him of her ill success, and begged him not to move, while she again pursued the runaway, and a long dance he led her, far out of sight of Lionel. Once she had considerable hopes, when she came in sight of a shepherd boy, who stood in amaze at the lady in chase of the runaway steed, then came up with a run to cut off its course, but so awkwardly that the pony was still more frightened, and galloped off in another direction faster than ever! Poor Marian! However after full half an hour, she succeeded in hunting him into a narrow place between two fields, ending in a gate, caught safely hold of the rein, kept it fast, and at length led Sorrel back in triumph to the spot where poor Lionel stood still patiently. She called out to him as soon as she came near enough to make her voice heard, and he answered, and walked forward to meet the dark shapes, which were all that he could see. Marian feared that he would be very much mortified at having been obliged to remain thus helpless, while a girl was doing what he would have so much enjoyed, and she looked anxiously at his face, alas! she could look there now without his knowing it. It was disconsolate, but the look was not bitter. She held Sorrel while he mounted, and she then apologized for having been so long, and said she feared he had thought she had forgotten him. He made not much reply, did not even ask how she had managed to catch the pony. Marian conducted him safely into the road before she would speak again. He did, however, congratulate himself on not having been obliged to be beholden to Mr. Faulkner for catching the pony, as well as on Sorrel's not having gone home to tell the tale himself. "Yes, indeed, they would have been terribly frightened," said Marian. "Ay, and if they once knew of my tumble, they would never let us go out riding again." "But, Lionel, we must tell," said Marian. "Just like a girl!" grumbled Lionel. "Then there's an end of all our rides, and all the comfort that I have in life." "I don't know," said Marian. "At any rate I can't ride with you, I should not think it right, unless Mr. Lyddell knew of this fall. It is my concern and not yours, for it was all through my carelessness." "You go on just as if you were a child still," said Lionel, still cross. "Well, Lionel, I believe the only way is to manage ourselves as if we were children still." "All very fine," was Lionel's surly answer, and they rode on, while Marian was very unhappy. She blamed herself for having given way to a foolish fit of nervous bashfulness, which had led to what might have been a serious accident to her especial charge. It had further made a very unpleasant confession needful, and Lionel's vexation and irritation seemed to have overcome all his late improvement. The thought of what poor Caroline was going through was enough to stifle everything else, and Marian wondered at herself, as for a sort of unkindness, in having been so fully occupied as to have had no time for anxiety. Both had been very silent ever since Lionel's reply, until Marian asked him to strike his repeater. It was half-past five, and they turned homewards, taking a bye road so as to avoid meeting Mr. Faulkner. And now Lionel began to talk of Caroline, and wonder how she had sped. He seemed to throw off his own private troubles as he talked of hers, and his fit of petulance was melting fast away. At last he made up his mind to inquire how she had caught Sorrel, and was positively interested in the narration, laughing at the idea of the scrape they would have been in if Sorrel had made his way to the road, and Mr. Faulkner had caught him. He said no more about the confession, but it was evident that he had conquered his annoyance sooner than he had ever done before. Marian had not theorized on the matter, but if she had she could not have judged better, for Lionel was far better dealt with by being bold and uncompromising. It was very strange to have this concern of their own so much on their minds when Caroline's fate was at its crisis, yet perhaps it was good for Marian to be thus occupied, since she was apt to suffer very much from anxiety, as persons of her calm and reserved demeanour often do. A sickening, throbbing, trembling feeling came over her, making her temples beat and her hands cold, as she came into the house, expecting to hear whether Caroline had endured and been true to herself, and it was well she had not had longer to suffer from it. No one was in the drawing-room, and she ran as fast as her trembling knees would allow to Caroline's room, knocked, received no answer, opened the door, and saw Caroline stretched out on her bed, in a state best described by the French word _anéantissement_, for it was not fainting, but the sort of prostration consequent on the completion of an effort for which she had wound herself up. She was very pale, her eyes were shut, and her breath came short. Marian stood watching her in alarm, wondering whether to speak, and how. At last Caroline looked up, held out her hand, and drew Marian down on her knees till her face was level with hers, then put her arm round her neck. "Dear Caroline!" said Marian, though it was not easy to say anything, "you will be happier now." A more caressing person would have been much more at ease herself and given more comfort to Caroline, that must be confessed, but as there was no one else to be had, Marian was obliged to do her best, and this was to kiss Caroline timidly and say, "I am so glad you have done right." But Caroline only hid her face at the word _glad_ and murmured, "You never did him justice! You never did!" "If it had not been for the want of that one thing he would have been all right," said Marian. "O, he is very noble! he has such a mind! such--such--O, he loved me so much," and Caroline fell into a paroxysm of silent misery. Marian began to dread lest the parting had not been final, and though doubtful whether she ought to ask, could not help saying, "But is it over?" "Yes, yes; you have your wish, Marian. It is done! He is angry with me now! It is over, and I am wretched for life!" "Not so wretched as if you had done wrong." said Marian. Caroline did not turn away this time, and Marian gathered courage to say, "You have persevered, and now there will be comfort. There will always be comfort in knowing you have tried to do right. Walter will be so glad, and so will Lionel." "Lionel," repeated Caroline. "Yes, he has been very anxious about you." "Poor boy!" sighed Caroline. "Well, Marian, there is one thing still to be done. Only one, and it is all that I shall live for. I shall devote myself to him, if I can but do anything to please him, and make him care for me when you are gone. It will be my one object." "Yes," said Marian, "it will be very good for you both." They were interrupted by Clara, who came in, dressed for dinner, pitying Caroline, and telling Marian it was very late. Caroline sat up, but she had a violent nervous headache, and they both persuaded her to lie down again. Marian ran off to dress, and though the dinner-bell rang in the midst of her hurried toilette, came back to look at Caroline, beg her to keep quiet, and promise to come up as soon as dinner was over. As she went down, the other trouble of having to confess their adventure came over her, but she was resolute, in spite of the want of favour with which she knew she was regarded. Want of favour, evident from the scrupulous formality with which she was treated; for if she had been like a daughter of the house, as she ought to have been, would they have waited dinner for her, and let her find them all looking uncomfortable and expectant in the drawing-room? They went into the dining-room; there was a silent, formal dinner, nothing like a family party. As soon as the servants had left the room. Marian quailing secretly, not from fear of Mr. and Mrs. Lyddell, but lest Lionel should lose his rides, began, "I have a confession to make, Mr. Lyddell," and told the story of the accident, explaining how it was entirely caused by her carelessness. Exclamations and inquiries arose, and Mrs. Lyddell certified herself by several questions that Lionel had not been hurt, but not one of them was addressed to Marian. It was as if this was only one among many injuries, too frequent for a reproach more or less to be needed. Mr. Lyddell did not take it half so much to heart, and no prohibition against future rides was issued, for the truth was that no one liked to mortify Lionel. It was exactly one of the cases in which the whole danger is not conquered, because it melts at the very aspect of moral courage. It was not comfortable to have to walk away to Caroline, knowing how much she had displeased Mrs. Lyddell; but it must be done, and it was, at least, agreeable to leave these cold looks. She found Caroline better, and able to tell her something of what had passed. At first Mr. Faulkner would not believe her to be in earnest, and had imagined this was a way of showing her displeasure at his long absence, or some trifling "lovers' quarrel;" but when he found that she really meant what she said, and her tears and stifled whispers alike announced her adherence to what she had expressed in her letter, he became extremely angry, thought himself, (as indeed he might with some justice) very ill-used, and though he had retained his gentlemanlike manner and language, had pretty plainly expressed that Miss Lyddell should have known her own mind. Poor Caroline wept bitterly, beseeching that they might not part in anger, but he disavowed all irritation, and took a cold, courteous leave, which wounded her more than all. Marian could not easily sympathise with regrets for such a lover, but she liked to magnify the sacrifice in order to admire it more, and greatly rejoiced in being able to give full admiration to one whom she had learnt to love so heartily as Caroline. Such a triumph over natural timidity and feebleness of character was indeed a great and gallant thing, and Marian used to muse and wonder at it in her solitary hours. There was still much to suffer externally as well as internally; there was the return of letters and presents, with all their associations; there was the feeling of the pain and offence given to Lady Julia and her daughters; there was the perception of the opinions of the world, and the certainty that all the gossips of the neighbourhood were busy with their conjectures; there was the continued anxiety about Elliot, and the marked vexation and displeasure of Mrs. Lyddell, who treated Caroline as one who had disappointed all her best hopes. Under all this there was only Marian to sustain Caroline, and their friendship was an additional offence. Marian knew that Mrs. Lyddell regarded her as the head of a hostile party, and a sower of dissension in the family, by no means an agreeable footing on which to stand; but the only way, was to appear completely unconscious, and behave as far as possible as usual. She was grateful to them for making it no worse, and still more for not having objected to her continuing her rides with Lionel, from whom, it may well be believed, she scarcely ever took her eyes, from the time his foot was in the stirrup. Lionel was triumphant at the dismissal of "Julian the apostate," but he was disappointed to find that Caroline did not recover her spirits "now she had had her own way, and got rid of the man." He did not like to have her presence announced by a sigh, and to hear the subdued, dejected tone of her voice, and he used to wonder over it with Marian, who laughed at him for fancying it was such an easy matter to part with a lover, yet agreed that it was hard to understand how there could be love where there was no esteem. Lionel used to consult her as to what was to be done to cheer his sister, since his mother would only make everything worse and he could not bear her continued melancholy. "I do believe, Lionel," said Marian, "that you could do more for her than any body else. If you would but sometimes let her do things for you, ask her to help you, as--as you ask me." Lionel would not take the suggestion as she wished. "I thought you liked to help me," said he, in a somewhat offended tone. "O, don't I?" cried Marian, eagerly; "but so does every one, if you would only allow them." Lionel flourished the little switch in his hand till it made an ill-tempered "_swish! _" and Marian knew that he thought her ungrateful for the exclusive preference with which he honoured her. "She is your sister," she added. "Very well," said Lionel, crossly shaking off her arm, "I shall know what to be at, if you are tired of helping me." He could not see the tears in her eyes, and though she was extremely grieved, her voice did not betray how strong her feeling was. "Tired! O Lionel, how can you think it? But would it not be better to learn to depend less on me against I go away?" "Ay, and glad enough you'll be to go." "For all but your sake and poor Caroline's," said Marian. "Mrs. Lyddell does not like to have me here." "It would not be fair to want to keep you," said Lionel, "but----" "I should have much more comfort in going if I thought you and Caroline were helping each other," said Marian. "I know she wants to make you her first object." Lionel made no answer nor any change in his ways for some days, yet sometimes it seemed, as if when he thought of it, he was more willing to allow Caroline to do him some of the small services which his fast increasing blindness rendered necessary. Caroline being more dexterous and neat-handed than Marian, did them well, and then Marian was vexed with herself for a few feelings like annoyance at not being equally necessary to Lionel, but she persevered, encouraged by seeing the comfort that each approach on his part seemed to give his sister. It was the hardest thing Marian had ever had to do, to give up the being first with him, as she must cease to be when the natural affection of the brother and sister was called into play. But it was right, and she would bear it. She thought it right as well as very pleasant to accept an invitation from the Wortleys to come and spend the Christmas holidays with them, joining her brother on the railroad, and meeting Edmund at Fern Torr. The repose would be beyond everything delightful, and no less so, the being in a house where her presence was welcome to every member of the family. Besides, she longed to see and to talk to Agnes, and the more she thought of her promised visit the more she enjoyed it. Caroline and Lionel both were very sorry to part with her, and jointly and separately lamented her going; but Caroline blamed herself for selfishness in wishing to keep her, and perceived that it would be a good thing that her brother should begin to be weaned from his sole dependance upon her, while Lionel seemed half afraid to trust her to depart, lest she should never return, and insisted on half a dozen promises that she would come back at the end of Gerald's holidays.

18

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"They made a famous procession My good little women and men; Such a sight was never seen before And never will again." SOUTHEY. A division of a first-class carriage, occupied only by Gerald, received Marian at the station, and first she had to be shown the hat, cloak, and umbrella with which he had constructed an effigy, which, as he firmly believed, had frightened away all who had thought of taking a seat in it. "Thinking you a mad monkey, and that your keeper," said Marian, looking proudly at the handsome face and dancing black eyes of her beautiful brother. "Why! how you are grown, Gerald! Do stand up, and let me see if you are not taller than I am." "No, not quite so tall, unless it is your bonnet," said Gerald, after craning up his neck in vain. "At any rate, you are taller than Lionel. He only comes up to my ear," said Marian. "Poor Lionel! How are his eyes?" "O Gerald, it is very sad. He has very little sight left. I believe he finds his way about quite by feeling now. It has grown worse so much faster in these last three weeks." "Poor fellow! What can he do all day?" A long description followed, and then Gerald wanted to hear all about Caroline, and what Marian thought fit to tell him, together with his comments, lasted till, in spite of his effigy, a lady made an entrance, and for some time Gerald was reduced to silence, and as he sat on the same side, to making horrible sidelong scowls at her, out of her sight, which sorely tried his sister's propriety of countenance. The tongues of two such happy people could not long, however, continue tied, and presently Gerald rattled off into a history of his sporting adventures in Scotland, as if he would detail every shot. The narration was endless, and very tiresome it would have been to any woman but a sister, and a sister who had so much of the hunter spirit in her as Marian; but she listened and sympathised with all her heart and soul, and understood why such a shot was a good one, and why such another failed, and was absorbed in the interest of the attempt to recover a wounded bird when the retriever was stupid, long after the intruder had made her exit, and they might have returned to matters touching her more closely, though regarded by Gerald as hardly equal in importance to roe deer, salmon, and grouse. They were on Devonshire ground before they ever began to rejoice over Edmund's engagement, and from thence to talk of Edmund himself. Gerald pronounced many an eulogium on him, in which praises of his excellence as a fisherman and sportsman were strangely mixed with a real genuine appreciation of his goodness and superiority. " 'Tis a capital thing that he is come home to stay," said Gerald, heartily. "Isn't it?" "I like him specially," said Gerald. "Do you know he showed me some of my father's letters." "Did he indeed?" "That he did. It was before I was born, when he thought he was going to have Fern Torr and all, he had rather an idle fit, and these were what papa wrote to him." "Was Edmund ever idle?" exclaimed Marian, falling into a reverie of wonder whether this did not make it more hopeful for Gerald. "I am very glad he has got this money," proceeded Gerald. "I only wish it was more. One letter he showed me that was best of all. It was from my father when I was born. You can't think what a nice letter it was. There was something about its being a disappointment to him--to Edmund, I mean, but how papa cared for him as much as ever, and thought after all it might be better for him in the end. And then, Marian, papa said he could hardly expect to live till I was grown up, and he asked Edmund to be my godfather, and said he trusted to him to be like an elder brother to us." "That he is!" murmured Marian. "Edmund said he wished me to read it that I might not think him interfering." "You never could have thought so!" "I don't know. I could not have stood it from some people, but I could see the sense of what Edmund said." Without entering into particulars, Gerald was now all freedom and openness, casting quite away the restraint that had so long grieved his sister. How happy she was! Mr. Wortley himself met them at Exeter, and in spite of the early darkness of the winter day, Charles and James met them at the foot of Blackstone hill, and Edmund and Agnes were a little further on. What a happy greeting it was! Marian and Gerald would jump out and walk home with them, the boys ran and called in the dark, the stars came out overhead, the tall hedges kept out all the glimmering light, splashes alone made them aware of the puddles; but on the happy party tramped, all talking an unmitigated flow of merry nonsense, laughing and enjoying it, all the more the darker and stranger it grew, and merrier than all, when they got home, at Mrs. Wortley's dismay at their having dragged Marian a mile and a half, in the dark and dirt, after her long journey. "Pretty guardians to have the care of her!" All the evening again there was nothing but fun and joyousness, fun of the brightest, happiest kind, positively wild in the three boys, and Edmund not much less so, the girls weary with laughing, and contributing their share to the sport. A person must have lived like Marian, pent up by formalities and the certainty of being disliked, to know what was the enjoyment of the perfect liberty and absence from constraint, the thorough home-like feeling of every one loving and understanding each other, which existed at Fern Torr. How delightful it was to have no heart achings for Gerald, to see Edmund just like his old self, and the dear Agnes, so very lovely and bright! so very unlike her only former experience of betrothed lovers. It was no small happiness to the Fern Torr party to have one so prized and loved as Marian to rejoice with them, indeed, all this evening every one was too joyous to dwell on any of the causes of their felicity, it was nothing but high spirits, and unreflective mirth. When they had bidden each other good night, and were gone up stairs, there was more of gravity and thought. Marian and Agnes could have sat up talking half the night, if Mrs. Wortley would have allowed them, but she said Marian must have time to rest, and ruthlessly condemned her to bed. Never did Marian spend so happy a Christmas. There was plenty of depth and earnestness in her _tête-à-têtes_ with Agnes, when they talked over the wonders that had happened to them both, and always ended by returning to recollections of happy old days before Marian left Fern Torr, when Edmund had been the prime mover of every delightful adventure. Marian was as good as a sister to each of the lovers, so heartily did she help each one to admire the other. Or when they were "lovering," as the boys chose to call their interminable wanderings in the manor gardens, Marian used to be extremely happy with Mrs. Wortley, talking over the history of the engagement, and settling how and when the love began. Mr. Wortley suggested that the first attraction had been Agnes' unmitigated horror of the Lyddells, which he declared had won Mr. Arundel's heart, though he never owned how much he participated in it. It needs not to be stated how Edmund's noble behaviour was appreciated, more especially after the new lights which Marian was able to throw upon it. Then came the discussion of the plans for the house which Edmund was to build, on a farm, which had come into the market at the very nick of time, just on the other side of the hill, and in Fern Torr parish. Marian and Gerald were taken the first day to look and advise whether the new house should be on the old site, or under the shelter of a great old slate quarry, crested with a wood, a beautiful view spread before it, and capacities for making the loveliest garden that was ever seen. Edmund sketched house and garden in every possible point of view, each prettier than the other, and all the young gave their voices eagerly for the quarry, while the old protested on the difficulty of getting so far up the hill, and suggested damp. But the young carried the day, and the plans were drawn and debated on a dozen times in twenty-four hours, always including the prettiest of little sitting-rooms for Marian, with a window opening into the garden, and a door into the drawing-room, and then came letters to architects and calculations with builders, and reckonings that the house should be habitable by next September, and Mr. Wortley laughing at their credulity for expecting it. Marian was surprised to find how far away and secondary seemed the thoughts that had of late engrossed her entirely. She wondered to discover how little her mind had been occupied with Caroline and Lionel, fond as she was of them and very anxious about them. This was so very different a world! and she felt so much more as if she belonged to it. She obtained from Agnes some admiration for Caroline's conduct, though in somewhat of the "better late than never" style, and at the price of warm abuse of the parents, in which Marian was not indisposed to join. Caroline wrote nearly every day, saying that she missed Marian dreadfully, and that her letters were the only comfort she had; she would not wish her back again, for that would be selfish, but it would be a joyful day when she returned. These constant letters, which Marian always kept to herself, rather surprised the Wortleys, but Edmund could better guess at her position. "Depend upon it," he said to Agnes, "it is she who has saved Miss Lyddell." "O, Edmund! do you think so? I wanted to have thought so, but she says it was the brother." "He took the steps which would not have become Marian, but Walter Lyddell could never have moved without his sister, and where could she have found the principle but in Marian? I see now that her perseverance in right is beginning to tell on those around her, in spite of all untoward circumstances." "I don't know anything like Marian!" said Agnes. "How very fine her countenance is!" "That steadfast brow and lip." "I saw her yesterday standing on the edge of a rock looking out on the view, and she was like some statue of Fortitude." "Yes, Marian is a grand creature," said Edmund; "so strong and firm, yet with such feminine, retiring strength. There are still prejudices and little roughnesses, but I doubt whether they have not been her safeguard, outworks to secure the building, and I think they are disappearing with the occasion." "Ah! papa and mamma think her very much softened down." "She has had a very hard part to act, and her shyness and rigidity have been great helps to her, but I am glad to see them wearing away, and especially pleasant it is to see her expand and show her true self here." "And to know she may soon be free of them all for ever!" said Agnes. The time when Marian was to be free of them for ever, as Agnes said, was to be the next summer. Edmund and Agnes were to be married in July, Marian would then come to Fern Torr, and comfort Mrs. Wortley for losing her daughter, till the holidays began, when Edmund and Agnes would return, and some undefined scheme of delight was to be settled on for Gerald's holidays, until the house should be ready. Gerald was in the meantime very agreeable and satisfactory on the whole. He was too busy drawing varieties of stables for Edmund, to talk about his own, and marvellous were the portraits of the inhabitants with which he would decorate Edmund's elevations, whenever he found them straying about the room. Very mischievous indeed was the young gentleman, and Marian considered him to have been "a great deal too bad" when on a neat, finished plan, just prepared to be sent to the builder, she found unmistakeable likenesses of the whole Wortley family, herself and Gerald, assembled round a great bowl of punch, large enough to drown them all, drinking to the health of Edmund and Agnes, who were riding in at the gate, pillion fashion, supposed to be returning after the honey moon, which in one corner of the picture was represented in a most waning state, but the man in the moon squinting down at them with a peculiarly benignant expression of countenance. Marian was very angry, but Edmund and Agnes would do nothing but laugh, though the whole plan had to be drawn over again, and Edmund was kept at work with ruler, scale, and compasses the whole evening, Marian scolding Gerald all the time, and Edmund too, for spoiling him, thinking her cousin the most heroically good natured and good tempered man in the world to bear with such an idle monkey, and laugh at the waste of time and trouble; and getting at last a glimmering perception that these tricks, thus met, were the greatest proof of good understanding and friendship. It ended in Gerald's inking in the plan, of his own free will, and very neatly, and getting up at six, the next morning, to ride to Exeter, in the dark cold misty December twilight, to take it to the builder, that no time might be lost; indeed, as he boasted, it was there a quarter of an hour before it would have come by post, as it would have done had it gone yesterday. Gerald's studies were not extensive, but Edmund, by some magic secret, unknown to Marian, made him read history to himself for a short space every morning. The sporting paper had disappeared, and nothing was heard of Elliot or of Queen Pomare, while though he could not yet go the length of talking to the poor people himself, he stood by very civilly while Edmund talked to them. The first ten days of Marian's stay had thus passed, when Caroline one day mentioned in her letter that mamma had a regularly bad influenza cold, and was quite laid up. It was aggravated, Caroline said, by the distress they were all in about Elliot. "But you will hear enough of this when you come back," wrote she, "so I will not grieve you with it now; though it is an additional load upon my mind--an additional offence, I fear, in poor mamma's eyes, since all this would not have come to light had I persisted. But you must not think I am repenting, for I never was further from regretting what I have done. The different spirit in which I could come to this Christmas feast, is a blessing to be purchased at any price, even at such wretchedness as it has been this autumn; and most earnestly do I thank you, dearest Marian. I can thank you by letter, though we never can speak of such things. Yes, I thank you. I regret nothing but my previous folly and weakness, and bitterly do I suffer for them; though all is better now, and Christmas has brought me peace and calm. It is as if the storm was lulled at last, and nothing left but dreariness, and the longing to be at rest. How bright the world was before me not a year ago! and now how worn out it seems,--only three comforts left in it, you, and Walter, and poor Lionel. For Lionel is a comfort; he is very kind and considerate, and, I do believe, softens mamma towards me. I suppose it is best for us that our hearts should have no home but one above; and if I was sure it was not disgust and disappointment, I should hope I was seeking one there; for I know the only feeling of rest and refreshment is in turning thither, and surely that must come from the FATHER, Who is ready to receive me. But I must leave off, for mamma is too unwell to be long left. "Your most affectionate "CAROLINE LYDDELL." After this, the letters, hitherto constant, ceased entirely, and Marian grew very uneasy. Her mother had died of influenza, so that the name gave her a fatal impression; and she dreaded to hear that Mrs. Lyddell was very ill, or that Caroline was ill herself. Another week, and at length she heard from Clara, in answer to a letter of inquiry, and to fix the day of her return. "Oakworthy, Jan. 7th. "MY DEAR MARIAN,--Caroline desires me to write to tell you, with her love, that she has this horrid influenza, and has been in bed since Monday. She is very feverish, and her throat so sore that she can hardly speak or swallow. Sarah sat up with her last night, and I think she is a little better this morning. Mamma is better, but only gets up for a little while in the evening, and cannot leave her room. I wish you were at home, for I don't know what to do: I am running backwards and forwards between the two rooms all day, and poor Lionel is so forlorn and solitary down stairs, with only papa. There! --that great blot was a tear, for I am so worn out with fatigue and nursing, that I am almost overcome. This winter I was to have come out,--how very different! I forgot to tell you, after all, that the carriage shall meet you, as you mention, on the 15th. I wish it was directly; they will be all well by the time you come. But it is so very forlorn, and I am so nervous; so excuse this scrawl. "Your affectionate cousin, "CLARA LYDDELL." As soon as Marian read this letter, she gave it to Edmund, saying, "I think I had better go home." "O, Marian, you must not cheat us!" cried Agnes. "I think they would be very glad of you," said Edmund, and withal Marian's mind was made up, and she withstood all the persuasions of Gerald and Agnes that it was nothing--nonsense--only Clara's dismality--they would laugh at her for coming for nothing. No; Marian knew she was no nurse, but she could not bear to think of Lionel left to his blindness and helplessness, still less of Caroline, ill, and with no one to cheer her. She was sure she was wanted by those two at least, and she resolved that she would be at Oakworthy to-morrow evening, wrote notice of her intention to Clara, and prepared for her journey, giving up that precious last week, so prized because it was the last. She could go alone with her maid; there was no use in spoiling Gerald's holidays; so he would stay for all the delights that she gave up, ruining all by her absence, as every one declared. Agnes grumbled and scolded her to her face, but made up for it out of hearing, by admiring her more than ever. Mr. and Mrs. Wortley gave her silent approval, and the boys would not wish her a pleasant journey. She was ready early the next morning, and once more left Fern Torr, bright with the promise that, when she was there next, it would be no more a guest. She prosperously arrived at the station nearest Oakworthy, and soon saw the servant waiting for her. "Is Miss Lyddell better?" "A little better than last night, ma'am. Mr. Lionel is in the carriage." Marian had not at all expected any one to meet her, especially Lionel, coming all this distance in silence and darkness. She hastened to the carriage, and saw him leaning forward, listening for her. His face lighted up at her, "Well, Lionel," and he fairly hurt her, by the tightness of his grasp, when once he had met her hand. "So, you're come! What a time it has been since you went! Now you are come, I don't care." "And how are you?" she asked anxiously. "Bad enough to be going back to the oculist next week," he answered; "I can't even see the light." A long silence; then, "How is Caroline?" "Pretty much the same; it is a bad, feverish cold, and shocking throat. She breathes as if she was half stifled, and can hardly speak." "I suppose she has Mr. Wells?" "Yes, two or three times a day," "And Mrs. Lyddell is better?" "Better, but not out of her room. It has been a tolerable state of things of late. Not a creature to speak to, except, now and then, Clara coming down to maunder and sigh over all she has to do, and my father, who has been thoroughly in a rage about Elliot. Do you know about all that, Marian?" "No," she answered. "It is out now, why he was so set upon Caroline's marriage, he had got Faulkner to back a bill for him; you don't know what that means, I suppose," said Lionel, with his old superior manner;--"made him engage that the money Elliot borrowed should be paid. There was to be some shuffle between them about her fortune it seems; so after the engagement was off, when the bill became due, Faulkner sent the holder of it to my father for the money and the news of this set on all the other creditors. No end of bills coming in, and he has been pretty nearly crazy among them; says we shall be beggars, and I don't know what all! I vow, it is my old plan coming right!" cried Lionel vehemently. "If the man in London can but set my eyes to rights, I'd be off to Australia to-morrow, instead of staying here to make all worse. Well, it's no use thinking of it: if ever I make my fortune now, it will be with a dog in a string, and a hat in his mouth." "But go on, Lionel; are the debts so very bad?" "I believe they are indeed, and no one knows the worst of them yet. No wonder Elliot was off to Paris in such a hurry, like a coward as he is, no one knows how he is ever to come back! And worst of all is to have mamma going about saying 'tis Caroline's fault! Hadn't I rather come to the hat and dog in good earnest than to see her marry that man? Why, Marian, he is actually engaged to Miss Dashwood! What do you say to that? To the Radical Dashwood's daughter that behaved so shamefully to papa!" "The daughter?" "No, the man. Fit company for the apostate, isn't it? He had better have begun with her. Fine love his must have been. Only six weeks. Should not that cure Caroline?" "Has she heard it?" "No, we have only known it since she was ill, and Clara thought she had better not tell her." "Very right of Clara," said Marian; "but I think she will be glad, when she is well enough to be told." Fast and eagerly did Marian and Lionel talk all the way, sometimes gravely and sorrowfully about Elliot and Caroline, sometimes cheerfully about Fern Torr, Edmund, and Gerald, of whom Lionel wanted much to hear. He clapped his hands, and danced himself up and down with ecstasy at the history of Gerald's embellishments of the plans, vowed that Gerald was a Trojan, and that it was as good as Beauty and the Beast, and seemed to be enjoying a perfect holiday in having some one to speak to again. "But," he said, "what a horrid bore it must have been to you to come away!" "I thought I might be some help to Clara." "Did she make you think Caroline so very ill? Mr. Wells says it is only a very bad cold. But I am very glad you are come." Clara met Marian in the hall. "O Marian, I am glad you are come, but I am sorry you came home in such a hurry. Mamma says there was no occasion, and that I need not have frightened you, for it is only a bad attack of influenza." "Then I hope Caroline Is better." "Yes, rather, and she will be so glad to see you. Come to her at once, won't you? she heard the carriage, and is watching for you." Marian hastily followed Clara to Caroline's room. In a few seconds both Caroline's arms were thrown round her neck, and a burning feverish face pressed to hers, then as she raised herself again, one of her hands still held fast, and Caroline lay looking up to her with an expression of relief and comfort. "Thank you," she murmured, in a hoarse low painful whisper, the sound of which gave an impression of dismay to Marian. Caroline was far worse than she had been prepared to sec her. That loud, oppressed, gasping breathing, the burning fever of hands and cheek, the parched lips,--this was far more than ordinary influenza. Marian stood watching her a little while; speaking now and then, until she closed her eyes in weariness, not for sleep, when she was about to leave the room, but Caroline looked up again anxiously and restlessly, and tried to say, "Come back." "Yes, I'll come in a moment," said Marian, "I'll only just take off my bonnet, and go and see Mrs. Lyddell, if I may." "O, yes, she is up, she knows you are come," said Clara, and Marian was presently knocking at Mrs. Lyddell's door. She found her sitting by the fire in a large easy chair, in her dressing-gown and shawl, and was surprised at the first sight of her too, for that very weakening complaint, the influenza, had made a great change in her, perhaps assisted by all that she had gone through during the last summer and autumn, beginning with the parting with John, the grief and anxiety for Lionel, the disappointment and warfare with Caroline, and worse than all, the discoveries respecting her eldest and favourite son. She looked a dozen years older, all the clearness of her complexion was gone, and the colouring that remained, as if ingrained, was worse than paleness; her hand shook with weakness, and the only trace of her prompt, decided activity was in the nervous agitation of her movements, and the querulous sharpness of her tones, as if her weakness was irritating to her. "Marian, how are you? I am sorry you have cut short your visit to come back to a sick house. I am afraid Clara has been alarming you needlessly." "I am very sorry to find you so unwell," said Marian; "I thought Clara would want some help." "Thank you, it was very kind," said Mrs. Lyddell, rather sharply, as if her thanks were only for form's sake. "Have you seen Caroline?" "Yes, and I am afraid she is very ill. Such a terrible oppression on her breath." "Ah! so Clara says. Mr. Wells has been applying mustard poultices." "Have you had no further advice?" said Marian. "No. He managed me very well; he is perfectly competent to attend an influenza such as this--a very simple affair." Mrs. Lyddell was evidently under the unreasonable infatuation that so many people are subject to, who will go on trusting their favourite apothecary, in spite of proofs that he is not to be trusted; but Marian, in her short life, had heard a good deal of doctors, and whether reasonably or not, had imbibed a distrust of country practitioners, which Lionel's misfortune had not tended to remove in Mr. Wells' case. Indeed, she had a particular dislike to the man, with his soft manner, love of set speeches and fine words, and resolution not to own that anything was the matter. There were stories abroad in the neighbourhood of his treating cases wrongly because he would not own they were beyond his skill. "Mrs. Lyddell," said she, very earnestly, "I do believe that Caroline is very ill. I think her throat is in a very alarming state, and I should not be at all satisfied to go on with no further advice." Mrs. Lyddell made some answer about girls being easily frightened, and Marian went back to Caroline, very unhappy and anxious, and trying to find comfort by telling herself that the cure does not depend alone on the physician. However, the words she had spoken were not without effect. Mrs. Lyddell's answer had been prompted by her first impulse of dislike and opposition, as if Marian was taking still further upon her; but she became very anxious when left alone. She thought that Marian's fresh eye might be better able to judge of the degree of Caroline's illness; she remembered how she had reproached herself about Lionel, and at last worked herself into such a state of alarm and anxiety, that though she had not yet walked further than to the window, she rose, left her room, and presently was by her daughter's bed-side. There needed no more to convince her that Caroline was excessively ill, and quick and prompt as ever, her first measure was to send Clara for her father, and hold a consultation with him outside the door; a message was despatched to hasten Mr. Wells, and the result was that a physician was sent for. Marian, who had all this time been watching the severe suffering, unable to do the least thing to alleviate it, was almost as glad as if she had been told of Caroline's certain recovery. She had again to tell herself not to put her trust in physicians.

19

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"Preach, read, and study as we will, Death is the mighty teacher still." _Baptistery_. Caroline continued very ill all the evening, hardly able to to look up, and every attempt to speak or swallow causing her great pain. Her mother would not leave her again, and sat watching her, and she smiled, and gave a pleased look of surprise at her kindness, which she had so long missed; but her chief comfort seemed to be in Marian's presence. She followed her about the room with her eyes, and was uneasy whenever she fancied that she was going out of the room. She was not told that the physician was coming till he was actually in the house, and then she gave Marian a quick, sharp look of alarmed inquiry; but Marian was not able to answer, as she had to leave her to his visit. When it was over, and Marian returned, while Mrs. Lyddell went to hear his opinion, Caroline was striving hard to speak. Marian bent over her, and at last heard one word gasped out--"Walter." "Yes, I will tell Mr. Lyddell; he shall be sent for, dearest," said Marian; and Caroline seemed satisfied. It was long before Marian had an opportunity of hearing what the physician's opinion had been, and there was little comfort in it. It was a very severe case of inflammation in the windpipe, and the only hope of subduing it was in instant recourse to strong remedies. How badly it was thought of she saw plainly enough, without words, in Mr. Lyddell's restless, hasty manner, and in the exertions which Mrs. Lyddell was allowed to make, at a time when she ought to have been in her bed. The worst sign of all was, it seemed to her, that as soon as she mentioned Caroline's wish to see Walter, Mr. Lyddell took measures for sending a letter at once by the railroad, instead of waiting for the post, which would have made a delay of two days. Lionel sat meanwhile, by himself in the drawing room, or was found wandering on the stairs, anxiously listening. Marian came on him once, and had exclaimed at finding him in the dark, before she remembered that it made no difference to him. She was in haste to fetch something for Caroline and could do nothing for him but say the sad words, "No better." All night Mrs. Lyddell and Marian stayed with Caroline; the one because she could not bear to go, the other because she could not be spared. Mrs. Lyddell would not acknowledge the extent of the danger to herself, far less allow any hint of it to come to Caroline; and for this Marian was sorry, though she was sure that Caroline was conscious of it herself; but with Mrs. Lyddell always present, it was impossible to read any of the things that would have been the only support at such a time. Poor Caroline could not speak to ask for them, and as if her mother feared they would bring death, she seemed to be watching Marian jealously to prevent the least approach to them. It was a terrible night; the applications did nothing but cause suffering, instead of removing the disorder,--the oppression grew more and more severe,--each breath more painful; the two watchers hardly dared to meet each other's eyes, and Caroline was in too much pain, too oppressed and overwhelmed, to give any token how far the mind and thought was awake within her. Such another day succeeded, every hour extinguishing some faint hope, and bringing the dread certainty more fully upon them. There was little or nothing to be done: they could only watch the sufferer, and try to glean her wishes from her looks; but these usually expressed more of pain than aught else, and no one could tell whether the ear and thought were free. One, at least, who sat beside her prayed fervently, and trusted in hope and love; holding fast by the certainty that Caroline had embraced the good part, and given up the allurements of the world, in health, for the sake of the treasure to which she was hastening. That last letter of her's was surely a proof that she was ready; and who could wish to detain that worn, harassed spirit from the repose where earthly cares shall "cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest?" Yet how Marian loved and clung to her, and felt as if she could never bear to part, and lose the affection that had been so long kept off by her own repulsive demeanour, but that was so ardent and unreserved! How grievous to think of the blooming, life-like creature that she was so lately, now so suddenly cut down! Hour after hour went by, bringing no change for the better. Day had faded into twilight, and twilight became night. Midnight had come, and Marian was still sitting, as she had done for more than an hour, holding up the faint head; for Caroline could no longer breathe in a recumbent posture, and sat partly supported on pillows, partly resting on Marian's shoulder. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed unconscious; it might be that she slept, but the features were full of suffering, and Marian could feel each of her breaths, gasping and convulsive. Her mother hung over her, feeling her pulse, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, or walking to the foot of the bed to speak to Mr. Lyddell, or to the apothecary, in the restless misery of despair. Mr. Lyddell came in and out, unable to bear the sight, yet unable to stay away. Clara had been too much overcome, and growing hysterical, had been sent away, and advised to go to bed. Lionel, too, had been sent to bed, but his room was in the same passage, and he lay with his door open, catching, with his quickened ears, at every sound in the sick room, and hearing each word of the hushed conferences that took place outside. A fresh tread was in the house--on the stairs--in the passage; Lionel's heart could not help bounding at it, as it came so softly along. It was the tread of the brother who, for his effort of courage and principle had been allowed to leave home like an exile, and treated as an offender. Lionel heard his father's step coming to meet him: how would they meet? He could hear the movement as their hands grasped together, and then Mr. Lyddell's smothered, choked whisper, "Only just in time, Walter! she won't know you. Come!" "Is it so?" said Walter, in a low tone, as of one extremely choked and overwhelmed. A sort of sob came before the answer, "Going fast." The steps moved on; Lionel could not stay where he was, dressed himself, and felt his way to the sick room. He heard the stifled breathings: he felt onward,--found he had hold of the bed-post, and leant against it, unheeded by all, so intently were all watching Caroline. "Speak to her," was the first thing he heard whispered by the doctor. "Caroline!" said Walter's trembling voice, "dear Caroline!" Poor Lionel could not see how, at the call, the dark blue eyes once more opened, and looked up in Walter's face; he only heard the steadier tone in which the brother said the ministerial words, "Peace be with this house!" The solemn calmness of the tone came gently and soothingly upon Lionel's ear; and withal there spread over Caroline's face a gleam of joy, and then a quiet stillness, as of a freedom from suffering. There was an interval--a gasp--another interval--another gasp--a pause-- Marian's voice was the first, and very low and awe-struck. "It has been without a struggle." A slight cry from his mother, and a confused movement, as if they were lifting something--steps--he stood still, and the next moment felt Marian's hand on his arm. "Mrs. Lyddell has fainted," said she, in explanation; "Mr. Lyddell and Walter are taking her to her own room," Lionel clasped Marian's hand very tight, and each felt how the other was trembling. "We must come away," said Marian; then hesitating, and with a quivering whisper, she said, "Would you like to kiss her?" "Yes, let me!" It was strange to guide the blind brother to kiss the white brow of the dead sister. Marian's throat was aching to such a degree with intense feeling, that she could hardly utter a word; but Lionel, who could not see, must hear. "She looks so calm, so sweet," said Marian struggling, "but I must go to your mother. Let me take you to your room; I'll send Walter to you. Lionel, Lionel, indeed she is happy!" said Marian, earnestly, while Lionel burst into a flood of tears, wholesome tears, as she led him from the room. She thought Walter would be the greatest comfort to him; and recollecting Mrs. Lyddell had no woman with her but her maid, she told Lionel she must go to his mother, ran down, and met Walter waiting in the dressing-room. "Is she recovering?" "A little." "Will you go to Lionel?" "This instant, but--" and he looked at her earnestly. "Yes, yes," said she hastily, "it is all right and beautiful. Here's her last letter; I've been reading it all day. Take it; you'll see how--" Marian's voice broke down, and she hastened to the open door of Mrs. Lyddell's room. There was something for her to do in attempting to restore her, for the maid was not helpful; and Mr. Lyddell stood at the foot of the bed, as if all his powers were paralysed. Mr. Wells wanted assistance; for Mrs. Lyddell, exhausted by watching and her previous weakness, was in so sinking and depressed a state, as to need the greatest care. Marian was employed in attending her till towards morning, when she sank into a sleep. "You had better go to bed," said Mr. Lyddell, very kindly, as Marian at length turned away from her, and stood by the fireside, where he was sitting in the arm-chair, his hands over his forehead "I must not let you overwork yourself." "O, I am not tired, if I can be of any use." "No, no, rest now, thank you," said he, in a broken, dejected tone. She went, and again found Walter in the outer room, watching for tidings of his mother. "Asleep," she said. "Lionel?" "Asleep too, I hope. You are going to bed?" "Yes, thank you; but Clara--" "I will go to Clara the first thing in the morning. I shall sit up on my father's account. Don't you think of it,--sleep as long as you can; you have had watching enough." "I have been so glad," Marian said, in a tear-stilled whisper. "You cannot tell how I have longed to thank you, Marian, for what you have been to her:" said Walter, speaking from the fulness of heart, which overcame his natural reserve and bashfulness. "You are thanked enough by our present feelings on the subject,--by that letter:--may I keep it a little longer?" "O yes, yes!" cried Marian, hastily, disclaiming in her heart all his thanks, though unable to do so with her lips. "It takes away all regret for the briefness of the illness," added Walter, as if the speaking of it was a satisfaction he could hardly relinquish. "I am sure she thought much; no one can tell what passed," said Marian, in a low, broken murmur. "Little did I think last summer--" said Walter, aloud to himself. "Yes, this is best, far best, if one could but feel it so!" Marian thought the same, and, like him, could not feel it; but unable to express herself, she simply said, as soon as her tears would let her, "Good-night," and went up to her own room. Fatigue came on her now. When she took off the dress she had worn since leaving Fern Torr, she found her limbs stiff and aching, and her head dizzy with weariness. She could hardly get through the operation of undressing; and when she tried to say her prayers, they would not come. She could only go through the LORD'S Prayer; and too worn out to be shocked at herself more than in a dull way, scarcely even alive to the recollection of what had happened, she laid herself down on the bed, which seemed strangely soft, but for a long time was too tired to sleep. With confused thoughts and exhausted spirits, she kept on feeling as if her aching limbs belonged to somebody else, and going off into odd, dreamy vagaries, each more uncomfortable than the last,--ever and anon waking into a moment's remembrance that Caroline was dead, wondering at herself for being so dull as only to think it strange, then losing the consciousness again. At last the light of morning made her perceptions clearer. Fanny knocked at her door, and brought her a cup of tea. She heard that all was quiet,--said she would get up; but with that resolution she suddenly became more easy, and while believing she was getting up, fell into a sound sleep. She awoke refreshed, and entirely herself again, though feeling stunned and bewildered by the all-pervading thought. Caroline dead! It seemed as if it was not otherwise with the rest of the family. Her illness had been so short, that there had been no time to grow familiar with the idea of her danger; and it was the first death in the household that had hitherto been so strong and confident in health,--the first touch that taught them how little the world they loved was an abiding-place. So sudden had been the stroke, that they seemed to pause and stand aghast under it, scarcely conscious how deep the wound might be. Her father went about the house, bowed down and stricken with grief, his tones low, sorrowful, and so gentle when speaking to his children, or to Marian, that they could scarcely be recognised as the same voice; but, without a word, so far as Marian, Clara, or Lionel knew, of his daughter, or of his own feelings. Her mother, already very weak, and suffering most acutely from the remembrance of the coldness with which she had treated her during the last autumn, became so seriously unwell, between a return of influenza, and her extreme depression and nervous hysterical agitation, that Marian and Clara were almost entirely occupied in nursing her, and trying to soothe her. In this work they were little successful. Marian had no hold on her affection, no power of talking soothingly, though most anxious to do what she could, and distressed excessively by her inability to be a comfort in the painful scenes which she was obliged to witness. She almost thought her presence made things worse, and that Mrs. Lyddell wished her away; but poor Clara was so entirely helpless and frightened, clung to her in so imploring a way, and was so incapable, from the restraint that had always subsisted between her and her mother, of saying anything to comfort her, or assuming any direction, that Marian was obliged, for her sake, to be almost always in the room. The only thing Marian could do in the way of consolation was to read aloud; she could not talk of the great thankfulness, peace, and hope which she felt herself, to Mrs. Lyddell, though she could have done so a little, with time, to Lionel, or even Clara; she could only read, and whether this did any good, she knew not. At any rate, it was what she ought to do; and the sound of the voice going on continuously had certainly a calming effect. Walter used daily to come and read, but this she did not seem to like, though she never made any objection; and there was so much reason for guarding against agitation and excitement, that he, never familiar with her, could not venture to attempt speaking to her on the subject of which all their hearts were full. It was only Mr. Lyddell who had any real serviceable influence with her. Her hysterical attacks never came on in his presence, and a few affectionate words or demonstrations from him would soothe the very worst of them. Marian saw so much real tenderness in his character, that she positively began to feel considerable affection for him. Clara was entirely bewildered and frightened, hardly yet realizing that she had lost her sister; perplexed and alarmed about her mother, suddenly thrust forward, from being an unregarded child, into having all the responsibilities of the eldest daughter of a sick mother on her hands, she could only depend upon Marian, and hang on her for direction, assistance, and consolation,--say "yes" to whatever she suggested, and set about it; and whenever she felt lonely, sisterless, and wretched, lean on her, pour out her grief, and feel that she had a kind listener, though only a monosyllabic answerer. She used to have great fits of crying at night, when they passed Caroline's door; and more than once she was so inconsolable, that Marian was obliged to come and stay in her room, and sleep all night with her arm clinging round her. Altogether, it was very desolate and perplexing; and Marian was grieved at herself for dwelling more on this, and on the loss of her dear companion and friend, than on the hope and happiness that ought to occupy her. How different in the two deaths she had known before, where there was none of this weary, harassed, doubtful, careworn feeling; only the sorrow, bitter indeed as it was, of the parting, but with time and scope for dwelling on all thoughts of comfort, when they would come. Lionel had his brother, and was thus in the best hands; and she saw very little of him except at meal-times, when all were silent and subdued. So passed the week before the funeral. Only the gentlemen attended it; Marian and Clara stayed with Mrs. Lyddell, who went through the time better than they had ventured to hope. She was altogether improved, and was able to sit up a little in the evening. Lionel was to go the next day to London, to be seen by the oculist; and her sanguine mind was fastening itself on the hope of his recovery; and though there was too much danger that she was only hoping in order to be the more disappointed, yet the present relief was great. Marian and Clara went down to dinner somewhat cheered, and hoping to carry satisfaction with them; but there was a deeper despondency in Mr. Lyddell's air than ever. He scarcely seemed to know what he was doing; and when at last dinner was over, he rose up, stood by the fire a moment, coughed, said to Walter, "You tell them," and ran upstairs. There was a silence: each of the three dreaded to ask what was the matter; Walter did not know how to begin. Marian began to think it was some family misfortune, better mentioned in her absence, and was rising to go away; but Walter exclaimed, "No, don't go, Marian; all the world must know it soon, I fear." "Not Johnny!" cried Clara. "O, Walter, Walter, don't let it be Johnny!" "No," said Lionel; "I know it is something more about Elliot. Is it very bad indeed, Walter?" "Very; I do not think he is going to tell my mother the full extent. There was a letter from Paris this morning, from Captain Evans, saying he thought it right that my father should be warned that Elliot is going on there in his old way, and worse still, is reported to be on the brink of a ruinous marriage." Clara was the first to break the silence of consternation. "Marriage! and now! a Frenchwoman! O Walter, Walter it can't be true! he can't do it now, at any rate!" "There is some hope that this may make a delay: it is the one chance that my father trusts to," said Walter. "The history seems to be this, as far as I can understand. When the discovery of all these debts came on my father, he wrote Elliot a very indignant letter, refusing to be answerable for any of them except that which Faulkner had guaranteed which of course he paid at once. This letter seems to have stirred Elliot up into a fit of passion; he went on more recklessly than ever, and now is getting drawn into this miserable connection." "Yes, just like Elliot!" said Lionel. "And what is papa going to do?" "He means to go to Paris at once, sacrifice any thing, pay all the debts at any cost, if he can only bring Elliot back with him, and save him from ruining himself entirely." "But he is not going to tell mamma about the marriage, I hope?" said Clara. "No, he will leave her to think it is only the old story, and that he wants to see if anything can be done about the debts. There is a hope that the news he must have had by this time may have checked him." "Perhaps it may be bringing him home," said Marian. "No, I fear he is too much involved to venture to England." Again following a silence; no one could think of anything consoling to suggest; all were unwilling to heap censure upon one who deserved it but too richly. Only Lionel was heard to give a sort of groan, find after a time Clara asked, "Is it a Frenchwoman?" "Yes," said Walter; "a person connected with the theatres." The four again sat in mournful silence. "I suppose," said Lionel at length, "that my going to London had better be put off till he comes back." "No," said Walter, "he wishes that to be done at once. We are all three to go to London to-morrow, as was settled before; he will go with you to see the oculist, and on to Dover by the night-train; and if the oculist wishes to keep you, I shall stay with you in London till he comes back, or till my mother and the rest can come." "Thank you," said Lionel, sighing; "I wish I could help it! Is not it leaving a pretty state of things behind us, though? not that we are any great good to the ladies to be sure!" "Yes, it is leaving you at a very sad time," said Walter, looking at the two girls, "but we are hardly able to be of much use to my mother, and if there was any prospect of your improvement, that they all say would do her more good than anything else. However, my father said that must be according to your feelings, Clara and Marian, if you were afraid to be left with the charge of her, I would remain." One of Walter's awkward ways of putting the question, and it instantly suggested to Clara to be afraid. "I am sure I shan't know what to do. Only think, Marian, for us to be left--what should we do if mamma was to get suddenly worse? We should have no one to help us, I shall be in such a nervous state, I could do no good." "No, no, Clara, you won't," said Marian, whilst Walter had begun to look in consternation at Clara. "Nobody ever has nerves when there is anything to be done. You know Mrs. Lyddell is much better." "O but she will be so very unhappy and excited about papa's being gone, and I am sure I shall never be able to conceal from her all this dreadful business about Elliot." "Yes, you will," said Marian quietly. "We shall do very well indeed, it cannot be for long, and if we wanted him we could get Walter home in a few hours' time. If he can send us good news of Lionel, it will help us much more than his staying here could do." "If dear Caroline,"--and Clara burst into a fit of weeping, which obliged her to leave the room. Every one was feeling the same thing, that Caroline, with her energy, good sense, and the power she had once possessed with her mother, would have made all easy, and the sense of missing her had come strongly upon them all. Marian followed Clara to her own room, let her lean upon her and cry, wept with her, joined in saying how grievous the loss was, and how much they had loved her, and how they should want her every day and every hour, then called hack the remembrance that Caroline had not been happy here, and had longed for rest, and it was come to her, and they must not be selfish, but there Clara cried more, saying that Marian never knew what a sister was, and it was unkind to wish her to be glad. "I don't know," said Marian, pausing as her tears flowed fast, "I have known death, Clara." "You weren't glad!" said Clara passionately. "I don't know," she said thinking, and speaking with difficulty. "Not then, not always now, O no! But I always knew I ought to be glad, for dear papa had suffered so much, I could not wish it to be going on still--no, no. And dear mamma, when he was gone, it was a sad world for her, she could only have wished to stay for our sakes. Yet, after the first, I always felt it was right, and so will you too, Clara, in time." "If she was but here to help me!" sobbed Clara. "We must try," said Marian, "we can't be as useful and ready as she was, but we will do our very best. I am sure Mrs. Lyddell likes to have you sit with her." "Did you think so?" said Clara, ready to be cheered by any token, of preference. "Yes, I saw how glad she was to have you instead of me, when you came in from the garden." Clara looked pleased. "You will sit with her, and read to her, and I can help you when you have too much on your hands at once. You see it is a great comfort to Mr. Lyddell to have you to leave her with." The being made important was a great thing with Clara, and she was quite reconciled to the prospect of her charge by the time they had to go down stairs to tea. After tea Marian was left alone with Lionel, while Clara was with her mother; and Walter in consultation with Mr. Lyddell, for here at least was one benefit, that Walter seemed to have taken his proper place, and to be a real comfort and help to his father in a way he had never hoped for. "You've cheered up Clara, I hear in her voice," said Lionel. "O yes, we shall do very well." "Do you mind it, Marian?" said he, turning his ear towards her, as if to judge by the minute intonations of her answer, as people do by the expression of the countenance. Her reply was brave, "No, not at all." "Are you sure?" "Yes. I don't see what would be gained by keeping you and Walter here. She does not depend on Walter as she does on your father, and all that is required we can do as well without Walter in the house. It would be nonsense to keep you merely for the feel of having some one, and for the rest, I am sure Clara will be the better for being thrust forward, and made useful." "Very well. I should not in the least mind waiting, for I have not much hope myself, but it is just as well for oneself and every one else to be put out of one's misery as soon as possible, and settle down into it." Marian remembered how differently he had spoken half a year ago, when the danger first broke on him, and looking up she saw his steadfast though mournful face. She spoke her thought. "It has been a great thing to have this long preparation." "Yes, I am glad of it, though I have been a great plague and nuisance to every one, especially to you, Marian. I know what you're going to say, so let alone that. I wish--. But no use talking of that, she was very kind and we got very comfortable together after you were gone, Marian, and I like to remember that." "Ah! I was sure you would. And Walter read you what she said about you?" "Yes, I wish--I little knew"--then suddenly "Marian, I'll tell you something: one morning when you were gone, she had to read a bit of a chapter in the Gospel about the healing the blind man, and you can't think how hard she tried to get through it without breaking down, but she could not. She cried at last, as if she could not help it, and then she got up, and came and kissed me, and I felt her tears on my face. I didn't know what to say, but that's what I like to remember." "And the Church-going on Christmas day," whispered Marian. "Ay, she led me up," said Lionel. "Everything is so very comforting," said Marian. "So Walter says." "Lionel, do you remember the print you and Gerald gave me long ago of S. Margaret walking through the dark wood of this world, and subduing the dragon? I am sure she is like it. She had all this world before her, and she chose vexation and trouble instead of doing wrong! O Lionel, it is very noble!" "That it is," said Lionel, "only things never seem so at the time. I wish they did, but. I am glad my father saw it all right before, and said he was glad she had given him up." "Yes, that is a comfort." "My poor father!" said Lionel presently, "I never guessed he cared so much about--things. Do you know, Marian, I think even if I do get back my eyes, I could not go after the Australian bulls, unless 'twas the only way of getting a living." "I am glad you have put them out of your head," said Marian, smiling sadly. "Ay, I was very mad upon them once," said Lionel, "but I see that eyes or no eyes, we must set ourselves in earnest to be some sort of comfort to them, and if Johnny is to be always at sea, I had better not be on the other side of the world. If I am to see, why then it is all right; if not, I'll do the best I can at home." "That's right, Lionel." "I can do a good deal already, I am no trouble to any one, am I? I can go all over the house and park by myself, and find all my own goods without any one's help, and I'll do more in time, so as to be no bother to any one, and I do believe now they like to have me at home. Don't you remember, Marian," and he lowered his voice confidentially, one reason why I wanted to go to Australia, and make a fortune?" "Yes," said Marian, knowing that he meant his vision of winning love from his parents. "Well, I think," said he, "that being blind has answered as well." A silence, then he went on, "I know what you meant now about a time when I might he glad to have been blind. If Caroline had married that man, she would not have died as happily as that, and there was an end of all the trouble and vexation; so there will be an end to my blindness some time or other, and it will keep me out of lots of mischief. I don't mean that there is not plenty of opportunity of doing wrong as it is," he added, "but not so much. Better be blind than like Elliot, and perhaps I might have come to that." "O Lionel, it is such a comfort you can speak so!" "I've tried it now, and 'tis not so very bad," said Lionel, turning with an odd mixture of smile and sadness, "besides I saw almost the last of her face, and I should only miss her the more like her voice. I have got her face stored up with all of yours. You know I shan't see when any of you grow old and ugly, Marian. Well, and after all I am glad it is to be settled now, I don't think I shall mind it near so much as I should another time, now I have just heard all that over her grave. I got Walter to read it to me all over again when we came home. It has been very nice to have Walter." Marian guessed how Walter had strengthened and helped him, and she judged rightly, but she did not know how silently he listened to all Walter's talkings and readings, unable to pour out his full feeling to any one but herself. The others came in from their different quarters, it was late, and Marian was about to wish good night, when Walter in a low hurried voice said to her and Clara, "Don't go yet, my father wishes to have prayers." A moment more and the servants came in, all were kneeling, and Marian's tears of thankful joy were streaming fast as Walter read an evening prayer. Was not Caroline glad? was the thought, as she recollected that first morning, when all had seemed to her childish mind so dreary and unhallowed, and when Caroline had lamented the omission. Yes! was not Caroline glad, now that one of the dearest wishes of her heart had been gained? Was she not glad of this first token that trouble had brought a change over her father? Each fresh petition brought such a gush of earnest softened tears that Marian's face bore evident traces of them, when she rose up, and had to wish Mr. Lyddell good night. She did not speak, but held out her hand. He spoke with difficulty, "My dear," he said, "I have wished to thank you, but I cannot otherwise than by leaving more on your hands. Walter has told you how it is with us. You are kind enough to help Clara. I don't know what we should do without you. I rely on your judgment entirely." "I'll do my best," said Marian, "I am glad to be of use." "You were _her_ best friend," said Mr. Lyddell hastily. "Well, good night, thank you, my dear," and he kissed her forehead, as though she had been his own daughter.

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"Let us be patient. These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. "We see but dimly through the mists and vapours Amid these earthly damps What seems to us but sad funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps." LONGFELLOW. There were morning prayers before the hurried breakfast, which was interspersed with numerous directions about what was to be done for Mrs. Lyddell, and what letters were to be sent after Mr. Lyddell. Lionel was grave and silent, as became one whose fate was in the balance, without either shrinking or bravado; but somewhat as if he was more inclined, than had been the case last night, to hope for a favorable result. With heartfelt prayers did Marian watch him as be crossed the hall and entered the carriage, calling out a cheerful good-bye,--prayers that, if it were the will of Heaven, his affliction might be removed; but that if not, help might be given him to turn it into a blessing, as he seemed almost to be beginning to do. His father, too,--little had Marian ever thought to feel for him the affectionate compassion and sympathy, of which she was now sensible, as she responded to his kind, fatherly farewell, and thought of what he must be feeling; obliged to leave his wife in so anxious and suffering a state; his daughter, the pride of the family, removed so suddenly; his most promising son probably blind for life; his eldest, a grief, pain, and shame to them all. Marian must pray for him too, that he might be supported and aided through these most bitter trials, and that the work which they had begun in him might go on and be perfected; that these troubles, grievous as they were, might in his ease also turn to blessings. The occupation of the two girls was all day the care of Mrs. Lyddell. She was not worse, as far as bodily ailments went; the attack of cold, brought on by leaving her room to attend on Caroline, had gone off, and her strength was in some degree returning; but she was restless, excited, irritable, and with an inability to restrain herself, that was more alarming than Marian liked to own to herself, far less to Clara. She insisted on getting up at an earlier hour than she had hitherto attempted; she was worn out and wearied with dressing; she was impatient and vexed with Clara, for some mistake about her pillows; and the trembling of her hand, as she was eating some broth, was uncontrollable. The broth was not what she liked, and she would send for the housekeeper, to reprove her about it; asked questions about the arrangements, found them not as she wished; spoke sharply, said no one took heed to anything while she was ill, and then burst into a fit of weeping at the thought of the daughter who would have been able to supply her place. This spent itself, (for the girls were unable to do anything effectual in soothing it away); the doctors made their daily visit, and cheered her up a little. The consequence of this exhilaration was, that she began talking about Lionel, and anticipating his perfect recovery; arranging how they were all to go and join him in London, and working herself up to a state of great excitement; pettish with Marian for not being able to answer her hopefully, and at last, hysterically laughing at the picture she drew of Lionel with restored sight. Marian asked if she would be read to, and took up a serious book, with which she had put her to sleep two or three times before, but nothing of the kind would she hear; and as the best chance of at least quieting her, Marian went on a voyage of discovery among the club books down stairs, and brought up a book of travels, and a novel. Mrs. Lyddell chose the novel; it was a very exciting story, and caught the attention of all three. Marian grew eager about it, and was well pleased to go on; and so it occupied them most of the afternoon and evening, driving out a great deal of care, as Marian could not help gratefully acknowledging, though she would willingly have had space to work out with herself the question, whether care had best be driven out or grappled with. Mrs. Lyddell was indeed in no state to grapple with it, and there was nothing to be done but to take the best present means of distracting her attention; yet it was to be feared that, though put aside, the enemy was not conquered,--and might there not be worse to come? It was about half-past seven and the two girls were drinking tea with Mrs. Lyddell in her room. She was just beginning to make herself unhappy about Mr. Lyddell's late journey and night-voyage, when there was a tap at the door, and on the answer, "Come in!" it opened, and Lionel stood there. There was a sudden exclamation: they all three sprang up and looked at him, but alas! it was still by feeling that he came forward, though his countenance was cheerful, and there was a smile upon his lips. "Well, mamma," he said, in a brave, almost a lively tone, "you must be content to have me at home." And in answer to their broken, half expressed interrogations, "No, he can't do any thing for me; so it was not worth while to stay any longer in London. How are you this evening, mamma?" He was guiding himself towards her chair, one hand on the table; she threw herself forward to meet him, flung her arms round his neck and sobbed, "My boy, my poor dear boy! O Lionel! it has been all my fault and neglect!" "No, no, don't--don't say that, mamma!" said Lionel, extremely distressed by her weeping, and not knowing where to rest her, as she hung with her whole weight abandoned on him. Marian and Clara were obliged to help him, and seat her in her chair again; while she still wept piteously, and poor Lionel stood, hearing the sobs, and very much grieved. "Ought I not to have told her?" said he to Marian. "I thought if she saw I could bear it, it would be better than writing." "Yes, yes, you did quite right; she will be better presently." She was soon better, and leaning back on her pillows exhausted, looked up at the fine tall boy before her, the glow of youth and health on his face, spirit and enterprise in every feature,--but those large blue eyes, bright as they were, for ever darkened and useless. "O Lionel!" she sighed again. "The man behaved very well," said Lionel; "he did not plague me at all. He only pulled up my eyelids--so--and studied them, and I suppose he gave some sign to my father, for I heard him make a noise that showed me how I was; so I asked. He told me there was not a chance, and made me understand the rights of it; and so here I am. Never mind, mamma, there was a tendency to it all my life, and nothing would have stopped it in the end; and now I know what it is, I have no doubt but I shall do very well. I mean to be like the blind man that unharnessed all the horses in the middle of the night, when the coach was upset, and no one else was of any use." He stopped once or twice in his harangue, to judge how his mother was, by her breathings; and he spoke with a smile and look of resolution and eagerness, as he concluded with another "Never mind, mamma, for I don't." She took hold of his hand, and pressed it, too much overcome to speak. "Is papa gone?" asked Clara. "Yes." And Lionel proceeded to give a message which he had sent back. "And where's Walter?" "In the drawing-room." More people were already in the room than Marian thought good for Mrs. Lyddell; and understanding Clara's wishes, she went down to speak to Walter, to carry a message that his mother would see him after tea, and to arrange for a substantial supper for the two youths, who had had no dinner. Walter was waiting anxiously to know how his mother had endured the tidings. "She was very much, overcome at first," said Marian; "but now she has had a good cry, she will be more likely to go to sleep quietly. Poor Lionel! he did it admirably." "It has been his chief thought," said Walter. "He begged to come home at once, saying it would be the best way to have it over before night; it would save all hoping and worrying, about him; and the instant we arrived, he ran straight up stairs." Walter and Marian were not familiar enough to say it to each other, but both were comparing his present conduct with his former bitterness of spirit against his mother. Death, sorrow, anxiety, and illness had drawn close the cords of love, and opened the well-springs of affection, so long choked up and soured by neglect and worldly care. "How did he bear it at the first?" "Bravely; he had wound himself up. He was flushing and turning pale all through the journey; but when once he came to the door, he was as calm and steady as possible. My father was much more agitated; he would lead Lionel himself, and very nearly threw him down the steps. You should have seen how Lionel never flinched,--did not let one feature quiver while he was being turned round to the light and examined. We saw how it was by the doctor's face, but Lionel spoke first, as--no, more steadily, than I can tell it, 'There is nothing to be done, then?' --attended more firmly to the explanation of the causes than we could, spoke as freely as if it had been about some indifferent case. The doctor was quite struck with it. He shook hands with him when he went, and kept me a moment after, to say, of all the many cases he had seen, he had never known greater resolution,--never seen any one he had been more sorry for. However, it was not only that,--that might have been the pride of firmness; but it has been the same all along. He set himself to cheer my father, who was very much overcome; and ever since has been telling me of all his schemes for employment, and arranging how to spare my mother as much as possible. Yes, he is a fine fellow!" said Walter, stopping with a heavy sigh. "I am sure he will make himself happy," said Marian earnestly; "you don't know how many resources he has, and you see how wonderfully independent he is already." "Yes," said Walter, sadly; "but though I know it is all right--to see what he might have been! But that is mere nonsense," he added, catching himself up; "we should never have known what was in him; and perhaps he would have been very different." Not a word expressed of Walter's sincere thankfulness for the change that affliction was bringing on them. Lionel came down presently, Marian presided at their tea, and would have enjoyed it very much, if she had not been sorry Clara should not be relieved from her harassing attendance up stairs. But her mother could not spare her, and perhaps the being positively useful, and pulled by force out of her childishness, was the best thing for her. "Marian, I hope you will be able to ride with me to-morrow, if mamma does not want you?" said Lionel. Walter looked full of inquiry and consternation. "If we can manage it," said Marian, cheerfully; though now that the custom had been disused for a time, she did not like the notion quite so well as before; since she could not now even figure to herself that Lionel guided himself at all, He had said it chiefly for the purpose of asserting his intention of continuing the practice, and was quite satisfied by her answer. Walter went up stairs to his mother shortly after, and Lionel was left alone with Marian. "I am sure I hope it won't hurt her," said he; "I thought it was best to have it out at once." "Much the best, since it was to come." "Yes," he said, pausing for some space, then exclaiming, "I don't know, though! I thought it would be better to know the worst, and have one's mind made up; but I don't think 'tis more comfortable, after all. I should like to get back that little spark of hope I had this morning! O, Marian, there was one time when the sun shone out full, and so warm, exactly on my face, and some one in the train said it was a glorious winter day. It was close by Slough; I knew we were in sight of the castle, and perhaps one might see the chapel, and the trees in the playing-fields. I thought soon, I might be seeing it all again: and I vow, Marian, I could have leaped from here to Windsor at the bare thought. It was being a great fool, to be sure; but as we came back, I was half glad it was dark, so that nobody else could see it." "Yet I am sure your last half year at Eton was no happy time; you went through a great deal." "I'd do it all again, if I could see as much as I did then," said Lionel. "I don't mind it so much in general now; I get on much better than I thought I should, and it is not nearly as bad now I am quite in the dark, and wake up to it, as when the glimmer of light was going. I can do very well, except when a great gush--I don't know what to call it--great rush of remembering the sky and all sorts of things comes on me, and I know it is to be darkness always. Then! --but it is all nonsense talking of it. I shall get the better of that, some day or other, I suppose. But I did not think, yesterday, that the being sure of it would be half so bad!" "You braced yourself yesterday, and that helped you to-day." "Yes; and then there was my father,--he has enough to vex him, without knowing all this. And, after all, it is nothing; I've got plenty to do, and I'll manage it capitally. I'll tell you what, Marian, if mamma can spare you, we'll ride to Salisbury, and get some of that good twine, and I'll make Gerald the fishing-net you said he wanted." Lionel had hitherto never consented to learn to net. Mrs. Lyddell was better the next day, and all was quiet and prosperous, so that Walter could write a satisfactory account to his father. Clara had a good walk with her brothers in the morning, and in the afternoon the ride took effect: Marian came into Mrs. Lyddell's room in her habit, and gave notice, "we are going to ride," so much as if it was a matter of course that Mrs. Lyddell asked no questions, and feared no dangers. Walter went with them, and Marian could have wished him away, for he was so anxious and nervous as very nearly to make her the same, and though he said nothing of his anxieties, Lionel found them out, and told him in his old gruff way that there was nothing to be in a taking about; indeed, Lionel was the more inclined to be adventurous in order to show himself entirely at his ease. However, nothing went wrong, and Marian and he both felt it a point gained that their riding together was established. A few days passed on quietly and gravely, a pause of waiting and suspense. Mrs. Lyddell, though less ill, was not materially improved as regarded the excitability of her spirits. She would be excessively depressed at one time, at another in such high spirits as were much more alarming. Sometimes she would talk about their being all ruined and undone, and go on rapidly to say they must give up the house in London, retrench, live on nothing; at others she anticipated Mr. Lyddell's bringing Elliot back, all his debts paid, to live at home and be a comfort, or some friend was to give Walter a great living, or Clara was to come out, and to be presented in the summer. At the same time the fretful irritability of nerve and temper continued, and any unusual excitement, the talking a little longer in her room, a letter, or a little disappointment, would keep her awake all night. One thing, however, seemed certain, that Lionel's presence had some of the same power over her as her husband's; she was too much occupied with watching him, to work herself into her anxious excited moods, and now that he had grown more familiar with her, his cheerful lively way of speaking always refreshed and pleased her. He would come in, in a glow of bright health, from a quick walk or ride in the clear frosty air, and show such genuine pleasure and animation as must console those who were grieving for his privation; he would undertake her messages, and find things in a wonderful manner, and he liked to listen to the reading aloud that always went on in her room. When Lionel came in, Marian and Clara always felt relieved from half their present care. At last came a letter from Mr. Lyddell to Walter. The worst of his fears were fulfilled. Elliot was actually married, and report had not exaggerated the disgrace of the connection. Mr. Lyddell had not chosen to see him, and intended to be at home, by the end of the next day, after they would receive the letter. It was a great shock, but perhaps none of the four young people had such lively hopes of Elliot as to be very much overwhelmed by the disappointment, as far as he was individually concerned. He had never been a kind elder brother to Clara or Lionel, and it was only Walter who could have any of those recollections of a childhood spent together, which would make the loss of intercourse personally painful. They had all been brought up to a sort of loyal feeling towards Elliot as the eldest, and to think his extravagance almost a matter of course, but only the tie of blood, and sympathy for their parents could cause them any acute pain on his account. For their parents they were greatly grieved, for Elliot had with all his faults, been their especial pride and hope, and the effect on Mrs. Lyddell in her present state was very much to be apprehended. It was a comfort however that it was decided in full council that they might put off the evil day of telling her, for there was no occasion that she should be informed till her husband returned. He came the next day, and very worn down, broken and oldened did he look, as he returned to his mourning household. Not a word did he say in public of the object of his journey, and all that transpired to Marian, through Lionel, who heard it from Walter, was "that it was as bad as bad could be; it was thought Elliot had done it out of spite, at any rate he was never likely to bring his wife to England." Neither did Mrs. Lyddell speak of it, and Marian only knew that she had been informed of it, by the increased excitability and irritation of her nerves. Poor Clara underwent plenty of scolding, for she was the only victim, since Mrs. Lyddell's continuous dislike to Marian kept her on her ordinary terms of ceremony, scarcely ever asking her to do her any service, thanking her scrupulously, and never finding fault to her face. Marian was at first very sorry for Clara, who was bewildered, and disconcerted, but after a day or two, things seemed to right themselves wonderfully. Clara grew used to the fretfulness, and was no longer frightened by it, nor made unhappy, but learnt how to meet it and smooth it down without being hurt by it. It was surely the instinct of natural affection, for inferior in every way as she was to Marian, yet in her mother's sick room she suddenly acquired all the tact, power, and management that Marian failed in. Hitherto she had been childish and astray, as if she wanted her vocation; now she had found it, and settled admirably into it, acquiring a sense, energy, and activity that no one could have supposed her capable of. Outside that room, she was the same Clara still, without much either of rational tastes or conversation, afraid of her father, and not much of a companion to her brother, helpless in everything that did not regard her mother, and clinging to Marian for help and direction, Marian must speak for her, tell her what to say if she had to write a note, take the responsibility of every arrangement. Nothing was much harder than to shove Clara forward into becoming the ostensible lady of the house, as it seemed as if she must continue for some time to come, since the doctors spoke of the most absolute rest and freedom from excitement being necessary to restore her mother's shattered health and spirits. She was to see no visitors, be soothed as much as possible, have no cares or anxieties brought to her, be only moderately occupied and amused, or the nervous attacks would return. Marian had a suspicion that they feared for her mind. She became stronger, was able to rise earlier, and to drive out in the carriage, but she never dined with the family, and remained in her sitting room up stairs, with Clara for her regular attendant, and visits from the rest. Walter returned to his curacy as soon as he could be spared, and Lionel became, as usual, chiefly dependent on Marian, who read to him, walked with him, rode with him, assisted him in his contrivances for helping himself, and was his constant guide and companion; doing at the same time all she could for Clara's service, but keeping in the back ground and making Clara do all the representative part for herself. They missed Caroline every hour of the day, far more since they had settled into an every-day course of habits and most especially in the evening and at meal times. There always used to be so much conversation going on at dinner and now no one seemed to say anything; Clara sat at the head of the table in awe of her father, Lionel and Marian did not feel disposed to talk in their own way before him there never had been any freedom of intercourse, and nobody knew how to begin. Marian thought the silent party very sad and forlorn for poor Mr. Lyddell, and that it must remind him grievously of the state of his family. Some one must talk, but how were they ever to begin? She was the worst person in the world to do it, yet try she must. She began talking over the ride they had taken that day, but Clara was not at her ease enough to ask questions, or make observations, Lionel did not second her, and Mr. Lyddell said no more than "O." Another day she tried giving a history of a call that had been made by some of their neighbors, but nobody would be interested. How could she be so stupid? She almost dreaded dinner time. At last one day, she luckily cast her eyes on the newspaper, and it is a melancholy truth that the sight of a horrid murder gave her a certain degree of satisfaction! She began about it at dinner, when every one talked about it, every one had some view as to the perpetrator, and it really carried them through all dinner time without one dreary tract of silence, and served them on a second day. A second day and a third, for more intelligence came out, and then luckily for her, came a revolution, next a dreadful accident, and at last the habit of talking became so well established that there was no need to look for topics in the newspaper. It was without an effort that she could originate a remark addressed to Mr. Lyddell. Lionel began to shake off his old schoolboy reserves, and rattle on freely. Clara grew more at ease, and Mr. Lyddell began to be entertained, to be drawn into the conversation, and to narrate his day's doings, just as of old when his wife was there, pleased with their interest in them, making explanations, and diverted with Lionel's merry comments. It was however dreary and uncomfortable, with all these vague anxieties for Mrs. Lyddell, and with the whole house in the unsettled state consequent on missing its moving power. The servants had been used to depend on her, and could not go on without her; they teased Clara, and Clara teased Marian about them, no one knew what to do, nor what authority to assume, and the petty vexations were endless that were borne by the two girls rather than annoy Mr. Lyddell; perplexities, doubts whether they were doing what was wise or right by the house or by the servants; Marian's good sense making her judge the right, but her awkwardness, and Clara's incapacity, breaking down in the execution; continual worry and no dignity in it. The loss of Caroline as a companion was severely felt. Marian had not been fully conscious how very closely entwined their hearts had been, how necessary they had grown to each other even before those latter days of full confidence. Every pursuit was mixed up with Caroline, every walk recalled her, every annoyance would have given way at her light touch. There was no one left with whom Marian could have anything like the conversations they had been used to enjoy from almost the earliest days of her coming to Oakworthy. Lionel was indeed a very agreeable companion, nay more, a friend, full of right feeling, principle, good sense, thought, and liveliness; but a younger boy could never make up for the loss of such a friend of her own sex. Each evening as she sat over the fire in her room, her heart ached with longing for Caroline's tap at the door, or with the wish to go and knock at hers, and then the thrill at thinking that there was only gloom and vacancy in her room. Had they but found each other out before! But oh! how much better to think of her as she did of her own parents, added to her store in Paradise, than to see her the wife of that man, unhappy as she must have been unless she had lost all that was excellent and hopeful. These thoughts would comfort Marian when she went up to bed, harassed, weary, disgusted with cares and vexations, and craving for rest and sympathy. She thought of the home that awaited her at Fern Torr, the hope that had carried her through last autumn, but withal came a dim vague perception that a great sacrifice might be before her. Would it be right to seek her own happiness and repose there, and leave the Lyddells to their present distress? She did not think she was of much use, Clara was all-sufficient for her mother, and Marian was rather less liked by Mrs. Lyddell than formerly; but as a support to Clara, as a companion to Lionel, and as some one to talk to Mr. Lyddell, she was not absolutely useless. She had no doubt Clara and Lionel would miss her sadly, indeed it would be unkind to leave them, it would be positively wrong to forsake them when she was of some value, and go where she could not suppose herself to be actually wanted, though she might be loved and cherished. Yet to give up that beloved hope! The vision that had delighted her from the first years of her orphanhood; the hope become tangible beyond all expectations, the wish of her heart. To give up home, Edmund and Agnes, for this weary life! How could she? But it was not worth while to think about it yet, things might change, before they were ready for her, Mrs. Lyddell might recover, Clara and Lionel might grow sufficient for each other, anything might, would or should happen, rather than she would give up her beloved hope of the home she longed for, especially now the house was actually building, and each letter brought her accounts of its progress.

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"Perchance it was ours on life's journey to enter Some path through whose shadows no lovelight was thrown, With heart that could breast the fierce storms of its winter, And gather the wealth of its harvest alone; It is well there are stars in bright heaven to guide us To heights we ne'er dreamt of,--but oh, to forget The fortunes that bar, and the gulfs that divide us From paths that looked lovely, with some we have met." F. BROWNE. Many weeks had passed away, and nothing had changed, in any material way, since the spring. Mrs. Lyddell's condition was still unsatisfactory, and she seemed to be settling into a confirmed state of ill health, and almost of hypochondriacism. So many shocks, following each other in such quick succession, on a person entirely unprepared by nature, experience or self-regulation, had entirely broken her down, and shattered her nerves and spirits in a manner which she seemed less and less like to recover. She was only able to rise late in the day, take a short drive, and after dining in her own room, come down in the evening, if they were alone, and it was a good day with her. No change, neither sea air, nor London advice, had made much difference, and her condition had become so habitual, that her family had ceased to expect any considerable amendment; and it was likely that Clara would, for many years, have full employment as her companion and attendant. Lionel was perfectly, hopelessly blind, but growing reconciled to his misfortune, and habituated to the privation, as well as resigned in will. His natural character, of a high-spirited, joyous, enterprising boy, showed itself still in his independence and fearlessness, joined to cheerfulness, and enlivened the house. He had even gone the length of talking freely and drolly to his father, and Mr. Lyddell had learnt to smile, and even laugh at his fun. There had been fears that the removal to London, for the session of Parliament, would be a great privation to him, since he would miss the wandering about the downs by himself, and the riding with Marian; but his temper and spirits did not fail. He walked every day with her, and was entertained with all he heard, both by his own quick ears, and by her description. They went to exhibitions, where she saw for him, and there were lectures, readings, and other oral amusements, to which his father, or some good-natured friend, would take him. He began to acquire a taste for music, which he had hitherto never cared to hear, and concerts became a great delight to him: though he had not the correct ear, and admirable appreciation of music, that often, in blind persons, seems like a compensation for the loss of the pleasures of the eye. Lady Marchmont became very kind to him. She was thoroughly good natured, and the sight of the blind youth, whose arm Marian held as they walked together, stirred all her kindly feelings. He was gentlemanlike and pleasant looking, and his manner, now divested of schoolboy _brusquerie_, was frank and confiding. Selina was disposed to like him, and to be interested in him. She found, too, that Marian did not like to go out when his amusement was not provided for; so at first for Marian's sake, then for his own, she made him join them when they went to concerts, or to any other amusement that could gratify him. Her bright liveliness and spirited way of talking, won him; and it delighted Marian to see what great friends they became, even to the length of laughing over the old Wreath of Beauty story together. And when at length she was brought, of her own accord, in some degree to patronise Clara, it was a triumph indeed; and Mrs. Lyddell was more obliged to Marian than for all the real benefits she had conferred, when she saw Clara dressed to go to a party at Lady Marchmont's. All this time Marian was becoming more and more a prey to that secret doubt, whether it might not be a duty to give up her cherished hope of a home at Fern Torr. She did not see how she could be spared. Clara was an admirable attendant on her mother, and was becoming a better mistress of the house; but she was not able to be at the same time a companion to her father and Lionel, and, poor girl, she would be very forlorn and much at a loss, without Marian's elder sisterhood; for the sense of help and reliance that Marian's presence gave her was little less. For her to go away, would be to bring home to Clara the loss of Caroline more than she had ever been left to feel it. Yet, on the other hand, Clara was no companion. They talked, indeed, but they never discussed,--never had any interchange of higher sympathies or reflections; it was not getting beyond the immediate matter in hand; and often Marian, would be sensible that, if her own pleasure were consulted, a walk or ride, with her thoughts free to range in meditation or day-dream, was preferable to Clara's chatter. Her own pleasure,--that she enjoyed but little, and less now than ever, for her time was never her own. There was Lionel on her hands almost every day, to be read to, or walked with; and if he went out with his father, or spent an hour in his mother's room, there was Clara wanting her quite as much, for gossip, exercise, or consultation. Mrs. Lyddell, too, must be visited; for though Marian was not the most beloved, or most welcome person in the world, yet a change of society and conversation was desirable, both for her sake and Clara's; so more than two hours every day were spent in her sitting-room. Then, in the evening, Marian's thoughts and ears must be free for Mr. Lyddell and Lionel. All her own pursuits were at an end, she had hardly touched a pencil the whole year, nor opened a German book, nor indeed any book, excepting what she read to Lionel, and these were many. She was very seldom able to enjoy the luxury of being alone; she could hardly even write her letters, except by sitting up for them; and even the valuable hour before midnight was not certain to be her own, for if Clara had no other time to pour out her cares, she used to come then, and linger in her cousin's room, reiterating petty perplexities, endless in detail. How delightful to escape from all this, to quietness, peace, freedom from her own cares and other people's,--Fern Torr air and scenery, Edmund and Agnes for companions, and liberty to teach school children, go about among her own people, do good in her own way, and enjoy her own studies. It was like a captive longing to be set free,--a wanderer in sight of home. But the captive paused on the threshold of the dungeon; the wanderer stood still on the brow of the last hill. Marian paced up and down her own room, and thought and reasoned half aloud,-- "Sweet is the smile of home, the mutual look, When hearts are of each other sure; Sweet all the joys that crown the household nook, The haunt of all affections pure: Yet in the world even these abide, and we Above the world our calling boast." "And I am making them the world, if for their sake I give up what my conscience calls on me to do. I know, though I do little good here, my going away would make them more uncomfortable. Have I any right to seek my pleasure? But I should do more good there; I should go to school, read to the poor people, go to Church in the week, be more improved myself. O that home of peace and joy! And Gerald--my first duty is to him. But what harm would it do him? I could go home for his holidays. I must not deceive myself; I have been put in the way of positive duties here, or rather, ways of being useful have grown up round me. Is it right to run away from them,--poor Lionel, poor Clara! Would not every weary hour of Lionel's--every time Clara was teased, and teased her father,--be my fault? But how Edmund and Agnes will be disappointed! --they who will have been throwing away so much kind care! O you goose of a Marian! are you going to fancy it is for your sake that they mean to marry? don't you think they can do very well without you? How very silly to be sorry that it must be so! --how very, very silly! And even Gerald will marry one of these days, and will not want me; and shall I always be alone then? For as to that other sort of affection, I am sure it is quite certain that I can never care for any body enough to marry,--never half as well as for Gerald. No, no one will ever love me as I do others; every one has some one nearer to them; a lonely life, and never a home! Well, then there is a home somewhere else, and those who made my earthly home are waiting for me there, in the Land of the Leal." Such was the tenor of Marian's oft-repeated musings. The practical result was a resolution to consult Edmund when she should go to Fern Torr to his wedding, early in August. She could not write her pros and cons, but to Edmund she could tell them, and trust to him as a just and impartial judge; and if Agnes was angry, it would serve them, thought Marian, smiling, for a quarrel, for they won't have many other chances of one. However, the time drew on when, behold, every one's calculations were disturbed by a sudden dissolution of Parliament. Hitherto such events had not made much difference to the Lyddells; as Mr. Lyddell's election had been, for the last twenty years, unopposed; and the only doubt at present was, whether he thought it worth while to stand again, considering that he was growing old and weary of business, and besides could not well afford the London house. He had been hinting something of the kind to Lionel and Marian in the evening, as a matter under consideration and they had heard it with joy, when the next morning made a sudden change in affairs, by bringing tidings that Mr. Faulkner was soliciting the votes of Mr. Lyddell's constituents on the opposite interest, taking the wrong side of the question,--a most important one, upon which the dissolution had taken place. Here was indignation indeed. There was something so unfeeling in such a proceeding, on his part, that the mildest word spoken against him was Marian's, and that was "atrocious." To give up was one thing, to be thus turned out was quite another; and it was clearly right to the moral sense, as well as satisfactory to the indignant temper, that Mr. Lyddell should oppose "to the last gasp," as the furious Lionel expressed it, one who espoused principles so pernicious both in politics and religion. One thing was certain, that nobody would ever wish again that Caroline had married him. Ill as Mr. Lyddell could afford the expense of a contested election, his blood was up, and he was determined not to yield an inch. Never had Marian believed she could grow so vehement about anything that concerned him, but now her whole soul seemed to be in his success. He had always been on the right side; and now that a steadily growing sense of religion was influencing all his actions, he was just the fit person for his position, and Marian could, on principle, wish earnestly to see him retain it, for his own sake, as well as to keep out Mr. Faulkner. But, alas! poor Marian, that the ministers should have chosen this precise time, so as just to bring the election the very week of Edmund's wedding! What was to be done? Mrs. Lyddell could not believe that an election would go on right without dinner-parties of every visitable individual in the county; and how was Clara to manage them all? Mrs. Lyddell's only experiment, in coming into the room when there was company, had done her so much harm, that it was not on any account to be repeated; and her restlessness and anxiety,--her persuasion that nothing could be done well in which she was not concerned,--made the keeping her quiet a more anxious business than even the receiving company. There was Mr. Lyddell wanting to have lists written, and needing all sorts of small helps to which he had been used from his active wife; everything came on the two girls, and Marian did not see how she could be spared even for the three days it would take to go to the wedding. Perhaps that excitement about the election would have somewhat dulled the acuteness of the sacrifice, if it had not been for what was to come after it. The die must be cast without consultation with Edmund; she must write and tell them that their kind design for her was in vain. Gerald was at Oakworthy for the first week of his holidays, and he was the only person she could call to hold council with her. She had some difficulty in catching him; for he was galloping about with messages all day, figuring to himself that he produced a grand effect in the canvass,--making caricatures, describing them to Lionel, and conducting him wherever he was not expected to be seen. However, catch him she did, at bed-time, and pulling him into her room, propounded her difficulty. "Gerald, I don't see how I am ever to manage to go with you to their wedding." Ha? don't you? Well, it would be a pity to lose the nomination-day, and the show of hands; I should travel all night to be in time, but you could not, I suppose?" "I? why you don't think I should go to it?" "Lionel will--I am to take care of Lionel. Can't you go? What a bore it must be to be a woman! Well, then, why don't you come to the wedding?" "Because I think Clara will get into such a fuss, if there is no one to help her at the dinner the evening before. There is Mrs. Pringle coming to dine and sleep, so it can't be only a gentleman's party: and there is so much to do." "Whew! it will be very stupid of you not to come; and how Agnes will scold! But I suppose yen can't be everywhere. One would give up something for the sake of beating such a rogue as that Faulkner." "If we were but sure of doing it." "Sure! Why we shall smash him to shivers, if one fortieth part of the people are but as good as their word. Did I tell you, Marian, how I answered that old farmer to-day?" &c., &c., all which Marian had to hear, before she could get him back to the matter in hand. "I am almost sorry to give up those three days," he said, "though it is for their wedding; but you see, Marian," and the boy spoke with his air of consequence, "I think it is expected of me, and they would all be disappointed. It would not look as if it was well between Edmund and mo, if I was not present; but you can please yourself, you know." "Yes, yes, you could not stay away," said Marian; "I should be very sorry that you should. You must go." "And if I come away that afternoon, I may be back by the mail train by one at night, and be in time for the show of hands. Hurrah! I've a'mind to write to Jemmy, to buy up all the rotten eggs in Fern Torr." "You wild animal! But do be sensible a little while, Gerald, for I have something serious to ask your advice upon." "Well,"--and all the wisdom of sixteen was at her service. "I want to know what you think about my living here, or at Fern Torr?" "Hollo! why I thought it was settled long ago that you were to live at the Quarry with them." "So it was; but I don't know whether I am not more wanted here than there." "You don't mean that that have changed their mind, and don't want to have you?" "Not a bit--O dear, no! but I think, somehow, Clara and Lionel find me of more use than they would." "To be sure, this place would be in a pretty tolerable sort of a mess without you. I don't know how any of them would get on." "Well, then, I wanted your opinion, Gerald; I had better tell Edmund and Agnes that I ought to stay on here." "But what am I to do? I mean to be at Fern Torr in the holidays, I assure you, except a week or two, just to see Lionel; and I don't mean to have my holidays without you, I declare!" "O, I hope always to come home for them." "Why, then, if I have you when I am at home, I don't care,--I mean--" said Gerald, conscious of the egotism he was committing, "I mean you don't like it half so well, do you?" "O no--I mean--I don't know--" "Which do you mean?" "I don't know--at least, of course, I had rather be with Edmund and Agnes than anybody else, except you; but then, if I was thinking Lionel had no one to read to him, or to ride with, or that Mrs. Lyddell was worse, and Clara unhappy, I could hardly enjoy it." "You would not think so much about it if you were away from them." "Perhaps not, but it would be the same, and it would haunt me at night." "But, Marian, you can't give up Edmund and Agnes now they have built a room for you." "I must have it when I come for your holidays." "Well, you must do as you please," said Gerald. "And you won't be vexed?" "Vexed! Why should I? It is nothing to me, if I have you when I am at home; and, indeed, I don't see what poor Lionel would do without you. I suppose it is the best way, since you like it; only you must settle it with Agnes your own way. I shall tell her it is not my fault. Won't she be in a rage, that's all!" With which sentence Sir Gerald's acquiescence was conveyed, with little perception of the struggle in his sister's mind, and of the pain and grief it was to her to write to her cousin and friend, begging them to release her from her promise. As to the rest of the house, they never appeared to think at all about her quitting them; or if Clara and Lionel did, perchance, remember that it had been spoken of, they hoped it had blown over, and dreaded the revival of the idea too much to refer to it. Not one of the whole family guessed that to them was sacrificed the most treasured project of Marian's life. She had made up her mind, but she could not bear to write to tell her friend that her plans were frustrated; so it was to Edmund that she wrote the full detail of her reasons and regrets, begging him to forgive her, and to make her peace with Agnes; while she begged Mrs. Wortley to excuse her for missing the wedding. Edmund's answer was just what she wished, and indeed expected. "You are right," he said, "and it is of no use to tell you how sorry we are. It is impossible to be so selfish as to wish you to act otherwise, and in process of time you may perhaps obtain Agnes' pardon: in the mean time we never walk to the Quarry, without her abusing you for giving so much trouble for nothing. I would only advise one thing, namely, that you make no promise nor engagement respecting your place of residence, since circumstances may alter; and you had better not feel yourself bound. With this proviso we resign you to your own judgment, and to the place where you seem indeed at present to be most wanted." So wrote Edmund: Agnes did not write at all. Marian announced that she had given up going to the wedding. Clara was sorry she should miss it, but could not guess how she should have managed without her; and no one else had leisure to think at all, or else considered it quite as a matter of course that site should not go away when she was wanted. If any one had, seven years, or even one year ago, told Marian how she would spend that bridal day, her incredulity would have been complete. So absorbed was she in Mr. Lyddell's election affairs that she hardly had time to think about it, between hopes and alarms, doubts and intelligence, visitors and preparations, notes to be written and papers to be found, Clara to be helped, Mrs. Lyddell to be kept quiet, Lionel's news to hear, the dinner party to be entertained. Very differently had Marian now learnt to sit in company from former days. She had a motive now, in the wish to help Clara, and all her distant coldness had melted into a quiet, kind, obliging manner, which had taught her to take genuine interest even in common-place people, and caused it to be said that Miss Arundel had ceased to be shy and haughty. It was all one whirl, leaving no time for sitting down, and still less for musing. Lionel went indeed with his father to the committee-room, and was there half the day; for his services were wonderful, and particularly his memory for names and places, to which Mr. Lyddell declared he would rather trust than to any memorandum. He was thus out of Marian's way all the morning, but there was enough to occupy her without him, and in the afternoon he came home, full of news, and especially full of glory, in a conquest of his own, a doubtful voter, whom he had recollected, and undertaken to secure, had made the servant drive him round that way, canvassed on his own account, and obtained a promise, extracted as Marian suspected, by admiration of the blind young gentleman's high spirit and independence. Mr. Lyddell was particularly delighted; when became home very late, just before the eight o'clock dinner, he came up into his wife's room, and told her the whole story, told Marian all over again on the stairs, and told it a third time to some of the dinner guests, before Lionel came down. Marian saw he valued that vote above all the rest. Busy as the day had been, Marian was resolved to sit up till her brother's return at two o'clock in the morning, to hear his tidings, and she expected to enjoy the space for thinking; but the thoughts would not be settled, and instead of dwelling on Edmund and Agnes, she found herself continually going back to the voters' list, and counting up the forces on each side. Then she grew sleepy, and fell into a long musing dream of shapeless fancies, woke herself, tried to write to Agnes, and went off into her former vision of felicity in the house at the Quarry, which she indulged in, forgetting that she had renounced it. At last came the sounds of a carriage, and of opening doors. She met Gerald on the stairs, but he was sleepy and would say little. "It had all gone off very well--yes--nobody cried--he had a bit of wedding-cake for her, and here was a note, she should hear all about it another time;"--yawn, and he shut himself into his own room. That was all Marian obtained by her vigil. You, there was the note, put in with the wedding cards. "MY DEAR MARIAN,--I can't relieve my mind by scolding you, and I don't know what else you have a right to expect after the way you have treated us. They tell me I must write, and I have not a word to say, though I always promised you should have the first letter from "Your affectionate cousin, "AGNES ARUNDEL." Wild as ever, thought Marian, as a little disappointed, she laid down the note, but she understood how Agnes had felt obliged to write, in hurry and agitation, and just because she felt deeply, had been unable to express herself otherwise than what some people would call foolishly and unsuitably. There was not much more of the wedding to be heard from Gerald the next morning, for he was full of the nomination, and proud of having Lionel under his especial charge. This day was as wild a bustle as the former one, and there was still more excitement in the evening. Of course the show of hands had been in favour of Mr. Faulkner, of course he and his proposer and seconder had behaved one only more disgracefully than the other, of course the rabble bad behaved shamefully, and the boys were almost beside themselves with wrath; and besides the details of all these matters-of-course, the boys had adventures of their own, for somehow Gerald and Lionel had been left in the midst of a vituperative mob, out of which Gerald had brought off his companion in a most spirited and successful way, without letting any one discover Lionel's blindness, which would have been the most efficient protection for both. Again and again Marian was told of the gallant way in which both boys had conducted themselves, and proud and pleased was she. Mr. Lyddell lost his seat, and the boys were half mad, a hundred times more concerned than he was himself, while Marian moralized to herself on why it was allowed to happen that he should be set aside from public life, just when he would have begun to act on truly sound principles. And yet perhaps the leisure he thus obtained, and the seclusion from the whirl of politics were the very things he needed, to draw him entirely apart from the world which had so long engrossed him. It was about sis weeks after this that Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Arundel, in acceptance of a warm invitation from Mr. Lyddell, were driving along the white road leading to Oakworthy, after a very pleasant visit to the Marchmonts, when Selina had treated Agnes so affectionately, as to cause her to forget all past neglect, and had, as Edmund said, scaled their friendship, by raving at Marian's decision, "It was too bad," said she, "when they had given up London,--the only thing that made it tolerable." To which, however, Agnes did not quite agree. "And now," said she, "I shall see whether Marian is happy." "I don't believe you wish her to be so," said Edmund. "No, I am not quite so spiteful," rejoined Agnes, "but in order to forgive her, I must think it a very great sacrifice." "And have a marvellously high estimate of our two selves," said Edmund. "What do I see?" said Agnes. "Look at those two people riding on the down up there against the sky, don't you see their figures? It is a lady. Gould it be Marian? No, she is riding so close to the other--he can't be a servant." "Lionel, I suspect," said Edmund. "The poor blind boy! O surely she does not ride alone with him! O what a pretty cantering on the turf. It is really Marian, I see now. How I do like to see her ride." A moment or two more, and descending from the high green slope, the two riders were on the road meeting the carriage. Marian looked her best on horseback, with her excellent seat, and easy, fearless manner, her little hat and feathers became her fine features, and the air and exercise gave them animation, which made her more like a picture of Velasquez and less like a Grecian statue than she was at any other time. Lionel rode almost close to her, a bright glow of sunshine on his lively face, and a dexterity and quickness in his whole air that made Agnes hesitate for a second or two, whether he could really be the blind youth. A joyous "How d'ye do?" was called out on each side. "Well, Lionel," then said Edmund, "are you quite well?" "O yes, thank you," replied a gay voice, "we thought we would see if we could not meet you." "We rode over the down," said Marian, "and we are going back the same way. We shall be at home as soon as you are. Good-bye. To the right, Lionel." And they were seen trotting up the hill again, then as the carriage came in sight of the front door, there was Lionel jumping Marian down from her saddle. Agnes did not know how to believe that he could not see, as she watched his upright bearing, and rapid, fearless step, so unlike the groping ways of persons who have lost their sight later in life. Clara presently came down, and Agnes was struck with her more thoughtful face, and collected manner, so unlike the giddy child she had last seen, not intellectual indeed, but quiet, lady-like, and sensible. And as to Mr. Lyddell, he looked so worn and so much older, so subdued in manner, and so free from those over civilities of former times, that Agnes made up her mind that he must not be hated. Of Mrs. Lyddell she saw very little, only sitting in her room for an hour each morning, as a visitor, but it was evident she was very much out of health, and a great charge to them all. Agnes could be sorry for her, but could not like her while she did not speak more cordially of Marian. All praise of her had something forced and against the grain, and Agnes thought her intensely ungrateful. Lionel interested Agnes extremely, with his happy, independent ways, unrepining temper and spirit of enterprise. He was always eager about some contrivance of his own, and just at this time it was wood-carving. His left hand showed as much sticking-plaster as skin, and he used to come into the drawing-room with it wrapped up in his handkerchief and say, "Here's another, Marian," when Marian very quietly produced her sticking-plaster, as if it was quite an ordinary matter; nay, would not follow up the suggestion that he should not have so sharp a knife, saying that it was much better to cut one's finger with a sharp knife than a blunt one. He had cut about twenty bits of wood to waste, to say nothing of hands, but he persevered with amusing energy, and before the end of the visit had achieved a capital old man's head for the top of a walking stick, which he presented to Edmund. He promised Agnes a set of silk winders, and in the mean time made great friends with her, getting her to tell him about her brother's sporting adventures, and in return making himself very amusing with relations out of his sailor brother's letters. Johnny had been concerned in the great exploit of climbing the Peter Bottle mountain, and Lionel was as proud of it as if he had done it himself, making Marian show everybody a drawing which Gerald had made of the appearance that Johnny must have cut, standing on one leg on the highest stone. They were also struck with the change in the manner in which Walter was regarded, and the pride and affection with which all the family spoke of his doings at his curacy. But that Marian, though not prominent, and apparently merely a guest, was necessary to the comfort of each member of the family, was a thing that at the end of a fortnight, Agnes could not deny. Nor could she attempt to make up a case to show that she and her husband were equally in want of her. "So, Marian," said she, as they parted, "I forgive you on condition of your spending Christmas with us." "And I ought to forgive you," said Edmund, "in consideration of the fulfilment of my prediction that you would not be able to leave the Lyddells when I was ready to receive you." Marian smiled, and watched them from the door. As they lost sight of the house, Edmund turned to his wife, saying, "How little we are fit to order events! Here, Agnes, I looked back at this house six years ago in a sort of despair. I was ready to reproach Providence, to reproach everything. I thought I saw my uncle's children in the way to be ruined, all his work undone, and there was I, unable to act, and yet with the responsibility of the care of them. I tell you, Agnes, I never was so wretched in my life. And yet what short-sightedness! There has Marian been, placed, like a witness of the truth, calm, firm, constant, guarding herself and her brother first, and then softening, and winning all that came under her influence." "Oh! but, Edmund, your coming home saved Gerald," said the wife, who could not see her husband's credit given away even to Marian. "I brought the experience and authority that she could not have, but vain would have been my attempts without the sense of right she had always kept up in his mind. Trouble has done much for those Lyddells, but I don't believe that without her, it would have had that effect: When I remember what Mr. Lyddell was, his carelessness, the painful manner in which he used to talk; when I see him now, when I think of what that poor Caroline was saved from, when I see the alteration in Clara, and watch that blind boy, then I see indeed that our little Marian, whom we thought thrown away and spoilt, was sent there to be a blessing. If she had been naturally a winning, gentle, persuasive person, I should have thought less of the wonder; but in her it is the simple force of goodness, undecorated. I once feared the constant opposition in which she lived, would harden her, but instead, she has softened, sweetened, and lost all that was hard and haughty in her ways, when it was no longer needed for a protection. Selina Marchmont has failed too in giving her the exclusive spirit which I once feared for her. It is as if she had a spell for passing through the world unscathed." "And you think she is happy?" "As happy as those that never look for their happiness in this world." Agnes sighed. "My vision has always been," said she, "to see Marian as happy as--ourselves." "She may be yet," said Edmund smiling, "but she has the best sort of happiness. She is in less danger of clinging to this world than we are. And somehow she gives me the impression of one too high and noble to seek her happiness in the way in which most people look for it. Yes, we ourselves, Agnes, we have a nest and home in this world; she stands above it, and her only relation with it is to make others happy." "She little thinks how we talk of her," said Agnes. "And still stranger it is, that with the reverence I have for her, I can play with her and scold her." A silence; ending with Agnes repeating, "GOOD LORD, through this world's troubled way Thy children's course secure; And lead them onward day by day, Kindly like Thee and pure. "Be theirs to do Thy work of love, All erring souls to win; Amid a sinful world to move, Yet give no smile to sin."

1

THE VERDURER’S LODGE

“Give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament, with that I will go buy me fortunes.” “Get you with him, you old dog.” _As You Like It_. THE officials of the New Forest have ever since the days of the Conqueror enjoyed some of the pleasantest dwellings that southern England can boast. The home of the Birkenholt family was not one of the least delightful. It stood at the foot of a rising ground, on which grew a grove of magnificent beeches, their large silvery boles rising majestically like columns into a lofty vaulting of branches, covered above with tender green foliage. Here and there the shade beneath was broken by the gilding of a ray of sunshine on a lower twig, or on a white trunk, but the floor of the vast arcades was almost entirely of the russet brown of the fallen leaves, save where a fern or holly bush made a spot of green. At the foot of the slope lay a stretch of pasture ground, some parts covered by “lady-smocks, all silver white,” with the course of the little stream through the midst indicated by a perfect golden river of shining kingcups interspersed with ferns. Beyond lay tracts of brown heath and brilliant gorse and broom, which stretched for miles and miles along the flats, while the dry ground was covered with holly brake, and here and there woods of oak and beech made a sea of verdure, purpling in the distance. Cultivation was not attempted, but hardy little ponies, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs were feeding, and picking their way about in the marshy mead below, and a small garden of pot-herbs, inclosed by a strong fence of timber, lay on the sunny side of a spacious rambling forest lodge, only one story high, built of solid timber and roofed with shingle. It was not without strong pretensions to beauty, as well as to picturesqueness, for the posts of the door, the architecture of the deep porch, the frames of the latticed windows, and the verge boards were all richly carved in grotesque devices. Over the door was the royal shield, between a pair of magnificent antlers, the spoils of a deer reported to have been slain by King Edward IV., as was denoted by the “glorious sun of York” carved beneath the shield. In the background among the trees were ranges of stables and kennels, and on the grass-plat in front of the windows was a row of beehives. A tame doe lay on the little green sward, not far from a large rough deer-hound, both close friends who could be trusted at large. There was a mournful dispirited look about the hound, evidently an aged animal, for the once black muzzle was touched with grey, and there was a film over one of the keen beautiful eyes, which opened eagerly as he pricked his ears and lifted his head at the rattle of the door latch. Then, as two boys came out, he rose, and with a slowly waving tail, and a wistful appealing air, came and laid his head against one of the pair who had appeared in the porch. They were lads of fourteen and fifteen, clad in suits of new mourning, with the short belted doublet, puffed hose, small ruffs and little round caps of early Tudor times. They had dark eyes and hair, and honest open faces, the younger ruddy and sunburnt, the elder thinner and more intellectual—and they were so much the same size that the advantage of age was always supposed to be on the side of Stephen, though he was really the junior by nearly a year. Both were sad and grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed traces of recent floods of tears, though there was more settled dejection on the countenance of his brother. “Ay, Spring,” said the lad, “’tis winter with thee now. A poor old rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old Spring, thou shalt share thy master’s fortunes, changed though they be. Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!” And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and sobbed. “Come, Stephen, Stephen; ’tis time to play the man! What are we to do out in the world if you weep and wail?” “She might have let us stay for the month’s mind,” was heard from Stephen. “Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I.” “There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part—” “Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant to seek your fortune—not bide here like an acorn for ever.” “I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father’s burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-souled—” “Hist! hist!” said the more prudent Ambrose. “Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done! All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in his grave,” cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his passionate sense of wrong. “That’s womanish,” said Ambrose. “Who’ll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?” cried Stephen, sitting up. At that moment there came through the porch a man, a few years over thirty, likewise in mourning, with a paler, sharper countenance than the brothers, and an uncomfortable pleading expression of self-justification. “How now, lads!” he said, “what means this passion? You have taken the matter too hastily. There was no thought that ye should part till you had some purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on here, so he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach little Will his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule your tongue better than Stephen.” “Thanks, brother John,” said Ambrose, somewhat sarcastically, “but where Stephen goes I go.” “I would—I would have found Stephen a place among the prickers or rangers, if—” hesitated John. “In sooth, I would yet do it, if he would make it up with the housewife.” “My father looked higher for his son than a pricker’s office,” returned Ambrose. “That do I wot,” said John, “and therefore, ’tis for his own good that I would send him forth. His godfather, our uncle Birkenholt, he will assuredly provide for him, and set him forth—” The door of the house was opened, and a shrewish voice cried, “Mr. Birkenholt—here, husband! You are wanted. Here’s little Kate crying to have yonder smooth pouch to stroke, and I cannot reach it for her.” “Father set store by that otter-skin pouch, for poor Prince Arthur slew the otter,” cried Stephen. “Surely, John, you’ll not let the babes make a toy of that?” John made a helpless gesture, and at a renewed call, went indoors. “You are right, Ambrose,” said Stephen, “this is no place for us. Why should we tarry any longer to see everything moiled and set at nought? I have couched in the forest before, and ’tis summer time.” “Nay,” said Ambrose, “we must make up our fardels and have our money in our pouches before we can depart. We must tarry the night, and call John to his reckoning, and so might we set forth early enough in the morning to lie at Winchester that night and take counsel with our uncle Birkenholt.” “I would not stop short at Winchester,” said Stephen. “London for me, where uncle Randall will find us preferment!” “And what wilt do for Spring!” “Take him with me, of course!” exclaimed Stephen. “What! would I leave him to be kicked and pinched by Will, and hanged belike by Mistress Maud?” “I doubt me whether the poor old hound will brook the journey.” “Then I’ll carry him!” Ambrose looked at the big dog as if he thought it would be a serious undertaking, but he had known and loved Spring as his brother’s property ever since his memory began, and he scarcely felt that they could be separable for weal or woe. The verdurers of the New Forest were of gentle blood, and their office was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother had been of knightly lineage, had resented his father’s second marriage with the daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected of a strain of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a sort of agent at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest duties. Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early spring of 1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a patrimony, bringing his wife and children with him. The funeral ceremonies had been conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive scale of the sixteenth century, the requiem, the feast, and the dole, all taking place there, leaving the Forest lodge in its ordinary quiet. It had always been understood that on their father’s death the two younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped to live until they were a little older, when he might himself have started them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to their elder brother. As it was, however, there was no commendation of them, nothing but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of Beaulieu, leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels and properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to their brother. There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in which Stephen’s efficiency—boy as he was—was evidently held by the plain-spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress Birkenholt’s dislike to the presence of her husband’s half-brothers, whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist. Matters were brought to a climax by old Spring’s resentment at being roughly teased by her spoilt children. He had done nothing worse than growl and show his teeth, but the town-bred dame had taken alarm, and half in terror, half in spite, had insisted on his instant execution, since he was too old to be valuable. Stephen, who loved the dog only less than he loved his brother Ambrose, had come to high words with her; and the end of the altercation had been that she had declared that she would suffer no great lubbers of the half-blood to devour her children’s inheritance, and teach them ill manners, and that go they must, and that instantly. John had muttered a little about “not so fast, dame,” and “for very shame,” but she had turned on him, and rated him with a violence that demonstrated who was ruler in the house, and took away all disposition to tarry long under the new dynasty. The boys possessed two uncles, one on each side of the house. Their father’s elder brother had been a man-at-arms, having preferred a stirring life to the Forest, and had fought in the last surges of the Wars of the Roses. Having become disabled and infirm, he had taken advantage of a corrody, or right of maintenance, as being of kin to a benefactor of Hyde Abbey at Winchester, to which Birkenholt some generations back had presented a few roods of land, in right of which, one descendant at a time might be maintained in the Abbey. Intelligence of his brother’s death had been sent to Richard Birkenholt, but answer had been returned that he was too evil-disposed with the gout to attend the burial. The other uncle, Harry Randall, had disappeared from the country under a cloud connected with the king’s deer, leaving behind him the reputation of a careless, thriftless, jovial fellow, the best company in all the Forest, and capable of doing every one’s work save his own. The two brothers, who were about seven and six years old at the time of his flight, had a lively recollection of his charms as a playmate, and of their mother’s grief for him, and refusal to believe any ill of her Hal. Rumours had come of his attainment to vague and unknown greatness at court, under the patronage of the Lord Archbishop of York, which the Verdurer laughed to scorn, though his wife gave credit to them. Gifts had come from time to time, passed through a succession of servants and officials of the king, such as a coral and silver rosary, a jewelled bodkin, an agate carved with St. Catherine, an ivory pouncet box with a pierced gold coin as the lid; but no letter with them, as indeed Hal Randall had never been induced to learn to read or write. Master Birkenholt looked doubtfully at the tokens and hoped Hal had come honestly by them; but his wife had thoroughly imbued her sons with the belief that Uncle Hal was shining in his proper sphere, where he was better appreciated than at home. Thus their one plan was to go to London to find Uncle Hal, who was sure to put Stephen on the road to fortune, and enable Ambrose to become a great scholar, his favourite ambition. His gifts would, as Ambrose observed, serve them as tokens, and with the purpose of claiming them, they re-entered the hall, a long low room, with a handsome open roof, and walls tapestried with dressed skins, interspersed with antlers, hung with weapons of the chase. At one end of the hall was a small polished barrel, always replenished with beer, at the other a hearth with a wood fire constantly burning, and there was a table running the whole length of the room; at one end of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child’s feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle at a little distance. “Brother,” said Stephen, “we have thought on what you said. We will put our stuff together, and if you will count us out our portions, we will be afoot by sunrise to-morrow.” “Nay, nay, lad, I said not there was such haste; did I, mistress housewife?” —(she snorted); “only that thou art a well-grown lusty fellow, and ’tis time thou wentest forth. For thee, Ambrose, thou wottest I made thee a fair offer of bed and board.” “That is,” called out the wife, “if thou wilt make a fair scholar of little Will. ’Tis a mighty good offer. There are not many who would let their child be taught by a mere stripling like thee!” “Nay,” said Ambrose, who could not bring himself to thank her, “I go with Stephen, mistress; I would mend my scholarship ere I teach.” “As you please,” said Mistress Maud, shrugging her shoulders, “only never say that a fair offer was not made to you.” “And,” said Stephen, “so please you, brother John, hand us over our portions, and the jewels as bequeathed to us, and we will be gone.” “Portions, quotha?” returned John. “Boy, they be not due to you till you be come to years of discretion.” The brothers looked at one another, and Stephen said, “Nay, now, brother, I know not how that may be, but I do know that you cannot drive us from our father’s house without maintenance, and detain what belongs to us.” And Ambrose muttered something about “my Lord of Beaulieu.” “Look you, now,” said John, “did I ever speak of driving you from home without maintenance? Hath not Ambrose had his choice of staying here, and Stephen of waiting till some office be found for him? As for putting forty crowns into the hands of striplings like you, it were mere throwing it to the robbers.” “That being so,” said Ambrose turning to Stephen, “we will to Beaulieu, and see what counsel my lord will give us.” “Yea, do, like the vipers ye are, and embroil us with my Lord of Beaulieu,” cried Maud from the fire. “See,” said John, in his more caressing fashion, “it is not well to carry family tales to strangers, and—and—” He was disconcerted by a laugh from the old nurse, “Ho! John Birkenholt, thou wast ever a lad of smooth tongue, but an thou, or madam here, think that thy brothers can be put forth from thy father’s door without their due before the good man be cold in his grave, and the Forest not ring with it, thou art mightily out in thy reckoning!” “Peace, thou old hag; what matter is’t of thine?” began Mistress Maud, but again came the harsh laugh. “Matter of mine! Why, whose matter should it be but mine, that have nursed all three of the lads, ay, and their father before them, besides four more that lie in the graveyard at Beaulieu? Rest their sweet souls! And I tell thee, Master John, an thou do not righteously by these thy brothers, thou mayst back to thy parchments at Southampton, for not a man or beast in the Forest will give thee good day.” They all felt the old woman’s authority. She was able and spirited in her homely way, and more mistress of the house than Mrs. Birkenholt herself; and such were the terms of domestic service, that there was no peril of losing her place. Even Maud knew that to turn her out was an impossibility, and that she must be accepted like the loneliness, damp, and other evils of Forest life. John had been under her dominion, and proceeded to persuade her. “Good now, Nurse Joan, what have I denied these rash striplings that my father would have granted them? Wouldst thou have them carry all their portion in their hands, to be cozened of it at the first ale-house, or robbed on the next heath?” “I would have thee do a brother’s honest part, John Birkenholt. A loving part I say not. Thou wert always like a very popple for hardness, and smoothness, ay, and slipperiness. Heigh ho! But what is right by the lads, thou _shalt_ do.” John cowered under her eye as he had done at six years old, and faltered, “I only seek to do them right, nurse.” Nurse Joan uttered an emphatic grunt, but Mistress Maud broke in, “They are not to hang about here in idleness, eating my poor child’s substance, and teaching him ill manners.” “We would not stay here if you paid us for it,” returned Stephen. “And whither would you go?” asked John. “To Winchester first, to seek counsel with our uncle Birkenholt. Then to London, where uncle Randall will help us to our fortunes.” “Gipsy Hal! He is more like to help you to a halter,” sneered John, _sotto voce_, and Joan herself observed, “Their uncle at Winchester will show them better than to run after that there go-by-chance.” However, as no one wished to keep the youths, and they were equally determined to go, an accommodation was come to at last. John was induced to give them three crowns apiece and to yield them up the five small trinkets specified, though not without some murmurs from his wife. It was no doubt safer to leave the rest of the money in his hands than to carry it with them, and he undertook that it should be forthcoming, if needed for any fit purpose, such as the purchase of an office, an apprentice’s fee, or an outfit as a squire. It was a vague promise that cost him nothing just then, and thus could be readily made, and John’s great desire was to get them away so that he could aver that they had gone by their own free will, without any hardship, for he had seen enough at his father’s obsequies to show him that the love and sympathy of all the scanty dwellers in the Forest was with them. Nurse Joan had fought their battles, but with the sore heart of one who was parting with her darlings never to see them again. She bade them doff their suits of mourning that she might make up their fardels, as they would travel in their Lincoln-green suits. To take these she repaired to the little rough shed-like chamber where the two brothers lay for the last time on their pallet bed, awake, and watching for her, with Spring at their feet. The poor old woman stood over them, as over the motherless nurslings whom she had tended, and she should probably never see more, but she was a woman of shrewd sense, and perceived that “with the new madam in the hall” it was better that they should be gone before worse ensued. She advised leaving their valuables sealed up in the hands of my Lord Abbot, but they were averse to this—for they said their uncle Randall, who had not seen them since they were little children, would not know them without some pledge. She shook her head. “The less you deal with Hal Randall the better,” she said. “Come now, lads, be advised and go no farther than Winchester, where Master Ambrose may get all the book-learning he is ever craving for, and you, Master Steevie, may prentice yourself to some good trade.” “Prentice!” cried Stephen, scornfully. “Ay, ay. As good blood as thine has been prenticed,” returned Joan. “Better so than be a cut-throat sword-and-buckler fellow, ever slaying some one else or getting thyself slain—a terror to all peaceful folk. But thine uncle will see to that—a steady-minded lad always was he—was Master Dick.” Consoling herself with this hope, the old woman rolled up their new suits with some linen into two neat knapsacks; sighing over the thought that unaccustomed fingers would deal with the shirts she had spun, bleached, and sewn. But she had confidence in “Master Dick,” and concluded that to send his nephews to him at Winchester gave a far better chance of their being cared for, than letting them be flouted into ill-doing by their grudging brother and his wife.

2

THE GRANGE OF SILKSTEDE

“All Itchen’s valley lay, St. Catherine’s breezy side and the woodlands far away, The huge Cathedral sleeping in venerable gloom, The modest College tower, and the bedesmen’s Norman home.” LORD SELBORNE. VERY early in the morning, even according to the habits of the time, were Stephen and Ambrose Birkenholt astir. They were full of ardour to enter on the new and unknown world beyond the Forest, and much as they loved it, any change that kept them still to their altered life would have been distasteful. Nurse Joan, asking no questions, folded up their fardels on their backs, and packed the wallets for their day’s journey with ample provision. She charged them to be good lads, to say their Pater, Credo, and Ave daily, and never omit Mass on a Sunday. They kissed her like their mother and promised heartily—and Stephen took his crossbow. They had had some hope of setting forth so early as to avoid all other human farewells, except that Ambrose wished to begin by going to Beaulieu to take leave of the Father who had been his kind master, and get his blessing and counsel. But Beaulieu was three miles out of their way, and Stephen had not the same desire, being less attached to his schoolmaster and more afraid of hindrances being thrown in their way. Moreover, contrary to their expectation, their elder brother came forth, and declared his intention of setting them forth on their way, bestowing a great amount of good advice, to the same purport as that of nurse Joan, namely, that they should let their uncle Richard Birkenholt find them some employment at Winchester, where they, or at least Ambrose, might even obtain admission into the famous college of St. Mary. In fact, this excellent elder brother persuaded himself that it would be doing them an absolute wrong to keep such promising youths hidden in the Forest. The purpose of his going thus far with them made itself evident. It was to see them past the turning to Beaulieu. No doubt he wished to tell the story in his own way, and that they should not present themselves there as orphans expelled from their father’s house. It would sound much better that he had sent them to ask counsel of their uncle at Winchester, the fit person to take charge of them. And as he represented that to go to Beaulieu would lengthen their day’s journey so much that they might hardly reach Winchester that night, while all Stephen’s wishes were to go forward, Ambrose could only send his greetings. There was another debate over Spring, who had followed his master as usual. John uttered an exclamation of vexation at perceiving it, and bade Stephen drive the dog back. “Or give me the leash to drag him. He will never follow me.” “He goes with us,” said Stephen. “He! Thou’lt never have the folly! The old hound is half blind and past use. No man will take thee in with him after thee.” “Then they shall not take me in,” said Stephen. “I’ll not leave him to be hanged by thee.” “Who spoke of hanging him!” “Thy wife will soon, if she hath not already.” “Thou wilt be for hanging him thyself ere thou have made a day’s journey with him on the king’s highway, which is not like these forest paths, I would have thee to know. Why, he limps already.” “Then I’ll carry him,” said Stephen, doggedly. “What hast thou to say to that device, Ambrose?” asked John, appealing to the elder and wiser. But Ambrose only answered “I’ll help,” and as John had no particular desire to retain the superannuated hound, and preferred on the whole to be spared sentencing him, no more was said on the subject as they went along, until all John’s stock of good counsel had been lavished on his brothers’ impatient ears. He bade them farewell, and turned back to the lodge, and they struck away along the woodland pathway which they had been told led to Winchester, though they had never been thither, nor seen any town save Southampton and Romsey at long intervals. On they went, sometimes through beech and oak woods of noble, almost primeval, trees, but more often across tracts of holly underwood, illuminated here and there with the snowy garlands of the wild cherry, and beneath with wide spaces covered with young green bracken, whose soft irregular masses on the undulating ground had somewhat the effect of the waves of the sea. These alternated with stretches of yellow gorse and brown heather, sheets of cotton-grass, and pools of white crowfoot, and all the vegetation of a mountain side, only that the mountain was not there. The brothers looked with eyes untaught to care for beauty, but with a certain love of the home scenes, tempered by youth’s impatience for something new. The nightingales sang, the thrushes flew out before them, the wild duck and moorhen glanced on the pools. Here and there they came on the furrows left by the snout of the wild swine, and in the open tracts rose the graceful heads of the deer, but of inhabitants or travellers they scarce saw any, save when they halted at the little hamlet of Minestead, where a small alehouse was kept by one Will Purkiss, who claimed descent from the charcoal-burner who had carried William Rufus’s corpse to burial at Winchester—the one fact in history known to all New Foresters, though perhaps Ambrose and John were the only persons beyond the walls of Beaulieu who did not suppose the affair to have taken place in the last generation. A draught of ale and a short rest were welcome as the heat of the day came on, making the old dog plod wearily on with his tongue out, so that Stephen began to consider whether he should indeed have to be his bearer—a serious matter, for the creature at full length measured nearly as much as he did. They met hardly any one, and they and Spring were alike too well known and trained, for difficulties to arise as to leading a dog through the Forest. Should they ever come to the term of the Forest? It was not easy to tell when they were really beyond it, for the ground was much of the same kind. Only the smooth, treeless hills, where they had always been told Winchester lay, seemed more defined; and they saw no more deer, but here and there were inclosures where wheat and barley were growing, and black timbered farm-houses began to show themselves at intervals. Herd boys, as rough and unkempt as their charges, could be seen looking after little tawny cows, black-faced sheep, or spotted pigs, with curs which barked fiercely at poor weary Spring, even as their masters were more disposed to throw stones than to answer questions. By and by, on the further side of a green valley, could be seen buildings with an encircling wall of flint and mortar faced with ruddy brick, the dark red-tiled roofs rising among walnut-trees, and an orchard in full bloom spreading into a long green field. “Winchester must be nigh. The sun is getting low,” said Stephen. “We will ask. The good folk will at least give us an answer,” said Ambrose wearily. As they reached the gate, a team of plough horses was passing in led by a peasant lad, while a lay brother, with his gown tucked up, rode sideways on one, whistling. An Augustinian monk, ruddy, burly, and sunburnt, stood in the farm-yard, to receive an account of the day’s work, and doffing his cap, Ambrose asked whether Winchester were near. “Three mile or thereaway, my good lad,” said the monk; “thou’lt see the towers an ye mount the hill. Whence art thou?” he added, looking at the two young strangers. “Scholars? The College elects not yet a while.” “We be from the Forest, so please your reverence, and are bound for Hyde Abbey, where our uncle, Master Richard Birkenholt, dwells.” “And oh, sir,” added Stephen, “may we crave a drop of water for our dog?” The monk smiled as he looked at Spring, who had flung himself down to take advantage of the halt, hanging out his tongue, and panting spasmodically. “A noble beast,” he said, “of the Windsor breed, is’t not?” Then laying his hand on the graceful head, “Poor old hound, thou art o’er travelled. He is aged for such a journey, if you came from the Forest since morn. Twelve years at the least, I should say, by his muzzle.” “Your reverence is right,” said Stephen, “he is twelve years old. He is two years younger than I am, and my father gave him to me when he was a little whelp.” “So thou must needs take him to seek thy fortune with thee,” said the good-natured Augustinian, not knowing how truly he spoke. “Come in, my lads, here’s a drink for him. What said you was your uncle’s name?” and as Ambrose repeated it, “Birkenholt! Living on a corrody at Hyde! Ay! ay! My lads, I have a call to Winchester to-morrow, you’d best tarry the night here at Silkstede Grange, and fare forward with me.” The tired boys were heartily glad to accept the invitation, more especially as Spring, happy as he was with the trough of water before him, seemed almost too tired to stand over it, and after the first, tried to lap, lying down. Silkstede was not a regular convent, only a grange or farm-house, presided over by one of the monks, with three or four lay brethren under him, and a little colony of hinds, in the surrounding cottages, to cultivate the farm, and tend a few cattle and numerous sheep, the special care of the Augustinians. Father Shoveller, as the good-natured monk who had received the travellers was called, took them into the spacious but homely chamber which served as refectory, kitchen, and hall. He called to the lay brother who was busy over the open hearth to fry a few more rashers of bacon; and after they had washed away the dust of their journey at the trough where Spring had slaked his thirst, they sat down with him to a hearty supper, which smacked more of the grange than of the monastery, spread on a large solid oak table, and washed down with good ale. The repast was shared by the lay brethren and farm servants, and also by two or three big sheep dogs, who had to be taught their manners towards Spring. There was none of the formality that Ambrose was accustomed to at Beaulieu in the great refectory, where no one spoke, but one of the brethren read aloud some theological book from a stone pulpit in the wall. Here Brother Shoveller conversed without stint, chiefly with the brother who seemed to be a kind of bailiff, with whom he discussed the sheep that were to be taken into market the next day, and the prices to be given for them by either the college, the castle, or the butchers of Boucher Row. He however found time to talk to the two guests, and being sprung from a family in the immediate neighbourhood, he knew the verdurer’s name, and ere he was a monk, had joined in the chase in the Forest. There was a little oratory attached to the hall, where he and the lay brethren kept the hours, to a certain degree, putting two or three services into one, on a liberal interpretation of _laborare est orare_. Ambrose’s responses made their host observe as they went out, “Thou hast thy Latin pat, my son, there’s the making of a scholar in thee.” Then they took their first night’s rest away from home, in a small guest-chamber, with a good bed, though bare in all other respects. Brother Shoveller likewise had a cell to himself, but the lay brethren slept promiscuously among their sheep-dogs on the floor of the refectory. All were afoot in the early morning, and Stephen and Ambrose were awakened by the tumultuous bleatings of the flock of sheep that were being driven from their fold to meet their fate at Winchester market. They heard Brother Shoveller shouting his orders to the shepherds in tones a great deal more like those of a farmer than of a monk, and they made haste to dress themselves and join him as he was muttering a morning abbreviation of his obligatory devotions in the oratory, observing that they might be in time to hear mass at one of the city churches, but the sheep might delay them, and they had best break their fast ere starting. It was Wednesday, a day usually kept as a moderate fast, so the breakfast was of oatmeal porridge, flavoured with honey, and washed down with mead, after which Brother Shoveller mounted his mule, a sleek creature, whose long ears had an air of great contentment, and rode off, accommodating his pace to that of his young companions up a stony cart-track which soon led them to the top of a chalk down, whence, as in a map, they could see Winchester, surrounded by its walls, lying in a hollow between the smooth green hills. At one end rose the castle, its fortifications covering its own hill, beneath, in the valley, the long, low massive Cathedral, the college buildings and tower with its pinnacles, and nearer at hand, among the trees, the Almshouse of Noble Poverty at St. Cross, beneath the round hill of St. Catherine. Churches and monastic buildings stood thickly in the town, and indeed, Brother Shoveller said, shaking his head, that there were well-nigh as many churches as folk to go to them; the place was decayed since the time he remembered when Prince Arthur was born there. Hyde Abbey he could not show them, from where they stood, as it lay further off by the river side, having been removed from the neighbourhood of the Minster, because the brethren of St. Grimbald could not agree with those of St. Swithun’s belonging to the Minster, as indeed their buildings were so close together that it was hardly possible to pass between them, and their bells jangled in each other’s ears. Brother Shoveller did not seem to entertain a very high opinion of the monks of St. Grimbald, and he asked the boys whether they were expected there. “No,” they said; “tidings of their father’s death had been sent by one of the woodmen, and the only answer that had been returned was that Master Richard Birkenholt was ill at ease, but would have masses said for his brother’s soul.” “Hem!” said the Augustinian ominously; but at that moment they came up with the sheep, and his attention was wholly absorbed by them, as he joined the lay brothers in directing the shepherds who were driving them across the downs, steering them over the high ground towards the arched West Gate close to the royal castle. The street sloped rapidly down, and Brother Shoveller conducted his young companions between the overhanging houses, with stalls between serving as shops, till they reached the open space round the Market Cross, on the steps of which women sat with baskets of eggs, butter, and poultry, raised above the motley throng of cattle and sheep, with their dogs and drivers, the various cries of man and beast forming an incongruous accompaniment to the bells of the churches that surrounded the market-place. Citizens’ wives in hood and wimple were there, shrilly bargaining for provision for their households, squires and grooms in quest of hay for their masters’ stables, purveyors seeking food for the garrison, lay brethren and sisters for their convents, and withal, the usual margin of begging friars, wandering gleemen, jugglers and pedlars, though in no great numbers, as this was only a Wednesday market-day, not a fair. Ambrose recognised one or two who made part of the crowd at Beaulieu only two days previously, when he had “seen through tears the juggler leap,” and the jingling tune one of them was playing on a rebeck brought back associations of almost unbearable pain. Happily, Father Shoveller, having seen his sheep safely bestowed in a pen, bethought him of bidding the lay brother in attendance show the young gentlemen the way to Hyde Abbey, and turning up a street at right angles to the principal one, they were soon out of the throng. It was a lonely place, with a decayed uninhabited appearance, and Brother Peter told them it had been the Jewry, whence good King Edward had banished all the unbelieving dogs of Jews, and where no one chose to dwell after them. Soon they came in sight of a large extent of monastic buildings, partly of stone, but the more domestic offices of flint and brick or mortar. Large meadows stretched away to the banks of the Itchen, with cattle grazing in them, but in one was a set of figures to whom the lay brother pointed with a laugh of exulting censure. “Long bows!” exclaimed Stephen. “Who be they?” “Brethren of St. Grimbald, sir. Such rule doth my Lord of Hyde keep, mitred abbot though he be. They say the good bishop hath called him to order, but what recks he of bishops? Good-day, Brother Bulpett, here be two young kinsmen of Master Birkenholt to visit him; and so _benedicite_, fair sirs. St. Austin’s grace be with you!” Through a gate between two little red octagonal towers, Brother Bulpett led the two visitors, and called to another of the monks, “_Benedicite_, Father Segrim, here be two striplings wanting speech of old Birkenholt.” “Looking after dead men’s shoes, I trow,” muttered father Segrim, with a sour look at the lads, as he led them through the outer court, where some fine horses were being groomed, and then across a second court surrounded with a beautiful cloister, with flower beds in front of it. Here, on a stone bench, in the sun, clad in a gown furred with rabbit skin, sat a decrepit old man, both his hands clasped over his staff. Into his deaf ears their guide shouted, “These boys say they are your kindred, Master Birkenholt.” “Anan?” said the old man, trembling with palsy. The lads knew him to be older than their father, but they were taken by surprise at such feebleness, and the monk did not aid them, only saying roughly, “There he is. Tell your errand.” “How fares it with you, uncle?” ventured Ambrose. “Who be ye? I know none of you,” muttered the old man, shaking his head still more. “We are Ambrose and Stephen from the Forest,” shouted Ambrose. “Ah! Steve! poor Stevie! The accursed boar has rent his goodly face so as I would never have known him. Poor Steve! Best his soul!” The old man began to weep, while his nephews recollected that they had heard that another uncle had been slain by the tusk of a wild boar in early manhood. Then to their surprise, his eyes fell on Spring, and calling the hound by name, he caressed the creature’s head—“Spring, poor Spring! Stevie’s faithful old dog. Hast lost thy master? Wilt follow me now?” He was thinking of a Spring as well as of a Stevie of sixty years ago, and he babbled on of how many fawns were in the Queen’s Bower this summer, and who had best shot at the butts at Lyndhurst, as if he were excited by the breath of his native Forest, but there was no making him understand that he was speaking with his nephews. The name of his brother John only set him repeating that John loved the greenwood, and would be content to take poor Stevie’s place and dwell in the verdurer’s lodge; but that he himself ought to be abroad, he had seen brave Lord Talbot’s ships ready at Southampton, John might stay at home, but he would win fame and honour in Gascony. And while he thus wandered, and the boys stood by perplexed and distressed, Brother Segrim came back, and said, “So, young sirs, have you seen enough of your doting kinsman? The sub-prior bids me say that we harbour no strange, idling, lubber lads nor strange dogs here. ’Tis enough for us to be saddled with dissolute old men-at-arms without all their idle kin making an excuse to come and pay their devoirs. These corrodies are a heavy charge and a weighty abuse, and if there be the visitation the king’s majesty speaks of, they will be one of the first matters to be amended.” Wherewith Stephen and Ambrose found themselves walked out of the cloister of St. Grimbald, and the gates shut behind them.

3

KINSMEN AND STRANGERS

“The reul of St. Maure and of St. Beneit Because that it was old and some deale streit This ilke monk let old things pace; He held ever of the new world the trace.” CHAUCER. “THE churls!” exclaimed Stephen. “Poor old man!” said Ambrose; “I hope they are good to him!” “To think that thus ends all that once was gallant talk of fighting under Talbot’s banner,” sighed Stephen, thoughtful for a moment. “However, there’s a good deal to come first.” “Yea, and what next?” said the elder brother. “On to uncle Hal. I ever looked most to him. He will purvey me to a page’s place in some noble household, and get thee a clerk’s or scholar’s place in my Lord of York’s house. Mayhap there will be room for us both there, for my Lord of York hath a goodly following of armed men.” “Which way lies the road to London?” “We must back into the town and ask, as well as fill our stomachs and our wallets,” said Ambrose. “Talk of their rule! The entertaining of strangers is better understood at Silkstede than at Hyde.” “Tush! A grudged crust sticks in the gullet,” returned Stephen. “Come on, Ambrose, I marked the sign of the White Hart by the market-place. There will be a welcome there for foresters.” They returned on their steps past the dilapidated buildings of the old Jewry, and presently saw the market in full activity; but the sounds and sights of busy life where they were utter strangers, gave Ambrose a sense of loneliness and desertion, and his heart sank as the bolder Stephen threaded the way in the direction of a broad entry over which stood a slender-bodied hart with gold hoofs, horns, collar, and chain. “How now, my sons?” said a full cheery voice, and to their joy, they found themselves pushed up against Father Shoveller. “Returned already! Did you get scant welcome at Hyde? Here, come where we can get a free breath, and tell me.” They passed through the open gateway of the White Hart, into the court, but before listening to them, the monk exchanged greetings with the hostess, who stood at the door in a broad hat and velvet bodice, and demanded what cheer there was for noon-meat. “A jack, reverend sir, eels and a grampus fresh sent up from Hampton; also fresh-killed mutton for such lay folk as are not curious of the Wednesday fast. They are laying the board even now.” “Lay platters for me and these two young gentlemen,” said the Augustinian. “Ye be my guests, ye wot,” he added, “since ye tarried not for meat at Hyde.” “Nor did they ask us,” exclaimed Stephen; “lubbers and idlers were the best words they had for us.” “Ho! ho! That’s the way with the brethren of St. Grimbald! And your uncle?” “Alas, sir, he doteth with age,” said Ambrose. “He took Stephen for his own brother, dead under King Harry of Windsor.” “So! I had heard somewhat of his age and sickness. Who was it who thrust you out?” “A lean brother with a thin red beard, and a shrewd, puckered visage.” “Ha! By that token ’twas Segrim the bursar. He wots how to drive a bargain. St. Austin! but he deemed you came to look after your kinsman’s corrody.” “He said the king spake of a visitation to abolish corrodies from religious houses,” said Ambrose. “He’ll abolish the long bow from them first,” said Father Shoveller. “Ay, and miniver from my Lord Abbot’s hood. I’d admonish you, my good brethren of S. Grimbald, to be in no hurry for a visitation which might scarce stop where you would fain have it. Well, my sons, are ye bound for the Forest again? An ye be, we’ll wend back together, and ye can lie at Silkstede to-night.” “Alack, kind father, there’s no more home for us in the Forest,” said Ambrose. “Methought ye had a brother?” “Yea; but our brother hath a wife.” “Ho! ho! And the wife will none of you?” “She would have kept Ambrose to teach her boy his primer,” said Stephen; “but she would none of Spring nor of me.” “We hoped to receive counsel from our uncle at Hyde,” added Ambrose. “Have ye no purpose now?” inquired the Father, his jolly good-humoured face showing much concern. “Yea,” manfully returned Stephen. “’Twas what I ever hoped to do, to fare on and seek our fortune in London.” “Ha! To pick up gold and silver like Dick Whittington. Poor old Spring here will scarce do you the part of his cat,” and the monk’s hearty laugh angered Stephen into muttering, “We are no fools,” but Father Shoveller only laughed the more, saying, “Fair and softly, my son, ye’ll never pick up the gold if ye cannot brook a kindly quip. Have you friends or kindred in London?” “Yea, that have we, sir,” cried Stephen; “our mother’s own brother, Master Randall, hath come to preferment there in my Lord Archbishop of York’s household, and hath sent us tokens from time to time, which we will show you.” “Not while we be feasting,” said Father Shoveller, hastily checking Ambrose, who was feeling in his bosom. “See, the knaves be bringing their grampus across the court. Here, we’ll clean our hands, and be ready for the meal;” and he showed them, under a projecting gallery in the inn yard a stone trough, through which flowed a stream of water, in which he proceeded to wash his hands and face, and to wipe them in a coarse towel suspended nigh at hand. Certainly after handling sheep freely there was need, though such ablutions were a refinement not indulged in by all the company who assembled round the well-spread board of the White Hart for the meal after the market. They were a motley company. By the host’s side sat a knight on his way home from pilgrimage to Compostella, or perhaps a mission to Spain, with a couple of squires and other attendants, and converse of political import seemed to be passing between him and a shrewd-looking man in a lawyer’s hood and gown, the recorder of Winchester, who preferred being a daily guest at the White Hart to keeping a table of his own. Country franklins and yeomen, merchants and men-at-arms, palmers and craftsmen, friars and monks, black, white, and grey, and with almost all, Father Shoveller had greeting or converse to exchange. He knew everybody, and had friendly talk with all, on canons or crops, on war or wool, on the prices of pigs or prisoners, on the news of the country side, or on the perilous innovations in learning at Oxford, which might, it was feared, even affect St. Mary’s College at Winchester. He did not affect outlandish fishes himself, and dined upon pike, but observing the curiosity of his guests, he took good care to have them well supplied with grampus; also in due time with varieties of the pudding and cake kind which had never dawned on their forest-bred imagination, and with a due proportion of good ale—the same over which the knight might be heard rejoicing, and lauding far above the Spanish or French wines, on which he said he had been half starved. Father Shoveller mused a good deal over his pike and its savoury stuffing. He was not by any means an ideal monk, but he was equally far from being a scandal. He was the shrewd man of business and manager of his fraternity, conducting the farming operations and making all the bargains, following his rule respectably according to the ordinary standard of his time, but not rising to any spirituality, and while duly observing the fast day, as to the quality of his food, eating with the appetite of a man who lived in the open fields. But when their hunger was appeased, with many a fragment given to Spring, the young Birkenholts, wearied of the endless talk that was exchanged over the tankard, began to grow restless, and after exchanging signs across Father Shoveller’s solid person, they simultaneously rose, and began to thank him and say they must pursue their journey. “How now, not so fast, my sons,” said the Father; “tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I’ll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water in the shire?” Manners withheld Ambrose from responding to Stephen’s hot impatience, while the merchant in the sleek puce-coloured coat discussed the Flemish wool market with the monk for a good half-hour longer. By this time the knight’s horses were brought into the yard, and the merchant’s men had made ready his palfrey, his pack-horse being already on the way; the host’s son came round with the reckoning, and there was a general move. Stephen expected to escape, and hardly could brook the good-natured authority with which Father Shoveller put Ambrose aside, when he would have discharged their share of the reckoning, and took it upon himself. “Said I not ye were my guests?” quoth he. “We missed our morning mass, it will do us no harm to hear Nones in the Minster.” “Sir, we thank you, but we should be on our way,” said Ambrose, incited by Stephen’s impatient gestures. “Tut, tut. Fair and softly, my son, or more haste may be worse speed. Methought ye had somewhat to show me.” Stephen’s youthful independence might chafe, but the habit of submission to authorities made him obediently follow the monk out at the back entrance of the inn, behind which lay the Minster yard, the grand western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of St. Swithun’s Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the bishop’s new reredos. “Now for thy tokens,” said Father Shoveller. “See my young foresters, ye be new to the world. Take an old man’s counsel, and never show, nor speak of such gear in an hostel. Mine host of the White Hart is an old gossip of mine, and indifferent honest, but who shall say who might be within earshot?” Stephen had a mind to say that he did not see why the meddling monk should wish to see them at all, and Ambrose looked a little reluctant, but Father Shoveller said in his good-humoured way, “As you please, young sirs. ’Tis but an old man’s wish to see whether he can do aught to help you, that you be not as lambs among wolves. Mayhap ye deem ye can walk into London town, and that the first man you meet can point you to your uncle—Randall call ye him? —as readily as I could show you my brother, Thomas Shoveller of Granbury. But you are just as like to meet with some knave who might cozen you of all you have, or mayhap a beadle might take you up for vagabonds, and thrust you in the stocks, or ever you get to London town; so I would fain give you some commendation, an I knew to whom to make it, and ye be not too proud to take it.” “You are but too good to us, sir,” said Ambrose, quite conquered, though Stephen only half believed in the difficulties. The Father took them within the west door of the Minster, and looking up and down the long arcade of the southern aisle to see that no one was watching, he inspected the tokens, and cross-examined them on their knowledge of their uncle. His latest gift, the rosary, had come by the hand of Friar Hurst, a begging Minorite of Southampton, who had it from another of his order at Winchester, who had received it from one of the king’s archers at the Castle, with a message to Mistress Birkenholt that it came from her brother, Master Randall, who had good preferment in London, in the house of my Lord Archbishop of York, without whose counsel King Henry never stirred. As to the coming of the agate and the pouncet box, the minds of the boys were very hazy. They knew that the pouncet box had been conveyed through the attendants of the Abbot of Beaulieu, but they were only sure that from that time the belief had prevailed with their mother that her brother was prospering in the house of the all-powerful Wolsey. The good Augustinian, examining the tokens, thought they gave colour to that opinion. The rosary and agate might have been picked up in an ecclesiastical household, and the lid of the pouncet box was made of a Spanish coin, likely to have come through some of the attendants of Queen Katharine. “It hath an appearance,” he said. “I marvel whether there be still at the Castle this archer who hath had speech with Master Randall, for if ye know no more than ye do at present, ’tis seeking a needle in a bottle of hay. But see, here come the brethren that be to sing Nones—sinner that I am, to have said no Hours since the morn, being letted with lawful business.” Again the unwilling Stephen had to submit. There was no feeling for the incongruous in those days, and reverence took very different directions from those in which it now shows itself, so that nobody had any objection to Spring’s pacing gravely with the others towards the Lady Chapel, where the Hours were sung, since the Choir was in the hands of workmen, and the sound of chipping stone could be heard from it, where Bishop Fox’s elaborate lace-work reredos was in course of erection. Passing the shrine of St. Swithun, and the grand tomb of Cardinal Beaufort, where his life-coloured effigy filled the boys with wonder, they followed their leader’s example, and knelt within the Lady Chapel, while the brief Latin service for the ninth hour was sung through by the canon, clerks, and boys. It really was the Sixth, but cumulative easy-going treatment of the Breviary had made this the usual time for it, as the name of noon still testifies. The boys’ attention, it must be confessed, was chiefly expended on the wonderful miracles of the Blessed Virgin in fresco on the walls of the chapel, all tending to prove that here was hope for those who said their Ave in any extremity of fire or flood. Nones ended, Father Shoveller, with many a halt for greeting or for gossip, took the lads up the hill towards the wide fortified space where the old Castle and royal Hall of Henry of Winchester looked down on the city, and after some friendly passages with the warder at the gate, Father Shoveller explained that he was in quest of some one recently come from court, of whom the striplings in his company could make inquiry concerning a kinsman in the household of my Lord Archbishop of York. The warder scratched his head, and bethinking himself that Eastcheap Jockey was the reverend. Father’s man, summoned a horse-boy to call that worthy. “Where was he?” “Sitting over his pottle in the Hall,” was the reply, and the monk, with a laugh savouring little of asceticism, said he would seek him there, and accordingly crossed the court to the noble Hall, with its lofty dark marble columns, and the Round Table of King Arthur suspended at the upper end. The governor of the Castle had risen from his meal long ago, but the garrison in the piping times of peace would make their ration of ale last as far into the afternoon as their commanders would suffer. And half a dozen men still sat there, one or two snoring, two playing at dice on a clear corner of the board, and another, a smart well-dressed fellow in a bright scarlet jerkin, laying down the law to a country bumpkin, who looked somewhat dazed. The first of these was, as it appeared, Eastcheap Jockey, and there was something both of the readiness and the impudence of the Londoner in his manner, when he turned to answer the question. He knew many in my Lord of York’s house—as many as a man was like to know where there was a matter of two hundred folk between clerks and soldiers, he had often crushed a pottle with them. No; he had never heard of one called Randall, neither in hat nor cowl, but he knew more of them by face than by name, and more by byname than surname or christened name. He was certainly not the archer who had brought a token for Mistress Birkenholt, and his comrades all avouched equal ignorance on the subject. Nothing could be gained there, and while Father Shoveller rubbed his bald head in consideration, Stephen rose to take leave. “Look you here, my fair son,” said the monk. “Starting at this hour, though the days be long, you will not reach any safe halting place with daylight, whereas by lying a night in this good city, you might reach Alton to-morrow, and there is a home where the name of Brother Shoveller will win you free lodging and entertainment.” “And to-night, good Father?” inquired Ambrose. “That will I see to, if ye will follow me.” Stephen was devoured with impatience during the farewells in the Castle, but Ambrose represented that the good man was giving them much of his time, and that it would be unseemly and ungrateful to break from him. “What matter is it of his? And why should he make us lose a whole day?” grumbled Stephen. “What special gain would a day be to us?” sighed Ambrose. “I am thankful that any should take heed for us.” “Ay, you love leading-strings,” returned Stephen. “Where is he going now? All out of our way!” Father Shoveller, however, as he went down the Castle hill, explained that the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital was his friend, and knowing him to have acquaintance among the clergy of St. Paul’s, it would be well to obtain a letter of commendation from him, which might serve them in good stead in case they were disappointed of finding their uncle at once. “It would be better for Spring to have a little more rest,” thought Stephen, thus mitigating his own longing to escape from the monks and friars, of whom Winchester seemed to be full. They had a kindly welcome in the pretty little college of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, lying in the meadows between William of Wykeham’s College and the round hill of St. Catharine. The Warden was a more scholarly and ecclesiastical-looking person than his friend, the good-natured Augustinian. After commending them to his care, and partaking of a drink of mead, the monk of Silkstede took leave of the youths, with a hearty blessing and advice to husband their few crowns, not to tell every one of their tokens, and to follow the counsel of the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s, assuring them that if they turned back to the Forest, they should have a welcome at Silkstede. Moreover he patted Spring pitifully, and wished him and his master well through the journey. St. Elizabeth’s College was a hundred years older than its neighbour St. Mary’s, as was evident to practised eyes by its arches and windows, but it had been so entirely eclipsed by Wykeham’s foundation that the number of priests, students, and choir-boys it was intended to maintain, had dwindled away, so that it now contained merely the Warden, a superannuated priest, and a couple of big lads who acted as servants. There was an air of great quietude and coolness about the pointed arches of its tiny cloister on that summer’s day, with the old monk dozing in his chair over the manuscript he thought he was reading, not far from the little table where the Warden was eagerly studying Erasmus’s _Praise of Folly_. But the Birkenholts were of the age at which quiet means dulness, at least Stephen was, and the Warden had pity both on them and on himself; and hearing joyous shouts outside, he opened a little door in the cloister wall, and revealed a multitude of lads with their black gowns tucked up “a playing at the ball”—these being the scholars of St. Mary’s. Beckoning to a pair of elder ones, who were walking up and down more quietly, he consigned the strangers to their care, sweetening the introduction by an invitation to supper, for which he would gain permission from their Warden. One of the young Wykehamists was shy and churlish, and sheered off from the brothers, but the other catechised them on their views of becoming scholars in the college. He pointed out the cloister where the studies took place in all weathers, showed them the hall, the chapel, and the chambers, and expatiated on the chances of attaining to New College. Being moreover a scholarly fellow, he and Ambrose fell into a discussion over the passage of Virgil, copied out on a bit of paper, which he was learning by heart. Some other scholars having finished their game, and become aware of the presence of a strange dog and two strange boys, proceeded to mob Stephen and Spring, whereupon the shy boy stood forth and declared that the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s had brought them in for an hour’s sport. Of course, in such close quarters, the rival Warden was esteemed a natural enemy, and went by the name of “Old Bess,” so that his recommendation went for worse than nothing, and a dash at Spring was made by the inhospitable young savages. Stephen stood to the defence in act to box, and the shy lad stood by him, calling for fair play and one at a time. Of course a fight ensued, Stephen and his champion on the one side, and two assailants on the other, till after a fall on either side, Ambrose’s friend interfered with a voice as thundering as the manly crack would permit, peace was restored, Stephen found himself free of the meads, and Spring was caressed instead of being tormented. Stephen was examined on his past, present, and future, envied for his Forest home, and beguiled into magnificent accounts, not only of the deer that had fallen to his bow and the boars that had fallen to his father’s spear, but of the honours to which his uncle in the Archbishop’s household would prefer him—for he viewed it as an absolute certainty that his kinsman was captain among the men-at-arms, whom he endowed on the spot with scarlet coats faced with black velvet, and silver medals and chains. Whereat one of the other boys was not behind in telling how his father was pursuivant to my Lord Duke of Norfolk, and never went abroad save with silver lions broidered on back and breast, and trumpets going before; and another dwelt on the splendours of the mayor and aldermen of Southampton with their chains and cups of gold. Stephen felt bound to surpass this with the last report that my Lord of York’s men rode Flemish steeds in crimson velvet housings, passmented with gold and gems, and of course his uncle had the leading of them. “Who be thine uncle?” demanded a thin, squeaky voice. “I have brothers likewise in my Lord of York’s meimé.” “Mine uncle is Captain Harry Randall, of Shirley,” quoth Stephen magnificently, scornfully surveying the small proportions of the speaker, “What is thy brother?” “Head turnspit,” said a rude voice, provoking a general shout of laughter; but the boy stood his ground, and said hotly: “He is page to the comptroller of my lord’s household, and waits at the second table, and I know every one of the captains.” “He’ll say next he knows every one of the Seven Worthies,” cried another boy, for Stephen was becoming a popular character. “And all the paladins to boot. Come on, little Rowley!” was the cry. “I tell you my brother is page to the comptroller of the household, and my mother dwells beside the Gate House, and I know every man of them,” insisted Rowley, waxing hot. “As for that Forest savage fellow’s uncle being captain of the guard, ’tis more like that he is my lord’s fool, Quipsome Hal!” Whereat there was a cry, in which were blended exultation at the hit, and vituperation of the hitter. Stephen flew forward to avenge the insult, but a big bell was beginning to ring, a whole wave of black gowns rushed to obey it, sweeping little Rowley away with them; and Stephen found himself left alone with his brother and the two lads who had been invited to St. Elizabeth’s, and who now repaired thither with them. The supper party in the refectory was a small one, and the rule of the foundation limited the meal to one dish and a pittance, but the dish was of savoury eels, and the Warden’s good nature had added to it some cates and comfits in consideration of his youthful guests. After some conversation with the elder Wykehamist, the Warden called Ambrose and put him through an examination on his attainments, which proved so satisfactory, that it ended in an invitation to the brothers to fill two of the empty scholarships of the college of the dear St. Elizabeth. It was a good offer, and one that Ambrose would fain have accepted, but Stephen had no mind for the cloister or for learning. The Warden had no doubt that he could be apprenticed in the city of Winchester, since the brother at home had in keeping a sum sufficient for the fee. Though the trade of “capping” had fallen off, there were still good substantial burgesses who would be willing to receive an active lad of good parentage, some being themselves of gentle blood. Stephen, however, would not brook the idea. “Out upon you, Ambrose!” said he, “to desire to bind your own brother to base mechanical arts.” “’Tis what Nurse Joan held to be best for us both,” said Ambrose. “Joan! Yea, like a woman, who deems a man safest when he is a tailor, or a perfumer. An you be minded to stay here with a black gown and a shaven crown, I shall on with Spring and come to preferment. Maybe thou’lt next hear of me when I have got some fat canonry for thee.” “Nay, I quit thee not,” said Ambrose. “If thou fare forward, so do I. But I would thou couldst have brought thy mind to rest there.” “What! wouldst thou be content with this worn-out place, with more churches than houses, and more empty houses than full ones? No! let us on where there is something doing! Thou wilt see that my Lord of York will have room for the scholar as well as the man-at-arms.” So the kind offer was declined, but Ambrose was grieved to see that the Warden thought him foolish, and perhaps ungrateful. Nevertheless the good man gave them a letter to the Reverend Master Alworthy, singing clerk at St. Paul’s Cathedral, telling Ambrose it might serve them in case they failed to find their uncle, or if my Lord of York’s household should not be in town. He likewise gave them a recommendation which would procure them a night’s lodging at the Grange, and after the morning’s mass and meat, sped them on their way with his blessing, muttering to himself, “That elder one might have been the staff of mine age! Pity on him to be lost in the great and evil City! Yet ’tis a good lad to follow that fiery spark his brother. _Tanquam agnus inter lupos_. Alack!”

4

A HERO’S FALL

“These four came all afront and mainly made at me. I made no more ado, but took their seven points on my target—thus—” SHAKESPEARE. THE journey to Alton was eventless. It was slow, for the day was a broiling one, and the young foresters missed their oaks and beeches, as they toiled over the chalk downs that rose and sank in endless succession; though they would hardly have slackened their pace if it had not been for poor old Spring, who was sorely distressed by the heat and the want of water on the downs. Every now and then he lay down, panting distressfully, with his tongue hanging out, and his young masters always waited for him, often themselves not sorry to rest in the fragment of shade from a solitary thorn or juniper. The track was plain enough, and there were hamlets at long intervals. Flocks of sheep fed on the short grass, but there was no approaching the shepherds, as they and their dogs regarded Spring as an enemy, to be received with clamour, stones, and teeth, in spite of the dejected looks which might have acquitted him of evil intentions. The travellers reached Alton in the cool of the evening, and were kindly received by a monk, who had charge of a grange just outside the little town, near one of the springs of the River Wey. The next day’s journey was a pleasanter one, for there was more of wood and heather, and they had to skirt round the marshy borders of various bogs. Spring was happier, being able to stop and lap whenever he would, and the whole scene was less unfriendly to them. But they scarcely made speed enough, for they were still among tall whins and stiff scrub of heather when the sun began to get low, gorgeously lighting the tall plumes of golden broom, and they had their doubts whether they might not be off the track; but in such weather, there was nothing alarming in spending a night out of doors, if only they had something for supper. Stephen took a bolt from the purse at his girdle, and bent his crossbow, so as to be ready in case a rabbit sprang out, or a duck flew up from the marshes. A small thicket of trees was in sight, and they were making for it, when sounds of angry voices were heard, and Spring, bristling up the mane on his neck, and giving a few premonitory fierce growls like thunder, bounded forward as though he had been seven years younger. Stephen darted after him, Ambrose rushed after Stephen, and breaking through the trees, they beheld the dog at the throat of one of three men. As they came on the scene, the dog was torn down and hurled aside, giving a howl of agony, which infuriated his master. Letting fly his crossbow bolt full at the fellow’s face, he dashed on, reckless of odds, waving his knotted stick, and shouting with rage. Ambrose, though more aware of the madness of such an assault, still hurried to his support, and was amazed as well as relieved to find the charge effectual. Without waiting to return a blow, the miscreants took to their heels, and Stephen, seeing nothing but his dog, dropped on his knees beside the quivering creature, from whose neck blood was fast pouring. One glance of the faithful wistful eyes, one feeble movement of the expressive tail, and Spring had made his last farewell! That was all Stephen was conscious of; but Ambrose could hear the cry, “Good sirs, good lads, set me free!” and was aware of a portly form bound to a tree. As he cut the rope with his knife, the rescued traveller hurried out thanks and demands—“Where are the rest of you?” and on the reply that there were no more, proceeded, “Then we must on, on at once, or the villains will return! They must have thought you had a band of hunters behind you. Two furlongs hence, and we shall be safe in the hostel at Dogmersfield. Come on, my boy,” to Stephen, “the brave hound is quite dead, more’s the pity. Thou canst do no more for him, and we shall soon be in his case if we dally here.” “I cannot, cannot leave him thus,” sobbed Stephen, who had the loving old head on his knees. “Ambrose! stay, we must bring him. There, his tail wagged! If the blood were staunched—” “Stephen! Indeed he is stone dead! Were he our brother we could not do otherwise,” reasoned Ambrose, forcibly dragging his brother to his feet. “Go on we must. Wouldst have us all slaughtered for his sake? Come! The rogues will be upon us anon. Spring saved this good man’s life. Undo not his work. See! Is yonder your horse, sir? This way, Stevie!” The instinct of catching the horse roused Stephen, and it was soon accomplished, for the steed was a plump, docile, city-bred palfrey, with dapple-grey flanks like well-stuffed satin pincushions, by no means resembling the shaggy Forest ponies of the boys’ experience, but quite astray in the heath, and ready to come at the master’s whistle, and call of “Soh! Soh! —now Poppet!” Stephen caught the bridle, and Ambrose helped the burgess into the saddle. “Now, good boys,” he said, “each of you lay a hand on my pommel. We can make good speed ere the rascals find out our scant numbers.” “You would make better speed without us, sir,” said Stephen, hankering to remain beside poor Spring. “D’ye think Giles Headley the man to leave two children, that have maybe saved my life as well as my purse, to bear the malice of the robbers?” demanded the burgess angrily. “That were like those fellows of mine who have shown their heels and left their master strapped to a tree! Thou! thou! what’s thy name, that hast the most wit, bring thy brother, unless thou wouldst have him laid by the side of his dog.” Stephen was forced to comply, and run by Poppet’s side, though his eyes were so full of tears that he could not see his way, even when the pace slackened, and in the twilight they found themselves among houses and gardens, and thus in safety, the lights of an inn shining not far off. A figure came out in the road to meet them, crying, “Master! master! is it you? and without scathe? Oh, the saints be praised!” “Ay, Tibble, ’tis I and no other, thanks to the saints and to these brave lads! What, man, I blame thee not, I know thou canst not strike; but where be the rest?” “In the inn, sir. I strove to call up the hue and cry to come to the rescue, but the cowardly hinds were afraid of the thieves, and not one would come forth.” “I wish they may not be in league with them,” said Master Headley. “See! I was delivered—ay, and in time to save my purse, by these twain and their good dog. Are ye from these parts, my fair lads?” “We be journeying from the New Forest to London,” said Ambrose. “The poor dog heard the tumult, and leapt to your aid, sir, and we made after him.” “’Twas the saints sent him!” was the fervent answer. “And” (with a lifting of the cap) “I hereby vow to St. Julian a hound of solid bronze a foot in length, with a collar of silver, to his shrine in St. Faith’s, in token of my deliverance in body and goods! To London are ye bound? Then will we journey on together!” They were by this time near the porch of a large country hostel, from the doors and large bay window of which light streamed out. And as the casement was open, those without could both see and hear all that was passing within. The table was laid for supper, and in the place of honour sat a youth of some seventeen or eighteen years, gaily dressed, with a little feather curling over his crimson cap, and thus discoursing:— “Yea, my good host, two of the rogues bear my tokens, besides him whom I felled to the earth. He came on at me with his sword, but I had my point ready for him; and down he went before me like an ox. Then came on another, but him I dealt with by the back stroke as used in the tilt-yard at Clarendon.” “I trow we shall know him again, sir. Holy saints! to think such rascals should haunt so nigh us,” the hostess was exclaiming. “Pity for the poor goodman, Master Headley. A portly burgher was he, friendly of tongue and free of purse. I well remember him when he went forth on his way to Salisbury, little thinking, poor soul, what was before him. And is he truly sped?” “I tell thee, good woman, I saw him go down before three of their pikes. What more could I do but drive my horse over the nearest rogue who was rifling him?” “If he were still alive—which Our Lady grant! —the knaves will hold him to ransom,” quoth the host, as he placed a tankard on the table. “I am afraid he is past ransom,” said the youth, shaking his head. “But an if he be still in the rogues’ hands and living, I will get me on to his house in Cheapside, and arrange with his mother to find the needful sum, as befits me, I being his heir and about to wed his daughter. However, I shall do all that in me lies to get the poor old seignior out of the hands of the rogues. Saints defend me!” “The poor old seignior is much beholden to thee,” said Master Headley, advancing amid a clamour of exclamations from three or four serving-men or grooms, one protesting that he thought his master was with him, another that his horse ran away with him, one showing an arm which was actually being bound up, and the youth declaring that he rode off to bring help. “Well wast thou bringing it,” Master Headley answered. “I might be still standing bound like an eagle displayed, against yonder tree, for aught you fellows recked.” “Nay, sir, the odds—” began the youth. “Odds! such odds as were put to rout—by what, deem you? These two striplings and one poor hound. Had but one of you had the heart of a sparrow, ye had not furnished a tale to be the laugh of the Barbican and Cheapside. Look well at them. How old be you, my brave lads?” “I shall be sixteen come Lammas day, and Stephen fifteen at Martinmas day, sir,” said Ambrose; “but verily we did nought. We could have done nought had not the thieves thought more were behind us.” “There are odds between going forward and backward,” said Master Headley, dryly. “Ha! Art hurt? Thou bleedst,” he exclaimed, laying his hand on Stephen’s shoulder, and drawing him to the light. “’Tis no blood of mine,” said Stephen, as Ambrose likewise came to join in the examination. “It is my poor Spring’s. He took the coward’s blow. His was all the honour, and we have left him there on the heath!” And he covered his face with his hands. “Come, come, my good child,” said Master Headley; “we will back to the place by times to-morrow when rogues hide and honest men walk abroad. Thou shalt bury thine hound, as befits a good warrior, on the battle-field. I would fain mark his points for the effigy we will frame, honest Tibble, for St. Julian. And mark ye, fellows, thou godson Giles, above all, who ’tis that boast of their valour, and who ’tis that be modest of speech. Yea, thanks, mine host. Let us to a chamber, and give us water to wash away soil of travel and of fray, and then to supper. Young masters, ye are my guests. Shame were it that Giles Headley let go farther them that have, under Heaven and St. Julian, saved him in life, limb, and purse.” The inn was large, being the resort of many travellers from the south, often of nobles and knights riding to Parliament, and thus the brothers found themselves accommodated with a chamber, where they could prepare for the meal, while Ambrose tried to console his brother by representing that, after all, poor Spring had died gallantly, and with far less pain than if he had suffered a wasting old age, besides being honoured for ever by his effigy in St. Faith’s, wherever that might be, the idea which chiefly contributed to console his master. The two boys appeared in the room of the inn looking so unlike the dusty, blood-stained pair who had entered, that Master Headley took a second glance to convince himself that they were the same, before beckoning them to seats on either side of him, saying that he must know more of them, and bidding the host load their trenchers well from the grand fabric of beef-pasty which had been set at the end of the board. The runaways, four or five in number, herded together lower down, with a few travellers of lower degree, all except the youth who had been boasting before their arrival, and who retained his seat at the board, thumping it with the handle of his knife to show his impatience for the commencement of supper; and not far off sat Tibble, the same who had hailed their arrival, a thin, slight, one-sided looking person, with a terrible red withered scar on one cheek, drawing the corner of his mouth awry. He, like Master Headley himself, and the rest of his party were clad in red, guarded with white, and wore the cross of St. George on the white border of their flat crimson caps, being no doubt in the livery of their Company. The citizen himself, having in the meantime drawn his conclusions from the air and gestures of the brothers, and their mode of dealing with their food, asked the usual question in an affirmative tone, “Ye be of gentle blood, young sirs?” To which they replied by giving their names, and explaining that they were journeying from the New Forest to find their uncle in the train of the Archbishop of York. “Birkenholt,” said Tibble, meditatively. “He beareth vert, a buck’s head proper, on a chief argent, two arrows in saltire. Crest, a buck courant, pierced in the gorge by an arrow, all proper.” To which the brothers returned by displaying the handles of their knives, both of which bore the pierced and courant buck. “Ay, ay,” said the man. “’Twill be found in our books, sir. We painted the shield and new-crested the morion the first year of my prenticeship, when the Earl of Richmond, the late King Harry of blessed memory, had newly landed at Milford Haven.” “Verily,” said Ambrose, “our uncle Richard Birkenholt fought at Bosworth under Sir Richard Pole’s banner.” “A tall and stalwart esquire, methinks,” said Master Headley. “Is he the kinsman you seek?” “Not so, sir. We visited him at Winchester, and found him sorely old and with failing wits. We be on our way to our mother’s brother, Master Harry Randall.” “Is he clerk or layman? My Lord of York entertaineth enow of both,” said Master Headley. “Lay assuredly, sir,” returned Stephen; “I trust to him to find me some preferment as page or the like.” “Know’st thou the man, Tibble?” inquired the master. “Not among the men-at-arms, sir,” was the answer; “but there be a many of them whose right names we never hear. However, he will be easily found if my Lord of York be returned from Windsor with his train.” “Then will we go forward together, my young Masters Birkenholt. I am not going to part with my doughty champions!” —patting Stephen’s shoulder. “Ye’d not think that these light-heeled knaves belonged to the brave craft of armourers?” “Certainly not,” thought the lads, whose notion of armourers was derived from the brawny blacksmith of Lyndhurst, who sharpened their boar spears and shod their horses. They made some kind of assent, and Master Headley went on. “These be the times! This is what peace hath brought us to! I am called down to Salisbury to take charge of the goods, chattels, and estate of my kinsman, Robert Headley—Saints rest his soul! —and to bring home yonder spark, my godson, whose indentures have been made over to me. And I may not ride a mile after sunset without being set upon by a sort of robbers, who must have guessed over-well what a pack of cowards they had to deal with.” “Sir,” cried the younger Giles, “I swear to you that I struck right and left. I did all that man could do, but these rogues of serving-men, they fled, and dragged me along with them, and I deemed you were of our company till we dismounted.” “Did you so? Methought anon you saw me go down with three pikes in my breast. Come, come, godson Giles, speech will not mend it! Thou art but a green, town-bred lad, a mother’s darling, and mayst be a brave man yet, only don’t dread to tell the honest truth that you were afeard, as many a better man might be.” The host chimed in with tales of the thieves and outlaws who then, and indeed for many later generations, infested Bagshot heath, and the wild moorland tracks around. He seemed to think that the travellers had had a hair’s-breadth escape, and that a few seconds’ more delay might have revealed the weakness of the rescuers and have been fatal to them. However there was no danger so near the village in the morning, and, somewhat to Stephen’s annoyance, the whole place turned out to inspect the spot, and behold the burial of poor Spring, who was found stretched on the heather, just as he had been left the night before. He was interred under the stunted oak where Master Headley had been tied. While the grave was dug with a spade borrowed at the inn, Ambrose undertook to cut out the dog’s name on the bark, but he had hardly made the first incision when Tibble, the singed foreman, offered to do it for him, and made a much more sightly inscription than he could have done. Master Headley’s sword was found honourably broken under the tree, and was reserved to form a base for his intended _ex voto_. He uttered the vow in due form like a funeral oration, when Stephen, with a swelling heart, had laid the companion of his life in the little grave, which was speedily covered in.

5

THE DRAGON COURT

“A citizen Of credit and renown; A trainband captain eke was he Of famous London town.” COWPER. IN spite of his satisfaction at the honourable obsequies of his dog, Stephen Birkenholt would fain have been independent, and thought it provoking and strange that every one should want to direct his movements, and assume the charge of one so well able to take care of himself; but he could not escape as he had done before from the Warden of St. Elizabeth, for Ambrose had readily accepted the proposal that they should travel in Master Headley’s company, only objecting that they were on foot; on which the good citizen hired a couple of hackneys for them. Besides the two Giles Headleys, the party consisted of Tibble, the scarred and withered foreman, two grooms, and two serving-men, all armed with the swords and bucklers of which they had made so little use. It appeared in process of time that the two namesakes, besides being godfather and godson, were cousins, and that Robert, the father of the younger one, had, after his apprenticeship in the paternal establishment at Salisbury, served for a couple of years in the London workshop of his kinsman to learn the latest improvements in weapons. This had laid the foundation of a friendship which had lasted through life, though the London cousin had been as prosperous as the country one had been the reverse. The provincial trade in arms declined with the close of the York and Lancaster wars. Men were not permitted to turn from one handicraft to another, and Robert Headley had neither aptitude nor resources. His wife was vain and thriftless, and he finally broke down under his difficulties, appointing by will his cousin to act as his executor, and to take charge of his only son, who had served out half his time as apprentice to himself. There had been delay until the peace with France had given the armourer some leisure for an expedition to Salisbury, a serious undertaking for a London burgess, who had little about him of the ancient northern weapon-smith, and had wanted to avail himself of the protection of the suite of the Bishop of Salisbury, returning from Parliament. He had spent some weeks in disposing of his cousin’s stock in trade, which was far too antiquated for the London market; also of the premises, which were bought by an adjoining convent to extend its garden; and he had divided the proceeds between the widow and children. He had presided at the wedding of the last daughter, with whom the mother was to reside, and was on his way back to London with his godson, who had now become his apprentice. Giles Headley the younger was a fine tall youth, but clumsy and untrained in the use of his limbs, and he rode a large, powerful brown horse, which brooked no companionship, lashing out with its shaggy hoofs at any of its kind that approached it, more especially at poor, plump, mottled Poppet. The men said he had insisted on retaining that, and no other, for his journey to London, contrary to all advice, and he was obliged to ride foremost, alone in the middle of the road; while Master Headley seemed to have an immense quantity of consultation to carry on with his foreman, Tibble, whose quiet-looking brown animal was evidently on the best of terms with Poppet. By daylight Tibble looked even more sallow, lean, and sickly, and Stephen could not help saying to the serving-man nearest to him, “Can such a weakling verily be an armourer?” “Yea, sir. Wry-mouthed Tibble, as they call him, was a sturdy fellow till he got a fell against the mouth of a furnace, and lay ten months in St. Bartholomew’s Spital, scarce moving hand or foot. He cannot wield a hammer, but he has a cunning hand for gilding, and coloured devices, and is as good as Garter-king-at-arms himself for all bearings of knights and nobles.” “As we heard last night,” said Stephen. “Moreover in the spital he learnt to write and cast accompts like a very scrivener, and the master trusts him more than any, except maybe Kit Smallbones, the head smith.” “What will Smallbones think of the new prentice!” said one of the other men. “Prentice! ’Tis plain enough what sort of prentice the youth is like to be who beareth the name of a master with one only daughter.” An emphatic grunt was the only answer, while Ambrose pondered on the good luck of some people, who had their futures cut out for them with no trouble on their own part. This day’s ride was through more inhabited parts, and was esteemed less perilous. They came in sight of the Thames at Lambeth, but Master Headley, remembering how ill his beloved Poppet had brooked the ferry, decided to keep to the south of the river by a causeway across Lambeth marsh, which was just passable in high and dry summers, and which conducted them to a raised road called Bankside, where they looked across to the towers of Westminster, and the Abbey in its beauty dawned on the imagination of Stephen and Ambrose. The royal standard floated over the palace, whence Master Headley perceived that the King was there, and augured that my Lord of York’s meiné would not be far to seek. Then came broad green fields with young corn growing, or hay waving for the scythe, the tents and booths of May Fair, and the beautiful Market Cross in the midst of the village of Charing, while the Strand, immediately opposite, began to be fringed with great monasteries within their ample gardens, with here and there a nobleman’s castellated house and terraced garden, with broad stone stairs leading to the Thames. Barges and wherries plied up and down, the former often gaily canopied and propelled by liveried oarsmen, all plying their arms in unison, so that the vessel looked like some brilliant many-limbed creature treading the water. Presently appeared the heavy walls inclosing the City itself, dominated by the tall openwork timber spire of St. Paul’s, with the foursquare, four-turreted Tower acting, as it has been well said, as a padlock to a chain, and the river’s breadth spanned by London bridge, a very street of houses built on the abutments. Now, Bankside had houses on each side of the road, and Wry-mouthed Tibble showed evident satisfaction when they turned to cross the bridge, where they had to ride in single file, not without some refractoriness on the part of young Headley’s steed. On they went, now along streets where each story of the tall houses projected over the last, so that the gables seemed ready to meet; now beside walls of convent gardens, now past churches, while the country lads felt bewildered with the numbers passing to and fro, and the air was full of bells. Cap after cap was lifted in greeting to Master Headley by burgess, artisan, or apprentice, and many times did he draw Poppet’s rein to exchange greetings and receive congratulations on his return. On reaching St. Paul’s Minster, he halted and bade the servants take home the horses, and tell the mistress, with his dutiful greetings, that he should be at home anon, and with guests. “We must e’en return thanks for our safe journey and great deliverance,” he said to his young companions, and thrusting his arm into that of a russet-vested citizen, who met him at the door, he walked into the cathedral, recounting his adventure. The youths followed with some difficulty through the stream of loiterers in the nave, Giles the younger elbowing and pushing so that several of the crowd turned to look at him, and it was well that his kinsman soon astonished him by descending a stair into a crypt, with solid, short, clustered columns, and high-pitched vaulting, fitted up as a separate church, namely that of the parish of St. Faith. The great cathedral, having absorbed the site of the original church, had given this crypt to the parishioners. Here all was quiet and solemn, in marked contrast to the hubbub in “Paul’s Walk,” above in the nave. Against the eastern pillar of one of the bays was a little altar, and the decorations included St. Julian, the patron of travellers, with his saltire doubly crossed, and his stag beside him. Little ships, trees, and wonderful enamelled representations of perils by robbers, field and flood, hung thickly on St. Julian’s pillar, and on the wall and splay of the window beside it; and here, after crossing himself, Master Headley rapidly repeated a Paternoster, and ratified his vow of presenting a bronze image of the hound to whom he owed his rescue. One of the clergy came up to register the vow, and the good armourer proceeded to bespeak a mass of thanksgiving on the next morning, also ten for the soul of Master John Birkenholt, late Verdurer of the New Forest in Hampshire—a mode of showing his gratitude which the two sons highly appreciated. Then, climbing up the steps again, and emerging from the cathedral by the west door, the boys beheld a scene for which their experiences of Romsey, and even of Winchester, had by no means prepared them. It was five o’clock on a summer evening, so that the place was full of stir. Old women sat with baskets of rosaries and little crosses, or images of saints, on the steps of the cathedral, while in the open space beyond, more than one horse was displaying his paces for the benefit of some undecided purchaser, who had been chaffering for hours in Paul’s Walk. Merchants in the costume of their countries, Lombard, Spanish, Dutch, or French, were walking away in pairs, attended by servants, from their Exchange, likewise in the nave. Women, some alone, some protected by serving-men or apprentices, were returning from their orisons, or, it might be, from their gossipings. Priests and friars, as usual, pervaded everything, and round the open space were galleried buildings with stalls beneath them, whence the holders were removing their wares for the night. The great octagonal structure of Paul’s Cross stood in the centre, and just beneath the stone pulpit, where the sermons were wont to be preached, stood a man with a throng round him, declaiming a ballad at the top of his sing-song voice, and causing much loud laughter by some ribaldry about monks and friars. Master Headley turned aside as quickly as he could, through Paternoster Row, which was full of stalls, where little black books, and larger sheets printed in black-letter, seemed the staple commodities, and thence the burgess, keeping a heedful eye on his young companions among all his greetings, entered the broader space of Cheapside, where numerous prentice lads seemed to be playing at different sports after the labours of the day. Passing under an archway surmounted by a dragon with shining scales, Master Headley entered a paved courtyard, where the lads started at the figures of two knights in full armour, their lances in rest, and their horses with housings down to their hoofs, apparently about to charge any intruder. But at that moment there was a shriek of joy, and out from the scarlet and azure petticoats of the nearest steed, there darted a little girl, crying, “Father! father!” and in an instant she was lifted in Master Headley’s arms, and was clinging round his neck, while he kissed and blessed her, and as he set her on her feet, he said, “Here, Dennet, greet thy cousin Giles Headley, and these two brave young gentlemen. Greet them like a courteous maiden, or they will think thee a little town mouse.” In truth the child had a pointed little visage, and bright brown eyes, somewhat like a mouse, but it was a very sweet face that she lifted obediently to be kissed not only by the kinsman, but by the two guests. Her father meantime was answering with nods to the respectful welcomes of the workmen, who thronged out below, and their wives looking down from the galleries above; while Poppet and the other horses were being rubbed down after their journey. The ground-floor of the buildings surrounding the oblong court seemed to be entirely occupied by forges, workshops, warehouses and stables. Above, were open railed galleries, with outside stairs at intervals, giving access to the habitations of the workpeople on three sides. The fourth, opposite to the entrance, had a much handsomer, broad, stone stair, adorned on one side with a stone figure of the princess fleeing from the dragon, and on the other of St. George piercing the monster’s open mouth with his lance, the scaly convolutions of the two dragons forming the supports of the handrail on either side. Here stood, cap in hand, showing his thick curly hair, and with open front, displaying a huge hairy chest, a giant figure, whom his master greeted as Kit Smallbones, inquiring whether all had gone well during his absence. “’Tis time you were back, sir, for there’s a great tilting match on hand for the Lady Mary’s wedding. Here have been half the gentlemen in the Court after you, and my Lord of Buckingham sent twice for you since Sunday, and once for Tibble Steelman, and his squire swore that if you were not at his bidding before noon to-morrow, he would have his new suit of Master Hillyer of the Eagle.” “He shall see me when it suiteth me,” said Mr. Headley coolly. “He wotteth well that Hillyer hath none who can burnish plate armour like Tibble here.” “Moreover the last iron we had from that knave Mepham is nought. It works short under the hammer.” “That shall be seen to, Kit. The rest of the budget to-morrow. I must on to my mother.” For at the doorway, at the head of the stairs, there stood the still trim and active figure of an old woman, with something of the mouse likeness seen in her grand-daughter, in the close cap, high hat, and cloth dress, that sumptuary opinion, if not law, prescribed for the burgher matron, a white apron, silver chain and bunch of keys at her girdle. Due and loving greetings passed between mother and son, after the longest and most perilous absence of Master Headley’s life, and he then presented Giles, to whom the kindly dame offered hand and cheek, saying, “Welcome, my young kinsman, your good father was well known and liked here. May you tread in his steps!” “Thanks, good mistress,” returned Giles. “I am thought to have a pretty taste in the fancy part of the trade. My Lord of Montagu—” Before he could get any farther, Mistress Headley was inquiring what was the rumour she had heard of robbers and dangers that had beset her son, and he was presenting the two young Birkenholts to her. “Brave boys! good boys,” she said, holding out her hands and kissing each according to the custom of welcome, “you have saved my son for me, and this little one’s father for her. Kiss them, Dennet, and thank them.” “It was the poor dog,” said the child, in a clear little voice, drawing back with a certain quaint coquetting shyness; “I would rather kiss him.” “Would that thou couldst, little mistress,” said Stephen. “My poor brave Spring!” “Was he thine own? Tell me all about him,” said Dennet, somewhat imperiously. She stood between the two strangers looking eagerly up with sorrowfully interested eyes, while Stephen, out of his full heart, told of his faithful comradeship with his hound from the infancy of both. Her father meanwhile was exchanging serious converse with her grandmother, and Giles finding himself left in the background, began: “Come hither, pretty coz, and I will tell thee of my Lady of Salisbury’s dainty little hounds.” “I care not for dainty little hounds,” returned Dennet; “I want to hear of the poor faithful dog that flew at the wicked robber.” “A mighty stir about a mere chance,” muttered Giles. “I know what _you_ did,” said Dennet, turning her bright brown eyes full upon him. “You took to your heels.” Her look and little nod were so irresistibly comical that the two brothers could not help laughing; whereupon Giles Headley turned upon them in a passion. “What mean ye by this insolence, you beggars’ brats picked up on the heath?” “Better born than thou, braggart and coward that thou art!” broke forth Stephen, while Master Headley exclaimed, “How now, lads? No brawling here!” Three voices spoke at once. “They were insolent.” “He reviled our birth.” “Father! they did but laugh when I told cousin Giles that he took to his heels, and he must needs call them beggars’ brats picked up on the heath.” “Ha! ha! wench, thou art woman enough already to set them together by the ears,” said her father, laughing. “See here, Giles Headley, none who bears my name shall insult a stranger on my hearth.” Stephen however had stepped forth holding out his small stock of coin, and saying, “Sir, receive for our charges, and let us go to the tavern we passed anon.” “How now, boy! Said I not ye were my guests?” “Yea, sir, and thanks; but we can give no cause for being called beggars nor beggars’ brats.” “What beggary is there in being guests, my young gentlemen?” said the master of the house. “If any one were picked up on the heath, it was I. We owned you for gentlemen of blood and coat armour, and thy brother there can tell thee that, ye have no right to put an affront on me, your host, because a rude prentice from a country town hath not learnt to rule his tongue.” Giles scowled, but the armourer spoke with an authority that imposed on all, and Stephen submitted, while Ambrose spoke a few words of thanks, after which the two brothers were conducted by an external stair and gallery to a guest-chamber, in which to prepare for supper. The room was small, but luxuriously filled beyond all ideas of the young foresters, for it was hung with tapestry, representing the history of Joseph; the bed was curtained, there was a carved chest for clothes, a table and a ewer and basin of bright brass with the armourer’s mark upon it, a twist in which the letter H and the dragon’s tongue and tail were ingeniously blended. The City was far in advance of the country in all the arts of life, and only the more magnificent castles and abbeys, which the boys had never seen, possessed the amount of comforts to be found in the dwellings of the superior class of Londoners. Stephen was inclined to look with contempt upon the effeminacy of a churl merchant. “No churl,” returned Ambrose, “if manners makyth man, as we saw at Winchester.” “Then what do they make of that cowardly clown, his cousin?” Ambrose laughed, but said, “Prove we our gentle blood at least by not brawling with the fellow. Master Headley will soon teach him to know his place.” “That will matter nought to us. To-morrow shall we be with our uncle Hal. I only wish his lord was not of the ghostly sort, but perhaps he may prefer me to some great knight’s service. But oh! Ambrose, come and look. See! The fellow they call Smallbones is come out to the fountain in the middle of the court with a bucket in each hand. Look! Didst ever see such a giant? He is as big and brawny as Ascapart at the bar-gate at Southampton. See! he lifts that big pail full and brimming as though it were an egg shell. See his arm! ’ Twere good to see him wield a hammer! I must look into his smithy before going forth to-morrow.” Stephen clenched his fist and examined his muscles ere donning his best mourning jerkin, and could scarce be persuaded to complete his toilet, so much was he entertained with the comings and goings in the court, a little world in itself, like a college quadrangle. The day’s work was over, the forges out, and the smiths were lounging about at ease, one or two sitting on a bench under a large elm-tree beside the central well, enjoying each his tankard of ale. A few more were watching Poppet being combed down, and conversing with the newly-arrived grooms. One was carrying a little child in his arms, and a young man and maid sitting on the low wall round the well, seemed to be carrying on a courtship over the pitcher that stood waiting to be filled. Two lads were playing at skittles, children were running up and down the stairs and along the wooden galleries, and men and women went and came by the entrance gateway between the two effigies of knights in armour. Some were servants bringing helm or gauntlet for repair, or taking the like away. Some might be known by their flat caps to be apprentices, and two substantial burgesses walked in together, as if to greet Master Headley on his return. Immediately after, a man-cook appeared with white cap and apron, bearing aloft a covered dish surrounded by a steamy cloud, followed by other servants bearing other meats; a big bell began to sound, the younger men and apprentices gathered together and the brothers descended the stairs, and entered by the big door into the same large hall where they had been received. The spacious hearth was full of green boughs, with a beaupot of wild rose, honeysuckle, clove pinks and gilliflowers; the lower parts of the walls were hung with tapestry representing the adventures of St. George; the mullioned windows had their upper squares filled with glass, bearing the shield of the City of London, that of the Armourers’ Company, the rose and portcullis of the King, the pomegranate of Queen Catharine, and other like devices. Others, belonging to the Lancastrian kings, adorned the pendants from the handsome open roof and the front of a gallery for musicians which crossed one end of the hall in the taste of the times of Henry V. and Whittington. Far more interesting to the hungry travellers was it that the long table, running the whole breadth of the apartment, was decked with snowy linen, trenchers stood ready with horns or tankards beside them, and loaves of bread at intervals, while the dishes were being placed on the table. The master and his entire establishment took their meals together, except the married men, who lived in the quadrangle with their families. There was no division by the salt-cellar, as at the tables of the nobles and gentry, but the master, his family and guests, occupied the centre, with the hearth behind them, where the choicest of the viands were placed; next after them were the places of the journeymen according to seniority, then those of the apprentices, household servants, and stable-men, but the apprentices had to assist the serving-men in waiting on the master and his party before sitting down themselves. There was a dignity and regularity about the whole, which could not fail to impress Stephen and Ambrose with the weight and importance of a London burgher, warden of the Armourers’ Company, and alderman of the Ward of Cheap. There were carved chairs for himself, his mother, and the guests, also a small Persian carpet extending from the hearth beyond their seats. This article filled the two foresters with amazement. To put one’s feet on what ought to be a coverlet! They would not have stepped on it, had they not been kindly summoned by old Mistress Headley to take their places among the company, which consisted, besides the family, of the two citizens who had entered, and of a priest who had likewise dropped in to welcome Master Headley’s return, and had been invited to stay to supper. Young Giles, as a matter of course, placed himself amongst them, at which there were black looks and whispers among the apprentices, and even Mistress Headley wore an air of amazement. “Mother,” said the head of the family, speaking loud enough for all to hear, “you will permit our young kinsman to be placed as our guest this evening. To-morrow he will act as an apprentice, as we all have done in our time.” “I never did so at home!” cried Giles, in his loud, hasty voice. “I trow not,” dryly observed one of the guests. Giles, however, went on muttering while the priest was pronouncing a Latin grace, and thereupon the same burgess observed, “Never did I see it better proved that folk in the country give their sons no good breeding.” “Have patience with him, good Master Pepper,” returned Mr. Headley. “He hath been an only son, greatly cockered by father, mother, and sisters, but ere long he will learn what is befiting.” Giles glared round, but he met nothing encouraging. Little Dennet sat with open mouth of astonishment, her grandmother looked shocked, the household which had been aggrieved by his presumption laughed at his rebuke, for there was not much delicacy in those days; but something generous in the gentle blood of Ambrose moved him to some amount of pity for the lad, who thus suddenly became conscious that the tie he had thought nominal at Salisbury, a mere preliminary to municipal rank, was here absolute subjection, and a bondage whence there was no escape. His was the only face that Giles met which had any friendliness in it, but no one spoke, for manners imposed silence upon youth at table, except when spoken to; and there was general hunger enough prevailing to make Mistress Headley’s fat capon the most interesting contemplation for the present. The elders conversed, for there was much for Master Headley to hear of civic affairs that had passed in his absence of two months, also of all the comings and goings, and it was ascertained that my Lord Archbishop of York was at his suburban abode, York House, now Whitehall. It was a very late supper for the times, not beginning till seven o’clock, on account of the travellers; and as soon as it was finished, and the priest and burghers had taken their leave, Master Headley dismissed the household to their beds, although daylight was scarcely departed.

6

A SUNDAY IN THE CITY

“The rod of Heaven has touched them all, The word from Heaven is spoken: Rise, shine and sing, thou captive thrall, Are not thy fetters broken?” KEBLE. ON Sunday morning, when the young Birkenholts awoke, the whole air seemed full of bells from hundreds of Church and Minster steeples. The Dragon Court wore a holiday air, and there was no ring of hammers at the forges; but the men who stood about were in holiday attire: and the brothers assumed their best clothes. Breakfast was not a meal much accounted of. It was reckoned effeminate to require more than two meals a day, though, just as in the verdurer’s lodge at home, there was a barrel of ale on tap with drinking horns beside it in the hall, and on a small round table in the window a loaf of bread, to which city luxury added a cheese, and a jug containing sack, with some silver cups beside it, and a pitcher of fair water. Master Headley, with his mother and daughter, was taking a morsel of these refections, standing, and in out-door garments, when the brothers appeared at about seven o’clock in the morning. “Ha! that’s well,” quoth he, greeting them. “No slugabeds, I see. Will ye come with us to hear mass at St. Faith’s?” They agreed, and Master Headley then told them that if they would tarry till the next day in searching out their uncle, they could have the company of Tibble Steelman, who had to see one of the captains of the guard about an alteration of his corslet, and thus would have every opportunity of facilitating their inquiries for their uncle. The mass was an ornate one, though not more so than they were accustomed to at Beaulieu. Ambrose had his book of devotions, supplied by the good monks who had brought him up, and old Mrs. Headley carried something of the same kind; but these did not necessarily follow the ritual, and neither quiet nor attention was regarded as requisite in “hearing mass.” Dennet, unchecked, was exchanging flowers from her Sunday posy with another little girl, and with hooded fingers carrying on in all innocence the satirical pantomime of Father Francis and Sister Catharine; and even Master Headley himself exchanged remarks with his friends, and returned greetings from burgesses and their wives while the celebrant priest’s voice droned on, and the choir responded—the peals of the organ in the Minster above coming in at inappropriate moments, for there they were in a different part of High Mass using the Liturgy peculiar to St. Paul’s. Thinking of last week at Beaulieu, Ambrose knelt meantime with his head buried in his hands, in an absorption of feeling that was not perhaps wholly devout, but which at any rate looked more like devotion than the demeanour of any one around. When the _Ite missa est_ was pronounced, and all rose up, Stephen touched him and he rose, looking about, bewildered. “So please you, young sir, I can show you another sort of thing by and by,” said in his ear Tibble Steelman, who had come in late, and marked his attitude. They went up from St. Faith’s in a flood of talk, with all manner of people welcoming Master Headley after his journey, and thence came back to dinner which was set out in the hall very soon after their return from church. Quite guests enough were there on this occasion to fill all the chairs, and Master Headley intimated to Giles that he must begin his duties at table as an apprentice, under the tuition of the senior, a tall young fellow of nineteen, by name Edmund Burgess. He looked greatly injured and discomfited, above all when he saw his two travelling companions seated at the table—though far lower than the night before; nor would he stir from where he was standing against the wall to do the slightest service, although Edmund admonished him sharply that unless he bestirred himself it would be the worse for him. When the meal was over, and grace had been said, the boards were removed from their trestles, and the elders drew round the small table in the window with a flagon of sack and a plate of wastel bread in their midst to continue their discussion of weighty Town Council matters. Every one was free to make holiday, and Edmund Burgess good-naturedly invited the strangers to come to Mile End, where there was to be shooting at the butts, and a match at singlestick was to come off between Kit Smallbones and another giant, who was regarded as the champion of the brewer’s craft. Stephen was nothing loth, especially if he might take his own crossbow; but Ambrose never had much turn for these pastimes and was in no mood for them. The familiar associations of the mass had brought the grief of orphanhood, homelessness, and uncertainty upon him with the more force. His spirit yearned after his father, and his heart was sick for his forest home. Moreover, there was the duty incumbent on a good son of saying his prayers for the repose of his father’s soul. He hinted as much to Stephen, who, boy-like, answered, “Oh, we’ll see to that when we get into my Lord of York’s house. Masses must be plenty there. And I must see Smallbones floor the brewer.” Ambrose could trust his brother under the care of Edmund Burgess, and resolved on a double amount of repetitions of the appointed intercessions for the departed. He was watching the party of youths set off, all except Giles Headley, who sulkily refused the invitations, betook himself to a window and sat drumming on the glass, while Ambrose stood leaning on the dragon balustrade, with his eyes dreamily following the merry lads out at the gateway. “You are not for such gear, sir,” said a voice at his ear, and he saw the scathed face of Tibble Steelman beside him. “Never greatly so, Tibble,” answered Ambrose. “And my heart is too heavy for it now.” “Ay, ay, sir. So I thought when I saw you in St. Faith’s. I have known what it was to lose a good father in my time.” Ambrose held out his hand. It was the first really sympathetic word he had heard since he had left Nurse Joan. “’Tis the week’s mind of his burial,” he said, half choked with tears. “Where shall I find a quiet church where I may say his _De profundis_ in peace?” “Mayhap,” returned Tibble, “the chapel in the Pardon churchyard would serve your turn. ’Tis not greatly resorted to when mass time is over, when there’s no funeral in hand, and I oft go there to read my book in quiet on a Sunday afternoon. And then, if ’tis your will, I will take you to what to my mind is the best healing for a sore heart.” “Nurse Joan was wont to say the best for that was a sight of the true Cross, as she once beheld it at Holy Rood church at Southampton,” said Ambrose. “And so it is, lad, so it is,” said Tibble, with a strange light on his distorted features. So they went forth together, while Giles again hugged himself in his doleful conceit, marvelling how a youth of birth and nurture could walk the streets on a Sunday with a scarecrow such as that! The hour was still early, there was a whole summer afternoon before them; and Tibble, seeing how much his young companion was struck with the grand vista of church towers and spires, gave him their names as they stood, though coupling them with short dry comments on the way in which their priests too often perverted them. The Cheap was then still in great part an open space, where boys were playing, and a tumbler was attracting many spectators; while the ballad-singer of yesterday had again a large audience, who laughed loudly at every coarse jest broken upon mass-priests and friars. Ambrose was horrified at the stave that met his ears, and asked how such profanity could be allowed. Tibble shrugged his shoulders, and cited the old saying, “The nearer the church”—adding, “Truth hath a voice, and will out.” “But surely this is not the truth?” “’Tis mighty like it, sir, though it might be spoken in a more seemly fashion.” “What’s this?” demanded Ambrose. “’Tis a noble house.” “That’s the Bishop’s palace, sir—a man that hath much to answer for.” “Liveth he so ill a life then?” “Not so. He is no scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon ballad-monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while yet there is time.” Tibble muttered this to himself, unheeded by Ambrose, and then presently crossing the church-yard, where a grave was being filled up, with numerous idle children around it, he conducted the youth into a curious little chapel, empty now, but with the Host enthroned above the altar, and the trestles on which the bier had rested still standing in the narrow nave. It was intensely still and cool, a fit place indeed for Ambrose’s filial devotions, while Tibble settled himself on the step, took out a little black book, and became absorbed. Ambrose’s Latin scholarship enabled him to comprehend the language of the round of devotions he was rehearsing for the benefit of his father’s soul; but there was much repetition in them, and he had been so trained as to believe their correct recital was much more important than attention to their spirit, and thus, while his hands held his rosary, his eyes were fixed upon the walls where was depicted the Dance of Death. In terrible repetition, the artist had aimed at depicting every rank or class in life as alike the prey of the grisly phantom. Triple-crowned pope, scarlet-hatted cardinal, mitred prelate, priests, monks, and friars of every degree; emperors, kings, princes, nobles, knights, squires, yeomen, every sort of trade, soldiers of all kinds, beggars, even thieves and murderers, and, in like manner, ladies of every degree, from the queen and the abbess, down to the starving beggar, were each represented as grappled with, and carried off by the crowned skeleton. There was no truckling to greatness. The bishop and abbot writhed and struggled in the grasp of Death, while the miser clutched at his gold, and if there were some nuns, and some poor ploughmen who willingly clasped his bony fingers and obeyed his summons joyfully, there were countesses and prioresses who tried to beat him off, or implored him to wait. The infant smiled in his arms, but the middle-aged fought against his scythe. The contemplation had a most depressing effect on the boy, whose heart was still sore for his father. After the sudden shock of such a loss, the monotonous repetition of the snatching away of all alike, in the midst of their characteristic worldly employments, and the anguish and hopeless resistance of most of them, struck him to the heart. He moved between each bead to a fresh group; staring at it with fixed gaze, while his lips moved in the unconscious hope of something consoling; till at last, hearing some uncontrollable sobs, Tibble Steelman rose and found him crouching rather than kneeling before the figure of an emaciated hermit, who was greeting the summons of the King of Terrors, with crucifix pressed to his breast, rapt countenance and outstretched arms, seeing only the Angel who hovered above. After some minutes of bitter weeping, which choked his utterance, Ambrose, feeling a friendly hand on his shoulder, exclaimed in a voice broken by sobs, “Oh, tell me, where may I go to become an anchorite! There’s no other safety! I’ll give all my portion, and spend all my time in prayer for my father and the other poor souls in purgatory.” Two centuries earlier, nay, even one, Ambrose would have been encouraged to follow out his purpose. As it was, Tibble gave a little dry cough and said, “Come along with me, sir, and I’ll show you another sort of way.” “I want no entertainment!” said Ambrose, “I should feel only as if he,” pointing to the phantom, “were at hand, clutching me with his deadly claw,” and he looked over his shoulder with a shudder. There was a box by the door to receive alms for masses on behalf of the souls in purgatory, and here he halted and felt for the pouch at his girdle, to pour in all the contents; but Steelman said, “Hold, sir, are you free to dispose of your brother’s share, you who are purse-bearer for both?” “I would fain hold my brother to the only path of safety.” Again Tibble gave his dry cough, but added, “He is not in the path of safety who bestows that which is not his own but is held in trust. I were foully to blame if I let this grim portrayal so work on you as to lead you to beggar not only yourself, but your brother, with no consent of his.” For Tibble was no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman of sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen and only drop in a few groats which he knew to be his own. At the same moment, a church bell was heard, the tone of which Steelman evidently distinguished from all the others, and he led the way out of the Pardon churchyard, over the space in front of St. Paul’s. Many persons were taking the same route; citizens in gowns and gold or silver chains, their wives in tall pointed hats; craftsmen, black-gowned scholarly men with fur caps, but there was a much more scanty proportion of priests, monks or friars, than was usual in any popular assemblage. Many of the better class of women carried folding stools, or had them carried by their servants, as if they expected to sit and wait. “Is there a procession toward? or a relic to be displayed?” asked Ambrose, trying to recollect whose feast-day it might be. Tibble screwed up his mouth in an extraordinary smile as he said, “Relic quotha? yea, the soothest relic there be of the Lord and Master of us all.” “Methought the true Cross was always displayed on the High Altar,” said Ambrose, as all turned to a side aisle of the noble nave. “Rather say hidden,” muttered Tibble. “Thou shalt have it displayed, young sir, but neither in wood nor gilded shrine. See, here he comes who setteth it forth.” From the choir came, attended by half a dozen clergy, a small, pale man, in the ordinary dress of a priest, with a square cap on his head. He looked spare, sickly, and wrinkled, but the furrows traced lines of sweetness, his mouth was wonderfully gentle, and there was a keen brightness about his clear grey eye. Every one rose and made obeisance as he passed along to the stone stair leading to a pulpit projecting from one of the columns. Ambrose saw what was coming, though he had only twice before heard preaching. The children of the ante-reformation were not called upon to hear sermons; and the few exhortations given in Lent to the monks of Beaulieu were so exclusively for the religious that seculars were not invited to them. So that Ambrose had only once heard a weary and heavy discourse there plentifully garnished with Latin; and once he had stood among the throng at a wake at Millbrook, and heard a begging friar recommend the purchase of briefs of indulgence and the daily repetition of the Ave Maria by a series of extraordinary miracles for the rescue of desperate sinners, related so jocosely as to keep the crowd in a roar of laughter. He had laughed with the rest, but he could not imagine his guide, with the stern, grave eyebrows, writhen features and earnest, ironical tone, covering—as even he could detect—the deepest feeling, enjoying such broad sallies as tickled the slow merriment of village clowns and forest deer-stealers. All stood for a moment while the Paternoster was repeated. Then the owners of stools sat down on them, some leant on adjacent pillars, others curled themselves on the floor, but most remained on their feet as unwilling to miss a word, and of these were Tibble Steelman and his companion. _Omnis qui facit peccatum_, _servus est peccati_, followed by the rendering in English, “Whosoever doeth sin is sin’s bond thrall.” The words answered well to the ghastly delineations that seemed stamped on Ambrose’s brain and which followed him about into the nave, so that he felt himself in the grasp of the cruel fiend, and almost expected to feel the skeleton claw of Death about to hand him over to torment. He expected the consolation of hearing that a daily “Hail Mary,” persevered in through the foulest life, would obtain that beams should be arrested in their fall, ships fail to sink, cords to hang, till such confession had been made as should insure ultimate salvation, after such a proportion of the flames of purgatory as masses and prayers might not mitigate. But his attention was soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of him who brought sin and death into the world. The horror seemed to grow on Ambrose, as his boyish faults and errors rushed on his mind, and he felt pervaded by the contagion of the pestilence, abhorrent even to himself. But behold, what was he hearing now? “The bond thrall abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. _Si ergo Filius liberavit, verè liberi eritis_.” “If the Son should make you free, then are ye free indeed.” And for the first time was the true liberty of the redeemed soul comprehensibly proclaimed to the young spirit that had begun to yearn for something beyond the outside. Light began to shine through the outward ordinances; the Church; the world, life, and death, were revealed as something absolutely new; a redeeming, cleansing, sanctifying power was made known, and seemed to inspire him with a new life, joy, and hope. He was no longer feeling himself necessarily crushed by the fetters of death, or only delivered from absolute peril by a mechanism that had lost its heart, but he could enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, in process of being saved, not in sin but _from_ sin. It was an era in his life, and Tibble heard him sobbing, but with very different sobs from those in the Pardon chapel. When it was over, and the blessing given, Ambrose looked up from the hands which had covered his face with a new radiance in his eyes, and drew a long breath. Tibble saw that he was like one in another world, and gently led him away. “Who is he? What is he? Is he an angel from Heaven?” demanded the boy, a little wildly, as they neared the southern door. “If an angel be a messenger of God, I trow he is one,” said Tibble. “But men call him Dr. Colet. He is Dean of St. Paul’s Minster, and dwelleth in the house you see below there.” “And are such words as these to be heard every Sunday?” “On most Sundays doth he preach here in the nave to all sorts of folk.” “I must—I must hear it again!” exclaimed Ambrose. “Ay, ay,” said Tibble, regarding him with a well-pleased face. “You are one with whom it works.” “Every Sunday!” repeated Ambrose. “Why do not all—your master and all these,” pointing to the holiday crowds going to and fro—“why do they not all come to listen?” “Master doth come by times,” said Tibble, in the tone of irony that was hard to understand. “He owneth the dean as a rare preacher.” Ambrose did not try to understand. He exclaimed again, panting as if his thoughts were too strong for his words—“Lo you, that preacher—dean call ye him? —putteth a soul into what hath hitherto been to me but a dead and empty framework.” Tibble held out his hand almost unconsciously, and Ambrose pressed it. Man and boy, alike they had felt the electric current of that truth, which, suppressed and ignored among man’s inventions, was coming as a new revelation to many, and was already beginning to convulse the Church and the world. Ambrose’s mind was made up on one point. Whatever he did, and wherever he went, he felt the doctrine he had just heard as needful to him as vital air, and he must be within reach of it. This, and not the hermit’s cell, was what his instinct craved. He had always been a studious, scholarly boy, supposed to be marked out for a clerical life, because a book was more to him than a bow, and he had been easily trained in good habits and practices of devotion; but all in a childish manner, without going beyond simple receptiveness, until the experiences of the last week had made a man of him, or more truly, the Pardon chapel and Dean Colet’s sermon had made him a new being, with the realities of the inner life opened before him. His present feeling was relief from the hideous load he had felt while dwelling on the Dance of Death, and therewith general goodwill to all men, which found its first issue in compassion for Giles Headley, whom he found on his return seated on the steps—moody and miserable. “Would that you had been with us,” said Ambrose, sitting down beside him on the step. “Never have I heard such words as to-day.” “I would not be seen in the street with that scarecrow,” murmured Giles. “If my mother could have guessed that he was to be set over me, I had never come here.” “Surely you knew that he was foreman.” “Yea, but not that I should be under him—I whom old Giles vowed should be as his own son—I that am to wed yon little brown moppet, and be master here! So, forsooth,” he said, “now he treats me like any common low-bred prentice.” “Nay,” said Ambrose, “an if you were his son, he would still make you serve. It’s the way with all craftsmen—yea and with gentlemen’s sons also. They must be pages and squires ere they can be knights.” “It never was the way at home. I was only bound prentice to my father for the name of the thing, that I might have the freedom of the city, and become head of our house.” “But how could you be a wise master without learning the craft?” “What are journeymen for?” demanded the lad. “Had I known how Giles Headley meant to serve me, he might have gone whistle for a husband for his wench. I would have ridden in my Lady of Salisbury’s train.” “You might have had rougher usage there than here,” said Ambrose. “Master Headley lays nothing on you but what he has himself proved. I would I could see you make the best of so happy a home.” “Ay, that’s all very well for you, who are certain of a great man’s house.” “Would that I were certified that my brother would be as well off as you, if you did but know it,” said Ambrose. “Ha! here come the dishes! ’Tis supper time come on us unawares, and Stephen not returned from Mile End!” Punctuality was not, however, exacted on these summer Sunday evenings, when practice with the bow and other athletic sports were enjoined by Government, and, moreover, the youths were with so trustworthy a member of the household as Kit Smallbones. Sundry City magnates had come to supper with Master Headley, and whether it were the effect of Ambrose’s counsel, or of the example of a handsome lad who had come with his father, one of the worshipful guild of Merchant Taylors, Giles did vouchsafe to bestir himself in waiting, and in consideration of the effort it must have cost him, old Mrs. Headley and her son did not take notice of his blunders, but only Dennet fell into a violent fit of laughter, when he presented the stately alderman with a nutmeg under the impression that it was an overgrown peppercorn. She suppressed her mirth as well as she could, poor little thing, for it was a great offence in good manners, but she was detected, and, only child as she was, the consequence was the being banished from the table and sent to bed. But when, after supper was over, Ambrose went out to see if there were any signs of the return of Stephen and the rest, he found the little maiden curled up in the gallery with her kitten in her arms. “Nay!” she said, in a spoilt-child tone, “I’m not going to bed before my time for laughing at that great oaf! Nurse Alice says he is to wed me, but I won’t have him! I like the pretty boy who had the good dog and saved father, and I like you, Master Ambrose. Sit down by me and tell me the story over again, and we shall see Kit Smallbones come home. I know he’ll have beaten the brewer’s fellow.” Before Ambrose had decided whether thus far to abet rebellion, she jumped up and cried: “Oh, I see Kit! He’s got my ribbon! He has won the match!” And down she rushed, quite oblivious of her disgrace, and Ambrose presently saw her uplifted in Kit Smallbones’ brawny arms to utter her congratulations. Stephen was equally excited. His head was full of Kit Smallbones’ exploits, and of the marvels of the sports he had witnessed and joined in with fair success. He had thought Londoners poor effeminate creatures, but he found that these youths preparing for the trained bands understood all sorts of martial exercises far better than any of his forest acquaintance, save perhaps the hitting of a mark. He was half wild with a boy’s enthusiasm for Kit Smallbones and Edmund Burgess, and when, after eating the supper that had been reserved for the late comers, he and his brother repaired to their own chamber, his tongue ran on in description of the feats he had witnessed and his hopes of emulating them, since he understood that Archbishop as was my Lord of York, there was a tilt-yard at York House. Ambrose, equally full of his new feelings, essayed to make his brother a sharer in them, but Stephen entirely failed to understand more than that his book-worm brother had heard something that delighted him in his own line of scholarship, from which Stephen had happily escaped a year ago!

7

YORK HOUSE

“Then hath he servants five or six score, Some behind and some before; A marvellous great company Of which are lords and gentlemen, With many grooms and yeomen And also knaves among them.” _Contemporary Poem on Wolsey_. EARLY were hammers ringing on anvils in the Dragon Court, and all was activity. Master Headley was giving his orders to Kit Smallbones before setting forth to take the Duke of Buckingham’s commands; Giles Headley, very much disgusted, was being invested with a leathern apron, and entrusted to Edmund Burgess to learn those primary arts of furbishing which, but for his mother’s vanity and his father’s weakness, he would have practised four years sooner. Tibble Steelman was superintending the arrangement of half a dozen corslets, which were to be carried by three stout porters, under his guidance, to what is now Whitehall, then the residence of the Archbishop of York, the king’s prime adviser, Thomas Wolsey. “Look you, Tib,” said the kind-hearted armourer, “if those lads find not their kinsman, or find him not what they look for, bring them back hither, I cannot have them cast adrift. They are good and brave youths, and I owe a life to them.” Tibble nodded entire assent, but when the boys appeared in their mourning suits, with their bundles on their backs, they were sent back again to put on their forest green, Master Headley explaining that it was reckoned ill-omened, if not insulting, to appear before any great personage in black, unless to enhance some petition directly addressed to himself. He also bade them leave their fardels behind, as, if they tarried at York House, these could be easily sent after them. They obeyed—even Stephen doing so with more alacrity than he had hitherto shown to Master Headley’s behests; for now that the time for departure had come, he was really sorry to leave the armourer’s household. Edmund Burgess had been very good-natured to the raw country lad, and Kit Smallbones was, in his eyes, an Ascapart in strength, and a Bevis in prowess and kindliness. Mistress Headley too had been kind to the orphan lads, and these two days had given a feeling of being at home at the Dragon. When Giles wished them a moody farewell, and wished he were going with them, Stephen returned, “Ah! you don’t know when you are well off.” Little Dennet came running down after them with two pinks in her hands. “Here’s a sop-in-wine for a token for each of you young gentlemen,” she cried, “for you came to help father, and I would you were going to stay and wed me instead of Giles.” “What, both of us, little maid?” said Ambrose, laughing, as he stooped to receive the kiss her rosy lips tendered to him. “Not but what she would have royal example,” muttered Tibble aside. Dennet put her head on one side, as considering. “Nay, not both; but you are gentle and courteous, and he is brave and gallant—and Giles there is moody and glum, and can do nought.” “Ah! you will see what a gallant fellow Giles can be when thou hast cured him of his home-sickness by being good to him,” said Ambrose, sorry for the youth in the universal laughter at the child’s plain speaking. And thus the lads left the Dragon, amid friendly farewells. Ambrose looked up at the tall spire of St. Paul’s with a strong determination that he would never put himself out of reach of such words as he had there drunk in, and which were indeed spirit and life to him. Tibble took them down to the St. Paul’s stairs on the river, where at his whistle a wherry was instantly brought to transport them to York stairs, only one of the smiths going any further in charge of the corslets. Very lovely was their voyage in the brilliant summer morning, as the glittering water reflected in broken ripples church spire, convent garden, and stately house. Here rows of elm-trees made a cool walk by the river side, there strawberry beds sloped down the Strand, and now and then the hooded figures of nuns might be seen gathering the fruit. There, rose the round church of the Temple, and the beautiful gardens surrounding the buildings, half monastic, half military, and already inhabited by lawyers. From a barge at the Temple stairs a legal personage descended, with a square beard, and open, benevolent, shrewd face, before whom Tibble removed his cap with eagerness, saying to Ambrose, “Yonder is Master More, a close friend of the dean’s, a good and wise man, and forward in every good work.” Thus did they arrive at York House. Workmen were busy on some portions of it, but it was inhabited by the great Archbishop, the king’s chief adviser. The approach of the boat seemed to be instantly notified, as it drew near the stone steps giving entrance to the gardens, with an avenue of trees leading up to the principal entrance. Four or five yeomen ran down the steps, calling out to Tibble that their corslets had tarried a long time, and that Sir Thomas Drury had been storming for him to get his tilting armour into order. Tibble followed the man who had undertaken to conduct him through a path that led to the offices of the great house, bidding the boys keep with him, and asking for their uncle Master Harry Randall. The yeoman shook his head. He knew no such person in the household, and did not think there ever had been such. Sir Thomas Drury was found in the stable court, trying the paces of the horse he intended to use in the approaching joust. “Ha! old Wry-mouth,” he cried, “welcome at last! I must have my new device damasked on my shield. Come hither, and I’ll show it thee.” Private rooms were seldom enjoyed, even by knights and gentlemen, in such a household, and Sir Thomas could only conduct Tibble to the armoury, where numerous suits of armour hung on blocks, presenting the semblance of armed men. The knight, a good-looking personage, expatiated much on the device he wished to dedicate to his lady-love, a pierced heart with a forget-me-not in the midst, and it was not until the directions were finished that Tibble ventured to mention the inquiry for Randall. “I wot of no such fellow,” returned Sir Thomas, “you had best go to the comptroller, who keeps all the names.” Tibble had to go to this functionary at any rate, to obtain an order for payment for the corslets he had brought home. Ambrose and Stephen followed him across an enormous hall, where three long tables were being laid for dinner. The comptroller of the household, an esquire of good birth, with a stiff little ruff round his neck, sat in a sort of office inclosed by panels at the end of the hall. He made an entry of Tibble’s account in a big book, and sent a message to the cofferer to bring the amount. Then Tibble again put his question on behalf of the two young foresters, and the comptroller shook his head. He did not know the name. “Was the gentleman” (he chose that word as he looked at the boys) “layman or clerk?” “Layman, certainly,” said Ambrose, somewhat dismayed to find how little, on interrogation, he really knew. “Was he a yeoman of the guard, or in attendance on one of my lord’s nobles in waiting?” “We thought he had been a yeoman,” said Ambrose. “See,” said the comptroller, stimulated by a fee administered by Tibble, “’tis just dinner time, and I must go to attend on my Lord Archbishop; but do you, Tibble, sit down with these striplings to dinner, and then I will cast my eye over the books, and see if I can find any such name. What, hast not time? None ever quits my lord’s without breaking his fast.” Tibble had no doubt that his master would be willing that he should give up his time for this purpose, so he accepted the invitation. The tables were by this time nearly covered, but all stood waiting, for there flowed in from the great doorway of the hall a gorgeous train—first, a man bearing the double archiepiscopal cross of York, fashioned in silver, and thick with gems—then, with lofty mitre enriched with pearls and jewels, and with flowing violet lace-covered robes came the sturdy square-faced ruddy prelate, who was then the chief influence in England, and after him two glittering ranks of priests in square caps and richly embroidered copes, all in accordant colours. They were returning, as a yeoman told Tibble, from some great ecclesiastical ceremony, and dinner would be served instantly. “That for which Ralf Bowyer lives!” said a voice close by, “He would fain that the dial’s hands were Marie bones, the face blancmange, wherein the figures should be grapes of Corinth!” Stephen looked round and saw a man close beside him in what he knew at once to be the garb of a jester. A tall scarlet velvet cap, with three peaks, bound with gold braid, and each surmounted with a little gilded bell, crowned his head, a small crimson ridge to indicate the cock’s comb running along the front. His jerkin and hose were of motley, the left arm and right leg being blue, their opposites, orange tawny, while the nether stocks and shoes were in like manner black and scarlet counterchanged. And yet, somehow, whether from the way of wearing it, or from the effect of the gold embroidery meandering over all, the effect was not distressing, but more like that of a gorgeous bird. The figure was tall, lithe, and active, the brown ruddy face had none of the blank stare of vacant idiocy, but was full of twinkling merriment, the black eyes laughed gaily, and perhaps only so clearsighted and shrewd an observer as Tibble would have detected a weakness of purpose about the mouth. There was a roar of laughter at the gibe, as indeed there was at whatever was uttered by the man whose profession was to make mirth. “Thou likest thy food well enough thyself, quipsome one,” muttered Ralf. “Hast found one who doth not, Ralf? Then should he have a free gift of my bauble,” responded the jester, shaking on high that badge, surmounted with the golden head of an ass, and jingling with bells. “How now, friend Wry-mouth? ’Tis long since thou wert here! This house hath well-nigh been forced to its ghostly weapons for lack of thy substantial ones. Where hast thou been?” “At Salisbury, good Merryman.” “Have the Wilts men raked the moon yet out of the pond? Did they lend thee their rake, Tib, that thou hast raked up a couple of green Forest palmer worms, or be they the sons of the man in the moon, raked out and all astray?” “Mayhap, for we met them with dog and bush,” said Tibble, “and they dropped as from the moon to save my poor master from the robbers on Bagshot heath! Come now, mine honest fellow, aid me to rake, as thou sayest, this same household. They are come up from the Forest, to seek out their uncle, one Randall, who they have heard to be in this meiné. Knowest thou such a fellow?” “To seek a spider in a stubble-field! Truly he needs my bauble who sent them on such an errand,” said the jester, rather slowly, as if to take time for consideration. “What’s your name, my Forest flies?” “Birkenholt, sir,” answered Ambrose, “but our uncle is Harry Randall.” “Here’s fools enow to take away mine office,” was the reply. “Here’s a couple of lads would leave the greenwood and the free oaks and beeches, for this stinking, plague-smitten London.” “We’d not have quitted it could we have tarried at home,” began Ambrose; but at that moment there was a sudden commotion, a trampling of horses was heard outside, a loud imperious voice demanded, “Is my Lord Archbishop within?” a whisper ran round, “the King,” and there entered the hall with hasty steps, a figure never to be forgotten, clad in a hunting dress of green velvet embroidered with gold, with a golden hunting horn slung round his neck. Henry VIII. was then in the splendid prime of his youth, in his twenty-seventh year, and in the eyes, not only of his own subjects, but of all others, the very type of a true king of men. Tall, and as yet of perfect form for strength, agility, and grace; his features were of the beautiful straight Plantagenet type, and his complexion of purely fair rosiness, his large well-opened blue eyes full at once of frankness and keenness, and the short golden beard that fringed his square chin giving the manly air that otherwise might have seemed wanting to the feminine tinting of his regular lineaments. All caps were instantly doffed save the little bonnet with one drooping feather that covered his short, curled, yellow hair; and the Earl of Derby, who was at the head of Wolsey’s retainers, made haste, bowing to the ground, to assure him that my Lord Archbishop was but doffing his robes, and would be with his Grace instantly. Would his Grace vouchsafe to come on to the privy chamber where the dinner was spread? At the same moment Quipsome Hal sprang forward, exclaiming, “How now, brother and namesake? Wherefore this coil? Hath cloth of gold wearied yet of cloth of frieze? Is she willing to own her right to this?” as he held out his bauble. “Holla, old Blister! art thou there?” said the King, good-humouredly. “What! knowest not that we are to have such a wedding as will be a sight for sore eyes!” “Sore! that’s well said, friend Hal. Thou art making progress in mine art! Sore be the eyes wherein thou wouldst throw dust.” Again the King laughed, for every one knew that his sister Mary had secretly been married to the Duke of Suffolk for the last two months, and that this public marriage and the tournament that was to follow were only for the sake of appearances. He laid his hand good-naturedly on the jester’s shoulder as he walked up the hall towards the Archbishop’s private apartments, but the voices of both were loud pitched, and bits of the further conversation could be picked up. “Weddings are rife in your family,” said the jester, “none of you get weary of fitting on the noose. What, thou thyself, Hal? Ay, thou hast not caught the contagion yet! Now ye gods forefend! If thou hast the chance, thou’lt have it strong.” Therewith the Archbishop, in his purple robes, appeared in the archway at the other end of the hall, the King joined him, and still followed by the jester, they both vanished. It was presently made known that the King was about to dine there, and that all were to sit down to eat. The King dined alone with the Archbishop as his host; the two noblemen who had formed his suite joined the first table in the higher hall; the knights that of the steward of the household, who was of knightly degree, and with whom the superior clergy of the household ate; and the grooms found their places among the vast array of yeomen and serving-men of all kinds with whom Tibble and his two young companions had to eat. A week ago, Stephen would have contemned the idea of being classed with serving-men and grooms, but by this time he was quite bewildered, and anxious enough to be thankful to keep near a familiar face on any terms, and to feel as if Tibble were an old friend, though he had only known him for five days. Why the King had come had not transpired, but there was a whisper that despatches from Scotland were concerned in it. The meal was a lengthy one, but at last the King’s horses were ordered, and presently Henry came forth, with his arm familiarly linked in that of the Archbishop, whose horse had likewise been made ready that he might accompany the King back to Westminster. The jester was close at hand, and as a parting shaft he observed, while the King mounted his horse, “Friend Hal! give my brotherly commendations to our Madge, and tell her that one who weds Anguish cannot choose but cry out.” Wherewith, affecting to expect a stroke from the King’s whip, he doubled himself up, performed the contortion now called turning a coachwheel, then, recovering himself, put his hands on his hips and danced wildly on the steps; while Henry, shaking his whip at him, laughed at the only too obvious pun, for Anguish was the English version of Angus, the title of Queen Margaret’s second husband, and it was her complaints that had brought him to his counsellor. The jester then, much to the annoyance of the two boys, thought proper to follow them to the office of the comptroller, and as that dignitary read out from his books the name of every Henry, and of all the varieties of Ralf and Randolf among the hundred and eighty persons composing the household, he kept on making comments. “Harry Hempseed, clerk to the kitchen; ay, Hempseed will serve his turn one of these days. Walter Randall, groom of the chamber; ah, ha! my lads, if you want a generous uncle who will look after you well, there is your man! He’ll give you the shakings of the napery for largesse, and when he is in an open-handed mood, will let you lie on the rushes that have served the hall. Harry of Lambeth, yeoman of the stable. He will make you free of all the taverns in Eastchepe.” And so on, accompanying each remark with a pantomime mimicry of the air and gesture of the individual. He showed in a second the contortions of Harry Weston in drawing the bow, and in another the grimaces of Henry Hope, the choir man, in producing bass notes, or the swelling majesty of Randall Porcher, the cross-bearer, till it really seemed as if he had shown off the humours of at least a third of the enormous household. Stephen had laughed at first, but as failure after failure occurred, the antics began to weary even him, and seem unkind and ridiculous as hope ebbed away, and the appalling idea began to grow on him of being cast loose on London without a friend or protector. Ambrose felt almost despairing as he heard in vain the last name. He would almost have been willing to own Hal the scullion, and his hopes rose when he heard of Hodge Randolph, the falconer, but alas, that same Hodge came from Yorkshire. “And mine uncle was from the New Forest in Hampshire,” he said. “Maybe he went by the name of Shirley,” added Stephen, “’tis where his home was.” But the comptroller, unwilling to begin a fresh search, replied at once that the only Shirley in the household was a noble esquire of the Warwickshire family. “You must e’en come back with me, young masters,” said Tibble, “and see what my master can do for you.” “Stay a bit,” said the fool. “Harry of Shirley! Harry of Shirley! Methinks I could help you to the man, if so be as you will deem him worth the finding,” he added, suddenly turning upside down, and looking at them standing on the palms of his hands, with an indescribable leer of drollery, which in a moment dashed all the hopes with which they had turned to him. “Should you know this minks of yours?” he added. “I think I should,” said Ambrose. “I remember best how he used to carry me on his shoulder to cull mistletoe for Christmas.” “Ah, ha! A proper fellow of his inches now, with yellow hair?” “Nay,” said Ambrose, “I mind that his hair was black, and his eyes as black as sloes—or as thine own, Master Jester.” The jester tumbled over into a more extraordinary attitude than before, while Stephen said— “John was wont to twit us with being akin to Gipsy Hal.” “I mean a man sad and grave as the monks of Beaulieu,” said the jester. “He!” they both cried. “No, indeed! He was foremost in all sports.” “Ah!” cried Stephen, “mind you not, Ambrose, his teaching us leap-frog, and aye leaping over one of us himself, with the other in his arms?” “Ah! sadly changed, sadly changed,” said the jester, standing upright, with a most mournful countenance. “Maybe you’d not thank me if I showed him to you, young sirs, that is, if he be the man.” “Nay! is he in need, or distress?” cried the brothers. “Poor Hal!” returned the fool, shaking his head with mournfulness in his voice. “Oh, take us to him, good—good jester,” cried Ambrose. “We are young and strong. We will work for him.” “What, a couple of lads like you, that have come to London seeking for him to befriend you—deserving well my cap for that matter. Will ye be guided to him, broken and soured—no more gamesome, but a sickly old runagate?” “Of course,” cried Ambrose. “He is our mother’s brother. We must care for him.” “Master Headley will give us work, mayhap,” said Stephen, turning to Tibble. “I could clean the furnaces.” “Ah, ha! I see fools’ caps must hang thick as beech masts in the Forest,” cried the fool, but his voice was husky, and he turned suddenly round with his back to them, then cut three or four extraordinary capers, after which he observed—“Well, young gentlemen, I will see the man I mean, and if he be the same, and be willing to own you for his nephews, he will meet you in the Temple Gardens at six of the clock this evening, close to the rose-bush with the flowers in my livery—motley red and white.” “But how shall we know him?” “D’ye think a pair of green caterpillars like you can’t be marked—unless indeed the gardener crushes you for blighting his roses.” Wherewith the jester quitted the scene, walking on his hands, with his legs in the air. “Is he to be trusted?” asked Tibble of the comptroller. “Assuredly,” was the answer; “none hath better wit than Quipsome Hal, when he chooseth to be in earnest. In very deed, as I have heard Sir Thomas More say, it needeth a wise man to be fool to my Lord of York.”

8

QUIPSOME HAL

“The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear, The one in motley here The other found out there.” SHAKESPEARE. THERE lay the quiet Temple Gardens, on the Thames bank, cut out in formal walks, with flowers growing in the beds of the homely kinds beloved by the English. Musk roses, honeysuckle and virgin’s bower, climbed on the old grey walls; sops-in-wine, bluebottles, bachelor’s buttons, stars of Bethlehem and the like, filled the borders; May thorns were in full sweet blossom; and near one another were the two rose bushes, one damask and one white Provence, whence Somerset and Warwick were said to have plucked their fatal badges; while on the opposite side of a broad grass-plot was another bush, looked on as a great curiosity of the best omen, where the roses were streaked with alternate red and white, in honour, as it were, of the union of York and Lancaster. By this rose-tree stood the two young Birkenholts. Edmund Burgess having, by his master’s desire, shown them the way, and passed them in by a word and sign from his master, then retired unseen to a distance to mark what became of them, they having promised also to return and report of themselves to Master Headley. They stood together earnestly watching for the coming of the uncle, feeling quite uncertain whether to expect a frail old broken man, or to find themselves absolutely deluded, and made game of by the jester. The gardens were nearly empty, for most people were sitting over their supper-tables after the business of the day was over, and only one or two figures in black gowns paced up and down in conversation. “Come away, Ambrose,” said Stephen at last. “He only meant to make fools of us! Come, before he comes to gibe us for having heeded a moment. Come, I say—here’s this man coming to ask us what we are doing here.” For a tall, well-made, well-dressed personage in the black or sad colour of a legal official, looking like a prosperous householder, or superior artisan, was approaching them, some attendant, as the boys concluded belonging to the Temple. They expected to be turned out, and Ambrose in an apologetic tone, began, “Sir, we were bidden to meet a—a kinsman here.” “And even so am I,” was the answer, in a grave, quiet tone, “or rather to meet twain.” Ambrose looked up into a pair of dark eyes, and exclaimed “Stevie, Stevie, ’tis he. ’Tis uncle Hal.” “Ay, ’tis all you’re like to have for him,” answered Harry Randall, enfolding each in his embrace. “Lad, how like thou art to my poor sister! And is she indeed gone—and your honest father too—and none left at home but that hunks, little John? How and when died she?” “Two years agone come Lammastide,” answered Stephen. “There was a deadly creeping fever and ague through the Forest. We two sickened, and Ambrose was so like to die that Diggory went to the abbey for the priest to housel and anneal him, but by the time Father Simon came he was sound asleep, and soon was whole again. But before we were on our legs, our blessed mother took the disease, and she passed away ere many days were over. Then, though poor father took not that sickness, he never was the same man again, and only twelve days after last Pasch-tide he was taken with a fit and never spake again.” Stephen was weeping by this time, and his uncle had a hand on his shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, threw in ejaculations of pity and affection. Ambrose finished the narrative with a broken voice indeed, but as one who had more self-command than his brother, perhaps than his uncle, whose exclamations became bitter and angry as he heard of the treatment the boys had experienced from their half-brother, who, as he said, he had always known as a currish mean-spirited churl, but scarce such as this. “Nor do I think he would have been, save for his wife, Maud Pratt of Hampton,” said Ambrose. “Nay, truly also, he deemed that we were only within a day’s journey of council from our uncle Richard at Hyde.” “Richard Birkenholt was a sturdy old comrade! Methinks he would give Master Jack a piece of his mind.” “Alack, good uncle, we found him in his dotage, and the bursar of Hyde made quick work with us, for fear, good Father Shoveller said, that we were come to look after his corrody.” “Shoveller—what, a Shoveller of Cranbury? How fell ye in with him?” Ambrose told the adventures of their journey, and Randall exclaimed “By my bau—I mean by my faith—if ye have ill-luck in uncles, ye have had good luck in friends.” “No ill-luck in thee, good, kind uncle,” said Stephen, catching at his hand with the sense of comfort that kindred blood gives. “How wottest thou that, child? Did not I—I mean did not Merryman tell you, that mayhap ye would not be willing to own your uncle?” “We deemed he was but jesting,” said Stephen. “Ah!” For a sudden twinkle in the black eyes, an involuntary twist of the muscles of the face, were a sudden revelation to him. He clutched hold of Ambrose with a sudden grasp; Ambrose too looked and recoiled for a moment, while the colour spread over his face. “Yes, lads. Can you brook the thought! —Harry Randall is the poor fool!” Stephen, whose composure had already broken down, burst into tears again, perhaps mostly at the downfall of all his own expectations and glorifications of the kinsman about whom he had boasted. Ambrose only exclaimed “O uncle, you must have been hard pressed.” For indeed the grave, almost melancholy man, who stood before them, regarding them wistfully, had little in common with the lithe tumbler full of absurdities whom they had left at York House. “Even so, my good lad. Thou art right in that,” said he gravely. “Harder than I trust will ever be the lot of you two, my sweet Moll’s sons. She never guessed that I was come to this.” “O no,” said Stephen. “She always thought thou—thou hadst some high preferment in—” “And so I have,” said Randall with something of his ordinary humour. “There’s no man dares to speak such plain truth to my lord—or for that matter to King Harry himself, save his own Jack-a-Lee—and he, being a fool of nature’s own making, cannot use his chances, poor rogue! And so the poor lads came up to London hoping to find a gallant captain who could bring them to high preferment, and found nought but—Tom Fool! I could find it in my heart to weep for them! And so thou mindest clutching the mistletoe on nunk Hal’s shoulder. I warrant it groweth still on the crooked May bush? And is old Bobbin alive?” They answered his questions, but still as if under a great shock, and presently he said, as they paced up and down the garden walks, “Ay, I have been sore bestead, and I’ll tell you how it came about, boys, and mayhap ye will pardon the poor fool, who would not own you sooner, lest ye should come in for mockery ye have not learnt to brook.” There was a sadness and pleading in his tone that touched Ambrose, and he drew nearer to his uncle, who laid a hand on his shoulder, and presently the other on that of Stephen, who shrank a little at first, but submitted. “Lads, I need not tell you why I left fair Shirley and the good greenwood. I was a worse fool then than ever I have been since I wore the cap and bells, and if all had been brought home to me, it might have brought your father and mother into trouble—my sweet Moll who had done her best for me. I deemed, as you do now, that the way to fortune was open, but I found no path before me, and I had tightened my belt many a time, and was not much more than a bag of bones, when, by chance, I fell in with a company of tumblers and gleemen. I sang them the old hunting-song, and they said I did it tunably, and, whereas they saw I could already dance a hornpipe and turn a somersault passably well, the leader of the troop, old Nat Fire-eater, took me on, and methinks he did not repent—nor I neither—save when I sprained my foot and had time to lie by and think. We had plenty to fill our bellies and put on our backs; we had welcome wherever we went, and the groats and pennies rained into our caps. I was Clown and Jack Pudding and whatever served their turn, and the very name of Quipsome Hal drew crowds. Yea, ’twas a merry life! Ay, I feel thee wince and shrink, my lad; and so should I have shuddered when I was of thine age, and hoped to come to better things.” “Methinks ’twere better than this present,” said Stephen rather gruffly. “I had my reasons, boy,” said Randall, speaking as if he were pleading his cause with their father and mother rather than with two such young lads. “There was in our company an old man-at-arms who played the lute and the rebeck, and sang ballads so long as hand and voice served him, and with him went his grandchild, a fair and honest little maiden, whom he kept so jealously apart that ’twas long ere I knew of her following the company. He had been a franklin on my Lord of Warwick’s lands, and had once been burnt out by Queen Margaret’s men, and just as things looked up again with him, King Edward’s folk ruined all again, and slew his two sons. When great folk play the fool, small folk pay the scot, as I din into his Grace’s ears whenever I may. A minion of the Duke of Clarence got the steading, and poor old Martin Fulford was turned out to shift as best he might. One son he had left, and with him he went to the Low Countries, where they would have done well had they not been bitten by faith in the fellow Perkin Warbeck. You’ve heard of him?” “Yea,” said Ambrose; “the same who was taken out of sanctuary at Beaulieu, and borne off to London. Father said he was marvellous like in the face to all the kings he had ever seen hunting in the Forest.” “I know not; but to the day of his death old Martin swore that he was a son of King Edward’s, and they came home again with the men the Duchess of Burgundy gave Perkin—came bag and baggage, for young Fulford had wedded a fair Flemish wife, poor soul! He left her with his father nigh to Taunton ere the battle, and he was never heard of more, but as he was one of the few men who knew how to fight, belike he was slain. Thus old Martin was left with the Flemish wife and her little one on his hands, for whose sake he did what went against him sorely, joined himself to this troop of jugglers and players, so as to live by the minstrelsy he had learnt in better days, while his daughter-in-law mended and made for the company and kept them in smart and shining trim. By the time I fell in with them his voice was well-nigh gone, and his hand sorely shaking, but Fire-eating Nat, the master of our troop, was not an ill-natured fellow, and the glee-women’s feet were well used to his rebeck. Moreover, the Fire-eater had an eye to little Perronel, though her mother had never let him train her—scarce let him set an eye on her; and when Mistress Fulford died, poor soul, of ague, caught when we showed off before the merry Prior of Worcester, her last words were that Perronel should never be a glee-maiden. Well, to make an end of my tale, we had one day a mighty show at Windsor, when the King and Court were at the castle, and it was whispered to me at the end that my Lord Archbishop’s household needed a jester, and that Quipsome Hal had been thought to make excellent fooling. I gave thanks at first, but said I would rather be a free man, not bound to be a greater fool than Dame Nature made me all the hours of the day. But when I got back to the Garter, what should I find but that poor old Martin had been stricken with the dead palsy while he was playing his rebeck, and would never twang a note more; and there was pretty Perronel weeping over him, and Nat Fire-eater pledging his word to give the old man bed, board, and all that he could need, if so be that Perronel should be trained to be one of his glee-maidens, to dance and tumble and sing. And there was the poor old franklin shaking his head more than the palsy made it shake already, and trying to frame his lips to say, ‘rather they both should die. ’” “Oh, uncle, I wot now what thou didst!” cried Stephen. “Yea, lad, there was nought else to be done. I asked Master Fulford to give me Perronel, plighting my word that never should she sing or dance for any one’s pleasure save her own and mine, and letting him know that I came of a worthy family. We were wedded out of hand by the priest that had been sent for to housel him, and in our true names. The Fire-eater was fiery enough, and swore that, wedded or not, I was bound to him, that he would have both of us, and would not drag about a helpless old man unless he might have the wench to do his bidding. I verily believe that, but for my being on the watch and speaking a word to two or three stout yeomen of the king’s guard that chanced to be crushing a pot of sack at the Garter, he would have played some villainous trick on us. They gave a hint to my Lord of York’s steward, and he came down and declared that the Archbishop required Quipsome Hal, and would—of his grace—send a purse of nobles to the Fire-eater, wherewith he was to be off on the spot without more ado, or he might find it the worse for him, and they, together with mine host’s good wife, took care that the rogue did not carry away Perronel with him, as he was like to have done. To end my story, here am I, getting showers of gold coins one day and nought but kicks and gibes the next, while my good woman keeps house nigh here on the banks of the Thames with Gaffer Martin. Her Flemish thrift has set her to the washing and clear-starching of the lawyers’ ruffs, whereby she makes enough to supply the defects of my scanty days, or when I have to follow my lord’s grace out of her reach, sweet soul. There’s my tale, nevoys. And now, have ye a hand for Quipsome Hal?” “O uncle! Father would have honoured thee!” cried Stephen. “Why didst thou not bring her down to the Forest?” said Ambrose. “I conned over the thought,” said Randall, “but there was no way of living. I wist not whether the Ranger might not stir up old tales, and moreover old Martin is ill to move. We brought him down by boat from Windsor, and he has never quitted the house since, nor his bed for the last two years. You’ll come and see the housewife? She hath a supper laying out for you, and on the way we’ll speak of what ye are to do, my poor lads.” “I’d forgotten that,” said Stephen. “So had not I,” returned his uncle; “I fear me I cannot aid you to preferment as you expected. None know Quipsome Hal by any name but that of Harry Merryman, and it were not well that ye should come in there as akin to the poor fool.” “No,” said Stephen, emphatically. “Your father left you twenty crowns apiece?” “Ay, but John hath all save four of them.” “For that there’s remedy. What saidst thou of the Cheapside armourer? His fellow, the Wry-mouth, seemed to have a care of you. Ye made in to the rescue with poor old Spring.” “Even so,” replied Ambrose, “and if Stevie would brook the thought, I trow that Master Headley would be quite willing to have him bound as his apprentice.” “Well said, my good lad!” cried Hal. “What sayest thou, Stevie?” “I had liefer be a man-at-arms.” “That thou couldst only be after being sorely knocked about as horseboy and as groom. I tried that once, but found it meant kicks, and oaths, and vile company—such as I would not have for thy mother’s son, Steve. Headley is a well-reported, God-fearing man, and will do well by thee. And thou wilt learn the use of arms as well as handle them.” “I like Master Headley and Kit Smallbones well enough,” said Stephen, rather gloomily, “and if a gentleman must be a prentice, weapons are not so bad a craft for him.” “Whittington was a gentleman,” said Ambrose. “I am sick of Whittington,” muttered Stephen. “Nor is he the only one,” said Randall; “there’s Middleton and Pole—ay, and many another who have risen from the flat cap to the open helm, if not to the coronet. Nay, these London companies have rules against taking any prentice not of gentle blood. Come in to supper with my good woman, and then I’ll go with thee and hold converse with good Master Headley, and if Master John doth not send the fee freely, why then I know of them who shall make him disgorge it. But mark,” he added, as he led the way out of the gardens, “not a breath of Quipsome Hal. Down here they know me as a clerk of my lord’s chamber, sad and sober, and high in his trust, and therein they are not far out.” In truth, though Harry Randall had been a wild and frolicsome youth in his Hampshire home, the effect of being a professional buffoon had actually made it a relaxation of effort to him to be grave, quiet, and slow in movement; and this was perhaps a more effectual disguise than the dark garments, and the false brown hair, beard, and moustache, with which he concealed the shorn and shaven condition required of the domestic jester. Having been a player, he was well able to adapt himself to his part, and yet Ambrose had considerable doubts whether Tibble had not suspected his identity from the first, more especially as both the lads had inherited the same dark eyes from their mother, and Ambrose for the first time perceived a considerable resemblance between him and Stephen, not only in feature but in unconscious gesture. Ambrose was considering whether he had better give his uncle a hint, lest concealment should excite suspicion; when, niched as it were against an abutment of the wall of the Temple courts, close to some steps going down to the Thames, they came upon a tiny house, at whose open door stood a young woman in the snowiest of caps and aprons over a short black gown, beneath which were a trim pair of blue hosen and stout shoes; a suspicion of yellow hair was allowed to appear framing the honest, fresh, Flemish face, which beamed a good-humoured welcome. “Here they be! here be the poor lads, Pernel mine.” She held out her hand, and offered a round comfortable cheek to each, saying, “Welcome to London, young gentlemen.” Good Mistress Perronel did not look exactly the stuff to make a glee-maiden of, nor even the beauty for whom to sacrifice everything, even liberty and respect. She was substantial in form, and broad in face and mouth, without much nose, and with large almost colourless eyes. But there was a wonderful look of heartiness and friendliness about her person and her house; the boys had never in their lives seen anything so amazingly and spotlessly clean and shining. In a corner stood an erection like a dark oaken cupboard or wardrobe, but in the middle was an opening about a yard square through which could be seen the night-capped face of a white-headed, white-bearded old man, propped against snowy pillows. To him Randall went at once, saying, “So, gaffer, how goes it? You see I have brought company, my poor sister’s sons—rest her soul!” Gaffer Martin mumbled something to them incomprehensible, but which the jester comprehended, for he called them up and named them to him, and Martin put out a bony hand, and gave them a greeting. Though his speech and limbs had failed him, his intelligence was evidently still intact, and there was a tenderly-cared-for look about him, rendering his condition far less pitiable than that of Richard Birkenholt, who was so palpably treated as an incumbrance. The table was already covered with a cloth, and Perronel quickly placed on it a yellow bowl of excellent beef broth, savoury with vegetables and pot-herbs, and with meat and dumplings floating in it. A lesser bowl was provided for each of the company, with horn spoons, and a loaf of good wheaten bread, and a tankard of excellent ale. Randall declared that his Perronel made far daintier dishes than my Lord Archbishop’s cook, who went every day in silk and velvet. He explained to her his views on the armourer, to which she agreed with all her might, the old gentleman in bed adding something which the boys began to understand, that there was no worthier nor more honourable condition than that of an English burgess, specially in the good town of London, where the kings knew better than to be ever at enmity with their good towns. “Will the armourer take both of you?” asked Mistress Randall. “Nay, it was only for Stephen we devised it,” said Ambrose. “And what wilt thou do?” “I wish to be a scholar,” said Ambrose. “A lean trade,” quoth the jester; “a monk now or a friar may be a right jolly fellow, but I never yet saw a man who throve upon books!” “I had rather study than thrive,” said Ambrose rather dreamily. “He wotteth not what he saith,” cried Stephen. “Oh ho! so thou art of that sort!” rejoined his uncle. “I know them! A crabbed black and white page is meat and drink to them! There’s that Dutch fellow, with a long Latin name, thin and weazen as never was Dutchman before; they say he has read all the books in the world, and can talk in all the tongues, and yet when he and Sir Thomas More and the Dean of St. Paul’s get together at my lord’s table one would think they were bidding for my bauble. Such excellent fooling do they make, that my lord sits holding his sides.” “The Dean of St. Paul’s!” said Ambrose, experiencing a shock. “Ay! He’s another of your lean scholars, and yet he was born a wealthy man, son to a Lord Mayor, who, they say, reared him alone out of a round score of children.” “Alack! poor souls,” sighed Mistress Randall under her breath, for, as Ambrose afterwards learnt, her two babes had scarce seen the light. Her husband, while giving her a look of affection, went on—“Not that he can keep his wealth. He has bestowed the most of it on Stepney church, and on the school he hath founded for poor children, nigh to St. Paul’s.” “Could I get admittance to that school?” exclaimed Ambrose. “Thou art a big fellow for a school,” said his uncle, looking him over. “However, faint heart never won fair lady.” “I have a letter from the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s to one of the clerks of St. Paul’s,” added Ambrose. “Alworthy is his name.” “That’s well. We’ll prove that same,” said his uncle. “Meantime, if ye have eaten your fill, we must be on our way to thine armourer, nevoy Stephen, or I shall be called for.” And after a private colloquy between the husband and wife, Ambrose was by both of them desired to make the little house his home until he could find admittance into St. Paul’s School, or some other. He demurred somewhat from a mixture of feelings, in which there was a certain amount of Stephen’s longing for freedom of action, and likewise a doubt whether he should not thus be a great inconvenience in the tiny household—a burden he was resolved not to be. But his uncle now took a more serious tone. “Look thou, Ambrose, thou art my sister’s son, and fool though I be, thou art bound in duty to me, and I to have charge of thee, nor will I—for the sake of thy father and mother—have thee lying I know not where, among gulls, and cutpurses, and beguilers of youth here in this city of London. So, till better befals thee, and I wot of it, thou must be here no later than curfew, or I will know the reason why.” “And I hope the young gentleman will find it no sore grievance,” said Perronel, so good-humouredly that Ambrose could only protest that he had feared to be troublesome to her, and promise to bring his bundle the next day.

9

ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL

“For him was leifer to have at his bedde’s hedde Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde Of Aristotle and his philosophie Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie.” CHAUCER. MASTER HEADLEY was found spending the summer evening in the bay window of the hall. Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him, writing in a crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones towered above both, holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks. By the help of these, and of that accuracy of memory which writing has destroyed, he was unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the entire account of payments and receipts during his master’s absence, the debtor and creditor account being preserved as perfectly as if he had always had a pen in his huge fingers, and studied book-keeping by double or single entry. On the return of the two boys with such an apparently respectable member of society as the handsome well-dressed personage who accompanied them, little Dennet, who had been set to sew her sampler on a stool by her grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to bed if she disturbed her father, sprang up with a little cry of gladness, and running up to Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his good greenwood Forest, and the pucks and pixies, and the girl who daily shared her breakfast with a snake and said, “Eat your own side, Speckleback.” Somehow, on Sunday night she had gathered that Ambrose had a store of such tales, and she dragged him off to the gallery, there to revel in them, while his brother remained with her father. Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent to be bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it looked so friendly and felt so much like a home that he found himself very anxious that Master Headley should not say that he could take no more apprentices at present, and that he should be satisfied with the terms uncle Hal would propose. And oh! suppose Tibble should recognise Quipsome Hal! However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts, and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he himself held speech with his guest at some distance—sending for a cup of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation. He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of himself as a well known “housekeeper” close to the Temple, his wife a “lavender” there, while he himself was attached to the suite of the Archbishop of York. Here alone was there any approach to shuffling, for Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall attended Wolsey in his capacity of king’s counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his own, had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and servants. He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall was perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt family, and the circumstances under which he had left the Forest. Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that it would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his teeth that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to get a letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he should not dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which Master Headley would accept the two crowns that Stephen had in hand, as soon as the indentures could be drawn out by one of the many scriveners who lived about St. Paul’s. This settled, Randall could stay no longer, but he called both nephews into the court with him. “Ye can write a letter?” he said. “Ay, sure, both of us; but Ambrose is the best scribe,” said Stephen. “One of you had best write then. Let that cur John know that I have my Lord of York’s ear, and there will be no fear but he will give it. I’ll find a safe hand among the clerks, when the judges ride to hold the assize. Mayhap Ambrose might also write to the Father at Beaulieu. The thing had best be bruited.” “I wished to do so,” said Ambrose. “It irked me to have taken no leave of the good Fathers.” Randall then took his leave, having little more than time to return to York House, where the Archbishop might perchance come home wearied and chafed from the King, and the jester might be missed if not there to put him in good humour. The curfew sounded, and though attention to its notes was not compulsory by law, it was regarded as the break-up of the evening and the note of recall in all well-ordered establishments. The apprentices and journeymen came into the court, among them Giles Headley, who had been taken out by one of the men to be provided with a working dress, much to his disgust; the grandmother summoned little Dennet and carried her off to bed. Stephen and Ambrose bade good-night, but Master Headley and his two confidential men remained somewhat longer to wind up their accounts. Doors were not, as a rule, locked within the court, for though it contained from forty to fifty persons, they were all regarded as a single family, and it was enough to fasten the heavily bolted, iron-studded folding doors of the great gateway leading into Cheapside, the key being brought to the master like that of a castle, seven minutes, measured by the glass, after the last note of the curfew in the belfry outside St. Paul’s. The summer twilight, however, lasted long after this time of grace, and when Tibble had completed his accountant’s work, and Smallbones’ deep voiced “Goodnight, comrade,” had resounded over the court, he beheld a figure rise up from the steps of the gallery, and Ambrose’s voice said: “May I speak to thee, Tibble? I need thy counsel.” “Come hither, sir,” said the foreman, muttering to himself, “Methought ’twas working in him! The leaven! the leaven!” Tibble led the way up one of the side stairs into the open gallery, where he presently opened a door, admitting to a small, though high chamber, the walls of bare brick, and containing a low bed, a small table, a three-legged stool, a big chest, and two cupboards, also a cross over the head of the bed. A private room was a luxury neither possessed nor desired by most persons of any degree, and only enjoyed by Tibble in consideration of his great value to his master, his peculiar tastes, and the injuries he had received. In point of fact, his fall had been owing to a hasty blow, given in a passion by the master himself when a young man. Dismay and repentance had made Giles Headley a cooler and more self-controlled man ever since, and even if Tibble had not been a superior workman, he might still have been free to do almost anything he chose. Tibble gave his visitor the stool, and himself sat down on the chest, saying: “So you have found your uncle, sir.” “Ay,” said Ambrose, pausing in some expectation that Tibble would mention some suspicion of his identity; but if the foreman had his ideas on the subject he did not disclose them, and waited for more communications. “Tibble!” said Ambrose, with a long gasp, “I must find means to hear more of him thou tookedst me to on Sunday.” “None ever truly tasted of that well without longing to come back to it,” quoth Tibble. “But hath not thy kinsman done aught for thee?” “Nay,” said Ambrose, “save to offer me a lodging with his wife, a good and kindly lavender at the Temple.” Tibble nodded. “So far am I free,” said Ambrose, “and I am glad of it. I have a letter here to one of the canons, one Master Alworthy, but ere I seek him I would know somewhat from thee, Tibble. What like is he?” “I cannot tell, sir,” said Tibble. “The canons are rich and many, and a poor smith like me wots little of their fashions.” “Is it true,” again asked Ambrose, “that the Dean—he who spake those words yesterday—hath a school here for young boys?” “Ay. And a good and mild school it be, bringing them up in the name and nurture of the Holy Child Jesus, to whom it is dedicated.” “Then they are taught this same doctrine?” “I trow they be. They say the Dean loves them like the children of his old age, and declares that they shall be made in love with holy lore by gentleness rather than severity.” “Is it likely that this same Alworthy could obtain me entrance there?” “Alack, sir, I fear me thou art too old. I see none but little lads among them. Didst thou come to London with that intent?” “Nay, for I only wist to-day that there was such a school. I came with I scarce know what purpose, save to see Stephen safely bestowed, and then to find some way of learning myself. Moreover, a change seems to have come on me, as though I had hitherto been walking in a dream.” Tibble nodded, and Ambrose, sitting there in the dark, was moved to pour forth all his heart, the experience of many an ardent soul in those spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the simple monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat mechanical routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on acquiring knowledge with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of studious boyhood as yet unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical life to which every one destined him would only be a continuation of the same, as indeed it had been to his master, Father Simon. Not that Ambrose expressed this, beyond saying, “They are good and holy men, and I thought all were like them, and fear that was all!” Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting the youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he might yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy rites and doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion from home had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly life. Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey’s house had been a shock to the lad’s ideal of a bishop drawn from the saintly biographies he had studied at Beaulieu; and he had but to keep his ears open to hear endless scandals about the mass priests, as they were called, since they were at this time very unpopular in London, and in many cases deservedly so. Everything that the boy had hitherto thought the way of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by evil and danger, and under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance continued to haunt him. “I saw it, I saw it;” he said, “all over those halls at York House. I seemed to behold the grisly shape standing behind one and another, as they ate and laughed; and when the Archbishop and his priests and the King came in it seemed only to make the pageant complete! Only now and then could I recall those blessed words, ‘Ye are free indeed.’ Did he say from the bondage of death?” “Yea,” said Tibble, “into the glorious freedom of God’s children.” “Thou knowst it. Thou knowst it, Tibble. It seems to me that life is no life, but living death, without that freedom! And I _must_ hear of it, and know whether it is mine, yea, and Stephen’s, and all whom I love. O Tibble, I would beg my bread rather than not have that freedom ever before mine eyes.” “Hold it fast! hold it fast, dear sir,” said Tibble, holding out his hands with tears in his eyes, and his face working in a manner that happily Ambrose could not see. “But how—how? The barefoot friar said that for an _Ave_ a day, our Blessed Lady will drag us back from purgatory. I saw her on the wall of her chapel at Winchester saving a robber knight from the sea, yea and a thief from the gallows; but that is not being free.” “Fond inventions of pardon-mongers,” muttered Tibble. “And is one not free when the priest hath assoilsied him?” added Ambrose. “If, and if—” said Tibble. “But bone shall make me trow that shrift in words, without heart-sorrow for sin, and the Latin heard with no thought of Him that bore the guilt, can set the sinner free. ’Tis none other that the Dean sets forth, ay, and the book that I have here. I thank my God,” he stood up and took off his cap reverently, “that He hath opened the eyes of another!” His tone was such that Ambrose could have believed him some devout almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he appeared at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many another craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one that of the ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights that were shining unveiled and new to many; and especially here in the heart of the City, partly from the influence of Dean Colet’s sermons and catechisings at St. Paul’s, but also from remnants of Lollardism, which had never been entirely quenched. The ordinary clergy looked at it with horror, but the intelligent and thoughtful of the burgher and craftsman classes studied it with a passionate fervour which might have sooner broken out and in more perilous forms save for the guidance it received in the truly Catholic and open-spirited public teachings of Colet, in which he persisted in spite of the opposition of his brother clergy. Not that as yet the inquirers had in the slightest degree broken with the system of the Church, or with her old traditions. They were only beginning to see the light that had been veiled from them, and to endeavour to clear the fountain from the mire that had fouled it; and there was as yet no reason to believe that the aspersions continually made against the mass priests and the friars were more than the chronic grumblings of Englishmen, who had found the same faults in them for the last two hundred years. “And what wouldst thou do, young sir?” presently inquired Tibble. “That I came to ask thee, good Tibble. I would work to the best of my power in any craft so I may hear those words and gain the key to all I have hitherto learnt, unheeding as one in a dream. My purpose had been to be a scholar and a clerk, but I must see mine own way, and know whither I am being carried, ere I can go farther.” Tibble writhed and wriggled himself about in consideration. “I would I wist how to take thee to the Dean himself,” he said, “but I am but a poor man, and his doctrine is ‘new wine in old bottles’ to the master, though he be a right good man after his lights. See now, Master Ambrose, meseemeth that thou hadst best take thy letter first to this same priest. It may be that he can prefer thee to some post about the minster. Canst sing?” “I could once, but my voice is nought at this present. If I could but be a servitor at St. Paul’s School!” “It might be that the will which hath led thee so far hath that post in store for thee, so bear the letter to Master Alworthy. And if he fail thee, wouldst thou think scorn of aiding a friend of mine who worketh a printing-press in Warwick Inner Yard? Thou wilt find him at his place in Paternoster Row, hard by St. Paul’s. He needeth one who is clerk enough to read the Latin, and the craft being a new one ’tis fenced by none of those prentice laws that would bar the way to thee elsewhere, at thy years.” “I should dwell among books!” “Yea, and holy books, that bear on the one matter dear to the true heart. Thou might serve Lucas Hansen at the sign of the Winged Staff till thou hast settled thine heart, and then it may be the way would be opened to study at Oxford or at Cambridge, so that thou couldst expound the faith to others.” “Good Tibble, kind Tibble, I knew thou couldst aid me! Wilt thou speak to this Master Hansen for me?” Tibble, however, held that it was more seemly that Ambrose should first try his fate with Master Alworthy, but in case of this not succeeding, he promised to write a billet that would secure attention from Lucas Hansen. “I warn thee, however, that he is Low Dutch,” he added, “though he speaketh English well.” He would gladly have gone with the youth, and at any other time might have been sent by his master, but the whole energies of the Dragon would be taken up for the next week by preparations for the tilting-match at court, and Tibble could not be spared for another working hour. Ambrose, as he rose to bid his friend good-night, could not help saying that he marvelled that one such as he could turn his mind to such vanities as the tilt-yard required. “Nay,” said Tibble, “’twas the craft I was bred to—yea, and I have a good master; and the Apostle Paul himself—as I’ve heard a preacher say—bade men continue in the state wherein they were, and not be curious to chop and change. Who knoweth whether in God’s sight, all our wars and policies be no more than the games of the tilt-yard. Moreover, Paul himself made these very weapons read as good a sermon as the Dean himself. Didst never hear of the shield of faith, and helmet of salvation, and breastplate of righteousness? So, if thou comest to Master Hansen, and provest worthy of his trust, thou wilt hear more, ay, and maybe read too thyself, and send forth the good seed to others,” he murmured to himself, as he guided his visitor across the moonlit court up the stairs to the chamber where Stephen lay fast asleep.

10

TWO VOCATIONS

“The smith, a mighty man is he With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands.” LONGFELLOW. STEPHEN’S first thought in the morning was whether the _ex voto_ effigy of poor Spring was put in hand, while Ambrose thought of Tibble’s promised commendation to the printer. They both, however, found their affairs must needs wait. Orders for weapons for the tilting-match had come in so thickly the day before that every hand must be employed on executing them, and the Dragon court was ringing again with the clang of hammers and screech of grind-stones. Stephen, though not yet formally bound, was to enter on his apprentice life at once; and Ambrose was assured by Master Headley that it was of no use to repair to any of the dignified clergy of St. Paul’s before mid-day, and that he had better employ the time in writing to his elder brother respecting the fee. Materials were supplied to him, and he used them so as to do credit to the monks of Beaulieu, in spite of little Dennet spending every spare moment in watching his pen as if he were performing some cabalistic operation. He was a long time about it. There were two letters to write, and the wording of thorn needed to be very careful, besides that the old court hand took more time to frame than the Italian current hand, and even thus, when dinner-time came, at ten o’clock, the household was astonished to find that he had finished all that regarded Stephen, though he had left the letters open, until his own venture should have been made. Stephen flung himself down beside his brother hot and panting, shaking his shoulder-blades and declaring that his arms felt ready to drop out. He had been turning a grindstone ever since six o’clock. The two new apprentices had been set on to sharpening the weapon points as all that they were capable of, and had been bidden by Smallbones to turn and hold alternately, but “that oaf Giles Headley,” said Stephen, “never ground but one lance, and made me go on turning, threatening to lay the butt about mine ears if I slacked.” “The lazy lubber!” cried Ambrose. “But did none see thee, or couldst not call out for redress?” “Thou art half a wench thyself, Ambrose, to think I’d complain. Besides, he stood on his rights as a master, and he is a big fellow.” “That’s true,” said Ambrose, “and he might make it the worse for thee.” “I would I were as big as he,” sighed Stephen, “I would soon show him which was the better man.” Perhaps the grinding match had not been as unobserved as Stephen fancied, for on returning to work, Smallbones, who presided over all the rougher parts of the business, claimed them both. He set Stephen to stand by him, sort out and hand him all the rivets needed for a suit of proof armour that hung on a frame, while he required Giles to straighten bars of iron heated to a white heat. Ere long Giles called out for Stephen to change places, to which Smallbones coolly replied, “Turnabout is the rule here, master.” “Even so,” replied Giles, “and I have been at work like this long enough, ay, and too long!” “Thy turn was a matter of three hours this morning,” replied Kit—not coolly, for nobody was cool in his den, but with a brevity which provoked a laugh. “I shall see what my cousin the master saith!” cried Giles in great wrath. “Ay, that thou wilt,” returned Kit, “if thou dost loiter over thy business, and hast not those bars ready when called for.” “He never meant me to be put on work like this, with a hammer that breaks mine arm.” “What! crying out for _that_!” said Edmund Burgess, who had just come in to ask for a pair of tongs. “What wouldst say to the big hammer that none can wield save Kit himself?” Giles felt there was no redress, and panted on, feeling as if he were melting away, and with a dumb, wild rage in his heart, that could get no outlet, for Smallbones was at least as much bigger than he as he was than Stephen. Tibble was meanwhile busy over the gilding and enamelling of Buckingham’s magnificent plate armour in Italian fashion, but he had found time to thrust into Ambrose’s hand an exceedingly small and curiously folded billet for Lucas Hansen, the printer, in case of need. “He would be found at the sign of the Winged Staff, in Paternoster Row,” said Tibble, “or if not there himself, there would be his servant who would direct Ambrose to the place where the Dutch printer lived and worked.” No one was at leisure to show the lad the way, and he set out with a strange feeling of solitude, as his path began decisively to be away from that of his brother. He did not find much difficulty in discovering the quadrangle on the south side of the minster where the minor canons lived near the deanery; and the porter, a stout lay brother, pointed out to him the doorway belonging to Master Alworthy. He knocked, and a young man with a tonsured head but a bloated face opened it. Ambrose explained that he had brought a letter from the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s College at Winchester. “Give it here,” said the young man. “I would give it to his reverence himself,” said Ambrose. “His reverence is taking his after-dinner nap and may not be disturbed,” said the man. “Then I will wait,” said Ambrose. The door was shut in his face, but it was the shady side of the court, and he sat down on a bench and waited. After full an hour the door was opened, and the canon, a good-natured looking man, in a square cap, and gown and cassock of the finest cloth, came slowly out. He had evidently heard nothing of the message, and was taken by surprise when Ambrose, doffing his cap and bowing low, gave him the greeting of the Warden of St. Elizabeth’s and the letter. “Hum! Ha! My good friend—Fielder—I remember him. He was always a scholar. So he hath sent thee here with his commendations. What should I do with all the idle country lads that come up to choke London and feed the plague? Yet stay—that lurdane Bolt is getting intolerably lazy and insolent, and methinks he robs me! What canst do, thou stripling?” “I can read Latin, sir, and know the Greek alphabeta.” “Tush! I want no scholar more than enough to serve my mass. Canst sing?” “Not now; but I hope to do so again.” “When I rid me of Bolt there—and there’s an office under the sacristan that he might fill as well as another knave—the fellow might do for me well enow as a body servant,” said Mr. Alworthy, speaking to himself. “He would brush my gowns and make my bed, and I might perchance trust him with my marketings, and by and by there might be some office for him when he grew saucy and idle. I’ll prove him on mine old comrade’s word.” “Sir,” said Ambrose, respectfully, “what I seek for is occasion for study. I had hoped you could speak to the Dean, Dr. John Colet, for some post at his school.” “Boy,” said Alworthy, “I thought thee no such fool! Why crack thy brains with study when I can show thee a surer path to ease and preferment? But I see thou art too proud to do an old man a service. Thou writst thyself gentleman, forsooth, and high blood will not stoop.” “Not so, sir,” returned Ambrose, “I would work in any way so I could study the humanities, and hear the Dean preach. Cannot you commend me to his school?” “Ha!” exclaimed the canon, “this is your sort, is it? I’ll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child’s head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can’t Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation ’tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, we’ll get thee shorn and into minor orders, and who knows what good preferment thou mayst not win in due time!” “Sir, I am beholden to you, but my mind is set on study.” “What kin art thou to a fool?” cried the minor canon, so startling Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, “Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him that saucy lubber Bolt’s place, a gown of mine own a year, meat and preferment, and, lo you, he tells me all he wants is to study Greek, forsooth, and hear the Dean’s sermons!” The other canon shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly. “Young stripling, be warned,” he said. “Know what is good for thee. Greek is the tongue of heresy.” “How may that be, reverend sir,” said Ambrose, “when the holy Apostles and the Fathers spake and wrote in the Greek?” “Waste not thy time on him, brother,” said Mr. Alworthy. “He will find out his error when his pride and his Greek forsooth have brought him to fire and faggot.” “Ay! ay!” added Cloudesley. “The Dean with his Dutch friend and his sermons, and his new grammar and accidence, is sowing heretics as thick as groundsel.” Wherewith the two canons of the old school waddled away, arm in arm, and Bolt put out his head, leered at Ambrose, and bade him shog off, and not come sneaking after other folk’s shoes. Sooth to say, Ambrose was relieved by his rejection. If he were not to obtain admission in any capacity to St. Paul’s School, he felt more drawn to Tibble’s friend the printer; for the self-seeking luxurious habits into which so many of the beneficed clergy had fallen were repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that new revelation, as it were, which Colet’s sermon had made to him. Yet the word heresy was terrible and confusing, and a doubt came over him whether he might not be forsaking the right path, and be lured aside by false lights. He would think it out before he committed himself. Where should he do so in peace? He thought of the great Minster, but the nave was full of a surging multitude, and there was a loud hum of voices proceeding from it, which took from him all inclination to find his way to the quieter and inner portions of the sanctuary. Then he recollected the little Pardon Church, where he had seen the _Dance of Death_ on the walls; and crossing the burial-ground he entered, and, as he expected, found it empty, since the hours for masses for the dead were now past. He knelt down on a step, repeated the sext office, in warning for which the bells were chiming all round, covering his face with his hands, and thinking himself back to Beaulieu; then, seating himself on a step, leaning against the wall, he tried to think out whether to give himself up to the leadings of the new light that had broken on him, or whether to wrench himself from it. Was this, which seemed to him truth and deliverance, verily the heresy respecting which rumours had come to horrify the country convents? If he had only heard of it from Tibble Wry-mouth, he would have doubted, in spite of its power over him, but he had heard it from a man, wise, good, and high in place, like Dean Colet. Yet to his further perplexity, his uncle had spoken of Colet as jesting at Wolsey’s table. What course should he take? Could he bear to turn away from that which drew his soul so powerfully, and return to the bounds which seem to him to be grown so narrow, but which he was told were safe? Now that Stephen was settled, it was open to him to return to St. Elizabeth’s College, but the young soul within him revolted against the repetition of what had become to him unsatisfying, unless illumined by the brightness he seemed to have glimpsed at. But Ambrose had gone through much unwonted fatigue of late, and while thus musing he fell asleep, with his head against the wall. He was half wakened by the sound of voices, and presently became aware that two persons were examining the walls, and comparing the paintings with some others, which one of them had evidently seen. If he had known it, it was with the _Dance of Death_ on the bridge of Lucerne. “I question,” said a voice that Ambrose had heard before, “whether these terrors be wholesome for men’s souls.” “For priests’ pouches, they be,” said the other, with something of a foreign accent. “Alack, when shall we see the day when the hope of paradise and dread of purgatory shall be no longer made the tools of priestly gain; and hatred of sin taught to these poor folk, instead of servile dread of punishment.” “Have a care, my Colet,” answered the yellow bearded foreigner; “thou art already in ill odour with those same men in authority; and though a Dean’s stall be fenced from the episcopal crook, yet there is a rod at Rome which can reach even thither.” “I tell thee, dear Erasmus, thou art too timid; I were well content to leave house and goods, yea, to go to prison or to death, could I but bring home to one soul, for which Christ died, the truth and hope in every one of those prayers and creeds that our poor folk are taught to patter as a senseless charm.” “These are strange times,” returned Erasmus. “Methinks yonder phantom, be he skeleton or angel, will have snatched both of us away ere we behold the full issue either of thy preachings, or my Greek Testament, or of our More’s Utopian images. Dost thou not feel as though we were like children who have set some mighty engine in motion, like the great water-wheels in my native home, which, whirled by the flowing streams of time and opinion, may break up the whole foundations, and destroy the oneness of the edifice?” “It may be so,” returned Colet. “What read we? ‘The net brake’ even in the Master’s sight, while still afloat on the sea. It was only on the shore that the hundred and fifty-three, all good and sound, were drawn to His feet.” “And,” returned Erasmus, “I see wherefore thou hast made thy children at St. Paul’s one hundred and fifty and three.” The two friends were passing out. Their latter speeches had scarce been understood by Ambrose, even if he heard them, so full was he of conflicting feelings, now ready to cast himself before their feet, and entreat the Dean to help him to guidance, now withheld by bashfulness, unwillingness to interrupt, and ingenuous shame at appearing like an eavesdropper towards such dignified and venerable personages. Had he obeyed his first impulse, mayhap his career had been made safer and easier for him, but it was while shyness chained his limbs and tongue that the Dean and Erasmus quitted the chapel, and the opportunity of accosting them had slipped away. Their half comprehended words had however decided him in the part he should take, making him sure that Colet was not controverting the formularies of the Church, but drawing out those meanings which in repetition by rote were well-nigh forgotten. It was as if his course were made clear to him. He was determined to take the means which most readily presented themselves of hearing Colet; and leaving the chapel, he bent his steps to the Row which his book-loving eye had already marked. Flanking the great Cathedral on the north, was the row of small open stalls devoted to the sale of books, or “objects of devotion,” all so arranged that the open portion might be cleared, and the stock-in-trade locked up if not carried away. Each stall had its own sign, most of them sacred, such as the Lamb and Flag, the Scallop Shell, or some patron saint, but classical emblems were oddly intermixed, such as Minerva’s Ægis, Pegasus, and the Lyre of Apollo. The sellers, some middle-aged men, some lads, stretched out their arms with their wares to attract the passengers in the street, and did not fail to beset Ambrose. The more lively looked at his Lincoln green and shouted verses of ballads at him, fluttering broad sheets with verses on the lamentable fate of Jane Shore, or Fair Rosamond, the same woodcut doing duty for both ladies, without mercy to their beauty. The scholastic judged by his face and step that he was a student, and they flourished at him black-bound copies of Virgilius Maro, and of Tully’s Offices, while others, hoping that he was an incipient clerk, offered breviaries, missals or portuaries, with the Use of St. Paul’s, or of Sarum, or mayhap St. Austin’s Confessions. He made his way along, with his eye diligently heedful of the signs, and at last recognised the Winged Staff, or caduceus of Hermes, over a stall where a couple of boys in blue caps and gowns and yellow stockings were making a purchase of a small, grave-looking, elderly but bright cheeked man, whose yellow hair and beard were getting intermingled with grey. They were evidently those St. Paul’s School boys whom Ambrose envied so much, and as they finished their bargaining and ran away together, Ambrose advanced with a salutation, asked if he did not see Master Lucas Hansen, and gave him the note with the commendations of Tibble Steelman the armourer. He was answered with a ready nod and “yea, yea,” as the old man opened the billet and cast his eyes over it; then scanning Ambrose from head to foot, said with some amazement, “But you are of gentle blood, young sir.” “I am,” said Ambrose; “but gentle blood needs at times to work for bread, and Tibble let me hope that I might find both livelihood for the body and for the soul with you, sir.” “Is it so?” asked the printer, his face lighting up. “Art thou willing to labour and toil, and give up hope of fee and honour, if so thou mayst win the truth?” Ambrose folded his hands with a gesture of earnestness, and Lucas Hansen said, “Bless thee, my son! Methinks I can aid thee in thy quest, so thou canst lay aside,” and here his voice grew sharper and more peremptory, “all thy gentleman’s airs and follies, and serve—ay, serve and obey.” “I trust so,” returned Ambrose; “my brother is even now becoming prentice to Master Giles Headley, and we hope to live as honest men by the work of our hands and brains.” “I forgot that you English herren are not so puffed up with pride and scorn like our Dutch nobles,” returned the printer. “Canst live sparingly, and lie hard, and see that thou keepst the house clean, not like these English swine?” “I hope so,” said Ambrose, smiling; “but I have an uncle and aunt, and they would have me lie every night at their house beside the Temple gardens.” “What is thine uncle?” “He hath a post in the meiné of my Lord Archbishop of York,” said Ambrose, blushing and hesitating a little. “He cometh to and fro to his wife, who dwells with her old father, doing fine lavender’s work for the lawyer folk therein.” It was somewhat galling that this should be the most respectable occupation that could be put forward, but Lucas Hansen was evidently reassured by it. He next asked whether Ambrose could read Latin, putting a book into his hand as he did so; Ambrose read and construed readily, explaining that he had been trained at Beaulieu. “That is well!” said the printer; “and hast thou any Greek?” “Only the alphabeta,” said Ambrose, “I made that out from a book at Beaulieu, but Father Simon knew no more, and there was nought to study from.” “Even so,” replied Hansen, “but little as thou knowst ’tis as much as I can hope for from any who will aid me in my craft. ’Tis I that, as thou hast seen, furnish for the use of the children at the Dean’s school of St. Paul’s. The best and foremost scholars of them are grounded in their Greek, that being the tongue wherein the Holy Gospels were first writ. Hitherto I have had to get me books for their use from Holland, whither they are brought from Basle, but I have had sent me from Hamburg a fount of type of the Greek character, whereby I hope to print at home, the accidence, and mayhap the _Dialogues_ of Plato, and it might even be the sacred Gospel itself, which the great Doctor, Master Erasmus, is even now collating from the best authorities in the universities.” Ambrose’s eyes kindled with unmistakable delight. “You have the accidence!” he exclaimed. “Then could I study the tongue even while working for you! Sir, I would do my best! It is the very opportunity I seek.” “Fair and softly,” said the printer with something of a smile. “Thou art new to cheapening and bargaining, my fair lad. Thou hast spoken not one word of the wage.” “I recked not of that,” said Ambrose. “’Tis true, I may not burthen mine uncle and aunt, but verily, sir, I would live on the humblest fare that will keep body and soul together so that I may have such an opportunity.” “How knowst thou what the opportunity may be?” returned Lucas, drily. “Thou art but a babe! Some one should have a care of thee. If I set thee to stand here all day and cry what d’ye lack? or to carry bales of books twixt this and Warwick Inner Yard, thou wouldst have no ground to complain.” “Nay, sir,” returned Ambrose, “I wot that Tibble Steelman would never send me to one who would not truly give me what I need.” “Tibble Steelman is verily one of the few who are both called and chosen,” replied Lucas, “and I think thou art the same so far as green youth may be judged, since thou art one who will follow the word into the desert, and never ask for the loaves and fishes. Nevertheless, I will take none advantage of thy youth and zeal, but thou shalt first behold what thou shalt have to do for me, and then if it still likes thee, I will see thy kindred. Hast no father?” Ambrose explained, and at that moment Master Hansen’s boy made his appearance, returning from an errand; the stall was left in his charge, while the master took Ambrose with him into the precincts of what had once been the splendid and hospitable mansion of the great king-maker, Warwick, but was now broken up into endless little tenements with their courts and streets, though the baronial ornaments and the arrangement still showed what the place had been. Entering beneath a wide archway, still bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff, Lucas led the way into what must have been one of the courts of offices, for it was surrounded with buildings and sheds of different heights and sizes, and had on one side a deep trough of stone, fed by a series of water-taps, intended for the use of the stables. The doors of one of these buildings was unlocked by Master Hansen, and Ambrose found himself in what had once perhaps been part of a stable, but had been partitioned off from the rest. There were two stalls, one serving the Dutchman for his living room, the other for his workshop. In one corner stood a white earthenware stove—so new a spectacle to the young forester that he supposed it to be the printing press. A table, shiny with rubbing, a wooden chair, a couple of stools, a few vessels, mirrors for brightness, some chests and corner cupboards, a bed shutting up like a box and likewise highly polished, completed the furniture, all arranged with the marvellous orderliness and neatness of the nation. A curtain shut off the opening to the other stall, where stood a machine with a huge screw, turned by leverage. Boxes of type and piles of paper surrounded it, and Ambrose stood and looked at it with a sort of awe-struck wonder and respect as the great fount of wisdom. Hansen showed him what his work would be, in setting up type, and by and by correcting after the first proof. The machine could only print four pages at a time, and for this operation the whole strength of the establishment was required. Moreover, Master Hansen bound, as well as printed his books. Ambrose was by no means daunted. As long as he might read as well as print, and while he had Sundays at St. Paul’s to look to, he asked no more—except indeed that his gentle blood stirred at the notion of acting salesman in the book-stall, and Master Hansen assured him with a smile that Will Wherry, the other boy, would do that better than either of them, and that he would be entirely employed here. The methodical master insisted however on making terms with the boy’s relations; and with some misgivings on Ambrose’s part, the two—since business hours were almost over—walked together to the Temple and to the little house, where Perronel was ironing under her window. Ambrose need not have doubted. The Dutch blood on either side was stirred; and the good housewife commanded the little printer’s respect as he looked round on a kitchen as tidy as if it were in his own country. And the bargain was struck that Ambrose Birkenholt should serve Master Hansen for his meals and two pence a week, while he was to sleep at the little house of Mistress Randall, who would keep his clothes and linen in order. And thus it was that both Ambrose and Stephen Birkenholt had found their vocations for the present, and both were fervent in them. Master Headley pshawed a little when he heard that Ambrose had engaged himself to a printer and a foreigner; and when he was told it was to a friend of Tibble’s, only shook his head, saying that Tib’s only fault was dabbling in matters of divinity, as if a plain man could not be saved without them! However, he respected the lad for having known his own mind and not hung about in idleness, and he had no opinion of clerks, whether monks or priests. Indeed, the low esteem in which the clergy as a class were held in London was one of the very evil signs of the times. Ambrose was invited to dine and sup at the Dragon court every Sunday and holiday, and he was glad to accept, since the hospitality was so free, and he thus was able to see his brother and Tibble; besides that, it prevented him from burthening Mistress Randall, whom he really liked, though he could not see her husband, either in his motley or his plain garments, without a shudder of repulsion. Ambrose found that setting up type had not much more to do with the study of new books than Stephen’s turning the grindstone had with fighting in the lists; and the mistakes he made in spelling from right to left, and in confounding the letters, made him despair, and prepare for any amount of just indignation from his master; but he found on the contrary that Master Hansen had never had a pupil who made so few blunders on the first trial, and augured well of him from such a beginning. Paper was too costly, and pressure too difficult, for many proofs to be struck off, but Hansen could read and correct his type as it stood, and assured Ambrose that practice would soon give him the same power; and the correction was thus completed, when Will Wherry, a big, stout fellow, came in to dinner—the stall being left during that time, as nobody came for books during the dinner-hour, and Hansen, having an understanding with his next neighbour, by which they took turns to keep guard against thieves. The master and the two lads dined together on the contents of a cauldron, where pease and pork had been simmering together on the stove all the morning. Their strength was then united to work the press and strike off a sheet, which the master scanned, finding only one error in it. It was a portion of Lilly’s _Grammar_, and Ambrose regarded it with mingled pride and delight, though he longed to go further into those deeper revelations for the sake of which he had come here. Master Hansen then left the youths to strike off a couple of hundred sheets, after which they were to wash the types and re-arrange the letters in the compartments in order, whilst he returned to the stall. The customers requiring his personal attention were generally late ones. When all this was accomplished, and the pot put on again in preparation for supper, the lads might use the short time that remained as they would, and Hansen himself showed Ambrose a shelf of books concealed by a blue curtain, whence he might read. Will Wherry showed unconcealed amazement that this should be the taste of his companion. He himself hated the whole business, and would never have adopted it, but that he had too many brothers for all to take to the water on the Thames, and their mother was too poor to apprentice them, and needed the small weekly pay the Dutchman gave him. He seemed a good-natured, dull fellow, whom no doubt Hansen had hired for the sake of the strong arms, developed by generations of oarsmen upon the river. What he specially disliked was that his master was a foreigner. The whole court swarmed with foreigners, he said, with the utmost disgust, as if they were noxious insects. They made provisions dear, and undersold honest men, and he wondered the Lord Mayor did not see to it and drive them out. He did not _so_ much object to the Dutch, but the Spaniards—no words could express his horror of them. By and by, Ambrose going out to fetch some water from the conduit, found standing by it a figure entirely new to him. It was a young girl of some twelve or fourteen years old, in the round white cap worn by all of her age and sex; but from beneath it hung down two thick plaits of the darkest hair he had ever seen, and though the dress was of the ordinary dark serge with a coloured apron, it was put on with an air that made it look like some strange and beautiful costume on the slender, lithe, little form. The vermilion apron was further trimmed with a narrow border of white, edged again with deep blue, and it chimed in with the bright coral earrings and necklace. As Ambrose came forward the creature tried to throw a crimson handkerchief over her head, and ran into the shelter of another door, but not before Ambrose had seen a pair of large dark eyes so like those of a terrified fawn that they seemed to carry him back to the Forest. Going back amazed, he asked his companion who the girl he had seen could have been. Will stared. “I trow you mean the old blackamoor sword-cutler’s wench. He is one of those pestilent strangers. An ’Ebrew Jew who worships Mahound and is too bad for the Spanish folk themselves.” This rather startled Ambrose, though he knew enough to see that the accusations could not both be true, but he forgot it in the delight, when Will pronounced the work done, of drawing back the curtain and feasting his eyes upon the black backs of the books, and the black-letter brochures that lay by them. There were scarcely thirty, yet he gloated on them as on an inexhaustible store, while Will, whistling wonder at his taste, opined that since some one was there to look after the stove, and the iron pot on it, he might go out and have a turn at ball with Hob and Martin. Ambrose was glad to be left to go over his coming feast. There was Latin, English, and, alas! baffling Dutch. High or Low it was all the same to him. What excited his curiosity most was the _Enchiridion Militis Christiani_ of Erasmus—in Latin of course, and that he could easily read—but almost equally exciting was a Greek and Latin vocabulary; or again, a very thin book in which he recognised the New Testament in the Vulgate. He had heard chapters of it read from the graceful stone pulpit overhanging the refectory at Beaulieu, and, of course, the Gospels and Epistles at mass, but they had been read with little expression and no attention; and that Sunday’s discourse had filled him with eagerness to look farther; but the mere reading the titles of the books was pleasure enough for the day, and his master was at home before he had fixed his mind on anything. Perhaps this was as well, for Lucas advised him what to begin with, and how to divide his studies so as to gain a knowledge of the Greek, his great ambition, and also to read the Scripture. The master was almost as much delighted as the scholar, and it was not till the curfew was beginning to sound that Ambrose could tear himself away. It was still daylight, and the door of the next dwelling was open. There, sitting on the ground cross-legged, in an attitude such as Ambrose had never seen, was a magnificent old man, with a huge long white beard, wearing, indeed, the usual dress of a Londoner of the lower class, but the gown flowed round him in a grand and patriarchal manner, corresponding with his noble, somewhat aquiline features; and behind him Ambrose thought he caught a glimpse of the shy fawn he had seen in the morning.

11

AY DI ME GRENADA

“In sooth it was a thing to weep If then as now the level plain Beneath was spreading like the deep, The broad unruffled main. If like a watch-tower of the sun Above, the Alpuxarras rose, Streaked, when the dying day was done, With evening’s roseate snows.” ARCHBISHOP TRENCH. WHEN Mary Tudor, released by death from her first dreary marriage, contracted for her brother’s pleasure, had appeased his wrath at her second marriage made to please herself, Henry VIII. was only too glad to mark his assent by all manner of festivities; and English chroniclers, instead of recording battles and politics, had only to write of pageantries and tournaments during the merry May of the year 1515—a May, be it remembered, which, thanks to the old style, was at least ten days nearer to Midsummer than our present month. How the two queens and all their court had gone a-maying on Shooter’s Hill, ladies and horses poetically disguised and labelled with sweet summer titles, was only a nine days’ wonder when the Birkenholts had come to London, but the approaching tournament at Westminster on the Whitsun holiday was the great excitement to the whole population, for, with all its faults, the Court of bluff King Hal was thoroughly genial, and every one, gentle and simple, might participate in his pleasures. Seats were reserved at the lists for the city dignitaries and their families, and though old Mistress Headley professed that she ought to have done with such vanities, she could not forbear from going to see that her son was not too much encumbered with the care of little Dennet, and that the child herself ran into no mischief. Master Headley himself grumbled and sighed, but he put himself into his scarlet gown, holding that his presence was a befitting attention to the king, glad to gratify his little daughter, and not without a desire to see how his workmanship—good English ware—held out against “mail and plate of Milan steel,” the fine armour brought home from France by the new Duke of Suffolk. Giles donned his best in the expectation of sitting in the places of honour as one of the family, and was greatly disgusted when Kit Smallbones observed, “What’s all that bravery for? The tilting match quotha? Ha! ha! my young springald, if thou see it at all, thou must be content to gaze as thou canst from the armourers’ tent, if Tibble there chooses to be cumbered with a useless lubber like thee.” “I always sat with my mother when there were matches at Clarendon,” muttered Giles, who had learnt at least that it was of no use to complain of Smallbones’ plain speaking. “If folks cocker malapert lads at Sarum we know better here,” was the answer. “I shall ask the master, my kinsman,” returned the youth. But he got little by his move. Master Headley told him, not unkindly, for he had some pity for the spoilt lad, that not the Lord Mayor himself would take his own son with him while yet an apprentice. Tibble Steelman would indeed go to one of the attendants’ tents at the further end of the lists, where repairs to armour and weapons might be needed, and would take an assistant or two, but who they might be must depend on his own choice, and if Giles had any desire to go, he had better don his working dress. In fact, Tibble meant to take Edmund Burgess and one workman for use, and one of the new apprentices for pleasure, letting them change in the middle of the day. The swagger of Giles actually forfeited for him the first turn, which—though he was no favourite with the men—would have been granted to his elder years and his relationship to the master; but on his overbearing demand to enter the boat which was to carry down a little anvil and charcoal furnace, with a few tools, rivets, nails, and horse-shoes, Tibble coolly returned that he needed no such gay birds; but if Giles chose to be ready in his leathern coat when Stephen Birkenholt came home at midday, mayhap he might change with him. Stephen went joyously in the plainest of attire, though Tibble in fur cap, grimy jerkin, and leathern apron was no elegant steersman; and Edmund, who was at the age of youthful foppery, shrugged his shoulders a little, and disguised the garments of the smithy with his best flat cap and newest mantle. They kept in the wake of the handsome barge which Master Headley shared with his friend and brother alderman, Master Hope the draper, whose young wife, in a beautiful black velvet hood and shining blue satin kirtle, was evidently petting Dennet to her heart’s content, though the little damsel never lost an opportunity of nodding to her friends in the plainer barge in the rear. The Tudor tilting matches cost no lives, and seldom broke bones. They were chiefly opportunities for the display of brilliant enamelled and gilt armour, at the very acme of cumbrous magnificence; and of equally gorgeous embroidery spread out over the vast expanse provided by elephantine Flemish horses. Even if the weapons had not been purposely blunted, and if the champions had really desired to slay one another, they would have found the task very difficult, as in effect they did in the actual game of war. But the spectacle was a splendid one, and all the apparatus was ready in the armourers’ tent, marked by St. George and the Dragon. Tibble ensconced himself in the innermost corner with a “tractate,” borrowed from his friend Lucas, and sent the apprentices to gaze their fill at the rapidly filling circles of seats. They saw King Harry, resplendent in gilded armour—“from their own anvil, true English steel,” said Edmund, proudly—hand to her seat his sister the bride, one of the most beautiful women then in existence, with a lovely and delicate bloom on her fair face and exquisite Plantagenet features. No more royally handsome creatures could the world have offered than that brother and sister, and the English world appreciated them and made the lists ring with applause at the fair lady who had disdained foreign princes to wed her true love, an honest Englishman. He—the cloth of frieze—in blue Milanese armour, made to look as classical as possible, and with clasps and medals engraven from antique gems—handed in Queen Katharine, whose dark but glowing Spanish complexion made a striking contrast to the dazzling fairness of her young sister-in-law. Near them sat a stout burly figure in episcopal purple, and at his feet there was a form which nearly took away all Stephen’s pleasure for the time. For it was in motley, and he could hear the bells jingle, while the hot blood rose in his cheeks in the dread lest Burgess should detect the connection, or recognise in the jester the grave personage who had come to negotiate with Mr. Headley for his indentures, or worse still, that the fool should see and claim him. However, Quipsome Hal seemed to be exchanging drolleries with the young dowager of France, who, sooth to say, giggled in a very unqueenly manner at jokes which made the grave Spanish-born queen draw up her stately head, and converse with a lady on her other hand—an equally stately lady, somewhat older, with the straight Plantagenet features, and by her side a handsome boy, who, though only eight or nine years was tonsured, and had a little scholar’s gown. “That,” said Edmund, “is my Lady Countess of Salisbury, of whom Giles Headley prates so much.” A tournament, which was merely a game between gorgeously equipped princes and nobles, afforded little scope for adventure worthy of record, though it gave great diversion to the spectators. Stephen gazed like one fascinated at the gay panoply of horse and man with the huge plumes on the heads of both, as they rushed against one another, and he shared with Edmund the triumph when the lance from their armoury held good, the vexation if it were shivered. All would have been perfect but for the sight of his uncle, playing off his drolleries in a manner that gave him a sense of personal degradation. To escape from the sight almost consoled him when, in the pause after the first courses had been run, Tibble told him and Burgess to return, and send Headley and another workman with a fresh bundle of lances for the afternoon’s tilting. Stephen further hoped to find his brother at the Dragon court, as it was one of those holidays that set every one free, and separation began to make the brothers value their meetings. But Ambrose was not at the Dragon court, and when Stephen went in quest of him to the Temple, Perronel had not seen him since the early morning, but she said he seemed so much bitten with the little old man’s scholarship that she had small doubt that he would be found poring over a book in Warwick Inner Yard. Thither therefore did Stephen repair. The place was nearly deserted, for the inhabitants were mostly either artisans or that far too numerous race who lived on the doles of convents, on the alms of churchgoers, and the largesses scattered among the people on public occasions, and these were for the most part pursuing their vocation both of gazing and looking out for gain among the spectators outside the lists. The door that Stephen had been shown as that of Ambrose’s master was, however, partly open, and close beside it sat in the sun a figure that amazed him. On a small mat or rug, with a black and yellow handkerchief over her head, and little scarlet legs crossed under a blue dress, all lighted up by the gay May sun, there slept the little dark, glowing maiden, with her head best as it leant against the wall, her rosy lips half open, her long black plaits on her shoulders. Stepping up to the half-open door, whence he heard a voice reading, his astonishment was increased. At the table were his brother and his master, Ambrose with a black book in hand, Lucas Hansen with some papers, and on the ground was seated a venerable, white-bearded old man, something between Stephen’s notions of an apostle and of a magician, though the latter idea predominated at sight of a long parchment scroll covered with characters such as belonged to no alphabet that he had ever dreamt of. What were they doing to his brother? He was absolutely in an enchanter’s den. Was it a pixy at the door, guarding it? “Ambrose!” he cried aloud. Everybody started. Ambrose sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “Stephen!” The pixy gave a little scream and jumped up, flying to the old man, who quietly rolled up his scroll. Lucas rose up as Ambrose spoke. “Thy brother?” said he. “Yea—come in search of me,” said Ambrose. “Thou hadst best go forth with him,” said Lucas. “It is not well that youth should study over long,” said the old man. “Thou hast aided us well, but do thou now unbend the bow. Peace be with thee, my son.” Ambrose complied, but scarcely willingly, and the instant they had made a few steps from the door, Stephen exclaimed in dismay, “Who—what was it? Have they bewitched thee, Ambrose?” Ambrose laughed merrily. “Not so. It is holy lore that those good men are reading.” “Nay now, Ambrose. Stand still—if thou canst, poor fellow,” he muttered, and then made the sign of the cross three times over his brother, who stood smiling, and said, “Art satisfied Stevie? Or wilt have me rehearse my _Credo_?” Which he did, Stephen listening critically, and drawing a long breath as he recognised each word, pronounced without a shudder at the critical points. “Thou art safe so far,” said Stephen. “But sure he is a wizard. I even beheld his familiar spirit—in a fair shape doubtless—like a pixy! Be not deceived, brother. Sorcery reads backwards—and I saw him so read from that scroll of his. Laughest thou! Nay! what shall I do to free thee? Enter here!” Stephen dragged his brother, still laughing, into the porch of the nearest church, and deluged him with holy water with such good will, that Ambrose, putting up his hands to shield his eyes, exclaimed, “Come now, have done with this folly, Stephen—though it makes me laugh to think of thy scared looks, and poor little Aldonza being taken for a familiar spirit.” And Ambrose laughed as he had not laughed for weeks. “But what is it, then?” “The old man is of thy calling, or something like it, Stephen, being that he maketh and tempereth sword-blades after the prime Damascene or Toledo fashion, and the familiar spirit is his little daughter.” Stephen did not however look mollified. “Swordblades! None have a right to make them save our craft. This is one of the rascaille Spaniards who have poured into the city under favour of the queen to spoil and ruin the lawful trade. Though could you but have seen, Ambrose, how our tough English ashwood in King Harry’s hand—from our own armoury too—made all go down before it, you would never uphold strangers and their false wares that _can_ only get the better by sorcery.” “How thou dost harp upon sorcery!” exclaimed Ambrose. “I must tell thee the good old man’s story as ’twas told to me, and then wilt thou own that he is as good a Christian as ourselves—ay, or better—and hath little cause to love the Spaniards.” “Come on, then,” said Stephen. “Methought if we went towards Westminster we might yet get where we could see the lists. Such a rare show, Ambrose, to see the King in English armour, ay, and Master Headley’s, every inch of it, glittering in the sun, so that one could scarce brook the dazzling, on his horse like a rock shattering all that came against him! I warrant you the lances cracked and shivered like faggots under old Purkis’s bill-hook. And that you should liefer pore over crabbed monkish stuff with yonder old men! My life on it, there must be some spell!” “No more than of old, when I was ever for book and thou for bow,” said Ambrose; “but I’ll make thee rueful for old Michael yet. Hast heard tell of the Moors in Spain?” “Moors—blackamoors who worship Mahound and Termagant. I saw a blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in Paul’s Walk. He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair. I marvelled that he did not writhe and flee when he came within the Minster, but Ned Burgess said he was a christened man.” “Moors be not all black, neither be they all worshippers of Mahound,” replied Ambrose. However, as Ambrose’s information, though a few degrees more correct and intelligent than his brother’s, was not complete, it will be better not to give the history of Lucas’s strange visitors in his words. They belonged to the race of Saracen Arabs who had brought the arts of life to such perfection in Southern Spain, but who had received the general appellation of Moors from those Africans who were continually reinforcing them, and, bringing a certain Puritan strictness of Mohammedanism with them, had done much towards destroying the highest cultivation among them before the Spanish kingdoms became united, and finally triumphed over them. During the long interval of two centuries, while Castille was occupied by internal wars, and Aragon by Italian conquests, there had been little aggression on the Moorish borderland, and a good deal of friendly intercourse both in the way of traffic and of courtesy, nor had the bitter persecution and distrust of new converts then set in, which followed the entire conquest of Granada. Thus, when Ronda was one of the first Moorish cities to surrender, a great merchant of the unrivalled sword-blades whose secret had been brought from Damascus, had, with all his family, been accepted gladly when he declared himself ready to submit and receive baptism. Miguel Abenali was one of the sons, and though his conversion had at first been mere compliance with his father’s will and the family interests, he had become sufficiently convinced of Christian truth not to take part with his own people in the final struggle. Still, however, the inbred abhorrence of idolatry had influenced his manner of worship, and when, after half a life-time, Granada had fallen, and the Inquisition had begun to take cognisance of new Christians from among the Moors as well as the Jews, there were not lacking spies to report the absence of all sacred images or symbols from the house of the wealthy merchant, and that neither he nor any of his family had been seen kneeling before the shrine of Nuestra Señora. The sons of Abenali did indeed feel strongly the power of the national reaction, and revolted from the religion which they saw cruelly enforced on their conquered countrymen. The Moor had been viewed as a gallant enemy, the Morisco was only a being to be distrusted and persecuted; and the efforts of the good Bishop of Granada, who had caused the Psalms, Gospels, and large portions of the Breviary to be translated into Arabic, were frustrated by the zeal of those who imagined that heresy lurked in the vernacular, and perhaps that objections to popular practices might be strengthened. By order of Cardinal Ximenes, these Arabic versions were taken away and burnt; but Miguel Abenali had secured his own copy, and it was what he there learnt that withheld him from flying to his countrymen and resuming their faith when he found that the Christianity he had professed for forty years was no longer a protection to him. Having known the true Christ in the Gospel, he could not turn back to Mohammed, even though Christians persecuted in the Name they so little understood. The crisis came in 1507, when Ximenes, apparently impelled by the dread that simulated conformity should corrupt the Church, quickened the persecution of the doubtful “Nuevos Cristianos,” and the Abenali family, who had made themselves loved and respected, received warning that they had been denounced, and that their only hope lay in flight. The two sons, high-spirited young men, on whom religion had far less hold than national feeling, fled to the Alpuxarra Mountains, and renouncing the faith of the persecutors, joined their countrymen in their gallant and desperate warfare. Their mother, who had long been dead, had never been more than an outward Christian; but the second wife of Abenali shared his belief and devotion with the intelligence and force of character sometimes found among the Moorish ladies of Spain. She and her little ones fled with him in disguise to Cadiz, with the precious Arabic Scriptures rolled round their waists, and took shelter with an English merchant, who had had dealings in sword-blades with Señor Miguel, and had been entertained by him in his beautiful Saracenic house at Ronda with Eastern hospitality. This he requited by giving them the opportunity of sailing for England in a vessel laden with Xeres sack; but the misery of the voyage across the Bay of Biscay in a ship fit for nothing but wine, was excessive, and creatures reared in the lovely climate and refined luxury of the land of the palm and orange, exhausted too already by the toils of the mountain journey, were incapable of enduring it, and Abenali’s brave wife and one of her children were left beneath the waves of the Atlantic. With the one little girl left to him, he arrived in London, and the recommendation of his Cadiz friend obtained for him work from a dealer in foreign weapons, who was not unwilling to procure them nearer home. Happily for him, Moorish masters, however rich, were always required to be proficients in their own trade; and thus Miguel, or Michael as he was known in England, was able to maintain himself and his child by the fabrication of blades that no one could distinguish from those of Damascus. Their perfection was a work of infinite skill, labour, and industry, but they were so costly, that their price, and an occasional job of inlaying gold in other metal, sufficed to maintain the old man and his little daughter. The armourers themselves were sometimes forced to have recourse to him, though unwillingly, for he was looked on with distrust and dislike as an interloper of foreign birth, belonging to no guild. A Biscayan or Castillian of the oldest Christian blood incurred exactly the same obloquy from the mass of London craftsmen and apprentices, and Lucas himself had small measure of favour, though Dutchmen were less alien to the English mind than Spaniards, and his trade did not lead to so much rivalry and competition. As much of this as Ambrose knew or understood he told to Stephen, who listened in a good deal of bewilderment, understanding very little, but with a strong instinct that his brother’s love of learning was leading him into dangerous company. And what were they doing on this fine May holiday, when every one ought to be out enjoying themselves? “Well, if thou wilt know,” said Ambrose, pushed hard, “there is one Master William Tindal, who hath been doing part of the blessed Evangel into English, and for better certainty of its correctness, Master Michael was comparing it with his Arabic version, while I overlooked the Latin.” “O Ambrose, thou wilt surely run into trouble. Know you not how nurse Joan used to tell us of the burning of the Lollard books?” “Nay, nay, Stevie, this is no heresy. ’Tis such work as the great scholar, Master Erasmus, is busied on—ay, and he is loved and honoured by both the Archbishops and the King’s grace! Ask Tibble Steelman what he thinks thereof.” “Tibble Steelman would think nought of a beggarly stranger calling himself a sword cutler, and practising the craft without prenticeship or license,” said Stephen, swelling with indignation. “Come on, Ambrose, and sweep the cobwebs from thy brain. If we cannot get into our own tent again, we can mingle with the outskirts, and learn how the day is going, and how our lances and breastplates have stood where the knaves’ at the Eagle have gone like reeds and egg-shells—just as I threw George Bates, the prentice at the Eagle yesterday, in a wrestling match at the butts with the trick old Diggory taught me.”

12

A KING IN A QUAGMIRE

For my pastance Hunt, sing, and dance, My heart is set All godly sport To my comfort. Who shall me let? THE KING’S BALADE, _attributed to Henry VIII. _ LIFE was a rough, hearty thing in the early sixteenth century, strangely divided between thought and folly, hardship and splendour, misery and merriment, toil and sport. The youths in the armourer’s household had experienced little of this as yet in their country life, but in London they could not but soon begin to taste both sides of the matter. Master Headley himself was a good deal taken up with city affairs, and left the details of his business to Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones, though he might always appear on the scene, and he had a wonderful knowledge of what was going on. The breaking-in and training of the two new country lads was entirely left to them and to Edmund Burgess. Giles soon found that complaints were of no avail, and only made matters harder for him, and that Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones had no notion of favouring their master’s cousin. Poor fellow, he was very miserable in those first weeks. The actual toil, to which he was an absolute novice, though nominally three years an apprentice, made his hands raw, and his joints full of aches, while his groans met with nothing but laughter; and he recognised with great displeasure, that more was laid on him than on Stephen Birkenholt. This was partly in consideration of Stephen’s youth, partly of his ready zeal and cheerfulness. His hands might be sore too, but he was rather proud of it than otherwise, and his hero worship of Kit Smallbones made him run on errands, tug at the bellows staff, or fetch whatever was called for with a bright alacrity that won the foremen’s hearts, and it was noted that he who was really a gentleman, had none of the airs that Giles Headley showed. Giles began by some amount of bullying, by way of slaking his wrath at the preference shown for one whom he continued to style a beggarly brat picked up on the heath; but Stephen was good-humoured, and accustomed to give and take, and they both found their level, as well in the Dragon court as among the world outside, where the London prentices were a strong and redoubtable body, with rude, not to say cruel, rites of initiation among themselves, plenty of rivalries and enmities between house and house, guild and guild, but a united, not to say ferocious, _esprit de corps_ against every one else. Fisticuffs and wrestlings were the amenities that passed between them, though always with a love of fair play so long as no cowardice, or what was looked on as such, was shown, for there was no mercy for the weak or weakly. Such had better betake themselves at once to the cloister, or life was made intolerable by constant jeers, blows, baiting and huntings, often, it must be owned, absolutely brutal. Stephen and Giles had however passed through this ordeal. The letter to John Birkenholt had been despatched by a trusty clerk riding with the Judges of Assize, whom Mistress Perronel knew might be safely trusted, and who actually brought back a letter which might have emanated from the most affectionate of brothers, giving his authority for the binding Stephen apprentice to the worshipful Master Giles Headley, and sending the remainder of the boy’s portion. Stephen was thereupon regularly bound apprentice to Master Headley. It was a solemn affair, which took place in the Armourer’s Hall in Coleman Street, before sundry witnesses. Harry Randall, in his soberest garb and demeanour, acted as guardian to his nephew, and presented him, clad in the regulation prentice garb—“flat round cap, close-cut hair, narrow falling bands, coarse side coat, close hose, cloth stockings,” coat with the badge of the Armourers’ Company, and Master Headley’s own dragon’s tail on the sleeve, to which was added a blue cloak marked in like manner. The instructions to apprentices were rehearsed, beginning, “Ye shall constantly and devoutly on your knees every day serve God, morning and evening”—pledging him to “avoid evil company, to make speedy return when sent on his master’s business, to be fair, gentle and lowly in speech and carriage with all men,” and the like. Mutual promises were interchanged between him and his master, Stephen on his knees; the indentures were signed, for Quipsome Hal could with much ado produce an autograph signature, though his penmanship went no further, and the occasion was celebrated by a great dinner of the whole craft at the Armourers’ Hall, to which the principal craftsmen who had been apprentices, such as Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones, were invited, sitting at a lower table, while the masters had the higher one on the daïs, and a third was reserved for the apprentices after they should have waited on their masters—in fact it was an imitation of the orders of chivalry, knights, squires, and pages, and the gradation of rank was as strictly observed as by the nobility. Giles, considering the feast to be entirely in his honour, though the transfer of his indentures had been made at Salisbury, endeavoured to come out in some of his bravery, but was admonished that such presumption might be punished, the first time, at his master’s discretion, the second time, by a whipping at the Hall of his Company, and the third time by six months being added to the term of his apprenticeship. Master Randall was entertained in the place of honour, where he comported himself with great gravity, though he could not resist alarming Stephen with an occasional wink or gesture as the boy approached in the course of the duties of waiting at the upper board—a splendid sight with cups and flagons of gold and silver, with venison and capons and all that a City banquet could command before the invention of the turtle. There was drinking of toasts, and among the foremost was that of Wolsey, who had freshly received his nomination of cardinal, and whose hat was on its way from Rome—and here the jester could not help betraying his knowledge of the domestic policy of the household, and telling the company how it had become known that the scarlet hat was actually on the way, but in a “varlet’s budget—a mere Italian common knave, no better than myself,” quoth Quipsome Hal, whereat his nephew trembled standing behind his chair, forgetting that the decorous solid man in the sad-coloured gown and well-crimped ruff, neatest of Perronel’s performances, was no such base comparison for any varlet. Hal went on to describe, however, how my Lord of York had instantly sent to stay the messenger on his handing at Dover, and equip him with all manner of costly silks by way of apparel, and with attendants, such as might do justice to his freight, “that so,” he said, “men may not rate it but as a scarlet cock’s comb, since all men be but fools, and the sole question is, who among them hath wit enough to live by his folly.” Therewith he gave a wink that so disconcerted Stephen as nearly to cause an upset of the bowl of perfumed water that he was bringing for the washing of hands. Master Headley, however, suspected nothing, and invited the grave Master Randall to attend the domestic festival on the presentation of poor Spring’s effigy at the shrine of St. Julian. This was to take place early in the morning of the 14th of September, Holy Cross Day, the last holiday in the year that had any of the glory of summer about it, and on which the apprentices claimed a prescriptive right to go out nutting in St. John’s Wood, and to carry home their spoil to the lasses of their acquaintance. Tibble Steelman had completed the figure in bronze, with a silver collar and chain, not quite without protest that the sum had better have been bestowed in alms. But from his master’s point of view this would have been giving to a pack of lying beggars and thieves what was due to the holy saint; no one save Tibble, who could do and say what he chose, could have ventured on a word of remonstrance on such a subject; and as the full tide of iconoclasm, consequent on the discovery of the original wording of the second commandment, had not yet set in, Tibble had no more conscientious scruple against making the figure, than in moulding a little straight-tailed lion for Lord Harry Percy’s helmet. So the party in early morning heard their mass, and then, repairing to St. Julian’s pillar, while the rising sun came peeping through the low eastern window of the vaulted Church of St. Faith, Master Headley on his knees gave thanks for his preservation, and then put forward his little daughter, holding on her joined hands the figure of poor Spring, couchant, and beautifully modelled in bronze with all Tibble’s best skill. Hal Randall and Ambrose had both come up from the little home where Perronel presided, for the hour was too early for the jester’s absence to be remarked in the luxurious household of the Cardinal elect, and he even came to break his fast afterwards at the Dragon court, and held such interesting discourse with old Dame Headley on the farthingales and coifs of Queen Katharine and her ladies, that she pronounced him a man wondrous wise and understanding, and declared Stephen happy in the possession of such a kinsman. “And whither away now, youngsters?” he said, as he rose from table. “To St. John’s Wood! The good greenwood, uncle,” said Ambrose. “Thou too, Ambrose?” said Stephen joyfully. “For once away from thine ink and thy books!” “Ay,” said Ambrose, “mine heart warms to the woodlands once more. Uncle, would that thou couldst come.” “Would that I could, boy! We three would show these lads of Cockayne what three foresters know of wood craft! But it may not be. Were I once there the old blood might stir again and I might bring you into trouble, and ye have not two faces under one hood as I have! So fare ye well, I wish you many a bagful of nuts!” The four months of city life, albeit the City was little bigger than our moderate sized country towns, and far from being an unbroken mass of houses, had yet made the two young foresters delighted to enjoy a day of thorough country in one another’s society. Little Dennet longed to go with them, but the prentice world was far too rude for little maidens to be trusted in it, and her father held out hopes of going one of these days to High Park as he called it, while Edmund and Stephen promised her all their nuts, and as many blackberries as could be held in their flat caps. “Giles has promised me none,” said Dennet, with a pouting lip, “nor Ambrose.” “Why sure, little mistress, thou’lt have enough to crack thy teeth on!” said Edmund Burgess. “They _ought_ to bring theirs to me,” returned the little heiress of the Dragon court with an air of offended dignity that might have suited the heiress of the kingdom. Giles, who looked on Dennet as a kind of needful appendage to the Dragon, a piece of property of his own, about whom he need take no trouble, merely laughed and said, “Want must be thy master then.” But Ambrose treated her petulance in another fashion. “Look here, pretty mistress,” said he, “there dwells by me a poor little maid nigh about thine age, who never goeth further out than to St. Paul’s minster, nor plucketh flower, nor hath sweet cake, nor manchet bread, nor sugar-stick, nay, and scarce ever saw English hazel-nut nor blackberry. ’Tis for her that I want to gather them.” “Is she thy master’s daughter?” demanded Dennet, who could admit the claims of another princess. “Nay, my master hath no children, but she dwelleth near him.” “I will send her some, and likewise of mine own comfits and cakes,” said Mistress Dennet. “Only thou must bring all to me first.” Ambrose laughed and said, “It’s a bargain then, little mistress?” “I keep my word,” returned Dennet marching away, while Ambrose obeyed a summons from good-natured Mistress Headley to have his wallet filled with bread and cheese like those of her own prentices. Off went the lads under the guidance of Edmund Burgess, meeting parties of their own kind at every turn, soon leaving behind them the City bounds, as they passed under New Gate, and by and by skirting the fields of the great Carthusian monastery, or Charter House, with the burial-ground given by Sir Walter Manny at the time of the Black Death. Beyond came marshy ground through which they had to pick their way carefully, over stepping-stones—this being no other than what is now the Regent’s Park, not yet in any degree drained by the New River, but all quaking ground, overgrown with rough grass and marsh-plants, through which Stephen and Ambrose bounded by the help of stout poles with feet and eyes well used to bogs, and knowing where to look for a safe footing, while many a flat-capped London lad floundered about and sank over his yellow ankles or left his shoes behind him, while lapwings shrieked pee-wheet, and almost flapped him with their broad wings, and moorhens dived in the dark pools, and wild ducks rose in long families. Stephen was able to turn the laugh against his chief adversary and rival, George Bates of the Eagle, who proposed seeking for the lapwing’s nest in hopes of a dainty dish of plovers’ eggs; being too great a cockney to remember that in September the contents of the eggs were probably flying over the heather, as well able to shift for themselves as their parents. Above all things the London prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, and the slight rise leading to the copse of St. John’s Wood was attained, behold, it was found to be in possession of the lower sort of lads, the black guard as they were called. They were of course quite as ready to fight with the prentices as the prentices were with them, and a battle royal took place, all along the front of the hazel bushes—in which Stephen of the Dragon and George of the Eagle fought side by side. Sticks and fists were the weapons, and there were no very severe casualties before the prentices, being the larger number as well as the stouter and better fed, had routed their adversaries, and driven them off towards Harrow. There was crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St. John’s Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it is doubtful whether they had ever enjoyed themselves more; until just as they were about to turn homeward, whether moved by his hostility to Stephen, or by envy at the capful of juicy blackberries, carefully covered with green leaves, George Bates, rushing up from behind, shouted out “Here’s a skulker! Here’s one of the black guard! Off to thy fellows, varlet!” at the same time dealing a dexterous blow under the cap, which sent the blackberries up into Ambrose’s face. “Ha! ha!” shouted the ill-conditioned fellow. “So much for a knave that serves rascally strangers! Here! hand over that bag of nuts!” Ambrose was no fighter, but in defence of the bag that was to purchase a treat for little Aldonza, he clenched his fists, and bade George Bates come and take them if he would. The quiet scholarly boy was, however, no match for the young armourer, and made but poor reply to the buffets of his adversary, who had hold of the bag, and was nearly choking him with the string round his neck. However, Stephen had already missed his brother, and turning round, shouted out that the villain Bates was mauling him, and rushed back, falling on Ambrose’s assailant with a sudden well-directed pounding that made him hastily turn about, with cries of “Two against one!” “Not at all,” said Stephen. “Stand by, Ambrose; I’ll give the coward his deserts.” In fact, though the boys were nearly of a size, George somewhat the biggest, Stephen’s country activity, and perhaps the higher spirit of his gentle blood, generally gave him the advantage, and on this occasion he soon reduced Bates to roar for mercy. “Thou must purchase it!” said Stephen. “Thy bag of nuts, in return for the berries thou hast wasted!” Peaceable Ambrose would have remonstrated, but Stephen was implacable. He cut the string, and captured the bag, then with a parting kick bade Bates go after his comrades, for his Eagle was nought but a thieving kite. Bates made off pretty quickly, but the two brothers tarried a little to see how much damage the blackberries had suffered, and to repair the losses as they descended into the bog by gathering some choice dewberries. “I marvel these fine fellows ’scaped our company,” said Stephen presently. “Are we in the right track, thinkst thou? Here is a pool I marked not before,” said Ambrose anxiously. “Nay, we can’t be far astray while we see St. Paul’s spire and the Tower full before us,” said Stephen. “Plainer marks than we had at home.” “That may be. Only where is the safe footing?” said Ambrose. “I wish we had not lost sight of the others!” “Pish! what good are a pack of City lubbers!” returned Stephen. “Don’t we know a quagmire when we see one, better than they do?” “Hark, they are shouting for us.” “Not they! That’s a falconer’s call. There’s another whistle! See, there’s the hawk. She’s going down the wind, as I’m alive,” and Stephen began to bound wildly along, making all the sounds and calls by which falcons were recalled, and holding up as a lure a lapwing which he had knocked down. Ambrose, by no means so confident in bog-trotting as his brother, stood still to await him, hearing the calls and shouts of the falconer coming nearer, and presently seeing a figure, flying by the help of a pole over the pools and dykes that here made some attempt at draining the waste. Suddenly, in mid career over one of these broad ditches, there was a collapse, and a lusty shout for help as the form disappeared. Ambrose instantly perceived what had happened, the leaping pole had broken to the downfall of its owner. Forgetting all his doubts as to bogholes and morasses, he grasped his own pole, and sprang from tussock to tussock, till he had reached the bank of the ditch or water-course in which the unfortunate sportsman was floundering. He was a large, powerful man, but this was of no avail, for the slough afforded no foothold. The further side was a steep built up of sods, the nearer sloped down gradually, and though it was not apparently very deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had done nothing but churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he sank deeper every moment, and it was already nearly to his shoulders when with a cry of joy, half choked however, by the mud, he cried, “Ha! my good lad! Are there any more of ye?” “Not nigh, I fear,” said Ambrose, beholding with some dismay the breadth of the shoulders which were all that appeared above the turbid water. “Soh! Lie down, boy, behind that bunch of osier. Hold out thy pole. Let me see thine hands. Thou art but a straw, but, our Lady be my speed! Now hangs England on a pair of wrists!” There was a great struggle, an absolute effort for life, and but for the osier stump Ambrose would certainly have been dragged into the water, when the man had worked along the pole, and grasping his hands, pulled himself upwards. Happily the sides of the dyke became harder higher up, and did not instantly yield to the pressure of his knees, and by the time Ambrose’s hands and shoulders felt nearly wrenched from their sockets, the stem of the osier had been attained, and in another minute, the rescued man, bareheaded, plastered with mud, and streaming with water, sat by him on the bank, panting, gasping, and trying to gather breath and clear his throat from the mud he had swallowed. “Thanks, good lad, well done,” he articulated. “Those fellows! where are they?” And feeling in his bosom, he brought out a gold whistle suspended by a chain. “Blow it,” he said, taking off the chain, “my mouth is too full of slime.” Ambrose blew a loud shrill call, but it seemed to reach no one but Stephen, whom he presently saw dashing towards them. “Here is my brother coming, sir,” he said, as he gave his endeavours to help the stranger to free himself from the mud that clung to him, and which was in some places thick enough to be scraped off with a knife. He kept up a continual interchange of exclamations at his plight, whistles and shouts for his people, and imprecations on their tardiness, until Stephen was near enough to show that the hawk had been recovered, and then he joyfully called out, “Ha! hast thou got her? Why, flat-caps as ye are, ye put all my fellows to shame! How now, thou errant bird, dost know thy master, or take him for a mud wall? Kite that thou art, to have led me such a dance! And what’s your name, my brave lads? Ye must have been bred to wood-craft.” Ambrose explained both their parentage and their present occupation, but was apparently heeded but little. “Wot ye how to get out of this quagmire?” was the question. “I never was here before, sir,” said Stephen; “but yonder lies the Tower, and if we keep along by this dyke, it must lead us out somewhere.” “Well said, boy, I must be moving, or the mud will dry on me, and I shall stand here as though I were turned to stone by the Gorgon’s head! So have with thee! Go on first, master hawk-tamer. What will bear thee will bear me!” There was an imperative tone about him that surprised the brothers, and Ambrose looking at him from head to foot, felt sure that it was some great man at the least, whom it had been his hap to rescue. Indeed, he began to have further suspicions when they came to a pool of clearer water, beyond which was firmer ground, and the stranger with an exclamation of joy, borrowed Stephen’s cap, and, scooping up the water with it, washed his face and head, disclosing the golden hair and beard, fair complexion, and handsome square face he had seen more than once before. He whispered to Stephen “’Tis the King!” “Ha! ha!” laughed Henry, “hast found him out, lads? Well, it may not be the worse for ye. Pity thou shouldst not be in the Forest still, my young falconer, but we know our good city of London to well to break thy indentures. And thou—” [Picture: “Ha! ha!” laughed Henry, “hast found him out, lads?”] He was turning to Ambrose when further shouts were heard. The King hallooed, and bade the boys do so, and in a few moments more they were surrounded by the rest of the hawking party, full of dismay at the king’s condition, and deprecating his anger for having lost him. “Yea,” said Henry; “an it had not been for this good lad, ye would never have heard more of the majesty of England! Swallowed in a quagmire had made a new end for a king, and ye would have to brook the little Scot.” The gentlemen who had come up were profuse in lamentations. A horse was brought up for the king’s use, and he prepared to mount, being in haste to get into dry clothes. He turned round, however, to the boys, and said, “I’ll not forget you, my lads. Keep that!” he added, as Ambrose, on his knee, would have given him back the whistle, “’tis a token that maybe will serve thee, for I shall know it again. And thou, my black-eyed lad—My purse, Howard!” He handed the purse to Stephen—a velvet hag richly wrought with gold, and containing ten gold angels, besides smaller money—bidding them divide, like good brothers as he saw they were, and then galloped off with his train. Twilight was coming on, but following in the direction of the riders, the boys were soon on the Islington road. The New Gate was shut by the time they reached it, and their explanation that they were belated after a nutting expedition would not have served them, had not Stephen produced the sum of twopence which softened the surliness of the guard. It was already dark, and though curfew had not yet sounded, preparations were making for lighting the watch-fires in the open spaces and throwing chains across the streets, but the little door in the Dragon court was open, and Ambrose went in with his brother to deliver up his nuts to Dennet and claim her promise of sending a share to Aldonza. They found their uncle in his sober array sitting by Master Headley, who was rating Edmund and Giles for having lost sight of them, the latter excusing himself by grumbling out that he could not be marking all Stephen’s brawls with George Bates. When the two wanderers appeared, relief took the form of anger, and there were sharp demands why they had loitered. Their story was listened to with many exclamations: Dennet jumped for joy, her grandmother advised that the angels should be consigned to her own safe keeping, and when Master Headley heard of Henry’s scruples about the indentures, he declared that it was a rare wise king who knew that an honest craft was better than court favour. “Yet mayhap he might do something for thee, friend Ambrose,” added the armourer. “Commend thee to some post in his chapel royal, or put thee into some college, since such is thy turn. How sayst thou, Master Randall, shall he send in this same token, and make his petition?” “If a foo—if a plain man may be heard where the wise hath spoken,” said Randall, “he had best abstain. Kings love not to be minded of mishaps, and our Hal’s humour is not to be reckoned on! Lay up the toy in case of need, but an thou claim overmuch he may mind thee in a fashion not to thy taste.” “Sure our King is of a more generous mould!” exclaimed Mrs. Headley. “He is like other men, good mistress, just as you know how to have him, and he is scarce like to be willing to be minded of the taste of mire, or of floundering like a hog in a salt marsh. Ha! ha!” and Quipsome Hal went off into such a laugh as might have betrayed his identity to any one more accustomed to the grimaces of his professional character, but which only infected the others with the same contagious merriment. “Come thou home now,” he said to Ambrose; “my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and would have me come out to seek after thee. Such are the women folk, Master Headley. Let them have but a lad to look after, and they’ll bleat after him like an old ewe that has lost her lamb.” Ambrose only stayed for Dennet to divide the spoil, and though the blackberries had all been lost or crushed, the little maiden kept her promise generously, and filled the bag not only with nuts but with three red-checked apples, and a handful of comfits, for the poor little maid who never tasted fruit or sweets.

13

A LONDON HOLIDAY

“Up then spoke the apprentices tall Living in London, one and all.” _Old Ballad_. ANOTHER of the many holidays of the Londoners was enjoyed on the occasion of the installation of Thomas Wolsey as Cardinal of St. Cecilia, and Papal Legate. A whole assembly of prelates and “lusty gallant gentlemen” rode out to Blackheath to meet the Roman envoy, who, robed in full splendour, with St. Peter’s keys embroidered on back and breast and on the housings of his mule, appeared at the head of a gallant train in the papal liveries, two of whom carried the gilded pillars, the insignia of office, and two more, a scarlet and gold-covered box or casket containing the Cardinal’s hat. Probably no such reception of the dignity was ever prepared elsewhere, and all was calculated to give magnificent ideas of the office of Cardinal and of the power of the Pope to those who had not been let into the secret that the messenger had been met at Dover; and thus magnificently fitted out to satisfy the requirements of the butcher’s son of Ipswich, and of one of the most ostentatious of courts. Old Gaffer Martin Fulford had muttered in his bed that such pomp had not been the way in the time of the true old royal blood, and that display had come in with the upstart slips of the Red Rose—as he still chose to style the Tudors; and he maundered away about the beauty and affability of Edward IV. till nobody could understand him, and Perronel only threw in her “ay, grandad,” or “yea, gaffer,” when she thought it was expected of her. Ambrose had an unfailing appetite for the sermons of Dean Colet, who was to preach on this occasion in Westminster Abbey, and his uncle had given him counsel how to obtain standing ground there, entering before the procession. He was alone, his friends Tibble and Lucas both had that part of the Lollard temper which loathed the pride and wealth of the great political clergy, and in spite of their admiration for the Dean they could not quite forgive his taking part in the pomp of such a rare show. But Ambrose’s devotion to the Dean, to say nothing of youthful curiosity, outweighed all those scruples, and as he listened, he was carried along by the curious sermon in which the preacher likened the orders of the hierarchy below to that of the nine orders of the Angels, making the rank of Cardinal correspond to that of the Seraphim, aglow with love. Of that holy flame, the scarlet robes were the type to the spiritualised mind of Colet, while others saw in them only the relic of the imperial purple of old Rome; and some beheld them as the token that Wolsey was one step nearer the supreme height that he coveted so earnestly. But the great and successful man found himself personally addressed, bidden not to be puffed up with his own greatness, and stringently reminded of the highest Example of humility, shown that he that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself be exalted. The preacher concluded with a strong personal exhortation to do righteousness and justice alike to rich and poor, joined with truth and mercy, setting God always before him. The sermon ended, Wolsey knelt at the altar, and Archbishop Wareham, who, like his immediate predecessors, held legatine authority, performed the act of investiture, placing the scarlet hat with its many hoops and tassels on his brother primate’s head, after which a magnificent _Te Deum_ rang through the beautiful church, and the procession of prelates, peers, and ecclesiastics of all ranks in their richest array formed to escort the new Cardinal to banquet at his palace with the King and Queen. Ambrose, stationed by a column, let the throng rush, tumble, and jostle one another to behold the show, till the Abbey was nearly empty, while he tried to work out the perplexing question whether all this pomp and splendour were truly for the glory of God, or whether it were a delusion for the temptation of men’s souls. It was a debate on which his old and his new guides seemed to him at issue, and he was drawn in both directions—now by the beauty, order, and deep symbolism of the Catholic ritual, now by the spirituality and earnestness of the men among whom he lived. At one moment the worldly pomp, the mechanical and irreverent worship, and the gross and vicious habits of many of the clergy repelled him; at another the reverence and conservatism of his nature held him fast. Presently he felt a hand on his shoulder, and started, “Lost in a stud, as we say at home, boy,” said the jester, resplendent in a bran new motley suit. “Wilt come in to the banquet? ’Tis open house, and I can find thee a seat without disclosing the kinship that sits so sore on thy brother. Where is he?” “I have not seen him this day.” “That did I,” returned Randall, “as I rode by on mine ass. He was ruffling it so lustily that I could not but give him a wink, the which my gentleman could by no means stomach! Poor lad! Yet there be times, Ambrose, when I feel in sooth that mine office is the only honourable one, since who besides can speak truth? I love my lord; he is a kind, open-handed master, and there’s none I would so willingly serve, whether by jest or earnest, but what is he but that which I oft call him in joke—the greater fool than I, selling peace and ease, truth and hope, this life and the next, for yonder scarlet hat, which is after all of no more worth than this jingling head-gear of mine.” “Deafening the spiritual ears far more, it may be,” said Ambrose, “since _humiles exallaverint_.” It was no small shock that there, in the midst of the nave, the answer was a bound, like a ball, almost as high as the capital of the column by which they stood. “There’s exaltation!” said Randall in a low voice, and Ambrose perceived that some strangers were in sight. “Come, seek thy brother out, boy, and bring him to the banquet. I’ll speak a word to Peter Porter, and he’ll let you in. There’ll be plenty of fooling all the afternoon, before my namesake King Hal, who can afford to be an honester man in his fooling than any about him, and whose laugh at a hearty jest is goodly to hear.” Ambrose thanked him and undertook the quest. They parted at the great west door of the Abbey, where, by way of vindicating his own character for buffoonery, Randall exclaimed, “Where be mine ass?” and not seeing the animal, immediately declared, “There he is!” and at the same time sprang upon the back and shoulders of a gaping and astonished clown who was gazing at the rear of the procession. The crowd applauded with shouts of coarse laughter, but a man, who seemed to belong to the victim, broke in with an angry oath, and “How now, sir?” “I cry you mercy,” quoth the jester; “’twas mine own ass I sought, and if I have fallen on thine, I will but ride him to York House and then restore him. So ho! good jackass,” crossing his ankles on the poor fellow’s chest so that he could not be shaken off. The comrade lifted a cudgel, but there was a general cry of “My Lord Cardinal’s jester, lay not a finger on him!” But Harry Randall was not one to brook immunity on the score of his master’s greatness. In another second he was on his feet, had wrested the staff from the hands of his astounded beast of burden, flourished it round his head after the most approved manner of Shirley champions at Lyndhurst fair, and called to his adversary to “come on.” It did not take many rounds before Hal’s dexterity had floored his adversary, and the shouts of “Well struck, merry fool!” “Well played, Quipsome Hal!” were rising high when the Abbot of Westminster’s yeomen were seen making way through the throng, which fell back in terror on either side as they came to seize on the brawlers in their sacred precincts. But here again my Lord Cardinal’s fool was a privileged person, and no one laid a hand on him, though his blood being up, he would, spite of his gay attire, have enjoyed a fight on equal terms. His quadruped donkey was brought up to him amid general applause, but when he looked round for Ambrose, the boy had disappeared. The better and finer the nature that displayed itself in Randall, the more painful was the sight of his buffooneries to his nephew, and at the first leap, Ambrose had hurried away in confusion. He sought his brother here, there, everywhere, and at last came to the conclusion that Stephen must have gone home to dinner. He walked quickly across the fields separating Westminster from the City of London, hoping to reach Cheapside before the lads of the Dragon should have gone out again; but just as he was near St. Paul’s, coming round Amen Corner, he heard the sounds of a fray. “Have at the country lubbers! Away with the moonrakers! Flat-caps, come on!” “Hey! lads of the Eagle! Down with the Dragons! Adders Snakes—s-s s-s-s!” There was a kicking, struggling mass of blue backs and yellow legs before him, from out of which came “Yah! Down with the Eagles! Cowards! Kites! Cockneys!” There were plenty of boys, men, women with children in their arms hallooing on, “Well done, Eagle!” “Go it, Dragon!” The word Dragon filled the quiet Ambrose with hot impulse to defend his brother. All his gentle, scholarly habits gave way before that cry, and a shout that he took to be Stephen’s voice in the midst of the _mêlée_. He was fairly carried out of himself, and doubling his fists, fell on the back of the nearest boys, intending to break through to his brother, and he found an unexpected ally. Will Wherry’s voice called out, “Have with you, comrade!” —and a pair of hands and arms considerably stouter and more used to fighting than his own, began to pommel right and left with such good will that they soon broke through to the aid of their friends; and not before it was time, for Stephen, Giles, and Edmund, with their backs against the wall, were defending themselves with all their might against tremendous odds; and just as the new allies reached them, a sharp stone struck Giles in the eye, and levelled him with the ground, his head striking against the wall. Whether it were from alarm at his fall, or at the unexpected attack in the rear, or probably from both causes, the assailants dispersed in all directions without waiting to perceive how slender the succouring force really was. Edmund and Stephen were raising up the unlucky Giles, who lay quite insensible, with blood pouring from his eye. Ambrose tried to wipe it away, and there were anxious doubts whether the eye itself were safe. They were some way from home, and Giles was the biggest and heaviest of them all. “Would that Kit Smallbones were here!” said Stephen, preparing to take the feet, while Edmund took the shoulders. “Look here,” said Will Wherry, pulling Ambrose’s sleeve, “our yard is much nearer, and the old Moor, Master Michael, is safe to know what to do for him. That sort of cattle always are leeches. He wiled the pain from my thumb when ’twas crushed in our printing press. Mayhap if he put some salve to him, he might get home on his own feet.” Edmund listened. “There’s reason in that,” he said. “Dost know this leech, Ambrose?” “I know him well. He is a good old man, and wondrous wise. Nay, no black arts; but he saith his folk had great skill in herbs and the like, and though he be no physician by trade, he hath much of their lore.” “Have with thee, then,” returned Edmund, “the rather that Giles is no small weight, and the guard might come on us ere we reached the Dragon.” “Or those cowardly rogues of the Eagle might set on us again,” added Stephen; and as they went on their way to Warwick Inner Yard, he explained that the cause of the encounter had been that Giles had thought fit to prank himself in his father’s silver chain, and thus George Bates, always owing the Dragon a grudge, and rendered specially malicious since the encounter on Holy Rood Day, had raised the cry against him, and caused all the flat-caps around to make a rush at the gaud as lawful prey. “’Tis clean against prentice statutes to wear one, is it not?” asked Ambrose. “Ay,” returned Stephen; “yet none of us but would stand up for our own comrade against those meddling fellows of the Eagle.” “But,” added Edmund, “we must beware the guard, for if they looked into the cause of the fray, our master might be called on to give Giles a whipping in the Company’s hall, this being a second offence of going abroad in these vanities.” Ambrose went on before to prepare Miguel Abenali, and entreat his good offices, explaining that the youth’s master, who was also his kinsman, would be sure to give handsome payment for any good offices to him. He scarcely got out half the words; the grand old Arab waved his hand and said, “When the wounded is laid before the tent of Ben Ali, where is the question of recompense? Peace be with thee, my son! Bring him hither. Aldonza, lay the carpet yonder, and the cushions beneath the window, where I may have light to look to his hurt.” Therewith he murmured a few words in an unknown tongue, which, as Ambrose understood, were an invocation to the God of Abraham to bless his endeavours to heal the stranger youth, but which happily were spoken before the arrival of the others, who would certainly have believed them an incantation. The carpet though worn threadbare, was a beautiful old Moorish rug, once glowing with brilliancy, and still rich in colouring, and the cushion was of thick damask faded to a strange pale green. All in that double-stalled partition, once belonging to the great earl’s war-horses, was scrupulously clean, for the Christian Moor had retained some of the peculiar virtues born of Mohammedanism and of high civilisation. The apprentice lads tramped in much as if they had been entering a wizard’s cave, though Stephen had taken care to assure Edmund of his application of the test of holy water. Following the old man’s directions, Edmund and Stephen deposited their burden on the rug. Aldonza brought some warm water, and Abenali washed and examined the wound, Aldonza standing by and handing him whatever he needed, now and then assisting with her slender brown hands in a manner astonishing to the youths, who stood by anxious and helpless, white their companion began to show signs of returning life. Abenali pronounced that the stone had missed the eyeball, but the cut and bruise were such as to require constant bathing, and the blow on the head was the more serious matter, for when the patient tried to raise himself he instantly became sick and giddy, so that it would be wise to leave him where he was. This was much against the will of Edmund Burgess, who shared all the prejudices of the English prentice against the foreigner—perhaps a wizard and rival in trade; but there was no help for it, and he could only insist that Stephen should mount guard over the bed until he had reported to his master, and returned with his orders. Therewith he departed, with such elaborate thanks and courtesies to the host, as betrayed a little alarm in the tall apprentice, who feared not quarter-staff, nor wrestler, and had even dauntlessly confronted the masters of his guild! Stephen, sooth to say, was not very much at ease; everything around had such a strange un-English aspect, and he imploringly muttered, “Bide with me, Am!” to which his brother willingly assented, being quite as comfortable in Master Michael’s abode as by his aunt’s own hearth. Giles meanwhile lay quiet, and then, as his senses became less confused, and he could open one eye, he looked dreamily about him, and presently began to demand where he was, and what had befallen him, grasping at the hand of Ambrose as if to hold fast by something familiar; but he still seemed too much dazed to enter into the explanation, and presently murmured something about thirst. Aldonza came softly up with a cup of something cool. He looked very hard at her, and when Ambrose would have taken it from her hand to give it to him, he said, “Nay! _She_!” And _she_, with a sweet smile in her soft, dark, shady eyes, and on her full lips, held the cup to his lips far more daintily and dexterously than either of his boy companions could have done; then when he moaned and said his head and eye pained him, the white-bearded elder came and bathed his brow with the soft sponge. It seemed all to pass before him like a dream, and it was not much otherwise with his unhurt companions, especially Stephen, who followed with wonder the movements made by the slippered feet of father and daughter upon the mats which covered the stone flooring of the old stable. The mats were only of English rushes and flags, and had been woven by Abenali and the child; but loose rushes strewing the floor were accounted a luxury in the Forest, and even at the Dragon court the upper end of the hall alone had any covering. Then the water was heated, and all such other operations carried on over a curious round vessel placed over charcoal; the window and the door had dark heavy curtains; and a matted partition cut off the further stall, no doubt to serve as Aldonza’s chamber. Stephen looked about for something to assure him that the place belonged to no wizard enchanter, and was glad to detect a large white cross on the wall, with a holy-water stoup beneath it, but of images there were none. It seemed to him a long time before Master Headley’s ruddy face, full of anxiety, appeared at the door. Blows were, of course, no uncommon matter; perhaps so long as no permanent injury was inflicted, the master-armourer had no objection to anything that might knock the folly out of his troublesome young inmate; but Edmund had made him uneasy for the youth’s eye, and still more so about the quarters he was in, and he had brought a mattress and a couple of men to carry the patient home, as well as Steelman, his prime minister, to advise him. He had left all these outside, however, and advanced, civilly and condescendingly thanking the sword-cutler, in perfect ignorance that the man who stood before him had been born to a home that was an absolute palace compared with the Dragon court. The two men were a curious contrast. There stood the Englishman with his sturdy form inclining, with age, to corpulence, his broad honest face telling of many a civic banquet, and his short stubbly brown grizzled heard; his whole air giving a sense of worshipful authority and weight; and opposite to him the sparely made, dark, thin, aquiline-faced, white-bearded Moor, a far smaller man in stature, yet with a patriarchal dignity, refinement, and grace in port and countenance, belonging as it were to another sphere. Speaking English perfectly, though with a foreign accent, Abenali informed Master Headley that his young kinsman would by Heaven’s blessing soon recover without injury to the eye, though perhaps a scar might remain. Mr. Headley thanked him heartily for his care, and said that he had brought men to carry the youth home, if he could not walk; and then he went up to the couch with a hearty “How now, Giles? So thou hast had hard measure to knock the foolery out of thee, my poor lad. But come, we’ll have thee home, and my mother will see to thee.” “I cannot walk,” said Giles, heavily, hardly raising his eyes, and when he was told that two of the men waited to bear him home, he only entreated to be let alone. Somewhat sharply, Mr. Headley ordered him to sit up and make ready, but when he tried to do so, he sank back with a return of sickness and dizziness. Abenali thereupon intreated that he might be left for that night, and stepping out into the court so as to be unheard by the patient, explained that the brain had had a shock, and that perfect quiet for some hours to come was the only way to avert a serious illness, possibly dangerous. Master Headley did not like the alternative at all, and was a good deal perplexed. He beckoned to Tibble Steelman, who had all this time been talking to Lucas Hansen, and now came up prepared with his testimony that this Michael was a good man and true, a godly one to boot, who had been wealthy in his own land and was a rare artificer in his own craft. “Though he hath no license to practise it here,” threw in Master Headley, _sotto voce_; but he accepted the assurance that Michael was a good Christian, and, with his daughter, regularly went to mass; and since better might not be, he reluctantly consented to leave Giles under his treatment, on Lucas reiterating the assurance that he need have no fears of magic or foul play of any sort. He then took the purse that hung at his girdle, and declared that Master Michael (the title of courtesy was wrung from him by the stately appearance of the old man) must be at no charges for his cousin. But Abenali with a grace that removed all air of offence from his manner, returned thanks for the intention, but declared that it never was the custom of the sons of Ali to receive reward for the hospitality they exercised to the stranger within their gates. And so it was that Master Headley, a good deal puzzled, had to leave his apprentice under the roof of the old sword-cutler for the night at least. “’Tis passing strange,” said he, as he walked back; “I know not what my mother will say, but I wish all may be right. I feel—I feel as if I had left the lad Giles with Abraham under the oak tree, as we saw him in the miracle play!” This description did not satisfy Mrs. Headley, indeed she feared that her son was likewise bewitched; and when, the next morning, Stephen, who had been sent to inquire for the patient, reported him better, but still unable to be moved, since he could not lift his head without sickness, she became very anxious. Giles was transformed in her estimate from a cross-grained slip to poor Robin Headley’s boy, the only son of a widow, and nothing would content her but to make her son conduct her to Warwick Inner Yard to inspect matters, and carry thither a precious relic warranted proof against all sorcery. It was with great trepidation that the good old dame ventured, but the result was that she was fairly subdued by Abenali’s patriarchal dignity. She had never seen any manners to equal his, not _even_ when King Edward the Fourth had come to her father’s house at the Barbican, chucked her under the chin, and called her a dainty duck! It was Aldonza, however, who specially touched her feelings. Such a sweet little wench, with the air of being bred in a kingly or knightly court, to be living there close to the very dregs of the city was a scandal and a danger—speaking so prettily too, and knowing how to treat her elders. She would be a good example for Dennet, who, sooth to say, was getting too old for spoilt-child sauciness to be always pleasing, while as to Giles, he could not be in better quarters. Mrs. Headley, well used to the dressing of the burns and bruises incurred in the weapon smiths’ business, could not but confess that his eye had been dealt with as skilfully as she could have done it herself.

14

THE KNIGHT OF THE BADGER

“I am a gentleman of a company.” SHAKESPEARE. GILES HEADLEY’S accident must have amounted to concussion of the brain, for though he was able to return to the Dragon in a couple of days, and the cut over his eye was healing fast, he was weak and shaken, and did not for several weeks recover his usual health. The noise and heat of the smithy were distressing to him, and there was no choice but to let him lie on settles, sun himself on the steps, and attempt no work. It had tamed him a good deal. Smallbones said the letting out of malapert blood was wholesome, and others thought him still under a spell; but he seemed to have parted with much of his arrogance, either because he had not spirits for self-assertion, or because something of the grand eastern courtesy of Abenali had impressed him. For intercourse with the Morisco had by no means ceased. Giles went, as long as the injury required it, to have the hurt dressed, and loitered in the Inner Yard a long time every day, often securing some small dainty for Aldonza—an apple, a honey cake, a bit of marchpane, a dried plum, or a comfit. One day he took her a couple of oranges. To his surprise, as he entered, Abenali looked up with a strange light in his eyes, and exclaimed, “My son! thy scent is to my nostrils as the court of my father’s house!” Then, as he beheld the orange, he clasped his hands, took it in them, and held it to his breast, pouring out a chant in an unknown tongue, while the tears flowed down his cheeks. “Father, father!” Aldonza cried, terrified, while Giles marvelled whether the orange worked on him like a spell. But he perceived their amazement, and spoke again in English, “I thank thee, my son! Thou hast borne me back for a moment to the fountain in my father’s house, where ye grow, ye trees of the unfading leaf, the spotless blossom, and golden fruit! Ah Ronda! Ronda! Land of the sunshine, the deep blue sky, and snow-topped hills! Land where are the graves of my father and mother! How pines and sickens the heart of the exile for thee! O happy they who died beneath the sword or flame, for they knew not the lonely home-longing of the exile. Ah! ye golden fruits! One fragrant breath of thee is as a waft of the joys of my youth! Are ye foretastes of the fruits of Paradise, the true home to which I may yet come, though I may never, never see the towers and hills of Ronda more?” Giles knew not what to make of this outburst. He kept it to himself as too strange to be told. The heads of the family were willing that he should carry these trifles to the young child of the man who would accept no reward for his hospitality. Indeed, Master Headley spent much consideration on how to recompense the care bestowed on his kinsman. Giles suggested that Master Michael had just finished the most beautiful sword blade he had ever seen, and had not yet got a purchaser for it; it was far superior to the sword Tibble had just completed for my Lord of Surrey. Thereat the whole court broke into an outcry; that any workman should be supposed to turn out any kind of work surpassing Steelman’s was rank heresy, and Master Headley bluntly told Giles that he knew not what he was talking of! He might perhaps purchase the blade by way of courtesy and return of kindness, but—good English workmanship for him! However, Giles was allowed to go and ask the price of the blade, and bring it to be looked at. When he returned to the court he found, in front of the building where finished suits were kept for display, a tall, thin, wiry, elderly man, deeply bronzed, and with a scar on his brow. Master Headley and Tibble were both in attendance, Tib measuring the stranger, and Stephen, who was standing at a respectful distance, gave Giles the information that this was the famous Captain of Free-lances, Sir John Fulford, who had fought in all the wars in Italy, and was going to fight in them again, but wanted a suit of “our harness.” The information was hardly needed, for Sir John, in a voice loud enough to lead his men to the battle-field, and with all manner of strong asseverations in all sorts of languages, was explaining the dints and blows that had befallen the mail he had had from Master Headley eighteen years ago, when he was but a squire; how his helmet had endured tough blows, and saved his head at Novara, but had been crushed like an egg shell by a stone from the walls at Barletta, which had nearly been his own destruction: and how that which he at present wore (beautifully chased and in a classical form) was taken from a dead Italian Count on the field of Ravenna, but always sat amiss on him; and how he had broken his good sword upon one of the rascally Swiss only a couple of months ago at Marignano. Having likewise disabled his right arm, and being well off through the payment of some ransoms, he had come home partly to look after his family, and partly to provide himself with a full suit of English harness, his present suit being a patchwork of relics of numerous battle-fields. Only one thing he desired, a true Spanish sword, not only Toledo or Bilboa in name, but nature. He had seen execution done by the weapons of the soldiers of the Great Captain, and been witness to the endurance of their metal, and this made him demand whether Master Headley could provide him with the like. Giles took the moment for stepping forward and putting Abenali’s work into the master’s hand. The Condottiere was in raptures. He pronounced it as perfect a weapon as Gonzalo de Cordova himself could possess; showed off its temper and his own dexterity by piercing and cutting up an old cuirass, and invited the bystanders to let him put it to further proof by letting him slice through an apple placed on the open palm of the hand. Giles’s friendship could not carry him so far as to make the venture; Kit Smallbones observed that he had a wife and children, and could not afford to risk his good right hand on a wandering soldier’s bravado; Edmund was heard saying, “Nay, nay, Steve, don’t be such a fool,” but Stephen was declaring he would not have the fellow say that English lads hung back from what rogues of France and Italy would dare. “No danger for him who winceth not,” said the knight. Master Headley, a very peaceful citizen in his composition in spite of his trade, was much inclined to forbid Stephen from the experiment, but he refrained, ashamed and unwilling to daunt a high spirit; and half the household, eager for the excitement, rushed to the kitchen in quest of apples, and brought out all the women to behold, and add a clamour of remonstrance. Sir John, however, insisted that they should all be ordered back again. “Not that the noise and clamour of women folk makes any odds to me,” said the grim old warrior, “I’ve seen too many towns taken for that, but it might make the lad queasy, and cost him a thumb or so.” Of course this renewed the dismay and excitement, and both Tibble and his master entreated Stephen to give up the undertaking if he felt the least misgiving as to his own steadiness, arguing that they should not think him any more a craven than they did Kit Smallbones or Edmund Burgess. But Stephen’s mind was made up, his spirit was high, and he was resolved to go through with it. He held out his open hand, a rosy-checked apple was carefully laid on it. The sword flashed through the air—divided in half the apple which remained on Stephen’s palm. There was a sharp shriek from a window, drowned in the acclamations of the whole court, while the Captain patted Stephen on the shoulder, exclaiming, “Well done, my lad. There’s the making of a tall fellow in thee! If ever thou art weary of making weapons and wouldst use them instead, seek out John Fulford, of the Badger troop, and thou shalt have a welcome. Our name is the Badger, because there’s no troop like us for digging out mines beneath the walls.” A few months ago such an invitation would have been bliss to Stephen. Now he was bound in all honour and duty to his master, and could only thank the knight of the Badger, and cast a regretful eye at him, as he drank a cup of wine, and flung a bag of gold and silver, supplemented by a heavy chain, to Master Headley, who prudently declined working for Free Companions, unless he were paid beforehand; and, at the knight’s request, took charge of a sufficient amount to pay his fare back again to the Continent. Then mounting a tall, lean, bony horse, the knight said he should call for his armour on returning from Somerset, and rode off, while Stephen found himself exalted as a hero in the eyes of his companions for an act common enough at feats of arms among modern cavalry, but quite new to the London flat-caps. The only sufferer was little Dennet, who had burst into an agony of crying at the sight, needed that Stephen should spread out both hands before her, and show her the divided apple, before she would believe that his thumb was in its right place, and at night screamed out in her sleep that the ill-favoured man was cutting off Stephen’s hands. The sword was left behind by Sir John in order that it might be fitted with a scabbard and belt worthy of it; and on examination, Master Headley and Tibble both confessed that they could produce nothing equal to it in workmanship, though Kit looked with contempt at the slight weapon of deep blue steel, with lines meandering on it like a watered silk, and the upper part inlaid with gold wire in exquisite arabesque patterns. He called it a mere toy, and muttered something about sorcery, and men who had been in foreign parts not thinking honest weight of English steel good enough for them. Master Headley would not trust one of the boys with the good silver coins that had been paid as the price of the sword—French crowns and Milanese ducats, with a few Venetian gold bezants—but he bade them go as guards to Tibble, for it was always a perilous thing to carry a sum of money through the London streets. Tibble was not an unwilling messenger. He knew Master Michael to be somewhat of his own way of thinking, and he was a naturally large-minded man who could appreciate skill higher than his own without jealousy. Indeed, he and his master held a private consultation on the mode of establishing a connection with Michael and profiting by his ability. To have lodged him at the Dragon court and made him part of the establishment might have seemed the most obvious way, but the dogged English hatred and contempt of foreigners would have rendered this impossible, even if Abenali himself would have consented to give up his comparative seclusion and live in a crowd and turmoil. But he was thankful to receive and execute orders from Master Headley, since so certain a connection would secure Aldonza from privation such as the child had sometimes had to endure in the winter; when, though the abstemious Eastern nature needed little food, there was great suffering from cold and lack of fuel. And Tibble moreover asked questions and begged for instructions in some of the secrets of the art. It was an effort to such a prime artificer as Steelman to ask instruction from any man, especially a foreigner, but Tibble had a nature of no common order, and set perfection far above class prejudice; and moreover, he felt Abenali to be one of those men who had their inner eyes devotedly fixed on the truth, though little knowing where the quest would lead them. On his side Abenali underwent a struggle. “Woe is me!” he said. “Wottest thou, my son, that the secrets of the sword of light and swiftness are the heritage that Abdallah Ben Ali brought from Damascus in the hundred and fifty-third year of the flight of him whom once I termed the prophet; nor have they departed from our house, but have been handed on from father to son. And shall they be used in the wars of the stranger and the Christian?” “I feared it might be thus,” said Tibble. “And yet,” went on the old man, as if not hearing him, “wherefore should I guard the secret any longer? My sons? Where are they? They brooked not the scorn and hatred of the Castillian which poisoned to them the new faith. They cast in their lot with their own people, and that their bones may lie bleaching on the mountains is the best lot that can have befallen the children of my youth and hope. The house of Miguel Abenali is desolate and childless, save for the little maiden who sits by my hearth in the land of my exile! Why should I guard it longer for him who may wed her, and whom I may never behold? The will of Heaven be done! Young man, if I bestow this knowledge on thee, wilt thou swear to be as a father to my daughter, and to care for her as thine own?” It was a good while since Tibble had been called a young man, and as he listened to the flowing Eastern periods in their foreign enunciation, he was for a moment afraid that the price of the secret was that he should become the old Moor’s son-in-law! His seared and scarred youth had precluded marriage, and he entertained the low opinion of women frequent in men of superior intellect among the uneducated. Besides, the possibilities of giving umbrage to Church authorities were dawning on him, and he was not willing to form any domestic ties, so that in every way such a proposition would have been unwelcome to him. But he had no objection to pledge himself to fatherly guardianship of the pretty child in case of a need that might never arise. So he gave the promise, and became a pupil of Abenali, visiting Warwick Inner Yard with his master’s consent whenever he could be spared, while the workmanship at the Dragon began to profit thereby. The jealousy of the Eagle was proportionately increased. Alderman Itillyeo, the head of the Eagle, was friendly enough to Mr. Headley, but it was undeniable that they were the rival armourers of London, dividing the favours of the Court equally between them, and the bitterness of the emulation increased the lower it went in the establishment. The prentices especially could hardly meet without gibes and sneers, if nothing worse, and Stephen’s exploit had a peculiar flavour because it was averred that no one at the Eagle would have done the like. But it was not till the Sunday that Ambrose chanced to hear of the feat, at which he turned quite pale, but he was prouder of it than any one else, and although he rejoiced that he had not seen it performed, he did not fail to boast of it at home, though Perronel began by declaring that she did not care for the mad pranks of roistering prentices; but presently she paused, as she stirred her grandfather’s evening posset, and said, “What saidst thou was the strange soldier’s name?” “Fulford—Sir John Fulford” said Ambrose. “What? I thought not of it, is not that Gaffer’s name?” “Fulford, yea! Mayhap—” and Perronel sat down and gave an odd sort of laugh of agitation—“mayhap ’tis mine own father.” “Shouldst thou know him, good aunt?” cried Ambrose, much excited. “Scarce,” she said. “I was not seven years old when he went to the wars—if so be he lived through the battle—and he reeked little of me, being but a maid. I feared him greatly and so did my mother. ’ Twas happier with only Gaffer! Where saidst thou he was gone?” Ambrose could not tell, but he undertook to bring Stephen to answer all queries on the subject. His replies that the Captain was gone in quest of his family to Somersetshire settled the matter, since there had been old Martin Fulford’s abode, and there John Fulford had parted with his wife and father. They did not, however, tell the old man of the possibility of his son’s being at home, he had little memory, and was easily thrown into a state of agitation; besides, it was a doubtful matter how the Condottiere would feel as to the present fortunes of the family. Stephen was to look out for his return in quest of his suit of armour, inform him of his father’s being alive, and show him the way to the little house by the Temple Gardens; but Perronel gave the strictest injunctions that her husband’s profession should not be explained. It would be quite enough to say that he was of the Lord Cardinal’s household. Stephen watched, but the armour was finished and Christmas passed by before anything was seen of the Captain. At last, however, he did descend on the Dragon court, looking so dilapidated that Mr. Headley rejoiced in the having received payment beforehand. He was louder voiced and fuller of strange oaths than ever, and in the utmost haste, for he had heard tidings that “there was to be a lusty game between the Emperor and the Italians, and he must have his share.” Stephen made his way up to speak to him, and was received with “Ha, my gallant lad! Art weary of hammer and anvil? Wouldst be a brave Badger, slip thine indentures, and hear helm and lance ring in good earnest?” “Not so, sir,” said Stephen, “but I have been bidden to ask if thou hast found thy father?” “What’s that to thee, stripling? When thou hast cut thy wisdom teeth, thou’lt know old fathers be not so easy found. ’ Twas a wild goose chase, and I wot not what moved me to run after it. I met jolly comrades enough, bumpkins that could drink with an honest soldier when they saw him, but not one that ever heard the name of Fulford.” “Sir,” said Stephen, “I know an old man named Fulford. His granddaughter is my uncle’s wife, and they dwell by the Temple.” The intelligence seemed more startling and less gratifying than Stephen had expected. Sir John demanded whether they were poor, and declared that he had better have heard of them when his purse was fuller. He had supposed that his wife had given him up and found a fresh mate, and when he heard of her death, he made an exclamation which might be pity, but had in it something of relief. He showed more interest about his old father; but as to his daughter, if she had been a lad now, a’ might have been a stout comrade by this time, ready to do the Badger credit. Yea, his poor Kate was a good lass, but she was only a Flemish woman and hadn’t the sense to rear aught but a whining little wench, who was of no good except to turn fools’ heads, and she was wedded and past all that by this time. Stephen explained that she was wedded to one of the Lord Cardinal’s meiné. “Ho!” said the Condottiere, pausing, “be that the butcher’s boy that is pouring out his gold to buy scarlet hats, if not the three crowns. ’Tis no bad household wherein to have a footing. Saidst thou I should find my wench and the old Gaffer there?” Stephen had to explain, somewhat to the disappointment of the Captain, who had, as it appeared, in the company of three or four more adventurous spirits like himself, taken a passage in a vessel lying off Gravesend, and had only turned aside to take up his new armour and his deposit of passage-money. He demurred a little, he had little time to spare, and though, of course, he could take boat at the Temple Stairs, and drop down the river, he observed that it would have been a very different thing to go home to the old man when he first came back with a pouch full of ransoms and plunder, whereas now he had barely enough to carry him to the place of meeting with his Badgers. And there was the wench too—he had fairly forgotten her name. Women were like she wolves for greed when they had a brood of whelps. Stephen satisfied him that there was no danger on that score, and heard him muttering, that it was no harm to secure a safe harbour in case a man hadn’t the luck to be knocked on the head ere he grew too old to trail a pike. And he would fain see the old man. So permission was asked for Stephen to show the way to Master Randall’s, and granted somewhat reluctantly, Master Headley saying, “I’ll have thee back within an hour, Stephen Birkenholt, and look thou dost not let thy brain be set afire with this fellow’s windy talk of battles and sieges, and deeds only fit for pagans and wolves.” “Ay!” said Tibble, perhaps with a memory of the old fable, “better be the trusty mastiff than the wolf.” And like the wolf twitting the mastiff with his chain, the soldier was no sooner outside the door of the Dragon court before he began to express his wonder how a lad of mettle could put up with a flat cap, a blue gown, and the being at the beck and call of a greasy burgher, when a bold, handsome young knave like him might have the world before him and his stout pike. Stephen was flattered, but scarcely tempted. The hard selfishness and want of affection of the Condottiere shocked him, while he looked about, hoping some of his acquaintance would see him in company with this tall figure clanking in shining armour, and with a knightly helmet and gilt spurs. The armour, new and brilliant, concealed the worn and shabby leathern dress beneath, and gave the tall, spare figure a greater breadth, diminishing the look of a hungry wolf which Sir John Fulford’s aspect suggested. However, as he passed some of the wealthier stalls, where the apprentices, seeing the martial figure, shouted, “What d’ye lack, sir knight?” and offered silk and velvet robes and mantles, gay sword knots, or even rich chains, under all the clamour, Stephen heard him swearing by St. George what a place this would be for a sack, if his Badgers were behind him. “If that poor craven of a Warbeck had had a spark of valour in him,” quoth he, as he passed a stall gay with bright tankards and flagons, “we would have rattled some of that shining gear about the lazy citizens’ ears! He, jolly King Edward’s son! I’ll never give faith to it! To turn his back when there was such a booty to be had for the plundering.” “He might not have found it so easy. Our trainbands are sturdy enough,” said Stephen, whose _esprit de corps_ was this time on the Londoners’ side, but the knight of the Badger snapped his fingers, and said, “So much for your burgher trainbands! All they be good for with their show of fight is to give honest landsknechts a good reason to fall on to the plunder, if so be one is hampered by a squeamish prince. But grammercy to St. George, there be not many of that sort after they he once fleshed!” Perhaps a year ago, when fresh from the Forest, Stephen might have been more captivated by the notion of adventure and conquest. Now that he had his place in the community and looked on a civic position with wholesome ambition, Fulford’s longings for havoc in these peaceful streets made his blood run cold. He was glad when they reached their destination, and he saw Perronel with bare arms, taking in some linen cuffs and bands from a line across to the opposite wall. He could only call out, “Good naunt, here he be!” Perronel turned round, the colour rising in her cheeks, with an obeisance, but trembling a good deal. “How now, wench? Thou art grown a buxom dame. Thou makst an old man of me,” said the soldier with a laugh. “Where’s my father? I have not the turning of a cup to stay, for I’m come home poor as a cat in a plundered town, and am off to the wars again; but hearing that the old man was nigh at hand, I came this way to see him, and let thee know thou art a knight’s daughter. Thou art indifferent comely, girl, what’s thy name? but not the peer of thy mother when I wooed her as one of the bonny lasses of Bruges.” He gave a kind of embrace, while she gave a kind of gasp of “Welcome, sir,” and glanced somewhat reproachfully at Stephen for not having given her more warning. The cause of her dismay was plain as the Captain, giving her no time to precede him, strode into the little chamber, where Hal Randall, without his false beard or hair, and in his parti-coloured hose, was seated by the cupboard-like bed, assisting old Martin Fulford to take his midday meal. “Be this thine husband, girl? Ha! ha! He’s more like a jolly friar come in to make thee merry when the good man is out!” exclaimed the visitor, laughing loudly at his own rude jest; but heeding little either Hal’s appearance or his reply, as he caught the old man’s bewildered eyes, and heard his efforts to utter his name. For eighteen years had altered John Fulford less than either his father or his daughter, and old Martin recognised him instantly, and held out the only arm he could use, while the knight, softened, touched, and really feeling more natural affection than Stephen had given him credit for, dropped on his knee, breaking into indistinct mutterings with rough but hearty greetings, regretting that he had not found his father sooner, when his pouch was full, lamenting the change in him, declaring that he must hurry away now, but promising to come back with sacks of Italian ducats to provide for the old man. Those who could interpret the imperfect utterance, now further choked by tears and agitation, knew that there was a medley of broken rejoicings, blessings, and weepings, in the midst of which the soldier, glad perhaps to end a scene where he became increasingly awkward and embarrassed, started up, hastily kissed the old man on each of his withered cheeks, gave another kiss to his daughter, threw her two Venetian ducats, bidding her spend them for the old man, and he would bring a pouchful more next time, and striding to the door, bade Stephen call a boat to take him down to Gravesend. Randall, who had in the meantime donned his sober black gown in the inner chamber, together with a dark hood, accompanied his newly found father-in-law down the river, and Stephen would fain have gone too, but for the injunction to return within the hour. Perronel had hurried back to her grandfather’s side to endeavour to compose him after the shock of gladness. But it had been too much for his enfeebled powers. Another stroke came on before the day was over, and in two or three days more old Martin Fulford was laid to rest, and his son’s ducats were expended on masses for his soul’s welfare.

15

HEAVE HALF A BRICK AT HIM

“For strangers then did so increase, By reason of King Henry’s queen, And privileged in many a place To dwell, as was in London seen. Poor tradesmen had small dealing then And who but strangers bore the bell, Which was a grief to Englishmen To see them here in London dwell.” _Ill May Day_, _by_ CHURCHILL, _a Contemporary Poet_. TIME passed on, and Edmund Burgess, who had been sent from York to learn the perfection of his craft, completed his term and returned to his home, much regretted in the Dragon court, where his good humour and good sense had generally kept the peace, both within and without. Giles Headley was now the eldest prentice. He was in every way greatly improved, thoroughly accepting his position, and showing himself quite ready both to learn and to work; but he had not the will or the power of avoiding disputes with outsiders, or turning them aside with a merry jest; and rivalries and quarrels with the armoury at the Eagle began to increase. The Dragon, no doubt, turned out finer workmanship, and this the Eagle alleged was wholly owing to nefarious traffic with the old Spanish or Moorish sorcerer in Warwick Inner Yard, a thing unworthy of honest Englishmen. This made Giles furious, and the cry never failed to end in a fight, in which Stephen supported the cause of the one house, and George Bates and his comrades of the other. It was the same with even the archery at Mile End, where the butts were erected, and the youth contended with the long bow, which was still considered as the safeguard of England. King Henry often looked in on these matches, and did honour to the winners. One match there was in especial, on Mothering Sunday, when the champions of each guild shot against one another at such a range that it needed a keen eye to see the popinjay—a stuffed bird at which they shot. Stephen was one of these, his forest lore having always given him an advantage over many of the others. He even was one of the last three who were to finish the sport by shooting against one another. One was a butcher named Barlow. The other was a Walloon, the best shot among six hundred foreigners of various nations, all of whom, though with little encouragement, joined in the national sport on these pleasant spring afternoons. The first contest threw out the Walloon, at which there were cries of ecstasy; now the trial was between Barlow and Stephen, and in this final effort, the distance of the pole to which the popinjay was fastened was so much increased that strength of arm told as much as accuracy of aim, and Stephen’s seventeen years’ old muscles could not, after so long a strain, cope with those of Ralph Barlow, a butcher of full thirty years old. His wrist and arm began to shake with weariness, and only one of his three last arrows went straight to the mark, while Barlow was as steady as ever, and never once failed. Stephen was bitterly disappointed, his eyes filled with tears, and he flung himself down on the turf feeling as if the shouts of “A Barlow! a Barlow!” which were led by the jovial voice of King Harry himself, were all exulting over him. Barlow was led up to the king, who hailed him “King of Shoreditch,” a title borne by the champion archer ever after, so long as bowmanship in earnest lasted. A tankard which the king filled with silver pieces was his prize, but Henry did not forget No. 2. “Where’s the other fellow?” he said. “He was but a stripling, and to my mind, his feat was a greater marvel than that of a stalwart fellow like Barlow.” Half a dozen of the spectators, among them the cardinal’s jester, hurried in search of Stephen, who was roused from his fit of weariness and disappointment by a shake of the shoulder as his uncle jingled his bells in his ears, and exclaimed, “How now, here I own a cousin!” Stephen sat up and stared with angry, astonished eyes, but only met a laugh. “Ay, ay, ’tis but striplings and fools that have tears to spend for such as this! Up, boy! Dye hear? The other Hal is asking for thee.” And Stephen, hastily brushing away his tears, and holding his flat cap in his hand, was marshalled across the mead, hot, shy, and indignant, as the jester mopped and mowed, and cut all sorts of antics before him, turning round to observe in an encouraging voice, “Pluck up a heart, man! One would think Hal was going to cut oft thine head!” And then, on arriving where the king sat on his horse, “Here he is, Hal, such as he is come humbly to crave thy gracious pardon for hitting the mark no better! He’ll mend his ways, good my lord, if your grace will pardon him this time.” “Ay, marry, and that will I,” said the king. “The springald bids fair to be King of Shoreditch by the time the other fellow abdicates. How old art thou, my lad?” “Seventeen, an it please your grace,” said Stephen, in the gruff voice of his age. “And thy name?” “Stephen Birkenholt, my liege,” and he wondered whether he would be recognised; but Henry only said— “Methinks I’ve seen those sloe-black eyes before. Or is it only that the lad is thy very marrow, quipsome one?” “The which,” returned the jester, gravely, while Stephen tingled all over with dismay, “may account for the tears the lad was wasting at not having the thews of the fellow double his age! But I envy him not! Not I! He’ll never have wit for mine office, but will come in second there likewise.” “I dare be sworn he will,” said the king. “Here, take this, my good lad, and prank thee in it when thou art out of thy time, and goest a-hunting in Epping!” It was a handsome belt with a broad silver clasp, engraven with the Tudor rose and portcullis; and Stephen bowed low and made his acknowledgments as best he might. He was hailed with rapturous acclamations by his own contemporaries, who held that he had saved the credit of the English prentice world, and insisted on carrying him enthroned on their shoulders back to Cheapside, in emulation of the journeymen and all the butcher kind, who were thus bearing home the King of Shoreditch. Shouts, halloos, whistles, every jubilant noise that youth and boyhood could invent, were the triumphant music of Stephen on his surging and uneasy throne, as he was shifted from one bearer to another when each in turn grew tired of his weight. Just, however, as they were nearing their own neighbourhood, a counter cry broke out, “Witchcraft! His arrows are bewitched by the old Spanish sorcerer! Down with Dragons and Wizards!” And a handful of mud came full in the face of the enthroned lad, aimed no doubt by George Bates. There was a yell and rush of rage, but the enemy was in numbers too small to attempt resistance, and dashed off before their pursuers, only pausing at safe corners to shout Parthian darts of “Wizards!” “Magic!” “Sorcerers!” “Heretics!” There was nothing to be done but to collect again, and escort Stephen, who had wiped the mud off his face, to the Dragon court, where Dennet danced on the steps for joy, and Master Headley, not a little gratified, promised Stephen a supper for a dozen of his particular friends at Armourers’ Hall on the ensuing Easter Sunday. Of course Stephen went in search of his brother, all the more eagerly because he was conscious that they had of late drifted apart a good deal. Ambrose was more and more absorbed by the studies to which Lucas Hansen led him, and took less and less interest in his brother’s pursuits. He did indeed come to the Sunday’s dinner according to the regular custom, but the moment it was permissible to leave the board he was away with Tibble Steelman to meet friends of Lucas, and pursue studies, as if, Stephen thought, he had not enough of books as it was. When Dean Colet preached or catechised in St. Paul’s in the afternoon they both attended and listened, but that good man was in failing health, and his wise discourses were less frequent. Where they were at other times, Stephen did not know, and hardly cared, except that he had a general dislike to, and jealousy of, anything that took his brother’s sympathy away from him. Moreover Ambrose’s face was thinner and paler, he had a strange absorbed look, and often even when they were together seemed hardly to attend to what his brother was saying. “I will make him come,” said Stephen to himself, as he went with swinging gait towards Warwick Inner Yard, where, sure enough, he found Ambrose sitting at the door, frowning over some black letter which looked most uninviting in the eyes of the apprentice, and he fell upon his brother with half angry, half merry reproofs for wasting the fine spring afternoon over such studies. Ambrose looked up with a dreamy smile and greeted his brother; but all the time Stephen was narrating the history of the match (and he _did_ tell the fate of each individual arrow of his own or Barlow’s) his eyes were wandering back to the crabbed page in his hand, and when Stephen impatiently wound up his history with the invitation to supper on Easter Sunday, the reply was, “Nay, brother, thanks, but that I cannot do.” “Cannot!” exclaimed Stephen. “Nay, there are other matters in hand that go deeper.” “Yea, I know whatever concerns musty books goes deeper with thee than thy brother,” replied Stephen, turning away much mortified. Ambrose’s warm nature was awakened. He held his brother by the arm and declared himself anything but indifferent to him, but he owned that he did not love noise and revelry, above all on Sunday. “Thou art addling thy brains with preachings!” said Stephen. “Pray Heaven they make not a heretic of thee. But thou mightest for once have come to mine own feast.” Ambrose, much perplexed and grieved at thus vexing his brother, declared that he would have done so with all his heart, but that this very Easter Sunday there was coming a friend of Master Hansen’s from Holland; who was to tell them much of the teaching in Germany, which was so enlightening men’s eyes. “Yea, truly, making heretics of them, Mistress Headley saith,” returned Stephen. “O Ambrose, if thou wilt run after these books and parchments, canst not do it in right fashion, among holy monks, as of old?” “Holy monks!” repeated Ambrose. “Holy monks! Where be they?” Stephen stared at him. “Hear uncle Hal talk of monks whom he sees at my Lord Cardinal’s table! What holiness is there among them? Men, that have vowed to renounce all worldly and carnal things flaunt like peacocks and revel like swine—my Lord Cardinal with his silver pillars foremost of them! He poor and mortified! ’Tis verily as our uncle saith, he plays the least false and shameful part there!” “Ambrose, Ambrose, thou wilt be distraught, poring over these matters that were never meant for lads like us! Do but come and drive them out for once with mirth and good fellowship.” “I tell thee, Stephen, what thou callest mirth and good fellowship do but drive the pain in deeper. Sin and guilt be everywhere. I seem to see the devils putting foul words on the tongue and ill deeds in the hands of myself and all around me, that they may accuse us before God. No, Stephen, I cannot, cannot come, I must go where I can hear of a better way.” “Nay,” said Stephen, “what better way can there be than to be shriven—clean shriven—and then houselled, as I was ere Lent, and trust to be again on next Low Sunday morn? That’s enough for a plain lad.” He crossed himself reverently, “Mine own Lord pardoneth and cometh to me.” But the two minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers that came in his way, and also all the controversial “tractates,” Latin or Dutch, that he could meet with, and attended many a secret conference between Lucas and his friends, when men, coming from Holland or Germany, communicated accounts of the lectures and sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, which already were becoming widely known. He was wretched under the continual tossings of his mind. Was the entire existing system a vast delusion, blinding the eyes and destroying the souls of those who trusted to it; and was the only safety in the one point of faith that Luther pressed on all, and ought all that he had hitherto revered to crumble down to let that alone be upheld? Whatever he had once loved and honoured at times seemed to him a lie, while at others real affection and veneration, and dread of sacrilege, made him shudder at himself and his own doubts! It was his one thought, and he passionately sought after all those secret conferences which did but feed the flame that consumed him. The elder men who were with him were not thus agitated. Lucas’s convictions had not long been fixed. He did not court observation nor do anything unnecessarily to bring persecution on himself, but he quietly and secretly acted as an agent in dispersing the Lollard books and those of Erasmus, and lived in the conviction that there would one day be a great crash, believing himself to be doing his part by undermining the structure, and working on undoubtingly. Abenali was not aggressive. In fact, though he was reckoned among Lucas’s party, because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or images, and the persecution he had suffered, he did not join in their general opinions, and held aloof from their meetings. And Tibble Steelman, as has been before said, lived two lives, and that as foreman at the Dragon court, being habitual to him, and requiring much thought and exertion, the speculations of the reformers were to him more like an intellectual relaxation than the business of life. He took them as a modern artisan would in this day read his newspaper, and attend his club meeting. Ambrose, however, had the enthusiastic practicalness of youth. On that which he fully believed, he must act, and what did he fully believe? Boy as he was—scarcely yet eighteen—the toils and sports that delighted his brother seemed to him like toys amusing infants on the verge of an abyss, and he spent his leisure either in searching in the Vulgate for something to give him absolute direction, or in going in search of preachers, for, with the stirring of men’s minds, sermons were becoming more frequent. There was much talk just now of the preaching of one Doctor Beale, to whom all the tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices were resorting, even those who were of no special religious tendencies. Ambrose went on Easter Tuesday to hear him preach at St. Mary’s Spitall. The place was crowded with artificers, and Beale began by telling them that he had “a pitiful bill,” meaning a letter, brought to him declaring how aliens and strangers were coming in to inhabit the City and suburbs, to eat the bread from poor fatherless children, and take the living from all artificers and the intercourse from merchants, whereby poverty was so much increased that each bewaileth the misery of others. Presently coming to his text, “_Cœlum cœli Domini_, _terram autem dedit filiis hominis_” (the Heaven of Heavens is the Lord’s, the earth hath He given to the children of men), the doctor inculcated that England was given to Englishmen, and that as birds would defend their nests, so ought Englishmen to defend themselves, _and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal_! The corollary a good deal resembled that of “hate thine enemy” which was foisted by “them of the old time” upon “thou shalt love thy neighbour.” And the doctor went on upon the text, “_Pugna pro patriâ_,” to demonstrate that fighting for one’s country meant rising upon and expelling all the strangers who dwelt and traded within it. Many of these foreigners were from the Hanse towns which had special commercial privileges, there were also numerous Venetians and Genoese, French and Spaniards, the last of whom were, above all, the objects of dislike. Their imports of silks, cloth of gold, stamped leather, wine and oil, and their superior skill in many handicrafts, had put English wares out of fashion; and their exports of wool, tin, and lead excited equal jealousy, which Dr. Beale, instigated as was well known by a broker named John Lincoln, was thus stirring up into fierce passion. His sermon was talked of all over London; blacker looks than ever were directed at the aliens, stones and dirt were thrown at them, and even Ambrose, as he walked along the street, was reviled as the Dutchkin’s knave. The insults became each day more daring and outrageous. George Bates and a skinner’s apprentice named Studley were caught in the act of tripping up a portly old Flanderkin and forthwith sent to Newgate, and there were other arrests, which did but inflame the smouldering rage of the mob. Some of the wealthier foreigners, taking warning by the signs of danger, left the City, for there could be no doubt that the whole of London and the suburbs were in a combustible condition of discontent, needing only a spark to set it alight. It was just about this time that a disreputable clerk—a lewd priest, as Hall calls him—a hanger-on of the house of Howard, was guilty of an insult to a citizen’s wife as she was quietly walking home through the Cheap. Her husband and brother, who were nearer at hand than he guessed, avenged the outrage with such good wills that this disgrace to the priesthood was left dead on the ground. When such things happened, and discourses like Beale’s were heard, it was not surprising that Ambrose’s faith in the clergy as guides received severe shocks.

16

MAY EVE

“The rich, the poor, the old, the young, Beyond the seas though born and bred, By prentices they suffered wrong, When armed thus, they gather’d head.” _Ill May Day_. MAY Eve had come, and little Dennet Headley was full of plans for going out early with her young playfellows to the meadow to gather May dew in the early morning, but her grandmother, who was in bed under a heavy attack of rheumatism, did not like the reports brought to her, and deferred her consent to the expedition. In the afternoon there were tidings that the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Rest had been sent for to my Lord Cardinal, who just at this time, during the building at York House, was lodging in his house close to Temple Bar. Some hours later a message came to Master Alderman Headley to meet the Lord Mayor and the rest of the Council at the Guildhall. He shook himself into his scarlet gown, and went off, puffing and blowing, and bidding Giles and Stephen take heed that they kept close, and ran into no mischief. But they agreed, and Kit Smallbones with them, that there could be no harm in going into the open space of Cheapside and playing out a match with bucklers between Giles and Wat Ball, a draper’s prentice who had challenged him. The bucklers were huge shields, and the weapons were wooden swords. It was an exciting sport, and brought out all the youths of Cheapside in the summer evening, bawling out encouragement, and laying wagers on either side. The curfew rang, but there were special privileges on May Eve, and the game went on louder than ever. There was far too much noise for any one to hear the town crier, who went along jingling his bell, and shouting, “O yes! O yes! O yes! By order of the Lord Mayor and Council, no householder shall allow any one of his household to be abroad beyond his gate between the hours of nine o’clock at night and seven in the morning,” or if any of the outermost heard it, as did Ambrose who was on his way home to his night quarters, they were too much excited not to turn a deaf ear to it. Suddenly, however, just as Giles was preparing for a master-stroke, he was seized roughly by the shoulder and bidden to give over. He looked round. It was an alderman, not his master, but Sir John Mundy, an unpopular, harsh man. “Wherefore?” demanded Giles. “Thou shalt know,” said the alderman, seizing his arm to drag him to the Counter prison, but Giles resisted. Wat Ball struck at Sir John’s arm with his wooden sword, and as the alderman shouted for the watch and city-guard, the lads on their side raised their cry, “Prentices and Clubs! Flat-caps and Clubs!” Master Headley, struggling along, met his colleague, with his gown torn into shreds from his back, among a host of wildly yelling lads, and panting, “Help, help, brother Headley!” With great difficulty the two aldermen reached the door of the Dragon, whence Smallbones sallied out to rescue them, and dragged them in. “The boys! —the boys!” was Master Headley’s first cry, but he might as well have tried to detach two particular waves from a surging ocean as his own especial boys from the multitude on that wild evening. There was no moon, and the twilight still prevailed, but it was dark enough to make the confusion greater, as the cries swelled and numbers flowed into the open space of Cheapside. In the words of Hall, the chronicler, “Out came serving-men, and watermen, and courtiers, and by XI of the chock there were VI or VII hundreds in Cheap. And out of Pawle’s Churchyard came III hundred which wist not of the others.” For the most part all was invoked in the semi-darkness of the summer night, but here and there light came from an upper window on some boyish face, perhaps full of mischief, perhaps somewhat bewildered and appalled. Here and there were torches, which cast a red glare round them, but whose smoke blurred everything, and seemed to render the darkness deeper. Perhaps if the tumult had only been of the apprentices, provoked by Alderman Mundy’s interference, they would soon have dispersed, but the throng was pervaded by men with much deeper design, and a cry arose—no one knew from whence—that they would break into Newgate and set free Studley and Bates. By this time the torrent of young manhood was quite irresistible by any force that had yet been opposed to it. The Mayor and Sheriffs stood at the Guildhall, and read the royal proclamation by the light of a wax candle, held in the trembling hand of one of the clerks; but no one heard or heeded them, and the uproar was increased as the doors of Newgate fell, and all the felons rushed out to join the rioters. At the same time another shout rose, “Down with the aliens!” and there was a general rush towards St. Martin’s gate, in which direction many lived. There was, however, a pause here, for Sir Thomas More, Recorder of London, stood in the way before St. Martin’s gate, and with his full sweet voice began calling out and entreating the lads to go home, before any heads were broken more than could be mended again. He was always a favourite, and his good humour seemed to be making some impression, when, either from the determination of the more evil disposed, or because the inhabitants of St. Martin’s Lane were beginning to pour down hot water, stones, and brickbats on the dense mass of heads below them, a fresh access of fury seized upon the mob. Yells of “Down with the strangers!” echoed through the narrow streets, drowning Sir Thomas’s voice. A lawyer who stood with him was knocked down and much hurt, the doors were battered down, and the household stuff thrown from the windows. Here, Ambrose, who had hitherto been pushed helplessly about, and knocked hither and thither, was driven up against Giles, and, to avoid falling and being trampled down, clutched hold of him breathless and panting. “Thou here!” exclaimed Giles. “Who would have thought of sober Ambrose in the midst of the fray? See here, Stevie!” “Poor old Ambrose!” cried Stephen, “keep close to us! We’ll see no harm comes to thee. ’Tis hot work, eh?” “Oh, Stephen! could I but get out of the throng to warn my master and Master Michael!” Those words seemed to strike Giles Headley. He might have cared little for the fate of the old printer, but as he heard the screams of the women in the houses around, he exclaimed, “Ay! there’s the old man and the little maid! We will have her to the Dragon!” “Or to mine aunt’s,” said Ambrose. “Have with thee then,” said Giles: “Take his other arm, Steve;” and locking their arms together the three fought and forced their way from among the plunderers in St. Martin’s with no worse mishap than a shower of hot water, which did not hurt them much through their stout woollen coats. They came at last to a place where they could breathe, and stood still a moment to recover from the struggle, and vituperate the hot water. Then they heard fresh howls and yells in front as well as behind. “They are at it everywhere,” exclaimed Stephen. “I hear them somewhere out by Cornhill.” “Ay, where the Frenchmen live that calender worsted,” returned Giles. “Come on; who knows how it is with the old man and little maid?” “There’s a sort in our court that are ready for aught,” said Ambrose. On they hurried in the darkness, which was now at the very deepest of the night; now and then a torch was borne across the street, and most of the houses had lights in the upper windows, for few Londoners slept on that strange night. The stained glass of the windows of the Churches beamed in bright colours from the Altar lights seen through them, but the lads made slower progress than they wished, for the streets were never easy to walk in the dark, and twice they came on mobs assailing houses, from the windows of one of which, French shoes and boots were being hailed down. Things were moderately quiet around St. Paul’s, but as they came into Warwick Lane they heard fresh shouts and wild cries, and at the archway heading to the inner yard they could see that there was a huge bonfire in the midst of the court—of what composed they could not see for the howling figures that exulted round it. “George Bates, the villain!” cried Stephen, as his enemy in exulting ferocious delight was revealed for a moment throwing a book on the fire, and shouting, “Hurrah! there’s for the old sorcerer, there’s for the heretics!” That instant Giles was flying on Bates, and Stephen, with equal, if not greater fury, at one of his comrades; but Ambrose dashed through the outskirts of the wildly screaming and shouting fellows, many of whom were the miscreant population of the mews, to the black yawning doorway of his master. He saw only a fellow staggering out with the screw of the press to feed the flame, and hurried on in the din to call “Master, art thou there?” There was no answer, and he moved on to the next door, calling again softly, while all the spoilers seemed absorbed in the fire and the combat. “Master Michael! ’Tis I, Ambrose!” “Here, my son,” cautiously answered a voice he knew for Lucas Hansen’s. “Oh, master! master!” was his low, heart-stricken cry, as by the leaping light of a flame he saw the pale face of the old printer, who drew him in. “Yea! ’tis ruin, my son,” said Lucas. “And would that that were the worst.” The light flashed and flickered through the broken window so that Ambrose saw that the hangings had been torn down and everything wrecked, and a low sound as of stifled weeping directed his eyes to a corner where Aldonza sat with her father’s head on her lap. “Lives he? Is he greatly hurt?” asked Ambrose, awe-stricken. “The life is yet in him, but I fear me greatly it is passing fast,” said Lucas, in a low voice. “One of those lads smote him on the back with a club, and struck him down at the poor maid’s feet, nor hath he moved since. It was that one young Headley is fighting with,” he added. “Bates! ah! Would that we had come sooner! What! more of this work—” For just then a tremendous outcry broke forth, and there was a rush and panic among those who had been leaping round the fire just before. “The guard! —the King’s men!” was the sound they presently distinguished. They could hear rough abusive voices, shrieks and trampling of feet. A few seconds more and all was still, only the fire remained, and in the stillness the suppressed sobs and moans of Aldonza were heard. “A light! Fetch a light from the fire!” said Lucas. Ambrose ran out. The flame was lessening, but he could see the dark bindings, and the blackened pages of the books he loved so well. A corner of a page of St. Augustine’s Confessions was turned towards him and lay on a singed fragment of Aldonza’s embroidered curtain, while a little red flame was licking the spiral folds of the screw, trying, as it were, to gather energy to do more than blacken it. Ambrose could have wept over it at any other moment, but now he could only catch up a brand—it was the leg of his master’s carved chair—and run back with it. Lucas ventured to light a lamp, and they could then see the old man’s face pale, but calm and still, with his long white beard flowing over his breast. There was no blood, no look of pain, only a set look about the eyes; and Aldonza cried “Oh, father, thou art better! Speak to me! Let Master Lucas lift thee up!” “Nay, my child. I cannot move hand or foot. Let me be thus till the Angel of Death come for me. He is very near.” He spoke in short sentences. “Water—nay—no pain,” he added then, and Ambrose ran for some water in the first battered fragment of a tin pot he could find. They bathed his face and he gathered strength after a time to say “A priest! —oh for a priest to shrive and housel me.” “I will find one,” said Ambrose, speeding out into the court over fragments of the beautiful work for which Abenali was hated, and over the torn, half-burnt leaves of the beloved store of Lucas. The fire had died down, but morning twilight was beginning to dawn, and all was perfectly still after the recent tumult, though for a moment or two Ambrose heard some distant cries. Where should he go? Priests indeed were plentiful, but both his friends were in bad odour with the ordinary ones. Lucas had avoided both the Lenten shrift and Easter Communion, and what Miguel might have done, Ambrose was uncertain. Some young priests had actually been among the foremost in sacking the dwellings of the unfortunate foreigners, and Ambrose was quite uncertain whether he might not fall on one of that stamp—or on one who might vex the old man’s soul—perhaps deny him the Sacraments altogether. As he saw the pale lighted windows of St. Paul’s, it struck him to see whether any one were within. The light might be only from some of the tapers burning perpetually, but the pale light in the north-east, the morning chill, and the clock striking three, reminded him that it must be the hour of Prime, and he said to himself, “Sure, if a priest be worshipping at this hour, he will be a good and merciful man. I can but try.” The door of the transept yielded to his hand. He came forward, lighted through the darkness by the gleam of the candles, which cast a huge and awful shadow from the crucifix of the rood-screen upon the pavement. Before it knelt a black figure in prayer. Ambrose advanced in some awe and doubt how to break in on these devotions, but the priest had heard his step, rose and said, “What is it, my son? Dost thou seek sanctuary after these sad doings?” “Nay, reverend sir,” said Ambrose. “’Tis a priest for a dying man I seek;” and in reply to the instant question, where it was, he explained in haste who the sufferer was, and how he had received a fatal blow, and was begging for the Sacraments. “And oh, sir!” he added, “he is a holy and God-fearing man, if ever one lived, and hath been cruelly and foully entreated by jealous and wicked folk, who hated him for his skill and industry.” “Alack for the unhappy lads; and alack for those who egged them on,” said the priest. “Truly they knew not what they did. I will come with thee, my good youth. Thou hast not been one of them?” “No, truly sir, save that I was carried along and could not break from the throng. I work for Lucas Hansen, the Dutch printer, whom they have likewise plundered in their savage rage.” “’Tis well. Thou canst then bear this,” said the priest, taking a thick wax candle. Then reverently advancing to the Altar, whence he took the pyx, or gold case in which the Host was reserved, he lighted the candle, which he gave, together with his stole, to the youth to bear before him. Then, when the light fell full on his features, Ambrose with a strange thrill of joy and trust perceived that it was no other than Dean Colet, who had here been praying against the fury of the people. He was very thankful, feeling intuitively that there was no fear but that Abenali would be understood, and for his own part, the very contact with the man whom he revered seemed to calm and soothe him, though on that solemn errand no word could be spoken. Ambrose went on slowly before, his dark head uncovered, the priestly stole hanging over his arm, his hands holding aloft the tall candle of virgin wax, while the Dean followed closely with feeble steps, looking frail and worn, but with a grave, sweet solemnity on his face. It was a perfectly still morning, and as they slowly paced along, the flame burnt steadily with little flickering, while the pure, delicately-coloured sky overhead was becoming every moment lighter, and only the larger stars were visible. The houses were absolutely still, and the only person they met, a lad creeping homewards after the fray, fell on his knees bareheaded as he perceived their errand. Once or twice again sounds came up from the city beneath, like shrieks or wailing breaking strangely on that fair peaceful May morn; but still that pair went on till Ambrose had guided the Dean to the yard, where, except that the daylight was revealing more and more of the wreck around, all was as he had left it. Aldonza, poor child, with her black hair hanging loose like a veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, nobler and more venerable than ever. On it lay, in the absolute immobility produced by the paralysing blow, the fine features already in the solemn grandeur of death, and only the movement of the lips under the white flowing beard and of the dark eyes showing life. Dean Colet said afterwards that he felt as if he had been called to the death-bed of Israel, or of Barzillai the Gileadite, especially when the old man, in the Oriental phraseology he had never entirely lost, said, “I thank Thee, my God, and the God of my fathers, that Thou hast granted me that which I had prayed for.” The Dutch printer was already slightly known to the Dean, having sold him many books. A few words were exchanged with him, but it was plain that the dying man could not be moved, and that his confession must he made on the lap of the young girl. Colet knelt over him so as to be able to hear, while Lucas and Ambrose withdraw, but were soon called back for the remainder of the service for the dying. The old man’s face showed perfect peace. All worldly thought and care seemed to have been crushed out of him by the blow, and he did not even appear to think of the unprotected state of his daughter, although he blessed her with solemn fervour immediately after receiving the Viaticum—then lay murmuring to himself sentences which Ambrose, who had learnt much from him, knew to be from his Arabic breviary about palm-branches, and the twelve manner of fruits of the Tree of Life. It was a strange scene—the grand, calm, patriarchal old man, so peaceful on his dark-haired daughter’s lap in the midst of the shattered home in the old feudal stable. All were silent a while in awe, but the Dean was the first to move and speak, calling Lucas forward to ask sundry questions of him. “Is there no good woman,” he asked, “who could be with this poor child and take her home, when her father shall have passed away?” “Mine uncle’s wife, sir,” said Ambrose, a little doubtfully. “I trow she would come—since I can certify her that your reverence holds him for a holy man.” “I had thy word for it,” said the Dean. “Ah! reply not, my son, I see well how it may be with you here. But tell those who will take the word of John Colet that never did I mark the passing away of one who had borne more for the true holy Catholic faith, nor held it more to his soul’s comfort.” For the Dean, a man of vivid intelligence, knew enough of the Moresco persecutions to be able to gather from the words of Lucas and Ambrose, and the confession of the old man himself, a far more correct estimate of Abenali’s sufferings, and constancy to the truth, than any of the more homebred wits could have divined. He knew, too, that his own orthodoxy was so called in question by the narrower and more unspiritual section of the clergy that only the appreciative friendship of the King and the Cardinal kept him securely in his position. Ambrose sped away, knowing that Perronel would be quite satisfied. He was sure of her ready compassion and good-will, but she had so often bewailed his running after learning and possibly heretical doctrine, that he had doubted whether she would readily respond to a summons, on his own authority alone, to one looked on with so much suspicion as Master Michael. Colet intimated his intention of remaining a little longer to pray with the dying man, and further wrote a few words on his tablets, telling Ambrose to leave them with one of the porters at his house as he went past St. Paul’s. It was broad daylight now, a lovely May morning, such as generally called forth the maidens, small and great, to the meadows to rub their fresh cheeks with the silvery dew, and to bring home kingcups, cuckoo flowers, blue bottles, and cowslips for the Maypoles that were to be decked. But all was silent now, not a house was open, the rising sun made the eastern windows of the churches a blaze of light, and from the west door of St. Paul’s the city beneath seemed sleeping, only a wreath or two of smoke rising. Ambrose found the porter looking out for his master in much perturbation. He groaned as he looked at the tablets, and heard where the Dean was, and said that came of being a saint on earth. It would be the death of him ere long! What would old Mistress Colet, his mother, say? He would have detained the youth with his inquiries, but Ambrose said he had to speed down to the Temple on an errand from the Dean, and hurried away. All Ludgate Hill was now quiet, every house closed, but here and there lay torn shreds of garments, or household vessels. As he reached Fleet Street, however, there was a sound of horses’ feet, and a body of men-at-arms with helmets glancing in the sun were seen. There was a cry, “There’s one! That’s one of the lewd younglings! At him!” And Ambrose to his horror and surprise saw two horsemen begin to gallop towards him, as if to ride him down. Happily he was close to a narrow archway leading to an alley down which no war-horse could possibly make its way, and dashing into it and round a corner, he eluded his pursuers, and reached the bank of the river, whence, being by this time experienced in the by-ways of London, he could easily reach Perronel’s house. She was standing at her door looking out anxiously, and as she saw him she threw up her hands in thanksgiving to our Lady that here he was at last, and then turned to scold him. “O lad, lad, what a night thou hast given me! I trusted at least that thou hadst wit to keep out of a fray and to let the poor aliens alone, thou that art always running after yonder old Spaniard. Hey! what now? Did they fall on him! Fie! Shame on them! —a harmless old man like that.” “Yea, good aunt, and what is more, they have slain him, I fear me, outright.” Amidst many a “good lack” and exclamation of pity and indignation from Perronel, Ambrose told his tale of that strange night, and entreated her to come with him to do what was possible for Abenali and his daughter. She hesitated a little; her kind heart was touched, but she hardly liked to leave her house, in case her husband should come in, as he generally contrived to do in the early morning, now that the Cardinal’s household was lodged so near her. Sheltered as she was by the buildings of the Temple, she had heard little or nothing of the noise of the riot, though she had been alarmed at her nephew’s absence, and an officious neighbour had run in to tell her first that the prentice lads were up and sacking the houses of the strangers, and next that the Tower was firing on them, and the Lord Mayor’s guard and the gentlemen of the Inns of Court were up in arms to put them down. She said several times, “Poor soul!” and “Yea, it were a shame to leave her to the old Dutchkin,” but with true Flemish deliberation she continued her household arrangements, and insisted that the bowl of broth, which she set on the table, should be partaken of by herself and Ambrose before she would stir a step. “Not eat! Now out on thee, lad! what good dost thou think thou or I can do if we come in faint and famished, where there’s neither bite nor sup to be had? As for me, not a foot will I budge, till I have seen thee empty that bowl. So to it, my lad! Thou hast been afoot all night, and lookst so grimed and ill-favoured a varlet that no man would think thou camest from an honest wife’s house. Wash thee at the pail! Get thee into thy chamber and put on clean garments, or I’ll not walk the street with thee! ’Tis not safe—thou wilt be put in ward for one of the rioters.” Everybody who entered that little house obeyed Mistress Randall, and Ambrose submitted, knowing it vain to resist, and remembering the pursuit he had recently escaped; yet the very refreshment of food and cleanliness revealed to him how stiff and weary were his limbs, though he was in no mood for rest. His uncle appeared at the door just as he had hoped Perronel was ready. “Ah! there’s one of you whole and safe!” he exclaimed. “Where is the other?” “Stephen?” exclaimed Ambrose. “I saw him last in Warwick Inner Yard.” And in a few words he explained. Hal Randall shook his head. “May all be well,” he exclaimed, and then he told how Sir Thomas Parr had come at midnight and roused the Cardinal’s household with tidings that all the rabble of London were up, plundering and murdering all who came in their way, and that he had then ridden on to Richmond to the King with the news. The Cardinal had put his house into a state of defence, not knowing against whom the riot might be directed—and the jester had not been awakened till too late to get out to send after his wife, besides which, by that time, intelligence had come in that the attack was directed entirely on the French and Spanish merchants and artificers in distant parts of the city and suburbs, and was only conducted by lads with no better weapons than sticks, so that the Temple and its precincts were in no danger at all. The mob had dispersed of its own accord by about three or four o’clock, but by that hour the Mayor had got together a force, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court and the Yeomen of the Tower were up in arms, and the Earl of Shrewsbury had come in with a troop of horse. They had met the rioters, and had driven them in herds like sheep to the different prisons, after which Lord Shrewsbury had come to report to the Cardinal that all was quiet, and the jester having gathered as much intelligence as he could, had contrived to slip into the garments that concealed his motley, and to reach home. He gave ready consent to Perronel’s going to the aid of the sufferers in Warwick Inner Yard, especially at the summons of the Dean of St. Paul’s, and even to her bringing home the little wench. Indeed, he would escort her thither himself for he was very anxious about Stephen, and Ambrose was so dismayed by the account he gave as to reproach himself extremely for having parted company with his brother, and never having so much as thought of him as in peril, while absorbed in care for Abenali. So the three set out together, when no doubt the sober, solid appearance which Randall’s double suit of apparel and black gown gave him, together with his wife’s matronly and respectable look, were no small protection to Ambrose, for men-at-arms were prowling about the streets, looking hungry to pick up straggling victims, and one actually stopped Randall to interrogate him as to who the youth was, and what was his errand. Before St. Paul’s they parted, the husband and wife going towards Warwick Inner Yard, whither Ambrose, fleeter of foot, would follow, so soon as he had ascertained at the Dragon court whether Stephen was at home. Alas! at the gate he was hailed with the inquiry whether he had seen his brother or Giles. The whole yard was disorganised, no work going on. The lads had not been seen all night, and the master himself had in the midst of his displeasure and anxiety been summoned to the Guildhall. The last that was known was Giles’s rescue, and the assault on Alderman Mundy. Smallbones and Steelman had both gone in different directions to search for the two apprentices, and Dennet, who had flown down unheeded and unchecked at the first hope of news, pulled Ambrose by the sleeve, and exclaimed, “Oh! Ambrose, Ambrose! they can never hurt them! They can never do any harm to our lads, can they?” Ambrose hoped for the same security, but in his dismay, could only hurry after his uncle and aunt. He found the former at the door of the old stable—whence issued wild screams and cries. Several priests and attendants were there now, and the kind Dean with Lucas was trying to induce Aldonza to relax the grasp with which she embraced the body, whence a few moments before the brave and constant spirit had departed. Her black hair hanging over like a veil, she held the inanimate head to her bosom, sobbing and shrieking with the violence of her Eastern nature. The priest who had been sent for to take care of the corpse, and bear it to the mortuary of the Minster, wanted to move her by force; but the Dean insisted on one more gentle experiment, and beckoned to the kindly woman, whom he saw advancing with eyes full of tears. Perronel knelt down by her, persevered when the poor girl stretched out her hand to beat her off, crying, “Off! go! Leave me my father! O father, father, joy of my life! my one only hope and stay, leave me not! Wake! wake, speak to thy child, O my father!” Though the child had never seen or heard of Eastern wailings over the dead, yet hereditary nature prompted her to the lamentations that scandalised the priests and even Lucas, who broke in with “Fie, maid, thou mournest as one who hath no hope.” But Dr. Colet still signed to them to have patience, and Perronel somehow contrived to draw the girl’s head on her breast and give her a motherly kiss, such as the poor child had never felt since she, when almost a babe, had been lifted from her dying mother’s side in the dark stifling hold of the vessel in the Bay of Biscay. And in sheer surprise and sense of being soothed she ceased her cries, listened to the tender whispers and persuasions about holy men who would care for her father, and his wishes that she should be a good maid—till at last she yielded, let her hands be loosed, allowed Perronel to lift the venerable head from her knee, and close the eyes—then to gather her in her arms, and lead her to the door, taking her, under Ambrose’s guidance, into Lucas’s abode, which was as utterly and mournfully dismantled as their own, but where Perronel, accustomed in her wandering days to all sorts of contrivances, managed to bind up the streaming hair, and, by the help of her own cloak, to bring the poor girl into a state in which she could be led through the streets. The Dean meantime had bidden Lucas to take shelter at his own house, and the old Dutchman had given a sort of doubtful acceptance. Ambrose, meanwhile, half distracted about his brother, craved counsel of the jester where to seek him.

17

ILL MAY DAY

“With two and two together tied, Through Temple Bar and Strand they go, To Westminster, there to be tried, With ropes about their necks also.” _Ill May Day_. AND where was Stephen? Crouching, wretched with hunger, cold, weariness, blows, and what was far worse, sense of humiliation and disgrace, and terror for the future, in a corner of the yard of Newgate—whither the whole set of lads, surprised in Warwick Inner Court by the law students of the Inns of Court, had been driven like so many cattle, at the sword’s point, with no attention or perception that he and Giles had been struggling _against_ the spoilers. Yet this fact made them all the more forlorn. The others, some forty in number, their companions in misfortune, included most of the Barbican prentices, who were of the Eagle faction, special enemies alike to Abenali and to the Dragon, and these held aloof from Headley and Birkenholt, nay, reviled them for the attack which they declared had caused the general capture. The two lads of the Dragon had, in no measured terms, denounced the cruelty to the poor old inoffensive man, and were denounced in their turn as friends of the sorcerer. But all were too much exhausted by the night’s work to have spirit for more than a snarling encounter of words, and the only effect was that Giles and Stephen were left isolated in their misery outside the shelter of the handsome arched gateway under which the others congregated. Newgate had been rebuilt by Whittington out of pity to poor prisoners and captives. It must have been unspeakably dreadful before, for the foulness of the narrow paved court, shut in by strong walls, was something terrible. Tired, spent, and aching all over, and with boyish callousness to dirt, still Giles and Stephen hesitated to sit down, and when at last they could stand no longer, they rested, leaning against one another. Stephen tried to keep up hope by declaring that his master would soon get them released, and Giles alternated between despair, and declarations that he would have justice on those who so treated his father’s son. They dropped asleep—first one and then the other—from sheer exhaustion, waking from time to time to realise that it was no dream, and to feel all the colder and more camped. By and by there were voices at the gate. Friends were there asking after their own Will, or John, or Thomas, as the case might be. The jailer opened a little wicket-window in the heavy door, and, no doubt for a consideration, passed in food to certain lads whom he called out, but it did not always reach its destination. It was often torn away as by hungry wolves. For though the felons had been let out, when the doors were opened; the new prisoners were not by any means all apprentices. There were watermen, husbandmen, beggars, thieves, among them, attracted by the scent of plunder; and even some of the elder lads had no scruple in snatching the morsel from the younger ones. Poor little Jasper Hope, a mischievous little curly-headed idle fellow, only thirteen, just apprenticed to his brother the draper, and rushing about with the other youths in the pride of his flat cap, was one of the sufferers. A servant had been at the door, promising that his brother would speedily have him released, and handing in bread and meat, of which he was instantly robbed by George Bates and three or four more big fellows, and sent away reeling and sobbing, under a heavy blow, with all the mischief and play knocked out of him. Stephen and Giles called “Shame!” but were unheeded, and they could only draw the little fellow up to them, and assure him that his brother would soon come for him. The next call at the gate was Headley and Birkenholt—“Master Headley’s prentices—Be they here?” And at their answer, not only the window, but the door in the gate was opened, and stooping low to enter, Kit Smallbones came in, and not empty-handed. “Ay, ay, youngsters,” said he, “I knew how it would be, by what I saw elsewhere, so I came with a fee to open locks. How came ye to get into such plight as this? And poor little Hope too! A fine pass when they put babes in jail.” “I’m prenticed!” said Jasper, though in a very weak little voice. “Have you had bite or sup?” asked Kit. And on their reply, telling how those who had had supplies from home had been treated, Smallbones observed, “Let them try it,” and stood, at all his breadth, guarding the two youths and little Jasper, as they ate, Stephen at first with difficulty, in the faintness and foulness of the place, but then ravenously. Smallbones lectured them on their folly all the time, and made them give an account of the night. He said their master was at the Guildhall taking counsel with the Lord Mayor, and there were reports that it would go hard with the rioters, for murder and plunder had been done in many places, and he especially looked at Giles with pity, and asked how he came to embroil himself with Master Mundy? Still his good-natured face cheered them, and he promised further supplies. He also relieved Stephen’s mind about his brother, telling of his inquiry at the Dragon in the morning. All that day the condition of such of the prisoners as had well-to-do friends was improving. Fathers, brothers, masters, and servants, came in quest of them, bringing food and bedding, and by exorbitant fees to the jailers obtained for them shelter in the gloomy cells. Mothers could not come, for a proclamation had gone out that none were to babble, and men were to keep their wives at home. And though there were more material comforts, prospects were very gloomy. Ambrose came when Kit Smallbones returned with what Mrs. Headley had sent the captives. He looked sad and dazed, and clung to his brother, but said very little, except that they ought to be locked up together, and he really would have been left in Newgate, if Kit had not laid a great hand on his shoulder and almost forced him away. Master Headley himself arrived with Master Hope in the afternoon. Jasper sprang to his brother, crying, “Simon! Simon! you are come to take me out of this dismal, evil place?” But Master Hope—a tall, handsome, grave young man, who had often been much disturbed by his little brother’s pranks—could only shake his head with tears in his eyes, and, sitting down on the roll of bedding, take him on his knee and try to console him with the hope of liberty in a few days. He had tried to obtain the boy’s release on the plea of his extreme youth, but the authorities were hotly exasperated, and would hear of no mercy. The whole of the rioters were to be tried three days hence, and there was no doubt that some would be made an example of, the only question was, how many? Master Headley closely interrogated his own two lads, and was evidently sorely anxious about his namesake, who, he feared, might be recognised by Alderman Mundy and brought forward as a ringleader of the disturbance; nor did he feel at all secure that the plea that he had no enmity to the foreigners, but had actually tried to defend Lucas and Abenali, would be attended to for a moment, though Lucas Hansen had promised to bear witness of it. Giles looked perfectly stunned at the time, unable to take in the idea, but at night Stephen was wakened on the pallet that they shared with little Jasper, by hearing him weeping and sobbing for his mother at Salisbury. Time lagged on till the 4th of May. Some of the poor boys whiled away their time with dreary games in the yard, sometimes wrestling, but more often gambling with the dice, that one or two happened to possess, for the dinners that were provided for the wealthier, sometimes even betting on what the sentences would be, and who would be hanged, or who escape. Poor lads, they did not, for the most part, realise their real danger, but Stephen was more and more beset with home-sick longing for the glades and thickets of his native forest, and would keep little Jasper and even Giles for an hour together telling of the woodland adventures of those happy times, shutting his eyes to the grim stone walls, and trying to think himself among the beeches, hollies, cherries, and hawthorns, shining in the May sun! Giles and he were chose friends now, and with little Jasper, said their Paters and Aves together, that they might be delivered from their trouble. At last, on the 4th, the whole of the prisoners were summoned roughly into the court, where harsh-hooking men-at-arms proceeded to bind them together in pairs to be marched through the streets to the Guildhall. Giles and Stephen would naturally have been put together, but poor little Jasper cried out so lamentably, when he was about to be bound to a stranger, that Stephen stepped forward in his stead, begging that the boy might go with Giles. The soldier made a contemptuous sound, but consented, and Stephen found that his companion in misfortune, whose left elbow was tied to his right was George Bates. The two lads looked at each other in a strange, rueful manner, and Stephen said, “Shake hands, comrade. If we are to die, let us bear no ill-will.” George gave a cold, limp, trembling hand. He looked wretched, subdued, tearful, and nearly starved, for he had no kinsfolk at hand, and his master was too angry with him, and too much afraid of compromising himself, to have sent him any supplies. Stephen tried to unbutton his own pouch, but not succeeding with his left hand, bade George try with his right. “There’s a cake of bread there,” he said. “Eat that, and thou’lt be able better to stand up like a man, come what will.” George devoured it eagerly. “Ah!” he said, in a stronger voice, “Stephen Birkenholt, thou art an honest fellow. I did thee wrong. If ever we get out of this plight!” Here they were ordered to march, and in a long and doleful procession they set forth. The streets were lined with men-at-arms, for all the affections and sympathies of the people were with the unfortunate boys, and a rescue was apprehended. In point of fact, the Lord Mayor and aldermen were afraid of the King’s supposing them to have organised the assault on their rivals, and each was therefore desirous to show severity to any one’s apprentices save his own; while the nobility were afraid of contumacy on the part of the citizens, and were resolved to crush down every rioter among them, so that they had filled the city with their armed retainers. Fathers and mothers, masters and dames, sisters and fellow prentices, found their doors closely guarded, and could only look with tearful, anxious eyes, at the processions of poor youths, many of them mere children, who were driven from each of the jails to the Guildhall. There when all collected the entire number amounted to two hundred and seventy-eight, though a certain proportion of these were grown men, priests, wherrymen and beggars, who had joined the rabble in search of plunder. It did not look well for them that the Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, were joined in the commission with the Lord Mayor. The upper end of the great hall was filled with aldermen in their robes and chains, with the sheriffs of London and the whole imposing array, and the Lord Mayor with the Duke sat enthroned above them in truly awful dignity. The Duke was a hard and pitiless man, and bore the City a bitter grudge for the death of his retainer, the priest killed in Cheapside, and in spite of all his poetical fame, it may be feared that the Earl of Surrey was not of much more merciful mood, while their men-at-arms spoke savagely of hanging, slaughtering, or setting the City on fire. The arraignment was very long, as there were so large a number of names to be read, and, to the horror of all, it was not for a mere riot, but for high treason. The King, it was declared, being in amity with all Christian princes, it was high treason to break the truce and league by attacking their subjects resident in England. The terrible punishment of the traitor would thus be the doom of all concerned, and in the temper of the Howards and their retainers, there was little hope of mercy, nor, in times like those, was there even much prospect that, out of such large numbers, some might escape. A few were more especially cited, fourteen in number, among them George Bates, Walter Ball, and Giles Headley, who had certainly given cause for the beginning of the affray. There was no attempt to defend George Bates, who seemed to be stunned and bewildered beyond the power of speaking or even of understanding, but as Giles cast his eyes round in wild, terrified appeal, Master Headley rose up in his alderman’s gown, and prayed leave to be heard in his defence, as he had witnesses to bring in his favour. “Is he thy son, good Armourer Headley?” demanded the Duke of Norfolk, who held the work of the Dragon court in high esteem. “Nay, my Lord Duke, but he is in the place of one, my near kinsman and godson, and so soon as his time be up, bound to wed my only child! I pray you to hear his cause, ere cutting off the heir of an old and honourable house.” Norfolk and his sons murmured something about the Headley skill in armour, and the Lord Mayor was willing enough for mercy, but Sir John Mundy here rose: “My Lord Duke, this is the very young man who was first to lay hands on me! Yea, my lords and sirs, ye have already heard how their rude sport, contrary to proclamation, was the cause of the tumult. When I would have bidden them go home, the one brawler asks me insolently, ‘Wherefore?’ the other smote me with his sword, whereupon the whole rascaille set on me, and as Master Alderman Headley can testify, I scarce reached his house alive. I ask should favour overcome justice, and a ringleader, who hath assaulted the person of an alderman, find favour above others?” “I ask not for favour,” returned Headley, “only that witnesses be heard on his behalf, ere he be condemned.” Headley, as a favourite with the Duke, prevailed to have permission to call his witnesses; Christopher Smallbones, who had actually rescued Alderman Mundy from the mob, and helped him into the Dragon court, could testify that the proclamation had been entirely unheard in the din of the youths looking on at the game. And this was followed up by Lucas Hansen declaring that so far from having attacked or plundered him and the others in Warwick Inner Yard, the two, Giles Headley and Stephen Birkenholt, had come to their defence, and fallen on those who were burning their goods. On this a discussion followed between the authorities seated at the upper end of the hall. The poor anxious watchers below could only guess by the gestures what was being agitated as to their fate, and Stephen was feeling it sorely hard that Giles should be pleaded for as the master’s kinsman, and he left to so cruel a fate, no one saying a word for him but unheeded Lucas. Finally, without giving of judgment, the whole of the miserable prisoners, who had been standing without food for hours, were marched back, still tied, to their several prisons, while their guards pointed out the gibbets where they were to suffer the next day. Master Headley was not quite so regardless of his younger apprentice as Stephen imagined. There was a sort of little council held in his hall when he returned—sad, dispirited, almost hopeless—to find Hal Randall anxiously awaiting him. The alderman said he durst not plead for Stephen, lest he should lose both by asking too much, and his young kinsman had the first right, besides being in the most peril as having been singled out by name; whereas Stephen might escape with the multitude if there were any mercy. He added that the Duke of Norfolk was certainly inclined to save one who knew the secret of Spanish sword-blades; but that he was fiercely resolved to be revenged for the murder of his lewd priest in Cheapside, and that Sir John Mundy was equally determined that Giles should not escape. “What am I to say to his mother? Have I brought him from her for this?” mourned Master Headley. “Ay, and Master Randall, I grieve as much for thy nephew, who to my mind hath done nought amiss. A brave lad! A good lad, who hath saved mine own life. Would that I could do aught for him! It is a shame!” “Father,” said Dennet, who had crept to the back of his chair, “the King would save him! Mind you the golden whistle that the grandame keepeth?” “The maid hath hit it!” exclaimed Randall. “Master alderman! Let me but have the little wench and the whistle to-morrow morn, and it is done. How sayest thou, pretty mistress? Wilt thou go with me and ask thy cousin’s life, and poor Stephen’s, of the King?” “With all my heart, sir,” said Dennet, coming to him with outstretched hands. “Oh! sir, canst thou save them? I have been vowing all I could think of to our Lady and the saints, and now they are going to grant it!” “Tarry a little,” said the alderman. “I must know more of this. Where wouldst thou take my child? How obtain access to the King’s Grace?” “Worshipful sir, trust me,” said Randall. “Thou know’st I am sworn servant to my Lord Cardinal, and that his folk are as free of the Court as the King’s own servants. If thine own folk will take us up the river to Richmond, and there wait for us while I lead the maid to the King, I can well-nigh swear to thee that she will prevail.” The alderman looked greatly distressed. Ambrose threw himself on his knees before him, and in an agony entreated him to consent, assuring him that Master Randall could do what he promised. The alderman was much perplexed. He knew that his mother, who was confined to her bed by rheumatism, would be shocked at the idea. He longed to accompany his daughter himself, but for him to be absent from the sitting of the court might be fatal to Giles, and he could not bear to lose any chance for the poor youths. Meantime an interrogative glance and a nod had passed between Tibble and Randall, and when the alderman looked towards the former, always his prime minister, the answer was, “Sir, meseemeth that it were well to do as Master Randall counselleth. I will go with Mistress Dennet, if such be your will. The lives of two such youths as our prentices may not lightly be thrown away, while by God’s providence there is any means of striving to save them.” Consent then was given, and it was further arranged that Dennet and her escort should be ready at the early hour of half-past four, so as to elude the guards who were placed in the streets; and also because King Henry in the summer went very early to mass, and then to some out-of-door sport. Randall said he would have taken his own good woman to have the care of the little mistress, but that the poor little orphan Spanish wench had wept herself so sick, that she could not be left to a stranger. Master Headley himself brought the child by back streets to the river, and thence down to the Temple stairs, accompanied by Tibble Steelman, and a maid-servant on whose presence her grandmother had insisted. Dennet had hardly slept all night for excitement and perturbation, and she looked very white, small, and insignificant for her thirteen years, when Randall and Ambrose met her, and placed her carefully in the barge which was to take them to Richmond. It was somewhat fresh in the very early morning, and no one was surprised that Master Randall wore a large dark cloak as they rowed up the river. There was very little speech between the passengers; Dennet sat between Ambrose and Tibble. They kept their heads bowed. Ambrose’s brow was on one hand, his elbow on his knee, but he spared the other to hold Dennet. He had been longing for the old assurance he would once have had, that to vow himself to a life of hard service in a convent would be the way to win his brother’s life; but he had ceased to be able to feel that such bargains were the right course, or that a convent necessarily afforded sure way of service, and he never felt mere insecure of the way and means to prayer than in this hour of anguished supplication. When they came beyond the City, within sight of the trees of Sheen, as Richmond was still often called, Randall insisted that Dennet should eat some of the bread and meat that Tibble had brought in a wallet for her. “She must look her best,” he said aside to the foreman. “I would that she were either more of a babe or better favoured! Our Hal hath a tender heart for a babe and an eye for a buxom lass.” He bade the maid trim up the child’s cap and make the best of her array, and presently reached some stairs leading up to the park. There he let Ambrose lift her out of the boat. The maid would fain have followed, but he prevented this, and when she spoke of her mistress having bidden her follow wherever the child went, Tibble interfered, telling her that his master’s orders were that Master Randall should do with her as he thought meet. Tibble himself followed until they reached a thicket entirely concealing them from the river. Halting here, Randall, with his nephew’s help, divested himself of his long gown and cloak, his beard and wig, produced cockscomb and bauble from his pouch, and stood before the astonished eyes of Dennet as the jester! She recoiled upon Tibble with a little cry, “Oh, why should he make sport of us? Why disguise himself?” “Listen, pretty mistress,” said Randall. “’Tis no disguise, Tibble there can tell you, or my nephew. My disguise lies there,” pointing to his sober raiment. “Thus only can I bring thee to the King’s presence! Didst think it was jest? Nay, verily, I am as bound to try to save my sweet Stevie’s life, my sister’s own gallant son, as thou canst be to plead for thy betrothed.” Dennet winced. “Ay, Mistress Dennet,” said Tibble, “thou mayst trust him, spite of his garb, and ’tis the sole hope. He could only thus bring thee in. Go thou on, and the lad and I will fall to our prayers.” Dennet’s bosom heaved, but she looked up in the jesters dark eyes, saw the tears in them, made an effort, put her hand in his, and said, “I will go with him.” Hal led her away, and they saw Tibble and Ambrose both fall on their knees behind the hawthorn bush, to speed them with their prayers, while all the joyous birds singing their carols around seemed to protest against the cruel captivity and dreadful doom of the young gladsome spirits pent up in the City prisons. One full gush of a thrush’s song in especial made Dennet’s eyes overflow, which the jester perceived and said, “Nay, sweet maid, no tears. Kings brook not to be approached with blubbered faces. I marvel not that it seems hard to thee to go along with such as I, but let me be what I will outside, mine heart is heavy enough, and thou wilt learn sooner or later, that fools are not the only folk who needs must smile when they have a load within.” And then, as much to distract her thoughts and prevent tears as to reassure her, he told her what he had before told his nephews of the inducements that had made him Wolsey’s jester, and impressed on her the forms of address. “Thou’lt hear me make free with him, but that’s part of mine office, like the kitten I’ve seen tickling the mane of the lion in the Tower. Thou must say, ‘An it please your Grace,’ and thou needst not speak of his rolling in the mire, thou wottest, or it may anger him.” The girl showed that her confidence became warmer by keeping nearer to his side, and presently she said, “I must beg for Stephen first, for ’tis his whistle.” “Blessings on thee, fair wench, for that, yet seest thou, ’tis the other springald who is in the greater peril, and he is closer to thy father and to thee.” “He fled, when Stephen made in to the rescue of my father,” said Dennet. “The saints grant we may so work with the King that he may spare them both,” ejaculated Randall. By this time the strange pair were reaching the precincts of the great dwelling-house, where about the wide-open door loitered gentlemen, grooms, lacqueys, and attendants of all kinds. Randall reconnoitred. “An we go up among all these,” he said, “they might make their sport of us both, so that we might have time. Let us see whether the little garden postern be open.” Henry VIII. had no fears of his people, and kept his dwellings more accessible than were the castles of many a subject. The door in the wall proved to be open, and with an exclamation of joy, Randall pointed out two figures, one in a white silken doublet and hose, with a short crimson cloak over his shoulder, the other in scarlet and purple robes, pacing the walk under the wall—Henry’s way of holding a cabinet council with his prime minister on a summer’s morning. “Come on, mistress, put a brave face on it!” the jester encouraged the girl, as he led her forward, while the king, catching sight of them, exclaimed, “Ha! there’s old Patch. What doth he there?” But the Cardinal, impatient of interruption, spoke imperiously, “What dost thou here, Merriman? Away, this is no time for thy fooleries and frolics.” But the King, with some pleasure in teasing, and some of the enjoyment of a schoolboy at a break in his tasks, called out, “Nay, come hither, quipsome one! What new puppet hast brought hither to play off on us?” “Yea, brother Hal,” said the jester, “I have brought one to let thee know how Tom of Norfolk and his crew are playing the fool in the Guildhall, and to ask who will be the fool to let them wreak their spite on the best blood in London, and leave a sore that will take many a day to heal.” “How is this, my Lord Cardinal?” said Henry; “I bade them make an example of a few worthless hinds, such as might teach the lusty burghers to hold their lads in bounds and prove to our neighbours that their churlishness was by no consent of ours.” “I trow,” returned the Cardinal, “that one of these same hinds is a boon companion of the fool’s—_hinc illæ lachrymæ_, and a speech that would have befitted a wise man’s mouth.” “There is work that may well make even a fool grave, friend Thomas,” replied the jester. “Nay, but what hath this little wench to say?” asked the King, looking down on the child from under his plumed cap with a face set in golden hair, the fairest and sweetest, as it seemed to her, that she had ever seen, as he smiled upon her. “Methinks she is too small to be thy love. Speak out, little one. I love little maids, I have one of mine own. Hast thou a brother among these misguided lads?” “Not so, an please your Grace,” said Dennet, who fortunately was not in the least shy, and was still too young for a maiden’s shamefastness. “He is to be my betrothed. I would say, one of them is, but the other—he saved my father’s life once.” The latter words were lost in the laughter of the King and Cardinal at the unblushing avowal of the small, prim-faced maiden. “Oh ho! So ’tis a case of true love, whereto a King’s face must needs show grace. Who art thou, fair suppliant, and who may this swain of thine be?” “I am Dennet Headley, so please your Grace; my father is Giles Headley the armourer, Alderman of Cheap Ward,” said Dennet, doing her part bravely, though puzzled by the King’s tone of banter; “and see here, your Grace!” [Picture: And see here, your Grace!] “Ha! the hawk’s whistle that Archduke Philip gave me! What of that? I gave it—ay, I gave it to a youth that came to mine aid, and reclaimed a falcon for me! Is’t he, child?” “Oh, sir, ’tis he who came in second at the butts, next to Barlow, ’tis Stephen Birkenholt! And he did nought! They bore no ill-will to strangers! No, they were falling on the wicked fellows who had robbed and slain good old Master Michael, who taught our folk to make the only real true Damascus blades welded in England. But the lawyers of the Inns of Court fell on them all alike, and have driven them off to Newgate, and poor little Jasper Hope too. And Alderman Mundy bears ill-will to Giles. And the cruel Duke of Norfolk and his men swear they’ll have vengeance on the Cheap, and there’ll be hanging and quartering this very morn. Oh! your Grace, your Grace, save our lads! for Stephen saved my father.” “Thy tongue wags fast, little one,” said the King, good-naturedly, “with thy Stephen and thy Giles. Is this same Stephen, the knight of the whistle and the bow, thy betrothed, and Giles thy brother?” “Nay, your Grace,” said Dennet, hanging her head, “Giles Headley is my betrothed—that is, when his time is served, he will be—father sets great store by him, for he is the only one of our name to keep up the armoury, and he has a mother, Sir, a mother at Salisbury. But oh, Sir, Sir! Stephen is so good and brave a had! He made in to save father from the robbers, and he draws the best bow in Cheapside, and he can grave steel as well as Tibble himself, and this is the whistle your Grace wots of.” Henry listened with an amused smile that grew broader as Dennet’s voice all unconsciously became infinitely more animated and earnest, when she began to plead Stephen’s cause. “Well, well, sweetheart,” he said, “I trow thou must have the twain of them, though,” he added to the Cardinal, who smiled broadly, “it might perchance be more for the maid’s peace than she wots of now, were we to leave this same knight of the whistle to be strung up at once, ere she have found her heart; but in sooth that I cannot do, owing well nigh a life to him and his brother. Moreover, we may not have old Headley’s skill in weapons lost!” Dennet held her hands close clasped while these words were spoken apart. She felt as if her hope, half granted, were being snatched from her, as another actor appeared on the scene, a gentleman in a lawyer’s gown, and square cap, which he doffed as he advanced and put his knee to the ground before the King, who greeted him with “Save you, good Sir Thomas, a fair morning to you.” “They told me your Grace was in Council with my Lord Cardinal,” said Sir Thomas More; “but seeing that there was likewise this merry company, I durst venture to thrust in, since my business is urgent.” Dennet here forgot court manners enough to cry out, “O your Grace! your Grace, be pleased for pity’s sake to let me have the pardon for them first, or they’ll be hanged and dead. I saw the gallows in Cheapside, and when they are dead, what good will your Grace’s mercy do them?” “I see,” said Sir Thomas. “This little maid’s errand jumps with mine own, which was to tell your Grace that unless there be speedy commands to the Howards to hold their hands, there will be wailing like that of Egypt in the City. The poor boys, who were but shouting and brawling after the nature of mettled youth—the most with nought of malice—are penned up like sheep for the slaughter—ay, and worse than sheep, for we quarter not our mutton alive, whereas these poor younglings—babes of thirteen, some of them—be indicted for high treason! Will the parents, shut in from coming to them by my Lord of Norfolk’s men, ever forget their agonies, I ask your Grace?” Henry’s face grew red with passion. “If Norfolk thinks to act the King, and turn the city into a shambles,”—with a mighty oath—“he shall abye it. Here, Lord Cardinal—more, let the free pardon be drawn up for the two lads. And we will ourselves write to the Lord Mayor and to Norfolk that though they may work their will on the movers of the riot—that pestilent Lincoln and his sort—not a prentice lad shall be touched till our pleasure be known. There now, child, thou hast won the lives of thy lads, as thou callest them. Wilt thou rue the day, I marvel? Why cannot some of their mothers pluck up spirit and beg them off as thou hast done?” “Yea,” said Wolsey. “That were the right course. If the Queen were moved to pray your Grace to pity the striplings then could the Spaniards make no plaint of too much clemency being shown.” They were all this time getting nearer the palace, and being now at a door opening into the hall, Henry turned round. “There, pretty maid, spread the tidings among thy gossips, that they have a tender-hearted Queen, and a gracious King. The Lord Cardinal will presently give thee the pardon for both thy lads, and by and by thou wilt know whether thou thankest me for it!” Then putting his hand under her chin, he turned up her face to him, kissed her on each cheek, and touched his feathered cap to the others, saying, “See that my bidding be done,” and disappeared. “It must be prompt, if it be to save any marked for death this morn,” More in a how voice observed to the Cardinal. “Lord Edmund Howard is keen as a blood-hound on his vengeance.” Wolsey was far from being a cruel man, and besides, there was a natural antagonism between him and the old nobility, and he liked and valued his fool, to whom he turned, saying, “And what stake hast thou in this, sirrah? Is’t all pure charity?” “I’m scarce such a fool as that, Cousin Red Hat,” replied Randall, rallying his powers. “I leave that to Mr. More here, whom we all know to be a good fool spoilt. But I’ll make a clean breast of it. This same Stephen is my sister’s son, an orphan lad of good birth and breeding—whom, my lord, I would die to save.” “Thou shalt have the pardon instantly, Merriman,” said the Cardinal, and beckoning to one of the attendants who clustered round the door, he gave orders that a clerk should instantly, and very briefly, make out the form. Sir Thomas More, hearing the name of Headley, added that for him indeed the need of haste was great, since he was one of the fourteen sentenced to die that morning. Quipsome Hal was interrogated as to how he had come, and the Cardinal and Sir Thomas agreed that the river would be as speedy a way of returning as by land; but they decided that a King’s pursuivant should accompany him, otherwise there would be no chance of forcing his way in time through the streets, guarded by the Howard retainers. As rapidly as was in the nature of a high officer’s clerk to produce a dozen lines, the precious document was indicted, and it was carried at last to Dennet, bearing Henry’s signature and seal. She held it to her bosom, while, accompanied by the pursuivant, who—happily for them—was interested in one of the unfortunate fourteen, and therefore did not wait to stand on his dignity, they hurried across to the place where they had left the barge—Tibble and Ambrose joining them on the way. Stephen was safe. Of his life there could be no doubt, and Ambrose almost repented of feeling his heart so light while Giles’s fate hung upon their speed. The oars were plied with hearty good-will, but the barge was somewhat heavy, and by and by coming to a landing-place where two watermen had a much smaller and lighter boat, the pursuivant advised that he should go forward with the more necessary persons, leaving the others to follow. After a few words, the light weights of Tibble and Dennet prevailed in their favour, and they shot forward in the little boat. They passed the Temple—on to the stairs nearest Cheapside—up the street. There was an awful stillness, only broken by heavy knells sounding at intervals from the churches. The back streets were thronged by a trembling, weeping people, who all eagerly made way for the pursuivant, as he called “Make way, good people—a pardon!” They saw the broader space of Cheapside. Horsemen in armour guarded it, but they too opened a passage for the pursuivant. There was to be seen above the people’s heads a scaffold. A fire burnt on it—the gallows and noosed rope hung above. A figure was mounting the ladder. A boy! Oh, Heavens! would it be too late? Who was it? They were still too far off to see. They might only be cruelly holding out hope to one of the doomed. The pursuivant shouted aloud—“In the King’s name, Hold!” He lifted Dennet on his shoulder, and bade her wave her parchment. An overpowering roar arose. “A pardon! a pardon! God save the King!” Every hand seemed to be forwarding the pursuivant and the child, and it was Giles Headley, who, loosed from the hold of the executioner, stared wildly about him, like one distraught.

18

PARDON

“What if;’ quoth she, ‘by Spanish blood Have London’s stately streets been wet, Yet will I seek this country’s good And pardon for these young men get. ’” CHURCHILL. THE night and morning had been terrible to the poor boys, who only had begun to understand what awaited them. The fourteen selected had little hope, and indeed a priest came in early morning to hear the confessions of Giles Headley and George Bates, the only two who were in Newgate. George Bates was of the stolid, heavy disposition that seems armed by outward indifference, or mayhap pride. He knew that his case was hopeless, and he would not thaw even to the priest. But Giles had been quite unmanned, and when he found that for the doleful procession to the Guildhall he was to be coupled with George Bates, instead of either of his room-fellows, he flung himself on Stephen’s neck, sobbing out messages for his mother, and entreaties that, if Stephen survived, he would be good to Aldonza. “For you will wed Dennet, and—” There the jailers roughly ordered him to hold his peace, and dragged him off to be pinioned to his fellow-sufferer. Stephen was not called till some minutes later, and had not seen him since. He himself was of course overshadowed by the awful gloom of apprehension for himself, and pity for his comrades, and he was grieved at not having seen or heard of his brother or master, but he had a very present care in Jasper, who was sickening in the prison atmosphere, and when fastened to his arm, seemed hardly able to walk. Leashed as they were, Stephen could only help him by holding the free hand, and when they came to the hall, supporting him as much as possible, as they stood in the miserable throng during the conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence of the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and seventy-eight. Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the sense of present discomfort to hear it, he seemed to stiffen all over with the shock of horror, and then hung a dead weight on Stephen’s arm. It would have dragged him down, but there was no room to fall, and the wretchedness of the lad against whom he staggered found vent in a surly imprecation, which was lost among the cries and the entreaties of some of the others. The London magistracy were some of them in tears, but the indictment for high treason removed the poor lads from their jurisdiction to that of the Earl Marshal, and thus they could do nothing to save the fourteen foremost victims. The others were again driven out of the hall to return to their prisons; the nearest pair of lads doing their best to help Stephen drag his burthen along. In the halt outside, to arrange the sad processions, one of the guards, of milder mood, cut the cord that bound the lifeless weight to Stephen, and permitted the child to be laid on the stones of the court, his collar unbuttoned, and water to be brought. Jasper was just reviving when the word came to march, but still he could not stand, and Stephen was therefore permitted the free use of his arms, in order to carry the poor little fellow. Thirteen years made a considerable load for seventeen, though Stephen’s arms were exercised in the smithy, and it was a sore pull from the Guildhall. Jasper presently recovered enough to walk with a good deal of support. When he was laid on the bed he fell unto an exhausted sleep, while Stephen kneeling, as the strokes of the knell smote on his ear, prayed—as he had never prayed before—for his comrade, for his enemy, and for all the unhappy boys who were being led to their death wherever the outrages had been committed. Once indeed there was a strange sound coming across that of the knell. It almost sounded like an acclamation of joy. Could people be so cruel, thought Stephen, as to mock poor Giles’s agonies? There were the knells still sounding. How long he did not know, for a beneficent drowsiness stole over him as he knelt, and he was only awakened, at the same time as Jasper, by the opening of his door. He looked up to see three figures—his brother, his uncle, his master. Were they come to take leave of him? But the one conviction that their faces beamed with joy was all that he could gather, for little Jasper sprang up with a scream of terror, “Stephen, Stephen, save me! They will cut out my heart,” and clung trembling to his breast, with arms round his neck. “Poor child! poor child!” sighed Master Headley. “Would that I brought him the same tidings as to thee!” “Is it so?” asked Stephen, reading confirmation as he looked from the one to the other. Though he was unable to rise under the weight of the boy, life and light were coming to his eye, while Ambrose clasped his hand tightly, chocked by the swelling of his heart in almost an agony of joy and thankfulness. “Yea, my good lad,” said the alderman. “Thy good kinsman took my little wench to bear to the King the token he gave thee.” “And Giles?” Stephen asked, “and the rest?” “Giles is safe. For the rest—may God have mercy on their souls.” These words passed while Stephen rocked Jasper backwards and forwards, his face hidden on his neck. “Come home,” added Master Headley. “My little Dennet and Giles cannot yet rejoice till thou art with them. Giles would have come himself, but he is sorely shaken, and could scarce stand.” Jasper caught the words, and loosing his friend’s neck, looked up. “Oh! are we going home? Come, Stephen. Where’s brother Simon? I want my good sister! I want nurse! Oh! take me home!” For as he tried to sit up, he fell back sick and dizzy on the bed. “Alack! alack!” mourned Master Headley; and the jester, muttering that it was not the little wench’s fault, turned to the window, and burst into tears. Stephen understood it all, and though he felt a passionate longing for freedom, he considered in one moment whether there were any one of his fellow prisoners to whom Jasper could be left, or who would be of the least comfort to him, but could find no one, and resolved to cling to him as once to old Spring. “Sir,” he said, as he rose to his master, “I fear me he is very sick. Will they—will your worship give me licence to bide with him till this ends?” “Thou art a good-hearted lad,” said the alderman with a hand on his shoulder. “There is no further danger of life to the prentice lads. The King hath sent to forbid all further dealing with them, and hath bidden my little maid to set it about that if their mothers beg them grace from good Queen Katherine, they shall have it. But this poor child! He can scarce be left. His brother will take it well of thee if thou wilt stay with him till some tendance can be had. We can see to that. Thanks be to St. George and our good King, this good City is our own again!” The alderman turned away, and Ambrose and Stephen exchanged a passionate embrace, feeling what it was to be still left to one another. The jester too shook his nephew’s hand, saying, “Boy, boy, the blessing of such as I is scarce worth the having, but I would thy mother could see thee this day.” Stephen was left with these words and his brother’s look to bear him through a trying time. For the “Captain of Newgate” was an autocrat, who looked on his captives as compulsory lodgers, out of whom he was entitled to wring as much as possible—as indeed he had no other salary, nor means of maintaining his underlings, a state of things which lasted for two hundred years longer, until the days of James Oglethorpe and John Howard. Even in the rare cases of acquittals, the prisoner could not be released till he had paid his fees, and that Giles Headley should have been borne off from the scaffold itself in debt to him was an invasion of his privileges, which did not dispose him to be favourable to any one connected with that affair; and he liked to show his power and dignity even to an alderman. He was found sitting in a comfortable tapestried chamber, handsomely dressed in orange and brown, and with a smooth sleek countenance and the appearance of a good-natured substantial citizen. He only half rose from his big carved chair, and touched without removing his cap, to greet the alderman, as he observed, without the accustomed prefix of your worship—“So, you are come about your prentice’s fees and dues. By St. Peter of the Fetters, ’tis an irksome matter to have such a troop of idle, mischievous, dainty striplings thrust on one, giving more trouble, and making more call and outcry than twice as many honest thieves and pickpurses.” “Be assured, sir, they will scarce trouble you longer than they can help,” said Master Headley. “Yea, the Duke and my Lord Edmund are making brief work of them,” quoth the jailer. “Ha!” with an oath, “what’s that? Nought will daunt those lads till the hangman is at their throats.” For it was a real hurrah that reached his ears. The jester had got all the boys round him in the court, and was bidding them keep up a good heart, for their lives were safe, and their mothers would beg them off. Their shouts did not tend to increase the captain’s good humour, and though he certainly would not have let out Alderman Headley’s remaining apprentice without his fee, he made as great a favour of permission, and charged as exorbitantly, for a pardoned man to remain within his domains as if they had been the most costly and delightful hostel in the kingdom. Master Hope, who presently arrived, had to pay a high fee for leave to bring Master Todd, the barber-surgeon, with him to see his brother; but though he offered a mark a day (a huge amount at that time) the captain was obdurate in refusing to allow the patient to be attended by his own old nurse, declaring that it was contrary to discipline, and (what probably affected him much more) one such woman could cause more trouble than a dozen felons. No doubt it was true, for she would have insisted on moderate cleanliness and comfort. No other attendant whom Mr. Hope could find would endure the disgrace, the discomfort, and alarm of a residence in Newgate for Jasper’s sake; so that the drapers gratitude to Stephen Birkenholt, for voluntarily sharing the little fellow’s captivity, was great, and he gave payment to one or two of the officials to secure the two lads being civilly treated, and that the provisions sent in reached them duly. Jasper did not in general seem very ill by day, only heavy, listless and dull, unable to eat, too giddy to sit up, and unable to help crying like a babe, if Stephen left him for a moment; but he never fell asleep without all the horror and dread of the sentence coming over him. Like all the boys in London, he had gazed at executions with the sort of curiosity that leads rustic lads to run to see pigs killed, and now the details came over him in semi-delirium, as acted out on himself, and he shrieked and struggled in an anguish which was only mitigated by Stephen’s reassurances, caresses, even scoldings. The other youths, relieved from the apprehension of death, agreed to regard their detention as a holiday, and not being squeamish, turned the yard into a playground, and there they certainly made uproar, and played pranks, enough to justify the preference of the captain for full grown criminals. But Stephen could not join them, for Jasper would not spare him for an instant, and he himself, though at first sorely missing employment and exercise, was growing drowsy and heavy limbed in his cramped life and the evil atmosphere, even the sick longings for liberty were gradually passing away from him, so that sometimes he felt as if he had lived here for ages and known no other life, though no sooner did he lie down to rest, and shut his eyes, than the trees and green glades of the New Forest rose before him, with all the hollies shining in the summer light, or the gorse making a sheet of gold. The time was not in reality so very long. On the 7th of May, John Lincoln, the broker, who had incited Canon Peale to preach against the foreigners, was led forth with several others of the real promoters of the riot to the centre of Cheapside, where Lincoln was put death, but orders were brought to respite the rest; and, at the same time, all the armed men were withdrawn, the City began to breathe, and the women who had been kept within doors to go abroad again. The Recorder of London and several aldermen were to meet the King at his manor at Greenwich. This was the mothers’ opportunity. The civic dignitaries rode in mourning robes, but the wives and mothers, sweethearts and sisters, every woman who had a youth’s life at stake, came together, took boat, and went down the river, a strange fleet of barges, all containing white caps, and black gowns and hoods, for all were clad in the most correct and humble citizen’s costume. “Never was such a sight,” said Jester Randall, who had taken care to secure a view, and who had come with his report to the Dragon court. “It might have been Ash Wednesday for the look of them, when they landed and got into order. One would think every prentice lad had got at least three mothers, and four or five aunts and sisters! I trow, verily, that half of them came to look on at the other half, and get a sight of Greenwich and the three queens. However, be that as it might, not one of them but knew how to open the sluices. Queen Katharine noted well what was coming, and she and the Queens of Scotland and France sat in the great chamber with the doors open. And immediately there’s a knock at the door, and so soon as the usher opens it, in they come, three and three, every good wife of them with her napkin to her eyes, and working away with her sobs. Then Mistress Todd, the barber-surgeon’s wife, she spoke for all, being thought to have the more courtly tongue, having been tirewoman to Queen Mary ere she went to France. Verily her husband must have penned the speech for her—for it began right scholarly, and flowery, with a likening of themselves to the mothers of Bethlehem (lusty innocents theirs, I trow!) , but ere long the good woman faltered and forgot her part, and broke out ‘Oh! madam, you that are a mother yourself, for the sake of your own sweet babe, give us back our sons.’ And therewith they all fell on their knees, weeping and wringing their hands, and crying out, ‘Mercy, mercy! For our Blessed Lady’s sake, have pity on our children!’ till the good Queen, with the tears running down her cheeks for very ruth, told them that the power was not in her hands, but the will was for them and their poor sons, and that she would strive so to plead for them with the King as to win their freedom. Meantime, there were the aldermen watching for the King in his chamber of presence, till forth he came, when all fell on their knees, and the Recorder spake for them, casting all the blame on the vain and light persons who had made that enormity. Thereupon what does our Hal but make himself as stern as though he meant to string them all up in a line. ‘Ye ought to wail and be sorry,’ said he, ‘whereas ye say that substantial persons were not concerned, it appeareth to the contrary. You did wink at the matter,’ quoth he, ‘and at this time we will grant you neither favour nor good-will.’ However, none who knew Hal’s eye but could tell that ’twas all very excellent fooling, when he bade them get to the Cardinal. Therewith, in came the three queens, hand in hand, with tears in their eyes, so as they might have been the three queens that bore away King Arthur, and down they went on their knees, and cried aloud ‘Dear sir, we who are mothers ourselves, beseech you to set the hearts at ease of all the poor mothers who are mourning for their sons.’ Whereupon, the door being opened, came in so piteous a sound of wailing and lamentation as our Harry’s name must have been Herod to withstand! ‘Stand up, Kate,’ said he, ‘stand up, sisters, and hark in your ear. Not a hair of the silly lads shall be touched, but they must bide lock and key long enough to teach them and their masters to keep better ward.’ And then when the queens came back with the good tidings, such a storm of blessings was never heard, laughings and cryings, and the like, for verily some of the women seemed as distraught for joy as ever they had been for grief and fear. Moreover, Mistress Todd being instructed of her husband, led up Mistress Hope to Queen Mary, and told her the tale of how her husband’s little brother, a mere babe, lay sick in prison—a mere babe, a suckling as it were—and was like to die there, unless the sooner delivered, and how our Steve was fool enough to tarry with the poor child, pardoned though he be. Then the good lady wept again, and ‘Good woman,’ saith she to Mistress Hope, ‘the King will set thy brother free anon. His wrath is not with babes, nor with lads like this other of whom thou speakest.’ “So off was she to the King again, and though he and his master pished and pshawed, and said if one and another were to be set free privily in this sort, there would be none to come and beg for mercy as a warming to all malapert youngsters to keep within bounds, ‘Nay, verily,’ quoth I, seeing the moment for shooting a fool’s bolt among them, ‘methinks Master Death will have been a pick-lock before you are ready for them, and then who will stand to cry mercy? ’” The narrative was broken off short by a cry of jubilee in the court. Workmen, boys, and all were thronging together, Kit Smallbones’ head towering in the midst. Vehement welcomes seemed in progress. “Stephen! Stephen!” shouted Dennet, and flew out of the hall and down the steps. “The lad himself!” exclaimed the jester, leaping down after her. “Stephen, the good boy!” said Master Headley, descending more slowly, but not less joyfully. Yes, Stephen himself it was, who had quietly walked into the court. Master Hope and Master Todd had brought the order for Jasper’s release, had paid the captain’s exorbitant fees for both, and, while the sick boy was carried home in a litter, Stephen had entered the Dragon court through the gates, as if he were coming home from an errand; though the moment he was recognised by the little four-year old Smallbones, there had been a general rush and shout of ecstatic welcome, led by Giles Headley, who fairly threw himself on Stephen’s neck, as they met like comrades after a desperate battle. Not one was there who did not claim a grasp of the boy’s hand, and who did not pour out welcomes and greetings, while in the midst, the released captive looked, to say the truth, very spiritless, faded, dusty, nay dirty. The court seemed spinning round with him, and the loud welcomes roared in his ears. He was glad that Dennet took one hand, and Giles the other, declaring that he must be led to the grandmother instantly. He muttered something about being in too foul trim to go near her, but Dennet held him fast, and he was too dizzy to make much resistance. Old Mrs. Headley was better again, though not able to do much but sit by the fire kept burning to drive away the plague which was always smouldering in London. She held out her hands to Stephen, as he knelt down by her. “Take an old woman’s blessing, my good youth,” she said. “Right glad am I to see thee once more. Thou wilt not be the worse for the pains thou hast spent on the little lad, though they have tried thee sorely.” Stephen, becoming somewhat less dazed, tried to fulfil his long cherished intention of thanking Dennet for her intercession, but the instant he tried to speak, to his dismay and indignation, tears choked his voice, and he could do nothing but weep, as if, thought he, his manhood had been left behind in the jail. “Vex not thyself,” said the old dame, as she saw him struggling with his sobs. “Thou art worn out—Giles here was not half his own man when he came out, nor is he yet. Nay, beset him not, children. He should go to his chamber, change these garments, and rest ere supper-time.” Stephen was fain to obey, only murmuring an inquiry for his brother, to which his uncle responded that if Ambrose were at home, the tidings would send him to the Dragon instantly; but he was much with his old master, who was preparing to leave England, his work here being ruined. The jester then took leave, accepting conditionally an invitation to supper. Master Headley, Smallbones, and Tibble now knew who he was, but the secret was kept from all the rest of the household, lest Stephen should be twitted with the connection. Cold water was not much affected by the citizens of London, but smiths’ and armourers’ work entailed a freer use of it than less grimy trades; and a bath and Sunday garments made Stephen more like himself, though still he felt so weary and depressed that he missed the buoyant joy of release to which he had been looking forward. He was sitting on the steps, leaning against the rail, so much tired that he hoped none of his comrades would notice that he had come out, when Ambrose hurried into the court, having just heard tidings of his freedom, and was at his side at once. The two brothers sat together, leaning against one another as if they had all that they could wish or long for. They had not met for more than a week, for Ambrose’s finances had not availed to fee the turnkeys to give him entrance. “And what art thou doing, Ambrose?” asked Stephen, rousing a little from his lethargy. “Methought I heard mine uncle say thine occupation was gone?” “Even so,” replied Ambrose. “Master Lucas will sail in a week’s time to join his brother at Rotterdam, bearing with him what he hath been able to save out of the havoc. I wot not if I shall ever see the good man more.” “I am glad thou dost not go with him,” said Stephen, with a hand on his brother’s leather-covered knee. “I would not put seas between us,” returned Ambrose. “Moreover, though I grieve to lose my good master, who hath been so scurvily entreated here, yet, Stephen, this trouble and turmoil hath brought me that which I longed for above all, even to have speech with the Dean of St. Paul’s.” He then told Stephen how he had brought Dean Colet to administer the last rites to Abenali, and how that good man had bidden Lucas to take shelter at the Deanery, in the desolation of his own abode. This had led to conversation between the Dean and the printer; Lucas, who distrusted all ecclesiastics, would accept no patronage. He had a little hoard, buried in the corner of his stall, which would suffice to carry him to his native home and he wanted no more; but he had spoken of Ambrose, and the Dean was quite ready to be interested in the youth who had led him to Abenali. “He had me to his privy chamber,” said Ambrose, “and spake to me as no man hath yet spoken—no, not even Tibble. He let me utter all my mind, nay, I never wist before even what mine own thoughts were till he set them before me—as it were in a mirror.” “Thou wast ever in a harl,” said Stephen, drowsily using the Hampshire word for whirl or entanglement. “Yea. On the one side stood all that I had ever believed or learnt before I came hither of the one true and glorious Mother-Church to whom the Blessed Lord had committed the keys of His kingdom, through His holy martyrs and priests to give us the blessed host and lead us in the way of salvation. And on the other side, I cannot but see the lewd and sinful and worldly lives of the most part, and hear the lies whereby they amass wealth and turn men from the spirit of truth and holiness to delude them into believing that wilful sin can be committed without harm, and that purchase of a parchment is as good as repentance. That do I see and hear. And therewith my master Lucas and Dan Tindall, and those of the new light, declare that all has been false even from the very outset, and that all the pomp and beauty is but Satan’s bait, and that to believe in Christ alone is all that needs to justify us, casting all the rest aside. All seemed a mist, and I was swayed hither and thither till the more I read and thought, the greater was the fog. And this—I know not whether I told it to yonder good and holy doctor, or whether he knew it, for his eyes seemed to see into me, and he told me that he had felt and thought much the same. But on that one great truth, that faith in the Passion is salvation, is the Church built, though sinful men have hidden it by their errors and lies as befell before among the Israelites, whose law, like ours, was divine. Whatever is entrusted to man, he said, will become stained, soiled, and twisted, though the power of the Holy Spirit will strive to renew it. And such an outpouring of cleansing and renewing power is, he saith, abroad in our day. When he was a young man, this good father, so he said, hoped great things, and did his best to set forth the truth, both at Oxford and here, as indeed he hath ever done, he and the good Doctor Erasmus striving to turn men’s eyes back to the simplicity of God’s Word rather than to the arguments and deductions of the schoolmen. And for the abuses of evil priests that have sprung up, my Lord Cardinal sought the Legatine Commission from our holy father at Rome to deal with them. But Dr. Colet saith that there are other forces at work, and he doubteth greatly whether this same cleansing can be done without some great and terrible rending and upheaving, that may even split the Church as it were asunder—since judgment surely awaiteth such as will not be reformed. But, quoth he, ‘our Mother-Church is God’s own Church and I will abide by her to the end, as the means of oneness with my Lord and Head, and do thou the same, my son, for thou art like to be more sorely tried than will a frail old elder like me, who would fain say his _Nunc Dimittis_, if such be the Lord’s will, ere the foundations be cast down. ’” Ambrose had gone on rehearsing all these words with the absorption of one to whom they were everything, till it occurred to him to wonder that Stephen had listened to so much with patience and assent, and then, looking at the position of head and hands, he perceived that his brother was asleep, and came to a sudden halt. This roused Stephen to say, “Eh? What? The Dean, will he do aught for thee?” “Yea,” said Ambrose, recollecting that there was little use in returning to the perplexities which Stephen could not enter into. “He deemed that in this mood of mine, yea, and as matters now be at the universities, I had best not as yet study there for the priesthood. But he said he would commend me to a friend whose life would better show me how the new gives life to the old than any man he wots of.” “One of thy old doctors in barnacles, I trow,” said Stephen. “Nay, verily. We saw him t’other night perilling his life to stop the poor crazy prentices, and save the foreigners. Dennet and our uncle saw him pleading for them with the King.” “What! Sir Thomas More?” “Ay, no other. He needs a clerk for his law matters, and the Dean said he would speak of me to him. He is to sup at the Deanery to-morrow, and I am to be in waiting to see him. I shall go with a lighter heart now that thou art beyond the clutches of the captain of Newgate.” “Speak no more of that!” said Stephen, with a shudder. “Would that I could forget it!” In truth Stephen’s health had suffered enough to change the bold, high-spirited, active had, so that he hardly knew himself. He was quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed the patient, in order, as he said, to carry off the humours contracted in the prison. He had done the same by Jasper Hope, and by Giles, but he followed the treatment up with better counsel, namely, that the lads should all be sent out of the City to some farm where they might eat curds and whey, until their strength should be restored. Thus they would be out of reach of the sweating sickness which was already in some of the purlieus of St. Katharine’s Docks, and must be specially dangerous in their lowered condition. Master Hope came in just after this counsel had been given. He had a sister married to the host of a large prosperous inn near Windsor, and he proposed to send not only Jasper but Stephen thither, feeling how great a debt of gratitude he owed to the lad. Remembering well the good young Mistress Streatfield, and knowing that the Antelope was a large old house of excellent repute, where she often lodged persons of quality attending on the court or needing country air, Master Headley added Giles to the party at his own expense, and wished also to send Dennet for greater security, only neither her grandmother nor Mrs. Hope could leave home. It ended, however, in Perronel Randall being asked to take charge of the whole party, including Aldonza. That little damsel had been in a manner confided to her both by the Dean of St. Paul’s and by Tibble Steelman—and indeed the motherly woman, after nursing and soothing her through her first despair at the loss of her father, was already loving her heartily, and was glad to give her a place in the home which Ambrose was leaving on being made an attendant on Sir Thomas More. For the interview at the Deanery was satisfactory. The young man, after a good supper, enlivened by the sweet singing of some chosen pupils of St. Paul’s school, was called up to where the Dean sat, and with him, the man of the peculiarly sweet countenance, with the noble and deep expression, yet withal, something both tender and humorous in it. They made him tell his whole life, and asked many questions about Abenali, specially about the fragment of Arabic scroll which had been clutched in his hand even as he lay dying. They much regretted never having known of his existence till too late. “Jewels lie before the unheeding!” said More. Then Ambrose was called on to show a specimen of his own penmanship, and to write from Sir Thomas’s dictation in English and in Latin. The result was that he was engaged to act as one of the clerks Sir Thomas employed in his occupations alike as lawyer, statesman, and scholar. “Methinks I have seen thy face before,” said Sir Thomas, looking keenly at him. “I have beheld those black eyes, though with a different favour.” Ambrose blushed deeply. “Sir, it is but honest to tell you that my mother’s brother is jester to my Lord Cardinal.” “Quipsome Hal Merriman! Patch as the King calleth him!” exclaimed Sir Thomas. “A man I have ever thought wore the motley rather from excess, than infirmity, of wit.” “Nay, sir, so please you, it was his good heart that made him a jester,” said Ambrose, explaining the story of Randall and his Perronel in a few words, which touched the friends a good deal, and the Dean remembered that she was in charge of the little Moresco girl. He lost nothing by dealing thus openly with his new master, who promised to keep his secret for him, then gave him handsel of his salary, and bade him collect his possessions, and come to take up his abode in the house of the More family at Chelsea. He would still often see his brother in the intervals of attending Sir Thomas to the courts of law, but the chief present care was to get the boys into purer air, both to expedite their recovery and to ensure them against being dragged into the penitential company who were to ask for their lives on the 22nd of May, consisting of such of the prisoners who could still stand or go—for jail-fever was making havoc among them, and some of the better-conditioned had been released by private interest. The remainder, not more than half of the original two hundred and seventy-eight, were stripped to their shirts, had halters hung round their necks, and then, roped together as before, were driven through the streets to Westminster, where the King sat enthroned. There, looking utterly miserable, they fell on their knees before him, and received his pardon for their misdemeanours. They returned to their masters, and so ended that Ill May-day, which was the longer remembered because one Churchill, a ballad-monger in St. Paul’s Churchyard, indited a poem on it, wherein he swelled the number of prentices to two thousand, and of the victims to two hundred. Will Wherry, who escaped from among the prisoners very forlorn, was recommended by Ambrose to the work of a carter at the Dragon, which he much preferred to printing.

19

AT THE ANTELOPE

“Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly race, Disporting on thy margent green, The paths of pleasure trace.” —GRAY. MASTER HOPE took all the guests by boat to Windsor, and very soon the little party at the Antelope was in a state of such perfect felicity as became a proverb with them all their lives afterwards. It was an inn wherein to take one’s ease, a large hostel full of accommodation for man and horse, with a big tapestried room of entertainment below, where meals were taken, with an oriel window with a view of the Round Tower, and above it a still more charming one, known as the Red Rose, because one of the Dukes of Somerset had been wont to lodge there. The walls were tapestried with the story of St. Genoveva of Brabant, fresh and new on Mrs. Streatfield’s marriage; there was a huge bed with green curtains of that dame’s own work, where one might have said “Above, below, the rose of snow, Twined with her blushing foe we spread.” so as to avoid all offence. There was also a cupboard or sideboard of the choicer plate belonging to the establishment, and another awmry containing appliances for chess and backgammon, likewise two large chairs, several stools, and numerous chests. This apartment was given up to Mistress Randall and the two girls, subject however to the chance of turning out for any very distinguished guests. The big bed held all three, and the chamber was likewise their sitting-room, though they took their meals down stairs, and joined the party in the common room in the evening whenever they were not out of doors, unless there were guests whom Perronel did not think desirable company for her charges. Stephen and Giles were quartered in a small room known as the Feathers, smelling so sweet of lavender and woodruff that Stephen declared it carried him back to the Forest. Mrs. Streatfield would have taken Jasper to tend among her children, but the boy could not bear to be without Stephen, and his brother advised her to let it be so, and not try to make a babe of him again. The guest-chamber below stairs opened at one end into the innyard, a quadrangle surrounded with stables, outhouses, and offices, with a gallery running round to give access to the chambers above, where, when the Court was at Windsor, two or three great men’s trains of retainers might be crowded together. One door, however, in the side of the guest-chamber had steps down to an orchard, full of apple and pear trees in their glory of pink bud and white blossom, borders of roses, gillyflowers, and lilies of the valley running along under the grey walls. There was a broad space of grass near the houses, whence could be seen the Round Tower of the Castle looking down in protection, while the background of the view was filled up with a mass of the foliage of Windsor forest, in the spring tints. Stephen never thought of its being beautiful, but he revelled in the refreshment of anything so like home, and he had nothing to wish for but his brother, and after all he was too contented and happy even to miss him much. Master Streatfield was an elderly man, fat and easygoing, to whom talking seemed rather a trouble than otherwise, though he was very good-natured. His wife was a merry, lively, active woman, who had been handed over to him by her father like a piece of Flanders cambric, but who never seemed to regret her position, managed men and maids, farm and guests, kept perfect order without seeming to do so, and made great friends with Perronel, never guessing that she had been one of the strolling company, who, nine or ten years before, had been refused admission to the Antelope, then crowded with my Lord of Oxford’s followers. At first, it was enough for the prentices to spend most of their time in lying about on the grass under the trees. Giles, who was in the best condition, exerted himself so far as to try to learn chess from Aldonza, who seemed to be a proficient in the game, and even defeated the good-natured burly parson who came every evening to the Antelope, to imbibe slowly a tankard of ale, and hear any news there stirring. She and Giles were content to spend hours over her instructions in chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house. Though really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more, and was so in all her ways. It never occurred to her to run childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did Dennet, who, with little five-years-old Will Streatfield for her guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows and goats milked, watching butter churned, bringing all manner of animal and vegetable curiosities to Stephen to be named and explained, and enjoying his delight in them, a delight which after the first few days became more and more vigorous. By and by there was punting and fishing on the river, strawberry gathering in the park, explorations of the forest, expeditions of all sorts and kinds, Jasper being soon likewise well enough to share in them. The boys and girls were in a kind of fairy hand under Perronel’s kind wing, the wandering habits of whose girlhood made the freedom of the country far more congenial to her than it would have been to any regular Londoner. Stephen was the great oracle, of course, as to the deer respectfully peeped at in the park, or the squirrels, the hares and rabbits, in the forest, and the inhabitants of the stream above or below. It was he who secured and tamed the memorials of their visit—two starlings for Dennet and Aldonza. The birds were to be taught to speak, and to do wonders of all kinds, but Aldonza’s bird was found one morning dead, and Giles consoled her by the promise of something much bigger, and that would talk much better. Two days after he brought her a young jackdaw. Aldonza clasped her hands and admired its glossy back and queer blue eye, and was in transports when it uttered something between “Jack” and “good lack.” But Dennet looked in scorn at it, and said, “That’s a bird tamed already. He didn’t catch it. He only bought it! I would have none such! An ugsome great thieving bird!” “Nay now, Mistress Dennet,” argued Perronel. “Thou hast thy bird, and Alice has lost hers. It is not meet to grudge it to her.” “I! Grudge it to her!” said Dennet, with a toss of the head. “I grudge her nought from Giles Headley, so long as I have my Goldspot that Stephen climbed the wall for, his very self.” And Dennet turned majestically away with her bird—Goldspot only in the future—perched on her finger; while Perronel shook her head bodingly. But they were all children still, and Aldonza was of a nature that was slow to take offence, while it was quite true that Dennet had been free from jealousy of the jackdaw, and only triumphant in Stephen’s prowess and her own starling. The great pleasure of all was a grand stag-hunt, got up for the diversion of the French ambassadors, who had come to treat for the espousals of the infant Princess Mary with the baby “Dolphyne.” Probably these illustrious personages did not get half the pleasure out of it that the Antelope party had. Were they not, by special management of a yeoman pricker who had recognised in Stephen a kindred spirit, and had a strong admiration for Mistress Randall, placed where there was the best possible view of hunters, horses, and hounds, lords and ladies, King and ambassadors, in their gorgeous hunting trim? Did not Stephen, as a true verdurer’s son, interpret every note on the horn, and predict just what was going to happen, to the edification of all his hearers? And when the final rush took place, did not the prentices, with their gowns rolled up, dart off headlong in pursuit? Dennet entertained some hope that Stephen would again catch some runaway steed, or come to the King’s rescue in some way or other, but such chances did not happen every day. Nay, Stephen did not even follow up the chase to the death, but left Giles to do that, turning back forsooth because that little Jasper thought fit to get tired and out of breath, and could not find his way back alone. Dennet was quite angry with Stephen and turned her back on him, when Giles came in all glorious, at having followed up staunchly all day, having seen the fate of the poor stag, and having even beheld the King politely hand the knife to Monsieur de Montmorency to give the first stroke to the quarry! That was the last exploit. There was to be a great tilting match in honour of the betrothal, and Master Alderman Headley wanted his apprentices back again, and having been satisfied by a laborious letter from Dennet, sent per carrier, that they were in good health, despatched orders by the same means, that they were to hire horses at the Antelope and return—Jasper coming back at the same time, though his aunt would fain have kept him longer. Women on a journey almost always rode double, and the arrangement came under debate. Perronel, well accustomed to horse, ass, or foot, undertook to ride behind the child, as she called Jasper, who—as a born Londoner—knew nothing of horses, though both the other prentices did. Giles, who, in right of his name, kindred, and expectations, always held himself a sort of master, declared that “it was more fitting that Stephen should ride before Mistiness Dennet.” And to this none of the party made any objection, except that Perronel privately observed to him that she should have thought he would have preferred the company of his betrothed. “I shall have quite enough of her by and by,” returned Giles; then adding, “She is a good little wench, but it is more for her honour that her father’s servant should ride before her.” Perronel held her tongue, and they rode merrily back to London, and astonished their several homes by the growth and healthful looks of the young people. Even Giles was grown, though he did not like to be told so, and was cherishing the down on his chin. But the most rapid development had been in Aldonza, or Alice, as Perronel insisted on calling her to suit the ears of her neighbours. The girl was just reaching the borderland of maidenhood, which came all the sooner to one of southern birth and extraction, when the great change took her from being her father’s childish darling to be Perronel’s companion and assistant. She had lain down on that fatal May Eve a child, she rose in the little house by the Temple Gardens, a maiden, and a very lovely one, with delicate, refined, beautifully cut features of a slightly aquiline cast, a bloom on her soft brunette cheek, splendid dark liquid eyes shaded by long black lashes, under brows as regular and well arched as her Eastern cousins could have made them artificially, magnificent black hair, that could hardly be contained in the close white cap, and a lithe beautiful figure on which the plainest dress sat with an Eastern grace. Perronel’s neighbours did not admire her. They were not sure whether she were most Saracen, gipsy, or Jew. In fact, she was as like Rachel at the well as her father had been to a patriarch, and her descent was of the purest Saracen lineage, but a Christian Saracen was an anomaly the London mind could not comprehend, and her presence in the family tended to cast suspicion that Master Randall himself, with his gipsy eyes, and mysterious comings and goings, must have some strange connections. For this, however, Perronel cared little. She had made her own way for many years past, and had won respect and affection by many good offices to her neighbours, one of whom had taken her laundry work in her absence. Aldonza was by no means indocile or incapable. She shared in Perronel’s work without reluctance, making good use of her slender, dainty brown fingers, whether in cooking, household work, washing, ironing, plaiting, making or mending the stiff lawn collars and cuffs in which her hostess’s business lay. There was nothing that she would not do when asked, or when she saw that it would save trouble to good mother Perronel, of whom she was very fond, and she seemed serene and contented, never wanting to go abroad; but she was very silent, and Perronel declared herself never to have seen any living woman so perfectly satisfied to do nothing. The good dame herself was industrious, not only from thrift but from taste, and if not busy in her vocation or in household business, was either using her distaff or her needle, or chatting with her neighbours—often doing both at once; but though Aldonza could spin, sew, and embroider admirably, and would do so at the least request from her hostess, it was always a sort of task, and she never seemed so happy as when seated on the floor, with her dark eyes dreamily fixed on the narrow window, where hung her jackdaw’s cage, and the beads of her rosary passing through her fingers. At first Mistress Randall thought she was praying, but by and by came to the conviction that most of the time “the wench was bemused.” There was nothing to complain of in one so perfectly gentle and obedient, and withal, modest and devout; but the good woman, after having for some time given her the benefit of the supposition that she was grieving for her father, began to wonder at such want of activity and animation, and to think that on the whole Jack was the more talkative companion. Aldonza had certainly not taught him the phrases he was so fond of repeating. Giles Headley had undertaken his education, and made it a reason for stealing down to the Temple many an evening after work was done, declaring that birds never learnt so well as after dark. Moreover, he had possessed himself of a chess board, and insisted that Aldonza should carry on her instructions in the game; he brought her all his Holy Cross Day gain of nuts, and he used all his blandishments to persuade Mrs. Randall to come and see the shooting at the popinjay, at Mile End. All this made the good woman uneasy. Her husband was away, for the dread of sweating sickness had driven the Court from London, and she could only take counsel with Tibble Steelman. It was Hallowmas Eve, and Giles had been the bearer of an urgent invitation from Dennet to her friend Aldonza to come and join the diversions of the evening. There was a large number of young folk in the hall—Jasper Hope among them—mostly contemporaries of Dennet, and almost children, all keen upon the sports of the evening, namely, a sort of indoor quintain, where the revolving beam was decorated with a lighted candle at one end, and at the other an apple to be caught at by the players with their mouths, their hands being tied behind them. Under all the uproarious merriment that each attempt occasioned, Tibble was about to steal off to his own chamber and his beloved books, when, as he backed out of the group of spectators, he was arrested by Mistress Randall, who had made her way into the rear of the party at the same time. “Can I have a word with you, privily, Master Steelman?” she asked. Unwillingly he muttered, “Yea, so please you;” and they retreated to a window at the dark end of the hall, where Perronel began—“The alderman’s daughter is contracted to young Giles, her kinsman, is she not?” “Not as yet in form, but by the will of the parents,” returned Tibble, impatiently, as he thought of the half-hour’s reading which he was sacrificing to woman’s gossip. “An it be so,” returned Perronel, “I would fain—were I Master Headley—that he spent not so many nights in gazing at mine Alice.” “Forbid him the house, good dame.” “Easier spoken than done,” returned Perronel. “Moreover, ’tis better to let the matter, such as it is, be open in my sight than to teach them to run after one another stealthily, whereby worse might ensue.” “Have they spoken then to one another?” asked Tibble, beginning to take alarm. “I trow not. I deem they know not yet what draweth them together.” “Pish, they are mere babes!” quoth Tib, hoping he might cast it off his mind. “Look!” said Perronel; and as they stood on the somewhat elevated floor of the bay window, they could look over the heads of the other spectators to the seats where the young girls sat. Aldonza’s beautiful and peculiar contour of head and face rose among the round chubby English faces like a jessamine among daisies, and at that moment she was undertaking, with an exquisite smile, the care of the gown that Giles laid at her feet, ere making his venture. “There!” said Perronel. “Mark that look on her face! I never see it save for that same youngster. The children are simple and guileless thus far, it may be. I dare be sworn that she is, but they wot not where they will be led on.” “You are right, dame; you know best, no doubt,” said Tib, in helpless perplexity. “I wot nothing of such gear. What would you do?” “Have the maid wedded at once, ere any harm come of it,” returned Perronel promptly. “She will make a good wife—there will be no complaining of her tongue, and she is well instructed in all good housewifery.” “To whom then would you give her?” asked Tibble. “Ay, that’s the question. Comely and good she is, but she is outlandish, and I fear me ’twould take a handsome portion to get her dark skin and Moorish blood o’erlooked. Nor hath she aught, poor maid, save yonder gold and pearl earrings, and a cross of gold that she says her father bade her never part with.” “I pledged my word to her father,” said Tibble, “that I would have a care of her. I have not cared to hoard, having none to come after me, but if a matter of twenty or five-and-twenty marks would avail—” “Wherefore not take her yourself?” said Perronel, as he stood aghast. “She is a maid of sweet obedient conditions, trained by a scholar even like yourself. She would make your chamber fair and comfortable, and tend you dutifully.” “Whisht, good woman. ’Tis too dark to see, or you could not speak of wedlock to such as I. Think of the poor maid!” “That is all folly! She would soon know you for a better husband than one of those young feather-pates, who have no care but of themselves.” “Nay, mistress,” said Tibble, gravely, “your advice will not serve here. To bring that fair young wench hither, to this very court, mind you, with a mate loathly to behold as I be, and with the lad there ever before her, would be verily to give place to the devil.” “But you are the best sword-cutler in London. You could make a living without service.” “I am bound by too many years of faithful kindness to quit my master or my home at the Dragon,” said Tibble. “Nay, that will not serve, good friend.” “Then what can be done?” asked Perronel, somewhat in despair. “There are the young sparks at the Temple. One or two of them are already beginning to cast eyes at her, so that I dare not let her help me carry home my basket, far less go alone. ’Tis not the wench’s fault. She shrinks from men’s eyes more than any maid I ever saw, but if she bide long with me, I wot not what may come of it. There be rufflers there who would not stick to carry her off!” Tibble stood considering, and presently said, “Mayhap the Dean might aid thee in this matter. He is free of hand and kind of heart, and belike he would dower the maid, and find an honest man to wed her.” Perronel thought well of the suggestion, and decided that after the mass on All Soul’s Day, and the general visiting of the graves of kindred, she would send Aldonza home with Dennet, whom they were sure to meet in the Pardon Churchyard, since her mother, as well as Abenali and Martin Fulford lay there; and herself endeavour to see Dean Colet, who was sure to be at home, as he was hardly recovered from an attack of the prevalent disorder. Then Tibble escaped, and Perronel drew near to the party round the fire, where the divination of the burning of nuts was going on, but not successfully, since no pair hitherto put in would keep together. However, the next contribution was a snail, which had been captured on the wall, and was solemnly set to crawl on the hearth by Dennet, “to see whether it would trace a G or an H.” However, the creature proved sullen or sleepy, and no jogging of hands, no enticing, would induce it to crawl an inch, and the alderman, taking his daughter on his knee, declared that it was a wise beast, who knew her hap was fixed. Moreover, it was time for the rere supper, for the serving-men with the lanterns would be coming for the young folk. London entertainments for women or young people had to finish very early unless they had a strong escort to go home with, for the streets were far from safe after dark. Giles’s great desire to convoy her home, added to Perronel’s determination, and on All Souls’ Day, while knells were ringing from every church in London, she roused Aldonza from her weeping devotions at her father’s grave, and led her to Dennet, who had just finished her round of prayers at the grave of the mother she had never known, under the protection of her nurse, and two or three of the servants. The child, who had thought little of her mother, while her grandmother was alert and supplied the tenderness and care she needed, was beginning to yearn after counsel and sympathy, and to wonder, as she told her beads, what might have been, had that mother lived. She took Aldonza’s hand, and the two girls threaded their way out of the crowded churchyard together, while Perronel betook herself to the Deanery of St. Paul’s. Good Colet was always accessible to the meanest, but he had been very ill, and the porter had some doubts about troubling him respecting the substantial young matron whose trim cap and bodice, and full petticoats, showed no tokens of distress. However, when she begged him to take in her message, that she prayed the Dean to listen to her touching the child of the old man who was slain on May Eve, he consented; and she was at once admitted to an inner chamber, where Colet, wrapped in a gown lined with lambskin, sat by the fire, looking so wan and feeble that it went to the good woman’s heart and she began by an apology for troubling him. “Heed not that, good dame,” said the Dean, courteously, “but sit thee down and let me hear of the poor child.” “Ah, reverend sir, would that she were still a child—” and Perronel proceeded to tell her difficulties, adding, that if the Dean could of his goodness promise one of the dowries which were yearly given to poor maidens of good character, she would inquire among her gossips for some one to marry the girl. She secretly hoped he would take the hint, and immediately portion Aldonza himself, perhaps likewise find the husband. And she was disappointed that he only promised to consider the matter and let her hear from him. She went back and told Tibble that his device was nought, an old scholar with one foot in the grave knew less of women than even he did! However it was only four days later, that, as Mrs. Randall was hanging out her collars to dry, there came up to her from the Temple stairs a figure whom for a moment she hardly knew, so different was the long, black garb, and short gown of the lawyer’s clerk from the shabby old green suit that all her endeavours had not been able to save from many a stain of printer’s ink. It was only as he exclaimed, “Good aunt, I am fain to see thee here!” that she answered, “What, thou, Ambrose! What a fine fellow thou art! Truly I knew not thou wast of such good mien! Thou thrivest at Chelsea!” “Who would not thrive there?” said Ambrose. “Nay, aunt, tarry a little, I have a message for thee that I would fain give before we go in to Aldonza.” “From his reverence the Dean? Hath he bethought himself of her?” “Ay, that hath he done,” said Ambrose. “He is not the man to halt when good may be done. What doth he do, since it seems thou hadst speech of him, but send for Sir Thomas More, then sitting at Westminster, to come and see him as soon as the Court brake up, and I attended my master. They held council together, and by and by they sent for me to ask me of what conditions and breeding the maid was, and what I knew of her father?” “Will they wed her to thee? That were rarely good, so they gave thee some good office!” cried his aunt. “Nay, nay,” said Ambrose. “I have much to learn and understand ere I think of a wife—if ever. Nay! But when they had heard all I could tell them, they looked at one another, and the Dean said, ‘The maid is no doubt of high blood in her own land—scarce a mate for a London butcher or currier.” “‘It were matching an Arab mare with a costard monger’s colt,’ said my master, ‘or Angelica with Ralph Roisterdoister. ’” “I’d like to know what were better for the poor outlandish maid than to give her to some honest man,” put in Perronel. “The end of it was,” said Ambrose, “that Sir Thomas said he was to be at the palace the next day, and he would strive to move the Queen to take her countrywoman into her service. Yea, and so he did, but though Queen Katharine was moved by hearing of a fatherless maid of Spain, and at first spake of taking her to wait on herself, yet when she heard the maid’s name, and that she was of Moorish blood, she would none of her. She said that heresy lurked in them all, and though Sir Thomas offered that the Dean or the Queen’s own chaplain should question her on the faith, it was all lost labour. I heard him tell the Dean as much, and thus it is that they bade me come for thee, and for the maid, take boat, and bring you down to Chelsea, where Sir Thomas will let her be bred up to wait on his little daughters till he can see what best may be done for her. I trow his spirit was moved by the Queen’s hardness! I heard the Dean mutter, ‘_Et venient ab Oriente et Occidente_. ’” Perronel hooked alarmed. “The Queen deemed her heretic in grain! Ah! She is a good wench, and of kind conditions. I would have no ill befall her, but I am glad to be rid of her. Sir Thomas—he is a wise man, ay, and a married man, with maidens of his own, and he may have more wit in the business than the rest of his kind. Be the matter instant?” “Methinks Sir Thomas would have it so, since this being a holy day, the courts be not sitting, and he is himself at home, so that he can present the maid to his lady. And that makes no small odds.” “Yea, but what the lady is makes the greater odds to the maid, I trow,” said Perronel anxiously. “Fear not on that score. Dame Alice More is of kindly conditions, and will be good to any whom her lord commends to her; and as to the young ladies, never saw I any so sweet or so wise as the two elder ones, specially Mistress Margaret.” “Well-a-day! What must be must!” philosophically observed Perronel. “Now I have my wish, I could mourn over it. I am loth to part with the wench; and my man, when he comes home, will make an outcry for his pretty Ally; but ’tis best so. Come, Alice, girl, bestir thyself. Here’s preferment for thee.” Aldonza raised her great soft eyes in slow wonder, and when she had heard what was to befall her, declared that she wanted no advancement, and wished only to remain with mother Perronel. Nay, she clung to the kind woman, beseeching that she might not be sent away from the only motherly tenderness she had ever known, and declaring that she would work all day and all night rather than leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a spruce grey-headed bird. Perronel said it would be presumption in a waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their father himself, and that he believed the daw would be welcome. At any rate, if the lady of the house objected to it, it could return with Mistress Randall. Perronel hurried the few preparations, being afraid that Giles might take advantage of the holiday to appear on the scene, and presently Aldonza was seated in the boat, making no more lamentations after she found that her fate was inevitable, but sitting silent, with downcast head, now and then brushing away a stray tear as it stole down under her long eyelashes. Meantime Ambrose, hoping to raise her spirits, talked to his aunt of the friendly ease and kindliness of the new home, where he was evidently as thoroughly happy as it was in his nature to be. He was much, in the position of a barrister’s clerk, superior to that of the mere servants, but inferior to the young gentlemen of larger means, though not perhaps of better birth, who had studied law regularly, and aspired to offices or to legal practice. But though Ambrose was ranked with the three or four other clerks, his functions had more relation to Sir Thomas’s literary and diplomatic avocations than his legal ones. From Lucas Hansen he had learnt Dutch and French, and he was thus available for copying and translating foreign correspondence. His knowledge of Latin and smattering of Greek enabled him to be employed in copying into a book some of the inestimable letters of Erasmus which arrived from time to time, and Sir Thomas promoted his desire to improve himself, and had requested Mr. Clements, the tutor of the children of the house, to give him weekly lessons in Latin and Greek. Sir Thomas had himself pointed out to him books calculated to settle his mind on the truth and catholicity of the Church, and had warned him against meddling with the fiery controversial tracts which, smuggled in often through Lucas’s means, had set his mind in commotion. And for the present at least beneath the shadow of the great man’s intelligent devotion, Ambrose’s restless spirit was tranquil. Of course, he did not explain his state of mind to his aunt, but she gathered enough to be well content, and tried to encourage Aldonza, when at length they landed near Chelsea Church, and Ambrose led the way to an extensive pleasaunce or park, full of elms and oaks, whose yellow leaves were floating like golden rain in the sunshine. Presently children’s voices guided them to a large chestnut tree. “Lo you now, I hear Mistress Meg’s voice, and where she is, his honour will ever be,” said Ambrose. And sure enough, among a group of five girls and one boy, all between fourteen and nine years old, was the great lawyer, knocking down the chestnuts with a long pole, while the young ones flew about picking up the burrs from the grass, exclaiming joyously when they found a full one. Ambrose explained that of the young ladies, one was Mistress Middleton, Lady More’s daughter by a former marriage, another a kinswoman. Perronel was for passing by unnoticed; but Ambrose knew better; and Sir Thomas, leaning on the pole, called out, “Ha, my Birkenholt, a forester born, knowst thou any mode of bringing down yonder chestnuts, which being the least within reach, seem in course the meetest of all.” “I would I were my brother, your honour,” said Ambrose, “then would I climb the thee.” “Thou shouldst bring him one of these days,” said Sir Thomas. “But thou hast instead brought in a fair maid. See, Meg, yonder is the poor young girl who lost her father on Ill May day. Lead her on and make her good cheer, while I speak to this good dame.” Margaret More, a slender, dark-eyed girl of thirteen, went forward with a peculiar gentle grace to the stranger, saying, “Welcome, sweet maid! I hope we shall make thee happy,” and seeing the mournful countenance, she not only took Aldonza’s hand, but kissed her cheek. Sir Thomas had exchanged a word or two with Perronel, when there was a cry from the younger children, who had detected the wicker cage which Perronel was trying to keep in the background. “A daw! a daw!” was the cry. “Is’t for us?” “Oh, mistress,” faltered Aldonza, “’tis mine—there was one who tamed it for me, and I promised ever to keep it, but if the good knight and lady forbid it, we will send it back.” “Nay now, John, Cicely,” was Margaret saying, “’tis her own bird! Wot ye not our father will let us take nought of them that come to him? Yea, Al-don-za—is not that thy name? —I am sure my father will have thee keep it.” She led up Aldonza, making the request for her. Sir Thomas smiled. “Keep thy bird? Nay, that thou shalt. Look at him, Meg, is he not in fit livery for a lawyer’s house? Mark his trim legs, sable doublet and hose, and grey hood—and see, he hath the very eye of a councillor seeking for suits, as he looketh at the chestnuts John holdeth to him. I warrant he hath a tongue likewise. Canst plead for thy dinner, bird?” “I love Giles!” uttered the black beak, to the confusion and indignation of Perronel. The perverse bird had heard Giles often dictate this avowal, but had entirely refused to repeat it, till, stimulated by the new surroundings, it had for the first time uttered it. “Ah! thou foolish daw! Crow that thou art! Had I known thou hadst such a word in thy beak, I’d have wrung thy neck sooner than have brought thee,” muttered Perronel. “I had best take thee home without more ado.” It was too late, however, the children were delighted, and perfectly willing that Aldonza should own the bird, so they might hear it speak, and thus the introduction was over. Aldonza and her daw were conveyed to Dame Alice More, a stout, good-tempered woman, who had too many dependents about her house to concern herself greatly about the introduction of another. And thus Aldonza was installed in the long, low, two-storied red house which was to be her place of home-like service.

20

CLOTH OF GOLD ON THE SEAMY SIDE

“Then you lost The view of earthly glory: men might say Till this time pomp was single; but now married To one above itself.” —SHAKESPEARE. IF Giles Headley murmured at Aldonza’s removal, it was only to Perronel, and that discreet woman kept it to herself. In the summer of 1519 he was out of his apprenticeship, and though Dennet was only fifteen, it was not uncommon for brides to be even younger. However, the autumn of that year was signalised by a fresh outbreak of the sweating sickness, apparently a sort of influenza, and no festivities could be thought of. The King and Queen kept at a safe distance from London, and escaped, so did the inmates of the pleasant house at Chelsea; but the Cardinal, who, as Lord Chancellor, could not entirely absent himself from Westminster, was four times attacked by it, and Dean Colet, a far less robust man, had it three times, and sank at last under it. Sir Thomas More went to see his beloved old friend, and knowing Ambrose’s devotion, let the young man be his attendant. Nor could those who saw the good man ever forget his peaceful farewells, grieving only for the old mother who had lived with him in the Deanery, and in the ninetieth year of her age, thus was bereaved of the last of her twenty-one children. For himself, he was thankful to be taken away from the evil times he already beheld threatening his beloved St. Paul’s, as well as the entire Church both in England and abroad; looking back with a sad sweet smile to the happy Oxford days, when he, with More and Erasmus, “Strained the watchful eye If chance the golden hours were nigh By youthful hope seen gleaming round her walls.” “But,” said he, as he laid his hand in blessing for the last time on Ambrose’s head, “let men say what they will, do thou cling fast to the Church, nor let thyself be swept away. There are sure promises to her, and grace is with her to purify herself, even though it be obscured for a time. Be not of little faith, but believe that Christ is with us in the ship, though He seem to be asleep.” He spoke as much to his friend as to the youth, and there can be no doubt that this consideration was the restraining force with many who have been stigmatised as half-hearted Reformers, because though they loved truth, they feared to lose unity. He was a great loss at that especial time, as a restraining power, trusted by the innovators, and a personal friend both of King and Cardinal, and his preaching and catechising were sorely missed at St. Paul’s. Tibble Steelman, though thinking he did not go far enough, deplored him deeply; but Tibble himself was laid by for many days. The epidemic went through the Dragon court, though some had it lightly, and only two young children actually died of it. It laid a heavy hand on Tibble, and as his distaste for women rendered his den almost inaccessible to Bet Smallbones, who looked after most of the patients, Stephen Birkenholt, whose nursing capacities had been developed in Newgate, spent his spare hours in attending him, sat with him in the evenings, slept on a pallet by his side, carried him his meals and often administered them, and finally pulled him through the illness and its effects, which left him much broken and never likely to be the same man again. Old Mistress Headley, who was already failing, did not have the actual disease severely, but she never again left her bed, and died just after Christmas, sinking slowly away with little pain, and her memory having failed from the first. Household affairs had thus shipped so gradually into Dennet’s hands that no change of government was perceptible, except that the keys hung at the maiden’s girdle. She had grown out of the child during this winter of trouble, and was here, there, and everywhere, the busy nurse and housewife, seldom pausing to laugh or play except with her father, and now and then to chat with her old friend and playfellow, Kit Smallbones. Her childish freedom of manner had given way to grave discretion, not to say primness, in her behaviour to her father’s guests, and even the apprentices. It was, of course, the unconscious reaction of the maidenly spirit, aware that she had nothing but her own modesty to protect her. She was on a small scale, with no pretensions to beauty, but with a fresh, honest, sensible young face, a clear skin, and dark eyes that could be very merry when she would let them, and her whole air and dress were trimness itself, with an inclination to the choicest materials permitted to an alderman’s daughter. Things were going on so smoothly that the alderman was taken by surprise when all the good wives around began to press on him that it was incumbent on him to lose no time in marrying his daughter to her cousin, if not before Lent, yet certainly in the Easter holidays. Dennet looked very grave thereon. Was it not over soon after the loss of the good grandmother? And when her father said, as the gossips had told him, that she and Giles need only walk quietly down some morning to St. Faith’s and plight their troth, she broke out into her girlish wilful manner, “Would she be married at all without a merry wedding? No, indeed! She would not have the thing done in a corner! What was the use of her being wedded, and having to consort with the tedious old wives instead of the merry wrenches? Could she not guide the house, and rule the maids, and get in the stores, and hinder waste, and make the pasties, and brew the possets? Had her father found the crust hard, or missed his roasted crab, or had any one blamed her for want of discretion? Nay, as to that, she was like to be more discreet as she was, with only her good old father to please, than with a husband to plague her.” On the other hand, Giles’s demeanour was rather that of one prepared for the inevitable than that of an eager bridegroom; and when orders began to pour in for accoutrements of unrivalled magnificence for the King and the gentlemen who were to accompany him to Ardres, there to meet the young King of France just after Whitsuntide, Dennet was the first to assure her father that there would be no time to think of weddings till all this was over, especially as some of the establishment would have to be in attendance to repair casualties at the jousts. At this juncture there arrived on business Master Tiptoff, husband to Giles’s sister, bringing greetings from Mrs. Headley at Salisbury, and inquiries whether the wedding was to take place at Whitsuntide, in which case she would hasten to be present, and to take charge of the household, for which her dear daughter was far too young. Master Tiptoff showed a suspicious alacrity in undertaking the forwarding of his mother-in-law and her stuff. The faces of Master Headley and Tib Steelman were a sight, both having seen only too much of what the housewifery at Salisbury had been. The alderman decided on the spot that there could be no marriage till after the journey to France, since Giles was certainly to go upon it; and lest Mrs. Headley should be starting on her journey, he said he should despatch a special messenger to stay her. Giles, who had of course been longing for the splendid pageant, cheered up into great amiability, and volunteered to write to his mother, that she had best not think of coming, till he sent word to her that matters were forward. Even thus, Master Headley was somewhat insecure. He thought the dame quite capable of coming and taking possession of his house in his absence, and therefore resolved upon staying at home to garrison it; but there was then the further difficulty that Tibble was in no condition to take his place on the journey. If the rheumatism seized his right arm, as it had done in the winter, he would be unable to drive a rivet, and there would be every danger of it, high summer though it were; for though the party would carry their own tent and bedding, the knights and gentlemen would be certain to take all the best places, and they might be driven into a damp corner. Indeed it was not impossible that their tent itself might be seized, for many a noble or his attendants might think that beggarly artisans had no right to comforts which he had been too improvident to afford, especially if the alderman himself were absent. Not only did Master Headley really love his trusty foreman too well to expose him to such chances, but Tibble knew too well that there were brutal young men to whom his contorted-visage would be an incitement to contempt and outrage, and that if racked with rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance. There was nothing for it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party. His imposing presence would keep off wanton insults, but on the other hand, he had not the moral weight of authority possessed by Tibble, and though far from being a drunkard, he was not proof against a carouse, especially when out of reach of his Bet and of his master, and he was not by any means Tib’s equal in fine and delicate workmanship. But on the other hand, Tib pronounced that Stephen Birkenholt was already well skilled in chasing metal and the difficult art of restoring inlaid work, and he showed some black and silver armour, that was in hand for the King, which fully bore out his words. “And thou thinkst Kit can rule the lads!” said the alderman, scarce willingly. “One of them at least can rule himself,” said Tibble. “They have both been far more discreet since the fright they got on Ill May day; and, as for Stephen, he hath seemed to me to have no eyes nor thought save for his work of late.” “I have marked him,” said the master, “and have marvelled what ailed the lad. His merry temper hath left him. I never hear him singing to keep time with his hammer, nor keeping the court in a roar with his gibes. I trust he is not running after the new doctrine of the hawkers and pedlars. His brother was inclined that way.” “There be worse folk than they, your worship,” protested Tib, but he did not pursue their defence, only adding, “but ’tis not that which ails young Stephen. I would it were!” he sighed to himself, inaudibly. “Well,” said the good-natured alderman, “it may be he misseth his brother. The boys will care for this raree-show more than thou or I, Tib! We’ve seen enough of them in our day, though verily they say this is to surpass all that ever were beheld!” The question of who was to go had not been hitherto decided, and Giles and Stephen were both so excited at being chosen that all low spirits and moodiness were dispelled, and the work which went on almost all night was merrily got through. The Dragon court was in a perpetual commotion with knights, squires, and grooms, coming in with orders for new armour, or for old to be furbished, and the tent-makers, lorimers, mercers, and tailors had their hands equally full. These lengthening mornings heard the hammer ringing at sunrise, and in the final rush, Smallbones never went to bed at all. He said he should make it up in the waggon on the way to Dover. Some hinted that he preferred the clang of his hammer to the good advice his Bet lavished on him at every leisure moment to forewarn him against French wine-pots. The alderman might be content with the party he sent forth, for Kit had hardly his equal in size, strength, and good humour. Giles had developed into a tall, comely young man, who had got rid of his country slouch, and whose tall figure, light locks, and ruddy cheeks looked well in the new suit which gratified his love of finery, sober-hued as it needs must be. Stephen was still bound to the old prentice garb, though it could not conceal his good mien, the bright sparkling dark eyes, crisp black hair, healthy brown skin, and lithe active figure. Giles had a stout roadster to ride on, the others were to travel in their own waggon, furnished with four powerful horses, which, if possible, they were to take to Calais, so as to be independent of hiring. Their needments, clothes, and tools, were packed in the waggon, with store of lances, and other appliances of the tourney. A carter and Will Wherry, who was selected as being supposed to be conversant with foreign tongues, were to attend on them; Smallbones, as senior journeyman, had the control of the party, and Giles had sufficiently learnt subordination not to be likely to give himself dangerous airs of mastership. Dennet was astir early to see them off, and she had a little gift for each. She began with her oldest friend. “See here, Kit,” she said, “here’s a wallet to hold thy nails and rivets. What wilt thou say to me for such a piece of stitchery?” “Say, pretty mistress? Why this!” quoth the giant, and he picked her up by the slim waist in his great hands, and kissed her on the forehead. He had done the like many a time nine or ten years ago, and though Master Headley laughed, Dennet was not one bit embarrassed, and turned to the next traveller. “Thou art no more a prentice, Giles, and canst wear this in thy bonnet,” she said, holding out to him a short silver chain and medal of St. George and the Dragon. “Thanks, gentle maid,” said Giles, taking the handsome gift a little sheepishly. “My bonnet will make a fair show,” and he bent down as she stood on the step, and saluted her lips, then began eagerly fastening the chain round his cap, as one delighted with the ornament. Stephen was some distance off. He had turned aside when she spoke to Giles, and was asking of Tibble last instructions about the restoration of enamel, when he felt a touch on his arm, and saw Dennet standing by him. She looked up in his face, and held up a crimson silken purse, with S. B embroidered on it with a wreath of oak and holly leaves. With the air that ever showed his gentle blood, Stephen put a knee to the ground, and kissed the fingers that held it to him, whereupon Dennet, a sudden burning blush overspreading her face under her little pointed hood, turned suddenly round and ran into the house. She was out again on the steps when the waggon finally got under weigh, and as her eyes met Stephen’s, he doffed his flat cap with one hand, and laid the other on his heart, so that she knew where her purse had taken up its abode. Of the Field of the Cloth of Gold not much need be said. To the end of the lives of the spectators, it was a tale of wonder. Indeed without that, the very sight of the pavilions was a marvel in itself, the blue dome of Francis spangled in imitation of the sky, with sun, moon, and stars; and the feudal castle of Henry, a three months’ work, each surrounded with tents of every colour and pattern which fancy could devise, with the owners’ banners or pennons floating from the summits, and every creature, man, and horse, within the enchanted precincts, equally gorgeous. It was the brightest and the last full display of magnificent pseudo chivalry, and to Stephen’s dazzled eye, seeing it beneath the slant rays of the setting sun of June, it was a fairy tale come to life. Hal Randall, who was in attendance on the Cardinal, declared that it was a mere surfeit of jewels and gold and silver, and that a frieze jerkin or leathern coat was an absolute refreshment to the sight. He therefore spent all the time he was off duty in the forge far in the rear, where Smallbones and his party had very little but hard work, mending, whetting, furbishing, and even changing devices. Those six days of tilting when “every man that stood, showed like a mine,” kept the armourers in full occupation night and day, and only now and then could the youths try to make their way to some spot whence they could see the tournament. Smallbones was more excited by the report of fountains of good red and white wines of all sorts, flowing perpetually in the court of King Henry’s splended mock castle; but fortunately one gulp was enough for an English palate nurtured on ale and mead, and he was disgusted at the heaps of country folk, men-at-arms, beggars and vagabonds of all kinds, who swilled the liquor continually, and, in loathsome contrast to the external splendours, lay wallowing on the ground so thickly that it was sometimes hardly possible to move without treading on them. “I stumbled over a dozen,” said the jester, as he strolled into the little staked inclosure that the Dragon party had arranged round their tent for the prosecution of their labours, which were too important to all the champions not to be respected. “Lance and sword have not laid so many low in the lists as have the doughty Baron Burgundy and the heady knight Messire Sherris Sack.” “Villain Verjuice and Varlet Vinegar is what Kit there calls them,” said Stephen, looking up from the work he was carrying on over a pan of glowing charcoal. “Yea,” said Smallbones, intermitting his noisy operations, “and the more of swine be they that gorge themselves on it. I told Jack and Hob that ’twould be shame for English folk to drown themselves like French frogs or Flemish hogs.” “Hogs!” returned Randall. “A decent Hampshire hog would scorn to be lodged as many a knight and squire and lady too is now, pigging it in styes and hovels and haylofts by night, and pranking it by day with the best!” “Sooth enough,” said Smallbones. “Yea, we have had two knights and their squires beseeching us for leave to sleep under our waggon! Not an angel had they got among the four of them either, having all their year’s income on their backs, and more too. I trow they and their heirs will have good cause to remember this same Field of Gold.” “And what be’st thou doing, nevvy?” asked the jester. “Thy trade seems as brisk as though red blood were flowing instead of red wine.” “I am doing my part towards making the King into Hercules,” said Stephen, “though verily the tailor hath more part therein than we have; but he must needs have a breastplate of scales of gold, and that by to-morrow’s morn. As Ambrose would say, ‘if he will be a pagan god, he should have what’s-his-name, the smith of the gods, to work for him. ’” “I heard of that freak,” said the jester. “There be a dozen tailors and all the Queen’s tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of gold for the lion’s mane, covering a club with green damask with pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland! In sooth, these graces have left me so far behind in foolery that I have not a jest left in my pouch! So here I be, while my Lord Cardinal is shut up with Madame d’Angoulême in the castle—the real old castle, mind you—doing the work, leaving the kings and queens to do their own fooling.” “Have you spoken with the French King, Hal?” asked Smallbones, who had become a great crony of his, since the anxieties of May Eve. “So far as I may when I have no French, and he no English! He is a comely fellow, with a blithe tongue and a merry eye, I warrant you a chanticleer who will lose nought for lack of crowing. He’ll crow louder than ever now he hath given our Harry a fall.” “No! hath he?” and Giles, Stephen, and Smallbones, all suspended their work to listen in concern. “Ay marry, hath he! The two took it into their royal noddles to try a fall, and wrestled together on the grass, when by some ill hap, this same Francis tripped up our Harry, so that he was on the sward for a moment. He was up again forthwith, and in full heart for another round, when all the Frenchmen burst in gabbling; and, though their King was willing to play the match out fairly, they wouldn’t let him, and my Lord Cardinal said something about making ill blood, whereat our King laughed and was content to leave it. As I told him, we have given the French falls enough to let them make much of this one.” “I hope he will yet give the mounseer a good shaking,” muttered Smallbones. “How now, Will! Who’s that at the door? We are on his grace’s work and can touch none other man’s were it the King of France himself, or his Constable, who is finer still.” By way of expressing “No admittance except on business,” Smallbones kept Will Wherry in charge of the door of his little territory, which having a mud wall on two sides, and a broad brook with quaking banks on a third, had been easily fenced on the fourth, so as to protect tent, waggon, horses, and work from the incursions of idlers. Will however answered, “The gentleman saith he hath kindred here.” “Ay!” and there pushed in, past the lad a tall, lean form, with a gay but soiled short cloak over one shoulder, a suit of worn buff, a cap garnished with a dilapidated black and yellow feather, and a pair of gilt spurs. “If this be as they told me, where Armourer Headley’s folk lodge—I have here a sort of a cousin. Yea, yonder’s the brave lad who had no qualms at the flash of a good Toledo in a knight’s fist. How now, my nevvy! Is not my daughter’s nevvy—mine?” “Save your knighthood!” said Smallbones. “Who would have looked to see you here, Sir John? Methought you were in the Emperor’s service!” “A stout man-at-arms is of all services,” returned Fulford. “I’m here with half Flanders to see this mighty show, and pick up a few more lusty Badgers at this encounter of old comrades. Is old Headley here?” “Nay, he is safe at home, where I would I were,” sighed Kit. “And you are my young master his nephew, who knew where to purvey me of good steel,” added Fulford, shaking Giles’s hand. “You are fain, doubtless, you youngsters, to be forth without the old man. Ha! and you’ve no lack of merry company.” Harry Randall’s first impulse had been to look to the right and left for the means of avoiding this encounter, but there was no escape; and he was moreover in most fantastic motley, arrayed in one of the many suits provided for the occasion. It was in imitation of a parrot, brilliant grass-green velvet, touched here and there with scarlet, yellow, or blue. He had been only half disguised on the occasion of Fulford’s visit to his wife, and he perceived the start of recognition in the eyes of the Condottiere, so that he knew it would be vain to try to conceal his identity. “You sought Stephen Birkenholt,” he said. “And you’ve lit on something nearer, if so be you’ll acknowledge the paraquito that your Perronel hath mated with.” The Condottiere burst into a roar of laughter so violent that he had to lean against the mud wall, and hold his sides. “Ha, ha! that I should be father-in-law to a fool!” and then he set off again. “That the sober, dainty little wench should have wedded a fool! Ha! ha! ha!” “Sir,” cried Stephen hotly, “I would have you to know that mine uncle here, Master Harry Randall, is a yeoman of good birth, and that he undertook his present part to support your own father and child! Methinks you are the last who should jeer at and insult him!” “Stephen is right,” said Giles. “This is my kinsman’s tent, and no man shall say a word against Master Harry Randall therein.” “Well crowed, my young London gamebirds,” returned Fulford, coolly. “I meant no disrespect to the gentleman in green. Nay, I am mightily beholden to him for acting his part out and taking on himself that would scarce befit a gentleman of a company—_impedimenta_, as we used to say in the grammar school. How does the old man? —I must find some token to send him.” “He is beyond the reach of all tokens from you save prayers and masses,” returned Randall, gravely. “Ay? You say not so? Old gaffer dead?” And when the soldier was told how the feeble thread of life had been snapped by the shock of joy on his coming, a fit of compunction and sorrow seized him. He covered his face with his hands and wept with a loudness of grief that surprised and touched his hearers; and presently began to bemoan himself that he had hardly a mark in his purse to pay for a mass; but therewith he proceeded to erect before him the cross hilt of poor Abenali’s sword, and to vow thereupon that the first spoil and the first ransom, that it should please the saints to send him, should be entirely spent in masses for the soul of Martin Fulford. This tribute apparently stilled both grief and remorse, for looking up at the grotesque figure of Randall, he said, “Methought they told me, master son, that you were in the right quarters for beads and masses and all that gear—a varlet of Master Butcher-Cardinal’s, or the like—but mayhap ’twas part of your fooling.” “Not so,” replied Randall. “’Tis to the Cardinal that I belong,” holding out his sleeve, where the scarlet hat was neatly worked, “and I’ll brook no word against his honour.” “Ho! ho! Maybe you looked to have the hat on your own head,” quoth Fulford, waxing familiar, “if your master comes to be Pope after his own reckoning. Why, I’ve known a Cardinal get the scarlet because an ape had danced on the roof with him in his arms!” “You forget! I’m a wedded man,” said Randall, who certainly, in private life, had much less of the buffoon about him than his father-in-law. “_Impedimentum_ again,” whistled the knight. “Put a halter round her neck, and sell her for a pot of beer.” “I’d rather put a halter round my own neck for good and all,” said Hal, his face reddening; but among other accomplishments of his position, he had learnt to keep his temper, however indignant he felt. “Well—she’s a knight’s daughter, and preferments will be plenty. Thou’lt make me captain of the Pope’s guard, fair son—there’s no post I should like better. Or I might put up with an Italian earldom or the like. Honour would befit me quite as well as that old fellow, Prosper Colonna; and the Badgers would well become the Pope’s scarlet and yellow liveries.” The Badgers, it appeared, were in camp not far from Gravelines, whence the Emperor was watching the conference between his uncle-in-law and his chief enemy; and thence Fulford, who had a good many French acquaintance, having once served under Francis I., had come over to see the sport. Moreover, he contrived to attach himself to the armourer’s party, in a manner that either Alderman Headley himself, or Tibble Steelman, would effectually have prevented; but which Kit Smallbones had not sufficient moral weight to hinder, even if he had had a greater dislike to being treated as a boon companion by a knight who had seen the world, could appreciate good ale, and tell all manner of tales of his experiences. So the odd sort of kindred that the captain chose to claim with Stephen Birkenholt was allowed, and in right of it, he was permitted to sleep in the waggon; and thereupon his big raw-boned charger was found sharing the fodder of the plump broad-backed cart horses, while he himself, whenever sport was not going forward for him, or work for the armourers, sat discussing with Kit the merits or demerits of the liquors of all nations, either in their own yard or in some of the numerous drinking booths that had sprung up around. To no one was this arrangement so distasteful as to Quipsome Hal, who felt himself in some sort the occasion of the intrusion, and yet was quite unable to prevent it, while everything he said was treated as a joke by his unwelcome father-in-law. It was a coarse time, and Wolsey’s was not a refined or spiritual establishment, but it was decorous, and Randall had such an affection and respect for the innocence of his sister’s young son, that he could not bear to have him exposed to the company of one habituated to the licentiousness of the mercenary soldier. At first the jester hoped to remove the lads from the danger, for the brief remainder of their stay, by making double exertion to obtain places for them at any diversion which might be going on when their day’s work was ended, and of these, of course, there was a wide choice, subordinate to the magnificent masquing of kings and queens. On the last midsummer evening, while their majesties were taking leave of one another, a company of strolling players were exhibiting in an extemporary theatre, and here Hal incited both the youths to obtain seats. The drama was on one of the ordinary and frequent topics of that, as of all other times, and the dumb show and gestures were far more effective than the words, so that even those who did not understand the language of the comedians, who seemed to be Italians, could enter into it, especially as it was interspersed with very expressive songs. An old baron insists on betrothing his daughter and heiress to her kinsman freshly knighted. She is reluctant, weeps, and is threatened, singing afterwards her despair (of course she really was a black-eyed boy). That song was followed by a still more despairing one from the baron’s squire, and a tender interview between them followed. Then came discovery, the baron descending as a thunderbolt, the banishment of the squire, the lady driven at last to wed the young knight, her weeping and bewailing herself under his ill-treatment, which extended to pulling her about by the hair, the return of the lover, notified by a song behind the scenes, a dangerously affectionate meeting, interrupted by the husband, a fierce clashing of swords, mutual slaughter by the two gentlemen, and the lady dying of grief on the top of her lover. Such was the argument of this tragedy, which Giles Headley pronounced to be very dreary pastime, indeed he was amusing himself with an exchange of comfits with a youth who sat next him all the time—for he had found Stephen utterly deaf to aught but the tragedy, following every gesture with eager eyes, lips quivering, and eyes filling at the strains of the love songs, though they were in their native Italian, of which he understood not a word. He rose up with a heavy groan when all was over, as if not yet disenchanted, and hardly answered when his uncle spoke to him afterwards. It was to ask whether the Dragon party were to return at once to London, or to accompany the Court to Gravelines, where, it had just been announced, the King intended to pay a visit to his nephew, the Emperor. Neither Stephen nor Giles knew, but when they reached their own quarters they found that Smallbones had received an intimation that there might be jousts, and that the offices of the armourers would be required. He was very busy packing up his tools, but loudly hilarious, and Sir John Fulford, with a flask of wine beside him, was swaggering and shouting orders to the men as though he were the head of the expedition. Revelations come in strange ways. Perhaps that Italian play might be called Galeotto to Stephen Birkenholt. It affected him all the more because he was not distracted by the dialogue, but was only powerfully touched by the music, and, in the gestures of the lovers, felt all the force of sympathy. It was to him like a kind of prophetic mirror, revealing to him the true meaning of all he had ever felt for Dennet Headley, and of his vexation and impatience at seeing her bestowed upon a dull and indifferent lout like her kinsman, who not only was not good enough for her, but did not even love her, or accept her as anything but his title to the Dragon court. He now thrilled and tingled from head to foot with the perceptions that all this meant love—love to Dennet; and in every act of the drama he beheld only himself, Giles, and Dennet. Watching at first with a sweet fascination, his feelings changed, now to strong yearning, now to hot wrath, and then to horror and dismay. In his troubled sleep after the spectacle, he identified himself with the lover, sang, wooed, and struggled in his person, woke with a start of relief, to find Giles snoring safely beside him, and the watch-dog on his chest instead of an expiring lady. He had not made unholy love to sweet Dennet, nor imperilled her good name, nor slain his comrade. Nor was she yet wedded to that oaf, Giles! But she would be in a few weeks, and then! How was he to brook the sight, chained as he was to the Dragon court—see Giles lord it over her, and all of them, see her missing the love that was burning for her elsewhere. Stephen lost his boyhood on that evening, and, though force of habit kept him like himself outwardly, he never was alone, without feeling dazed, and torn in every direction at once.

21

SWORD OR SMITHY

“Darest thou be so valiant as to play the coward with thy indenture, and to show it a fair pair of heels and run from it?” SHAKESPEARE. TIDINGS came forth on the parting from the French King that the English Court was about to move to Gravelines to pay a visit to the Emperor and his aunt, the Duchess of Savoy. As it was hoped that jousts might make part of the entertainment, the attendance of the Dragon party was required. Giles was unfeignedly delighted at this extension of holiday, Stephen felt that it deferred the day—would it be of strange joy or pain? —of standing face to face with Dennet; and even Kit had come to tolerate foreign parts more with Sir John Fulford to show him the way to the best Flemish ale! The knight took upon himself the conduct of the Dragons. He understood how to lead them by routes where all provisions and ale had not been consumed; and he knew how to swagger and threaten so as to obtain the best of liquor and provisions at each _kermesse_—at least so he said, though it might be doubted whether the Flemings might not have been more willing to yield up their stores to Kit’s open, honest face and free hand. However, Fulford seemed to consider himself one with the party; and he beguiled the way by tales of the doings of the Badgers in Italy and Savoy, which were listened to with avidity by the lads, distracting Stephen from the pain at his heart, and filling both with excitement. They were to have the honour of seeing the Badgers at Gravelines, where they were encamped outside the city to serve as a guard to the great inclosure that was being made of canvas stretched on the masts of ships to mark out the space for a great banquet and dance. The weather broke however just as Henry, his wife and his sister, entered Gravelines; it rained pertinaciously, a tempestuous wind blew down the erection, and as there was no time to set it up again, the sports necessarily took place in the castle and town hall. There was no occasion for the exercise of the armourer’s craft, and as Charles had forbidden the concourse of all save invited guests, everything was comparatively quiet and dull, though the entertainment was on the most liberal scale. Lodgings were provided in the city at the Emperor’s expense, and wherever an Englishman was quartered each night, the imperial officers brought a cast of fine manchet bread, two great silver pots with wine, a pound of sugar, white and yellow candles, and a torch. As Randall said, “Charles gave solid pudding where Francis gave empty praise”! Smallbones and the two youths had very little to do, save to consume these provisions and accept the hospitality freely offered to them at the camp of the Badgers, where Smallbones and the Ancient of the troop sat fraternising over big flagons of Flemish ale, which did not visibly intoxicate the honest smith, but kept him in the dull and drowsy state, which was his idea of the _dolce far niente_ of a holiday. Meanwhile the two youths were made much of by the warriors, Stephen’s dexterity with the bow and back-sword were shown off and lauded, Giles’s strength was praised, and all manner of new feats were taught them, all manner of stories told them; and the shrinking of well-trained young citizens from these lawless me “full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,” and some very truculent-looking, had given way to judicious flattery, and to the attractions of adventure and of a free life, where wealth and honour awaited the bold. Stephen was told that the gentleman in him was visible, that he ought to disdain the flat cap and blue gown, that here was his opportunity, and that among the Badgers he would soon be so rich, famous, glorious, as to wonder that he had ever tolerated the greasy mechanical life of a base burgher. Respect to his oaths to his master—Sir John laughed the scruple to scorn; nay, if he were so tender, he could buy his absolution the first time he had his pouch full of gold. “What shall I do?” was the cry of Stephen’s heart. “My honour and my oath. They bind me. _She_ would weep. My master would deem me ungrateful, Ambrose break his heart. And yet who knows but I should do worse if I stayed, I shall break my own heart if I do. I shall not see—I may forget. No, no, never! but at least I shall never know the moment when the lubber takes the jewel he knows not how to prize! Marches—sieges—there shall I quell this wild beating! I may die there. At least they will allay this present frenzy of my blood.” And he listened when Fulford and Will Marden, a young English man-at-arms with whom he had made friends, concerted how he should meet them at an inn—the sign of the Seven Stars—in Gravelines, and there exchange his prentice’s garb for the buff coat and corslet of a Badger, with the Austrian black and yellow scarf. He listened, but he had not promised. The sense of duty to his master, the honour to his word, always recurred like “first thoughts,” though the longing to escape, the restlessness of hopeless love, the youthful eagerness for adventure and freedom, swept it aside again and again. He had not seen his uncle since the evening of the comedy, for Hal had travelled in the Cardinal’s suite, and the amusements being all within doors, jesters were much in request, as indeed Charles V. was curious in fools, and generally had at least three in attendance. Stephen, moreover, always shrank from his uncle when acting professionally. He had learnt to love and esteem the man during his troubles, but this only rendered the sight of his buffoonery more distressing, and as Randall had not provided himself with his home suit, they were the more cut off from one another. Thus there was all the less to counteract or show the fallacy of Fulford’s recruiting blandishments. The day had come on the evening of which Stephen was to meet Fulford and Marden at the Seven Stars and give them his final answer, in time to allow of their smuggling him out of the city, and sending him away into the country, since Smallbones would certainly suspect him to be in the camp, and as he was still an apprentice, it was possible, though not probable, that the town magistrates might be incited to make search on inquiry, as they were very jealous of the luring away of their apprentices by the Free Companies, and moreover his uncle might move the Cardinal and the King to cause measures to be taken for his recovery. Ill at ease, Stephen wandered away from the hostel where Smallbones was entertaining his friend, the Ancient. He had not gone far down the street when a familiar figure met his eye, no other than that of Lucas Hansen, his brother’s old master, walking along with a pack on his back. Grown as Stephen was, the old man’s recognition was as rapid as his own, and there was a clasp of the hand, an exchange of greeting, while Lucas eagerly asked after his dear pupil, Ambrose. “Come in hither, and we can speak more at ease,” said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting there engaged in sewing up sheets so as to form a pamphlet. Lucas spoke to him in Flemish to explain his own return with the English prentice. “Dost thou dwell here, sir?” asked Stephen. “I thought Rotterdam was thine home.” “Yea,” said Lucas, “so it be, but I am sojourning here to aid in bearing about the seed of the Gospel, for which I walk through these lands of ours. But tell me of thy brother, and of the little Moorish maiden?” Stephen replied with an account of both Ambrose and Aldonza, and likewise of Tibble Steelman, explaining how ill the last had been in the winter, and that therefore he could not be with the party. “I would I had a token to send him,” said Lucas; “but I have nought here that is not either in the Dutch or the French, and neither of those tongues doth he understand. But thy brother, the good Ambrose, can read the Dutch. Wilt thou carry him from me this fresh tractate, showing how many there be that make light of the Apostle Paul’s words not to do evil that good may come?” Stephen had been hearing rather listlessly, thinking how little the good man suspected how doubtful it was that he should bear messages to Ambrose. Now, on that sore spot in his conscience, that sentence darted like an arrow, the shaft finding “mark the archer little meant,” and with a start, not lost on Lucas, he exclaimed “Saith the holy Saint Paul that?” “Assuredly, my son. Brother Cornelis, who is one whose eyes have been opened, can show you the very words, if thou hast any Latin.” Perhaps to gain time, Stephen assented, and the young friar, with a somewhat inquisitive look, presently brought him the sentence “_Et non faciamus mala ut veniant bona_.” Stephen’s Latin was not very fresh, and he hardly comprehended the words, but he stood gazing with a frown of distress on his brow, which made Lucas say, “My son, thou art sorely bestead. Is there aught in which a plain old man can help thee, for thy brother’s sake? Speak freely. Brother Cornelis knows not a word of English. Dost thou owe aught to any man?” “Nay, nay—not that,” said Stephen, drawn in his trouble and perplexity to open his heart to this incongruous confidant, “but, sir, sir, which be the worst, to break my pledge to my master, or to run into a trial which—which will last from day to day, and may be too much for me—yea, and for another—at last?” The colour, the trembling of limb, the passion of voice, revealed enough to Lucas to make him say, in the voice of one who, dried up as he was, had once proved the trial, “’Tis love, thou wouldst say?” “Ay, sir,” said Stephen, turning away, but in another moment bursting forth, “I love my master’s daughter, and she is to wed her cousin, who takes her as her father’s chattel! I wist not why the world had grown dark to me till I saw a comedy at Ardres, where, as in a mirror, ’twas all set forth—yea, and how love was too strong for him and for her, and how shame and death came thereof.” “Those players are good for nought but to wake the passions!” muttered Lucas. “Nay, methought they warned me,” said Stephen. “For, sir,”—he hid his burning face in his hands as he leant on the back of a chair—“I wot that she has ever liked me better, far better than him. And scarce a night have I closed an eye without dreaming it all, and finding myself bringing evil on her, till I deemed ’twere better I never saw her more, and left her to think of me as a forsworn runagate rather than see her wedded only to be flouted—and maybe—do worse.” “Poor lad!” said Lucas; “and what wouldst thou do?” “I have not pledged myself—but I said I would consider of—service among Fulford’s troop,” faltered Stephen. “Among those ruffians—godless, lawless men!” exclaimed Lucas. “Yea, I know what you would say,” returned Stephen, “but they are brave men, better than you deem, sir.” “Were they angels or saints,” said Lucas, rallying his forces, “thou hast no right to join them. Thine oath fetters thee. Thou hast no right to break it and do a sure and certain evil to avoid one that may never befall! How knowst thou how it may be? Nay, if the trial seem to thee over great, thine apprenticeship will soon be at an end.” “Not for two years” “Or thy master, if thou spakest the whole truth, would transfer thine indentures. He is a good man, and if it be as thou sayest, would not see his child tried too sorely. God will make a way for the tempted to escape. They need not take the devil’s way.” “Sir,” said Stephen, lifting up his head, “I thank you. Thus was what I needed. I will tell Sir John Fulford that I ought never to have heeded him.” “Must thou see him again?” “I must. I am to give him his answer at the Seven Stars. But fear not me, Master Lucas, he shall not lead me away.” And Stephen took a grateful leave of the little Dutchman, and charged himself with more messages for Ambrose and Tibble than his overburdened spirit was likely to retain. Lucas went down the stairs with him, and as a sudden thought, said at the foot of them, “’Tis at the Seven Stars thou meetest this knight. Take an old man’s counsel. Taste no liquor there.” “I am no ale bibber,” said Stephen. “Nay, I deemed thee none—but heed my words—captains of landsknechts in _kermesses_ are scarce to be trusted. Taste not.” Stephen gave a sort of laugh at the precaution, and shook himself loose. It was still an hour to the time of meeting, and the Ave-bell was ringing. A church door stood open, and for the first time since he had been at Gravelines he felt that there would be the calm he needed to adjust the conflict of his spirits, and comprehend the new situation, or rather the recurrence to the old one. He seemed to have recovered his former self, and to be able to perceive that things might go on as before, and his heart really leapt at finding he might return to the sight of Dennet and Ambrose and all he loved. His wishes were really that way; and Fulford’s allurements had become very shadowy when he made his way to the Seven Stars, whose vine-covered window allowed many loud voices and fumes of beer and wine to escape into the summer evening air. The room was perhaps cleaner than an English one would have been, but it was reeking with heat and odours, and the forest-bred youth was unwilling to enter, but Fulford and two or three Badgers greeted him noisily and called on him to partake of the supper they had ready prepared. “No, sir knight, I thank you,” said Stephen. “I am bound for my quarters, I came but to thank you for your goodness to me, and to bid you farewell.” “And how as to thy pledge to join us, young man?” demanded Fulford sternly. “I gave no pledge,” said Stephen. “I said I would consider of it.” “Faint-hearted! ha! ha!” and the English Badgers translated the word to the Germans, and set them shouting with derision. “I am not faint-hearted,” said Stephen; “but I will not break mine oath to my master.” “And thine oath to me? Ha!” said Fulford. “I sware you no oath, I gave you no word,” said Stephen. “Ha! Thou darest give me the lie, base prentice. Take that!” And therewith he struck Stephen a crushing blow on the head, which felled him to the ground. The host and all the company, used to pot-house quarrels, and perhaps playing into his hands, took little heed; Stephen was dragged insensible into another room, and there the Badgers began hastily to divest him of his prentice’s gown, and draw his arms into a buff coat. Fulford had really been struck with his bravery, and knew besides that his skill in the armourer’s craft would be valuable, so that it had been determined beforehand that he should—by fair means or foul—leave the Seven Stars a Badger. “By all the powers of hell, you have struck too hard, sir. He is sped,” said Marden anxiously. “Ass! tut!” said Fulford. “Only enough to daze him till he be safe in our quarters—and for that the sooner the better. Here, call Anton to take his heels. We’ll get him forth now as a fellow of our own.” “Hark! What’s that?” “Gentlemen,” said the host hurrying in, “here be some of the gentlemen of the English Cardinal, calling for a nephew of one of them, who they say is in this house.” With an imprecation, Fulford denied all connection with gentlemen of the Cardinal; but there was evidently an invasion, and in another moment, several powerful-looking men in the crimson and black velvet of Wolsey’s train had forced their way into the chamber, and the foremost, seeing Stephen’s condition at a glance, exclaimed loudly, “Thou villain! traitor! kidnapper! This is thy work.” “Ha! ha!” shouted Fulford, “whom have we here? The Cardinal’s fool a masquing! Treat us to a caper, quipsome sir?” “I’m more like to treat you to the gyves,” returned Randall. “Away with you! The watch are at hand. Were it not for my wife’s sake, they should bear you off to the city jail; the Emperor should know how you fill your ranks.” It was quite true. The city guard were entering at the street door, and the host hurried Fulford and his men, swearing and raging, out at a back door provided for such emergencies. Stephen was beginning to recover by this time. His uncle knelt down, took his head on his shoulder, and Lucas washed off the blood and administered a drop of wine. His first words were: “Was it Giles? Where is she?” “Still going over the play!” thought Lucas. “Nay, nay, lad. ’ Twas one of the soldiers who played thee this scurvy trick! All’s well now. Thou wilt soon be able to quit this place.” “I remember now,” said Stephen, “Sir John said I gave him the lie when I said I had given no pledge. But I had not!” “Thou hast been a brave fellow, and better broken head than broken troth,” said his uncle. “But how came you here,” asked Stephen. “In the nick of time?” It was explained that Lucas, not doubting Stephen’s resolution, but quite aware of the tricks of landsknecht captains with promising recruits in view, had gone first in search of Smallbones, but had found him and the Ancient so deeply engaged in potations from the liberal supply of the Emperor to all English guests, that there was no getting him apart, and he was too much muddled to comprehend if he could have been spoken with. Lucas then, in desperation, betook himself to the convent where Wolsey was magnificently lodged. Ill May Day had made him, as well as others, well acquainted with the relationship between Stephen and Randall, though he was not aware of the further connection with Fulford. He hoped, even if unable to see Randall, to obtain help on behalf of an English lad in danger, and happily he arrived at a moment when State affairs were going on, and Randall was refreshing himself by a stroll in the cloister. When Lucas had made him understand the situation, his dismay was only equalled by his promptitude. He easily obtained the loan of one of the splendid suits of scarlet and crimson, guarded with black velvet a hand broad, which were worn by the Cardinal’s secular attendants—for he was well known by this time in the household to be very far from an absolute fool, and indeed had done many a good turn to his comrades. Several of the gentlemen, indignant at the threatened outrage on a young Englishman, and esteeming the craftsmen of the Dragon, volunteered to accompany him, and others warned the watch. There was some difficulty still, for the burgher guards, coming up puffing and blowing, wanted to carry off the victim and keep him in ward to give evidence against the mercenaries, whom they regarded as a sort of wolves, so that even the Emperor never durst quarter them within one of the cities. The drawn swords of Randall’s friends however settled that matter, and Stephen, though still dizzy, was able to walk. Thus leaning on his uncle, he was escorted back to the hostel. “The villain!” the jester said on the way, “I mistrusted him, but I never thought he would have abused our kindred in this fashion. I would fain have come down to look after thee, nevvy, but these kings and queens are troublesome folk. The Emperor—he is a pale, shame-faced, solemn lad. Maybe he museth, but he had scarce a word to say for himself. Our Hal tried clapping on the shoulder, calling him fair coz, and the like, in his hearty fashion. Behold, what doth he but turn round with such a look about the long lip of him as my Lord of Buckingham might have if his scullion made free with him. His aunt, the Duchess of Savoy, is a merry dame, and a wise! She and our King can talk by the ell, but as for the Emperor, he speaketh to none willingly save Queen Katharine, who is of his own stiff Spanish humour, and he hath eyes for none save Queen Mary, who would have been his empress had high folk held to their word. And with so tongue-tied a host, and the rain without, what had the poor things to do by way of disporting themselves with but a show of fools. I’ve had to go through every trick and quip I learnt when I was with old Nat Fire-eater. And I’m stiffer in the joints and weightier in the heft than I was in those days when I slept in the fields, and fasted more than ever Holy Church meant. But, heigh ho! I ought to be supple enough after the practice of these three days. Moreover, if it could loose a fool’s tongue to have a king and queen for interpreters, I had them—for there were our Harry and Moll catching at every gibe as fast as my brain could hatch it, and rendering it into French as best thy might, carping and quibbling the while underhand at one another’s renderings, and the Emperor sitting by in his black velvet, smiling about as much as a felon at the hangman’s jests. All his poor fools moreover, and the King’s own, ready to gnaw their baubles for envy! That was the only sport I had! I’m wearier than if I’d been plying Smallbones’ biggest hammer. The worst of it is that my Lord Cardinal is to stay behind and go on to Bruges as ambassador, and I with him, so thou must bear my greetings to thy naunt, and tell her I’m keeping from picking up a word of French or Flemish lest this same Charles should take a fancy to me and ask me of my master, who would give away his own head to get the Pope’s fool’s cap.” “_Wer da_? _Qui va là_?” asked a voice, and the summer twilight revealed two figures with cloaks held high and drooping Spanish hats; one of whom, a slender, youthful figure, so far as could be seen under his cloak, made inquiries, first in Flemish, then in French, as to what ailed the youth. Lucas replied in the former tongue, and one of the Englishmen could speak French. The gentleman seemed much concerned, asked if the watch had been at hand, and desired Lucas to assure the young Englishman that the Emperor would be much distressed at the tidings, asked where he was lodged, and passed on. “Ah ha!” muttered the jester, “if my ears deceive me now, I’ll never trust them again! Mynheer Charles knows a few more tricks than he is fain to show off in royal company. Come on, Stevie! I’ll see thee to thy bed. Old Kit is too far gone to ask after thee. In sooth, I trow that my sweet father-in-law set his Ancient to nail him to the wine pot. And Master Giles I saw last with some of the grooms. I said nought to him, for I trow thou wouldst not have him know thy plight! I’ll be with thee in the morning ere thou partest, if kings, queens, and cardinals roar themselves hoarse for the Quipsome.” With this promise Hal Randall bestowed his still dulled and half-stunned nephew carefully on the pallet provided by the care of the purveyors. Stephen slept dreamily at first, then soundly, and woke at the sound of the bells of Gravelines to the sense that a great crisis in his life was over, a strange wild dream of evil dispelled, and that he was to go home to see, hear, and act as he could, with a heartache indeed, but with the resolve to do his best as a true and honest man. Smallbones was already afoot—for the start for Calais was to be made on that very day. The smith was fully himself again, and was bawling for his subordinates, who had followed his example in indulging in the good cheer, and did not carry it off so easily. Giles, rather silent and surly, was out of bed, shouting answers to Smallbones, and calling on Stephen to truss his points. He was in a mood not easy to understand, he would hardly speak, and never noticed the marks of the fray on Stephen’s temple—only half hidden by the dark curly hair. This was of course a relief, but Stephen could not help suspecting that he had been last night engaged in some revel about which he desired no inquiries. Randall came just as the operation was completed. He was in a good deal of haste, having to restore the groom’s dress he wore by the time the owner had finished the morning toilet of the Lord Cardinal’s palfreys. He could not wait to inquire how Stephen had contrived to fall into the hands of Fulford, his chief business being to put under safe charge a bag of coins, the largesse from the various princes and nobles whom he had diverted—ducats, crowns, dollars, and angels all jingling together—to be bestowed wherever Perronel kept her store, a matter which Hal was content not to know, though the pair cherished a hope some day to retire on it from fooling. “Thou art a good lad, Steve,” said Hal. “I’m right glad thou leavest this father of mine behind thee. I would not see thee such as he—no, not for all the gold we saw on the Frenchmen’s backs.” This was the jester’s farewell, but it was some time before the waggon was under way, for the carter and one of the smiths were missing, and were only at noon found in an alehouse, both very far gone in liquor, and one with a black eye. Kit discoursed on sobriety in the most edifying manner, as at last he drove heavily along the street, almost the last in the baggage train of the king and queens—but still in time to be so included in it so as to save all difficulty at the gates. It was, however, very late in the evening when they reached Calais, so that darkness was coming on as they waited their turn at the drawbridge, with a cart full of scullions and pots and pans before them, and a waggon-load of tents behind. The warders in charge of the gateway had orders to count over all whom they admitted, so that no unauthorised person might enter that much-valued fortress. When at length the waggon rolled forward into the shadow of the great towered gateway on the outer side of the moat, the demand was made, who was there? Giles had always insisted, as leader of the party, on making reply to such questions, and Smallbones waited for his answer, but none was forthcoming. Therefore Kit shouted in reply, “Alderman Headley’s wain and armourers. Two journeymen, one prentice, two smiths, two waggoners.” “Seven!” rejoined the warder. “One—two—three—four—five. Ha! your company seems to be lacking.” “Giles must have ridden on,” suggested Stephen, while Kit, growling angrily, called on the lazy fellow, Will Wherry, to wake and show himself. But the officials were greatly hurried, and as long as no dangerous person got into Calais, it mattered little to them who might be left outside, so they hurried on the waggon into the narrow street. It was well that it was a summer night, for lodgings there were none. Every hostel was full and all the houses besides. The earlier comers assured Kit that it was of no use to try to go on. The streets up to the wharf were choked, and he might think himself lucky to have his waggon to sleep in. But the horses! And food? However, there was one comfort—English tongues answered, if it was only with denials. Kit’s store of travelling money was at a low ebb, and it was nearly exhausted by the time, at an exorbitant price, he had managed to get a little hay and water for the horses, and a couple of loaves and a haunch of bacon among the five hungry men. They were quite content to believe that Master Giles had ridden on before and secured better quarters and viands, nor could they much regret the absence of Will Wherry’s wide mouth. Kit called Stephen to council in the morning. His funds would not permit waiting for the missing ones, if he were to bring home any reasonable proportion of gain to his master. He believed that Master Headley would by no means risk the whole party loitering at Calais, when it was highly probable that Giles might have joined some of the other travellers, and embarked by himself. After all, Kit’s store had to be well-nigh expended before the horses, waggon, and all, could find means to encounter the miseries of the transit to Dover. Then, glad as he was to be on his native soil, his spirits sank lower and lower as the waggon creaked on under the hot sun towards London. He had actually brought home only four marks to make over to his master; and although he could show a considerable score against the King and various nobles, these debts were not apt to be promptly discharged, and what was worse, two members of his party and one horse were missing. He little knew how narrow an escape he had had of losing a third!

22

AN INVASION

“What shall be the maiden’s fate? Who shall be the maiden’s mate?” SCOTT. NO Giles Headley appeared to greet the travellers, though Kit Smallbones had halted at Canterbury, to pour out entreaties to St. Thomas, and the vow of a steel and gilt reliquary of his best workmanship to contain the old shoe, which a few years previously had so much disgusted Erasmus and his companion. Poor old fellow, he was too much crest-fallen thoroughly to enjoy even the gladness of his little children; and his wife made no secret of her previous conviction that he was too dunderheaded not to run into some coil, when she was not there to look after him. The alderman was more merciful. Since there had been no invasion from Salisbury, he had regretted the not having gone himself to Ardres, and he knew pretty well that Kit’s power lay more in his arms than in his brain. He did not wonder at the small gain, nor at the having lost sight of the young man, and confidently expected the lost ones soon to appear. As to Dennet, her eyes shone quietly, and she took upon herself to send down to let Mistress Randall know of her nephew’s return, and invite her to supper to hear the story of his doings. The girl did not look at all like a maiden uneasy about her lost lover, but much more like one enjoying for the moment the immunity from a kind of burthen; and, as she smiled, called for Stephen’s help in her little arrangements, and treated him in the friendly manner of old times, he could not but wonder at the panic that had overpowered him for a time like a fever of the mind. There was plenty to speak of in the glories of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and the transactions with the knights and nobles; and Stephen held his peace as to his adventure, but Dennet’s eyes were sharper than Kit’s. She spied the remains of the bruise under his black curly hair; and while her father and Tib were unravelling the accounts from Kit’s brain and tally-sticks, she got the youth out into the gallery, and observed, “So thou hast a broken head. See here are grandmother’s lily-leaves in strong waters. Let me lay one on for thee. There, sit down on the step, then I can reach.” “’Tis well nigh whole now, sweet mistress,” said Stephen, complying however, for it was too sweet to have those little fingers busy about him, for the offer to be declined. “How gatst thou the blow?” asked Dennet. “Was it at single-stick? Come, thou mayst tell me. ’ Twas in standing up for some one.” “Nay, mistress, I would it had been.” “Thou hast been in trouble,” she said, leaning on the baluster above him. “Or did ill men set on thee?” “That’s the nearest guess,” said Stephen. “’Twas that tall father of mine aunt’s, the fellow that came here for armour, and bought poor Master Michael’s sword.” “And sliced the apple on thine hand. Ay?” “He would have me for one of his Badgers.” “Thee! Stephen!” It was a cry of pain as well as horror. “Yea, mistress; and when I refused, the fellow dealt me a blow, and laid me down senseless, to bear me off willy nilly, but that good old Lucas Hansen brought mine uncle to mine aid—” Dennet clasped her hands. “O Stephen, Stephen! Now I know how good the Lord is. Wot ye, I asked of Tibble to take me daily to St. Faith’s to crave of good St. Julian to have you all in his keeping, and saith he on the way, ‘Methinks, mistress, our dear Lord would hear you if you spake to Him direct, with no go-between.’ I did as he bade me, Stephen, I went to the high Altar, and prayed there, and Tibble went with me, and lo, now, He hath brought you back safe. We will have a mass of thanksgiving on the very morn.” Stephen’s heart could not but bound, for it was plain enough for whom the chief force of these prayers had been offered. “Sweet mistress,” he said, “they have availed me indeed. Certes, they warded me in the time of sore trial and temptation.” “Nay,” said Dennet, “thou _couldst_ not have longed to go away from hence with those ill men who live by slaying and plundering?” The present temptation was to say that he had doubted whether this course would not have been for the best both for himself and for her; but he recollected that Giles might be at the gate, and if so, he should feel as if he had rather have bitten out his tongue than have let Dennet know the state of the case, so he only answered— “There be sorer temptations in the world for us poor rogues than little home-biding house crickets like thee wot of, mistress. Well that ye can pray for us without knowing all!” Stephen had never consciously come so near love-making, and his honest face was all one burning glow with the suppressed feeling, while Dennet lingered till the curfew warned them of the lateness of the hour, both with a strange sense of undefined pleasure in the being together in the summer twilight. Day after day passed on with no news of Giles or Will Wherry. The alderman grew uneasy, and sent Stephen to ask his brother to write to Randall, or to some one else in Wolsey’s suite, to make inquiries at Bruges. But Ambrose was found to have gone abroad in the train of Sir Thomas More, and nothing was heard till their return six weeks later, when Ambrose brought home a small packet which had been conveyed to him through one of the Emperor’s suite. It was tied up with a long tough pale wisp of hair, evidently from the mane or tail of some Flemish horse, and was addressed, “To Master Ambrose Birkenholt, menial clerk to the most worshipful Sir Thomas More, Knight, Under Sheriff of the City of London. These greeting—” Within, when Ambrose could open the missive, was another small parcel, and a piece of brown coarse paper, on which was scrawled— “Good Ambrose Birkenholt,—I pray thee to stand my friend, and let all know whom it may concern, that when this same billet comes to hand, I shall be far on the march to High Germany, with a company of lusty fellows in the Emperor’s service. They be commanded by the good knight, Sir John Fulford. “If thou canst send tidings to my mother, bid her keep her heart up, for I shall come back a captain, full of wealth and honour, and that will be better than hammering for life—or being wedded against mine own will. There never was troth plight between my master’s daughter and me, and my time is over, so I be quit with them, and I thank my master for his goodness. They shall all hear of me some of these days. Will Wherry is my groom, and commends him to his mother. And so, commending thee and all the rest to Our Lady and the saints, “Thine to command, “GILES HEADLEY, “_Man-at-Arms in the Honourable Company_ _of Sir John Fulford_, _Knight_.” On a separate strip was written— “Give this packet to the little Moorish maid, and tell her that I will bring her better by and by, and mayhap make her a knight’s lady; but on thy life, say nought to any other.” It was out now! Ambrose’s head was more in Sir Thomas’s books than in real life at all times, or he would long ago have inferred something—from the jackdaw’s favourite phrase—from Giles’s modes of haunting his steps, and making him the bearer of small tokens—an orange, a simnel cake, a bag of walnuts or almonds to Mistress Aldonza, and of the smiles, blushes, and thanks with which she greeted them. Nay, had she not burst into tears and entreated to be spared when Lady More wanted to make a match between her and the big porter, and had not her distress led Mistress Margaret to appeal to her father, who had said he should as soon think of wedding the silver-footed Thetis to Polyphemus. “Tilley valley! Master More,” the lady had answered, “will all your fine pagan gods hinder the wench from starving on earth, and leading apes in hell.” Margaret had answered that Aldonza should never do the first, and Sir Thomas had gravely said that he thought those black eyes would lead many a man on earth before they came to the latter fate. Ambrose hid the parcel for her deep in his bosom before he asked permission of his master to go to the Dragon court with the rest of the tidings. “He always was an unmannerly cub,” said Master Headley, as he read the letter. “Well, I’ve done my best to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear! I’ve done my duty by poor Robert’s son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though ’tis pity of the old name! Ha! what’s this? ‘Wedded against my will—no troth plight.’ Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, my maid!” Dennet screwed up her little mouth, and looked very demure, but she twinkled her bright eyes, and said, “My heart will not break, sir; I am in no haste to be wed.” Her father pinched her cheek and said she was a silly wench; but perhaps he marked the dancing step with which the young mistress went about her household cares, and how she was singing to herself songs that certainly were not “Willow! willow!” Ambrose had no scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks. There came a wonderful illumination and agitation over the girl’s usually impassive features, giving all that they needed to make them surpassingly beautiful. “Woe is me!” was, however, her first exclamation. “That he should have given up all for me! Oh! if I had thought it!” But while she spoke as if she were shocked and appalled, her eyes belied her words. They shone with the first absolute certainty of love, and there was no realising as yet the years of silent waiting and anxiety that must go by, nay, perhaps an entire lifetime of uncertainty of her lover’s truth or untruth, life or death. Dame Alice called her, and in a rambling, maundering way, charged her with loitering and gadding with the young men; and Margaret saw by her colour and by her eyes that some strange thing had happened to her. Margaret had, perhaps, some intuition; for was not her heart very tender towards a certain young barrister by name Roper whom her father doubted as yet, because of his Lutheran inclinations. By and by she discovered that she needed Aldonza to comb out her long dark hair, and ere long, she had heard all the tale of the youth cured by the girl’s father, and all his gifts, and how Aldonza deemed him too great and too good for her (poor Giles!) though she knew she should never do more than look up to him with love and gratitude from afar. And she never so much as dreamt that he would cast an eye on her save in kindness. Oh yes, she knew what he had taught the daw to say, but then she was a child, she durst not deem it more. And Margaret More was more kind and eager than worldly wise, and she encouraged Aldonza to watch and wait, promised protection from all enforced suits and suitors, and gave assurances of shelter as her own attendant as long as the girl should need it. Master Headley, with some sighing and groaning, applied himself to write to the mother at Salisbury what had become of her son; but he had only spent one evening over the trying task, when just as the supper bell was ringing, with Master Hope and his wife as guests, there were horses’ feet in the court, and Master Tiptoff appeared, with a servant on another horse, which carried besides a figure in camlet, on a pillion. No sooner was this same figure lifted from her steed and set down on the steps, while the master of the house and his daughter came out to greet her, than she began, “Master Alderman Headley, I am here to know what you have done with my poor son!” “Alack, good cousin!” “Alack me no alacks,” she interrupted, holding up her riding rod. “I’ll have no dissembling, there hath been enough of that, Giles Headley. Thou hast sold him, soul and body, to one of yon cruel, bloodthirsty plundering, burning captains, that the poor child may be slain and murthered! Is this the fair promises you made to his father—wiling him away from his poor mother, a widow, with talking of teaching him the craft, and giving him your daughter! My son, Tiptoff here, told me the spousal was delayed and delayed, and he doubted whether it would ever come off, but I thought not of this sending him beyond seas, to make merchandise of him. And you call yourself an alderman! The gown should be stript off the back of you, and shall be, if there be any justice in London for a widow woman.” “Nay, cousin, you have heard some strange tale,” said Master Headley, who, much as he would have dreaded the attack beforehand, faced it the more calmly and manfully because the accusation was so outrageous. “Ay, so I told her,” began her son-in-law, “but she hath been neither to have nor to hold since the—” “And how should I be to have or to hold by a nincompoop like thee,” she said, turning round on him, “that would have me sit down and be content forsooth, when mine only son is kidnapped to be sold to the Turks or to work in the galleys, for aught I know.” “Mistress!” here Master Hope’s voice came in, “I would counsel you to speak less loud, and hear before you accuse. We of the City of London know Master Alderman Headley too well to hear him railed against.” “Ah! you’re all of a piece,” she began; but by this time Master Tiptoff had managed at least to get her into the hall, and had exchanged words enough with the alderman to assure himself that there was an explanation, nay, that there was a letter from Giles himself. This the indignant mother presently was made to understand—and as the alderman had borrowed the letter in order to copy it for her, it was given to her. She could not read, and would trust no one but her son-in-law to read it to her. “Yea, you have it very pat,” she said, “but how am I to be assured ’tis not all writ here to hoodwink a poor woman like me.” “’Tis Giles’s hand,” averred Tiptoff. “And if you will,” added the alderman, with wonderful patience, “to-morrow you may speak with the youth who received it. Come, sit down and sup with us, and then you shall learn from Smallbones how this mischance befel, all from my sending two young heads together, and one who, though a good fellow, could not hold all in rule.” “Ay—you’ve your reasons for anything,” she muttered, but being both weary and hungry, she consented to eat and drink, while Tiptoff, who was evidently ashamed of her violence, and anxious to excuse it, managed to explain that a report had been picked up at Romsey, by a bare-footed friar from Salisbury, that young Giles Headley had been seen at Ghent by one of the servants of a wool merchant, riding with a troop of Free Companions in the Emperor’s service. All the rest was deduced from this intelligence by the dame’s own imagination. After supper she was invited to interrogate Kit and Stephen, and her grief and anxiety found vent in fierce scolding at the misrule which had permitted such a villain as Fulford to be haunting and tempting poor fatherless lads. Master Headley had reproached poor Kit for the same thing, but he could only represent that Giles, being a freeman, was no longer under his authority. However, she stormed on, being absolutely convinced that her son’s evasion was every one’s fault but his own. Now it was the alderman for misusing him, overtasking the poor child, and deferring the marriage, now it was that little pert poppet, Dennet, who had flouted him, now it was the bad company he had been led into—the poor babe who had been bred to godly ways. The alderman was really sorry for her, and felt himself to blame so far as that he had shifted the guidance of the expedition to such an insufficient head as poor Smallbones, so he let her rail on as much as she would, till the storm exhausted itself, and she settled into the trust that Giles would soon grow weary and return. The good man felt bound to show her all hospitality, and the civilities to country cousins were in proportion to the rarity of their visits. So Mrs. Headley stayed on after Tiptoff’s return to Salisbury, and had the best view feasible of all the pageants and diversions of autumn. She saw some magnificent processions of clergy, she was welcomed at a civic banquet and drank of the loving cup, and she beheld the Lord Mayor’s Show in all its picturesque glory of emblazoned barges on the river. In fact, she found the position of denizen of an alderman’s household so very agreeable that she did her best to make it a permanency. Nay, Dennet soon found that she considered herself to be waiting there and keeping guard till her son’s return should establish her there, and that she viewed the girl already as a daughter—for which Dennet was by no means obliged to her! She lavished counsel on her hostess, found fault with the maidens, criticised the cookery, walked into the kitchen and still-room with assistance and directions, and even made a strong effort to possess herself of the keys. It must be confessed that Dennet was saucy! It was her weapon of self-defence, and she considered herself insulted in her own house. There she stood, exalted on a tall pair of pattens before the stout oaken table in the kitchen where a glowing fire burned; pewter, red and yellow earthenware, and clean scrubbed trenchers made a goodly show, a couple of men-cooks and twice as many scullions obeyed her behests—only the superior of the two first ever daring to argue a point with her. There she stood, in her white apron, with sleeves turned up, daintily compounding her mincemeat for Christmas, when in stalked Mrs. Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame’s scarlet-hosed ankles. She shook her petticoats at him, but Dennet tittered even while declaring that Tray hurt nobody. Mrs. Headley reviled the dog, and then proceeded to advise Dennet that she should chop her citron finer. Dennet made answer “that father liked a good stout piece of it.” Mistress Headley offered to take the chopper and instruct her how to compound all in the true Sarum style. “Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame’s recipe!” said Dennet, grasping her implement firmly. “Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders! Where’s the goose? What?” as the girl looked amazed, “where hast thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the mincemeat?” “I have never lived with barbarous, savage folk,” said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, it followed her like a train, while she rushed to box the ears of the offender, crying, “You set him on, you little saucy vixen! I saw it in your eyes. Let the rascal be scourged.” “Not so,” said Dennet, with prim mouth and laughing eyes. “Far be it from me! But ’tis ever the wont of the kitchen, when those come there who have no call thither.” Mistress Headley flounced away, dish-cloth and all, to go whimpering to the alderman with her tale of insults. She trusted that her cousin would give the pert wench a good beating. She was not a whit too old for it. “How oft did you beat Giles, good kinswoman?” said Dennet demurely, as she stood by her father. “Whisht, whisht, child,” said her father, “this may not be! I cannot have my guest flouted.” “If she act as our guest, I will treat her with all honour and courtesy,” said the maiden; “but when she comes where we look not for guests, there is no saying what the black guard may take it on them to do.” Master Headley was mischievously tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet’s ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father’s foolish fondness. He would rue the day! Meantime if the alderman’s peace on one side was disturbed by his visitor, on the other, suitors for Dennet’s hand gave him little rest. She was known to be a considerable heiress, and though Mistress Headley gave every one to understand that there was a contract with Giles, and that she was awaiting his return, this did not deter more wooers than Dennet ever knew of, from making proposals to her father. Jasper Hope was offered, but he was too young, and besides, was a mercer—and Dennet and her father were agreed that her husband must go on with the trade. Then there was a master armourer, but he was a widower with sons and daughters as old as Dennet, and she shook her head and laughed at the bare notion. There also came a young knight who would have turned the Dragon court into a tilt-yard, and spent all the gold that long years of prudent toil had amassed. If Mistress Headley deemed each denial the result of her vigilance for her son’s interests, she was the more impelled to expatiate on the folly of leaving a maid of sixteen to herself, to let the household go to rack and ruin; while as to the wench, she might prank herself in her own conceit, but no honest man would soon look at her for a wife, if her father left her to herself, without giving her a good stepmother, or at least putting a kinswoman in authority over her. The alderman was stung. He certainly had warmed a snake on his hearth, and how was he to be rid of it? He secretly winked at the resumption of a forge fire that had been abandoned, because the noise and smoke incommoded the dwelling-house, and Kit Smallbones hammered his loudest there, when the guest might be taking her morning nap; but this had no effect in driving her away, though it may have told upon her temper; and good-humoured Master Headley was harassed more than he had ever been in his life. “It puts me past my patience,” said he, turning into Tibble’s special workshop one afternoon. “Here hath Mistress Hillyer of the Eagle been with me full of proposals that I would give my poor wench to that scapegrace lad of hers, who hath been twice called to account before the guild, but who now, forsooth, is to turn over a new leaf.” “So I wis would the Dragon under him,” quoth Tibble. “I told her ’twas not to be thought of, and then what does the dame but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like mine. There’s the work of yonder Sarum woman. I tell thee, Tib, never was bull in the ring more baited than am I.” “Yea, sir,” returned Tib, “there’ll be no help for it till our young mistress be wed.” “Ay! that’s the rub! But I’ve not seen one whom I could mate with her—let alone one who would keep up the old house. Giles would have done that passably, though he were scarce worthy of the wench, even without—” An expressive shake of the head denoted the rest. “And now if he ever come home at all, ’twill be as a foul-mouthed, plundering scarecrow, like the kites of men-at-arms, who, if they lose not their lives, lose all that makes an honest life in the Italian wars. I would have writ to Edmund Burgess, but I hear his elder brother is dead, and he is driving a good traffic at York. Belike too he is wedded.” “Nay,” said Tibble, “I could tell of one who would be true and faithful to your worship, and a loving husband to Mistress Dennet, ay, and would be a master that all of us would gladly cleave to. For he is godly after his lights, and sound-hearted, and wots what good work be, and can do it.” “That were a son-in-law, Tib! Of who speakest thou? Is he of good birth?” “Yea, of gentle birth and breeding.” “And willing? But that they all are. Wherefore then hath he never made suit?” “He hath not yet his freedom.” “Who be it then?” “He that made this elbow-piece for the suit that Queen Margaret ordered for the little King of Scots,” returned Tibble, producing an exquisite miniature bit of workmanship. “Stephen Birkenholt! The fool’s nephew! Mine own prentice!” “Yea, and the best worker in steel we have yet turned out. Since the sickness of last winter hath stiffened my joints and dimmed mine eyes, I had rather trust dainty work such as this to him than to myself.” “Stephen! Tibble, hath he set thee on to this?” “No, sir. We both know too well what becometh us; but when you were casting about for a mate for my young mistress, I could not but think how men seek far, and overlook the jewel at their feet.” “He hath nought! That brother of his will give him nought.” “He hath what will be better for the old Dragon and for your worship’s self, than many a bag of gold, sir.” “Thou sayst truly there, Tib. I know him so far that he would not be the ingrate Jack to turn his back on the old master or the old man. He is a good lad. But—but—I’ve ever set my face against the prentice wedding the master’s daughter, save when he is of her own house, like Giles. Tell me, Tibble, deemst thou that the varlet hath dared to lift his eyes to the lass?” “I wot nothing of love!” said Tibble, somewhat grimly. “I have seen nought. I only told your worship where a good son and a good master might be had. Is it your pleasure, sir, that we take in a freight of sea-coal from Simon Collier for the new furnace? His is purest, if a mark more the chaldron.” He spoke as if he put the recommendation of the son and master on the same line as that of the coal. Mr. Headley answered the business matters absently, and ended by saying he would think on the council. In Tibble’s workroom, with the clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling’s cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill-starched it was. The bird had taken fright and flown to the tree in the court; Dennet hastened in pursuit, but all the boys and children in the court rushing out after her, her blandishments had no chance, and “Goldspot” had fluttered on to the gateway. Stephen had by this time come out, and hastened to the gate, hoping to turn the truant back from escaping into Cheapside; but all in vain, it flew out while the market was in full career, and he could only call back to her that he would not lose sight of it. Out he hurried, Dennet waiting in a sort of despair by the tree for a time that seemed to her endless, until Stephen reappeared under the gate, with a signal that all was well. She darted to meet him. “Yea, mistress, here he is, the little caitiff. He was just knocked down by this country lad’s cap—happily not hurt. I told him you would give him a tester for your bird.” “With all my heart!” and Dennet produced the coin. “Oh! Stephen, are you sure he is safe? Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me! Wink with thine eye—thou saucy rogue! Wottest thou not but for Stephen they might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot needles?” “His wing is grown since the moulting,” said Stephen. “It should be cut to hinder such mischances.” “Will you do it? I will hold him,” said Dennet. “Ah! ’tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing—that no armour of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots. But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. Know thy friends, Master Stare.” And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib and apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the other trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot, stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the other to clip the pen-feathers. “See there, Master Alderman,” cried Mistress Headley, bursting on him from the gallery stairs. “Be that what you call fitting for your daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath? I ever told you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself. And now you see it.” Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, “O father, father! suffer her not. He did no wrong. He was cutting my bird’s wing.” “I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house,” said the alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all at once. “Stephen Birkenholt, come here.” Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions. “Stephen,” said the alderman, “thou art a true and worthy lad! Canst thou love my daughter?” “I—I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,” stammered Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption. “Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me? And Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth—though he bring nought but skill and honesty?” “O, father, father! I—I had rather have him than any other!” “Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and wife, so soon as the young man’s term be over, and he be a freeman—so he continue to be that which he seems at present. Thereto I give my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof ye are witnesses, all of you. And God’s blessing on it.” A tremendous hurrah arose, led by Kit Smallbones, from every workman in the court, and the while Stephen and Dennet, unaware of anything else, flew into one another’s arms, while Goldspot, on whom the operation had been fortunately completed, took refuge upon Stephen’s head. “O, Mistress Dennet, I have made you black all over!” was Stephen’s first word. “Heed not, I ever loved the black!” she cried, as her eyes sparkled. “So I have done what was to thy mind, my lass?” said Master Headley, who, without ever having thought of consulting his daughter, was delighted to see that her heart was with him. “Sir, I did not know fully—but indeed I should never have been so happy as I am now.” “Sir,” added Stephen, putting his knee to the ground, “it nearly wrung my heart to think of her as belonging to another, though I never durst utter aught”—and while Dennet embraced her father, Stephen sobbed for very joy, and with difficulty said in broken words something about a “son’s duty and devotion.” They were broken in upon by Mistress Headley, who, after standing in mute consternation, fell on them in a fury. She understood the device now! All had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this beggarly brat. She had seen through the little baggage from the first, and she pitied Master Headley. Rage was utterly ungovernable in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his assistance, and carried her, kicking and screaming like a naughty child, into the house. There was small restraint of temper in those days even in high life, and below it, there was some reason for the employment of the padlock and the ducking stool. Floods of tears restored the dame to some sort of composure; but she declared she could stay no longer in a house where her son had been ill-used and deceived, and she had been insulted. The alderman thought the insult had been the other way, but he was too glad to be rid of her on any terms to gainsay her, and at his own charge, undertook to procure horse and escort to convey her safely to Salisbury the next morning. He advised Stephen to keep out of her sight for the rest of the day, giving leave of absence, so that the youth, as one treading on air, set forth to carry to his brother, his aunt, and if possible, his uncle, the intelligence that he could as yet hardly believe was more than a happy dream.

23

UNWELCOME PREFERMENT

“I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now To be thy lord and master. Seek the king! That sun I pray may never set.” SHAKESPEARE. MATTERS flowed on peaceably with Stephen and Dennet. The alderman saw no reason to repent his decision, hastily as it had been made. Stephen gave himself no unseemly airs of presumption, but worked on as one whose heart was in the business, and Dennet rewarded her father’s trust by her discretion. They were happily married in the summer of 1522, as soon as Stephen’s apprenticeship was over; and from that time, he was in the position of the master’s son, with more and more devolving on him as Tibble became increasingly rheumatic every winter, and the alderman himself grew in flesh and in distaste to exertion. Ambrose meanwhile prospered with his master, and could easily have obtained some office in the law courts that would have enabled him to make a home of his own; but if he had the least inclination to the love of women, it was all merged in a silent distant worship of “sweet pale Margaret, rare pale Margaret,” the like-minded daughter of Sir Thomas More—an affection which was so entirely devotion at a shrine, that it suffered no shock when Sir Thomas at length consented to his daughter’s marriage with William Roper. Ambrose was the only person who ever received any communication from Giles Headley. They were few and far between, but when Stephen Gardiner returned from his embassy to Pope Clement VII., who was then at Orvieto, one of the suite reported to Ambrose how astonished he had been by being accosted in good English by one of the imperial men-at-arms, who were guarding his Holiness in actual though unconfessed captivity. This person had sent his commendations to Ambrose, and likewise a laborious bit of writing, which looked as if he were fast forgetting the art. It bade Ambrose inform his mother and all his friends and kin that he was well and coming to preferment, and inclosed for Aldonza a small mother-of-pearl cross blessed by the Pope. Giles added that he should bring her finer gifts by and by. Seven years’ constancy! It gave quite a respectability to Giles’s love, and Aldonza was still ready and patient while waiting in attendance on her beloved mistress. Ambrose lived on in the colony at Chelsea, sometimes attending his master, especially on diplomatic missions, and generally acting as librarian and foreign secretary, and obtaining some notice from Erasmus on the great scholar’s visit to Chelsea. Under such guidance, Ambrose’s opinions had settled down a good deal; and he was a disappointment to Tibble, whose views advanced proportionably as he worked less, and read and thought more. He so bitterly resented and deplored the burning of Tindal’s Bible that there was constant fear that he might bring on himself the same fate, especially as he treasured his own copy and studied it constantly. The reform that Wolsey had intended to effect when he obtained the legatine authority seemed to fall into the background among political interests, and his efforts had as yet no result save the suppression of some useless and ill-managed small religious houses to endow his magnificent project of York College at Oxford, with a feeder at Ipswich, his native town. He was waiting to obtain the papacy, when he would deal better with the abuses. Randall once asked him if he were not waiting to be King of Heaven, when he could make root and branch work at once. Hal had never so nearly incurred a flogging! And in the meantime another influence was at work, an influence only heard of at first in whispered jests, which made loyal-hearted Dennet blush and look indignant, but which soon grew to sad earnest, as she could not but avow, when she beheld the stately pomp of the two Cardinals, Wolsey and Campeggio, sweep up to the Blackfriars Convent to sit in judgment on the marriage of poor Queen Katharine. “Out on them!” she said. “So many learned men to set their wits against one poor woman!” And she heartily rejoiced when they came to no decision, and the Pope was appealed to. As to understanding all the explanations that Ambrose brought from time to time, she called them quirks and quiddities, and left them to her father and Tibble to discuss in their chimney corners. They had seen nothing of the jester for a good while, for he was with Wolsey, who was attending the King on a progress through the midland shires. When the Cardinal returned to open the law courts as Chancellor at the beginning of the autumn term, still Randall kept away from home, perhaps because he had forebodings that he could not bear to mention. On the evening of that very day, London rang with the tidings that the Great Seal had been taken from the Cardinal, and that he was under orders to yield up his noble mansion of York House and to retire to Esher; nay, it was reported that he was to be imprisoned in the Tower, and the next day the Thames was crowded with more than a thousand boats filled with people, expecting to see him landed at the Traitors’ Gate, and much disappointed when his barge turned towards Putney. In the afternoon, Ambrose came to the Dragon court. Even as Stephen figured now as a handsome prosperous young freeman of the City, Ambrose looked well in the sober black apparel and neat ruff of a lawyer’s clerk—clerk indeed to the first lawyer in the kingdom, for the news had spread before him that Sir Thomas More had become Lord Chancellor. “Thou art come to bear us word of thy promotion—for thy master’s is thine own,” said the alderman heartily as he entered, shaking hands with him. “Never was the Great Seal in better hands.” “’Tis true indeed, your worship,” said Ambrose, “though it will lay a heavy charge on him, and divert him from much that he loveth better still. I came to ask of my sister Dennet a supper and a bed for the night, as I have been on business for him, and can scarce get back to Chelsea.” “And welcome,” said Dennet. “Little Giles and Bess have been wearying for their uncle.” “I must not toy with them yet,” said Ambrose, “I have a message for my aunt. Brother, wilt thou walk down to the Temple with me before supper?” “Yea, and how is it with Master Randall?” asked Dennet. “Be he gone with my Lord Cardinal?” “He is made over to the King,” said Ambrose briefly. “’Tis that which I must tell his wife.” “Have with thee, then,” said Stephen, linking his arm into that of his brother, for to be together was still as great an enjoyment to them as in Forest days. And on the way, Ambrose told what he had not been willing to utter in full assembly in the hall. He had been sent by his master with a letter of condolence to the fallen Cardinal, and likewise of inquiry into some necessary business connected with the chancellorship. Wolsey had not time to answer before embarking, but as Sir Thomas had vouched for the messenger’s ability and trustiness, he had bidden Ambrose come into his barge, and receive his instructions. Thus Ambrose had landed with him, just as a messenger came riding in haste from the King, with a kind greeting, assuring his old friend that his seeming disgrace was only for a time, and for political reasons, and sending him a ring in token thereof. The Cardinal had fallen on his knees to receive the message, had snatched a gold chain and precious relic from his own neck to reward the messenger, and then, casting about for some gift for the King, “by ill luck,” said Ambrose, “his eye lit upon our uncle, and he instantly declared that he would bestow Patch, as the Court chooses to call him, on the King. Well, as thou canst guess, Hal is hotly wroth at the treatment of his lord, whom he truly loveth; and he flung himself before the Cardinal, and besought that he might not be sent from his good lord. But the Cardinal was only chafed at aught that gainsaid him; and all he did was to say he would have no more ado, he had made his gift. ‘Get thee gone,’ he said, as if he had been ordering off a horse or dog. Well-a-day! it was hard to brook the sight, and Hal’s blood was up. He flatly refused to go, saying he was the Cardinal’s servant, but no villain nor serf to be thus made over without his own will.” “He was in the right there,” returned Stephen, hotly. “Yea, save that by playing the fool, poor fellow, he hath yielded up the rights of a wise man. Any way, all he gat by it was that the Cardinal bade two of the yeomen lay hands on him and bear him off. Then there came on him that reckless mood, which, I trow, banished him long ago from the Forest, and brought him to the motley. He fought with them with all his force, and broke away once—as if that were of any use for a man in motley! —but he was bound at last, and borne off by six of them to Windsor!” “And thou stoodst by, and beheld it!” cried Stephen. “Nay, what could I have done, save to make his plight worse, and forfeit all chance of yet speaking to him?” “Thou wert ever cool! I wot that I could not have borne it,” said Stephen. They told the story to Perronel, who was on the whole elated by her husband’s promotion, declaring that the King loved him well, and that he would soon come to his senses, though for a wise man, he certainly had too much of the fool, even as he had too much of the wise man for the fool. She became anxious, however, as the weeks passed by without hearing of or from him, and at length Ambrose confessed his uneasiness to his kind master, and obtained leave to attend him on the next summons to Windsor. Ambrose could not find his uncle at first. Randall, who used to pervade York House, and turn up everywhere when least expected, did not appear among the superior serving-men and secretaries with whom his nephew ranked, and of course there was no access to the state apartments. Sir Thomas, however, told Ambrose that he had seen Quipsome Hal among the other jesters, but that he seemed dull and dejected. Then Ambrose beheld from a window a cruel sight, for the other fools, three in number, were surrounding Hal, baiting and teasing him, triumphing over him in fact, for having formerly outshone them, while he stood among them like a big dog worried by little curs, against whom he disdained to use his strength. Ambrose, unable to bear this, ran down stairs to endeavour to interfere; but before he could find his way to the spot, an arrival at the gate had attracted the tormentors, and Ambrose found his uncle leaning against the wall alone. He looked thin and wan, the light was gone out of his black eyes, and his countenance was in sad contrast to his gay and absurd attire. He scarcely cheered up when his nephew spoke to him, though he was glad to hear of Perronel. He said he knew not when he should see her again, for he had been unable to secure his suit of ordinary garments, so that even if the King came to London, or if he could elude the other fools, he could not get out to visit her. He was no better than a prisoner here, he only marvelled that the King retained so wretched a jester, with so heavy a heart. “Once thou wast in favour,” said Ambrose. “Methought thou couldst have availed thyself of it to speak for the Lord Cardinal.” “What? A senseless cur whom he kicked from him,” said Randall. “’Twas that took all spirit from me, boy. I, who thought he loved me, as I love him to this day. To send me to be sport for his foes! I think of it day and night, and I’ve not a gibe left under my belt!” “Nay,” said Ambrose, “it may have been that the Cardinal hoped to secure a true friend at the King’s ear, as well as to provide for thee.” “Had he but said so—” “Nay, perchance he trusted to thy sharp wit.” A gleam came into Hal’s eyes. “It might be so. Thou always wast a toward lad, Ambrose, and if so, I was cur and fool indeed to baulk him.” Therewith one of the other fools danced back exhibiting a silver crown that had just been flung to him, mopping and mowing, and demanding when Patch would have wit to gain the like. Whereto Hal replied by pointing to Ambrose and declaring that that gentleman had given him better than fifty crowns. And that night, Sir Thomas told Ambrose that the Quipsome one had recovered himself, had been more brilliant than ever and had quite eclipsed the other fools. On the next opportunity, Ambrose contrived to pack in his cloak-bag, the cap and loose garment in which his uncle was wont to cover his motley. The Court was still at Windsor; but nearly the whole of Sir Thomas’s stay elapsed without Ambrose being able to find his uncle. Wolsey had been very ill, and the King had relented enough to send his own physician to attend him. Ambrose began to wonder if Hal could have found any plea for rejoining his old master; but in the last hour of his stay, he found Hal curled up listlessly on a window seat of a gallery, his head resting on his hand. “Uncle, good uncle! At last! Thou art sick?” “Sick at heart, lad,” said Hal, looking up. “Yea, I took thy counsel. I plucked up a spirit, I made Harry laugh as of old, though my heart smote me, as I thought how he was wont to be answered by my master. I even brooked to jest with the night-crow, as my own poor lord called this Nan Boleyn. And lo you now, when his Grace was touched at my lord’s sickness, I durst say there was one sure elixir for such as he, to wit a gold Harry; and that a King’s touch was a sovereign cure for other disorders than the King’s evil. Harry smiled, and in ten minutes more would have taken horse for Esher, had not Madam Nan claimed his word to ride out hawking with her. And next, she sendeth me a warning by one of her pert maids, that I should be whipped, if I spoke to his Grace of unfitting matters. My flesh could brook no more, and like a born natural, I made answer that Nan Boleyn was no mistress of mine to bid me hold a tongue that had spoken sooth to her betters. Thereupon, what think you, boy? The grooms came and soundly flogged me for uncomely speech of my Lady Anne! I that was eighteen years with my Lord Cardinal, and none laid hand on me! Yea, I was beaten; and then shut up in a dog-hole for three days on bread and water, with none to speak to, but the other fools jeering at me like a rogue in a pillory.” Ambrose could hardly speak for hot grief and indignation, but he wrung his uncle’s hand, and whispered that he had hid the loose gown behind the arras of his chamber, but he could do no more, for he was summoned to attend his master, and a servant further thrust in to say, “Concern yourself not for that rogue, sir, he hath been saucy, and must mend his manners, or he will have worse.” “Away, kind sir,” said Hal, “you can do the poor fool no further good! but only bring the pack about the ears of the mangy hound.” And he sang a stave appropriated by a greater man than he— “Then let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play.” The only hope that Ambrose or his good master could devise for poor Randall was that Sir Thomas should watch his opportunity and beg the fool from the King, who might part with him as a child gives away the once coveted toy that has failed in its hands; but the request would need circumspection, for all had already felt the change that had taken place in the temper of the King since Henry had resolutely undertaken that the wrong should be the right; and Ambrose could not but dread the effect of desperation on a man whose nature had in it a vein of impatient recklessness. It was after dinner, and Dennet, with her little boy and girl, was on the steps dispensing the salt fish, broken bread, and pottage of the Lenten meal to the daily troop who came for her alms, when, among them, she saw, somewhat to her alarm, a gipsy man, who was talking to little Giles. The boy, a stout fellow of six, was astride on the balustrade, looking up eagerly into the face of the man, who began imitating the note of a blackbird. Dennet, remembering the evil propensities of the gipsy race, called hastily to her little son to come down and return to her side; but little Giles was unwilling to move, and called to her, “O mother, come! He hath a bird-call!” In some perturbation lest the man might be calling her bird away, Dennet descended the steps. She was about to utter a sharp rebuke, but Giles held out his hand imploringly, and she paused a moment to hear the sweet full note of the “ouzel cock, with orange tawny bill” closely imitated on a tiny bone whistle. “He will sell it to me for two farthings,” cried the boy, “and teach me to sing on it like all the birds—” “Yea, good mistress,” said the gipsy, “I can whistle a tune that the little master, ay, and others, might be fain to hear.” Therewith, spite of the wild dress, Dennet knew the eyes and the voice. And perhaps the blackbird’s note had awakened echoes in another mind, for she saw Stephen, in his working dress, come out to the door of the shop where he continued to do all the finer work which had formerly fallen to Tibble’s share. She lifted her boy from his perch, and bade him take the stranger to his father, who would no doubt give him the whistle. And thus, having without exciting attention, separated the fugitive from the rest of her pensioners, she made haste to dismiss them. She was not surprised that little Giles came running back to her, producing unearthly notes on the instrument, and telling her that father had taken the gipsy into his workshop, and said they would teach him bird’s songs by and by. “Steve, Steve,” had been the first words uttered when the boy was out of hearing, “hast thou a smith’s apron and plenty of smut to bestow on me? None can tell what Harry’s mood may be, when he finds I’ve given him the slip. That is the reason I durst not go to my poor dame.” “We will send to let her know. I thought I guessed what black ouzel ’twas! I mind how thou didst make the like notes for us when we were no bigger than my Giles!” “Thou hast a kind heart, Stephen. Here! Is thy furnace hot enough to make a speedy end of this same greasy gipsy doublet? I trust not the varlet with whom I bartered it for my motley. And a fine bargain he had of what I trust never to wear again to the end of my days. Make me a smith complete, Stephen, and then will I tell thee my story.” “We must call Kit into counsel, ere we can do that fully,” said Stephen. In a few minutes Hal Randall was, to all appearance, a very shabby and grimy smith, and then he took breath to explain his anxiety and alarm. Once again, hearing that the Cardinal was to be exiled to York, he had ventured on a sorry jest about old friends and old wine being better than new; but the King, who had once been open to plain speaking, was now incensed, threatened and swore at him! Moreover, one of the other fools had told him, in the way of boasting, that he had heard Master Cromwell, formerly the Cardinal’s secretary, informing the King that this rogue was no true “natural” at all, but was blessed (or cursed) with as good an understanding as other folks, as was well known in the Cardinal’s household, and that he had no doubt been sent to serve as a spy, so that he was to be esteemed a dangerous person, and had best be put under ward. Hal had not been able to discover whether Cromwell had communicated his name, but he suspected that it might be known to that acute person, and he could not tell whether his compeer spoke out of a sort of good-natured desire to warn him, or simply to triumph in his disgrace, and leer at him for being an impostor. At any rate, being now desperate, he covered his parti-coloured raiment with the gown Ambrose had brought, made a perilous descent from a window in the twilight, scaled a wall with the agility that seemed to have returned to him, and reached Windsor Forest. There, falling on a camp of gipsies, he had availed himself of old experiences in his wild Shirley days, and had obtained an exchange of garb, his handsome motley being really a prize to the wanderers. Thus he had been able to reach London; but he did not feel any confidence that if he were pursued to the gipsy tent he would not be betrayed. In this, his sagacity was not at fault, for he had scarcely made his explanation, when there was a knocking at the outer gate, and a demand to enter in the name of the King, and to see Alderman Sir Giles Headley. Several of the stout figures of the yeomen of the King’s guard were seen crossing the court, and Stephen, committing the charge of his uncle to Kit, threw off his apron, washed his face and went up to the hall, not very rapidly, for he suspected that since his father-in-law knew nothing of the arrival, he would best baffle the inquiries by sincere denials. And Dennet, with her sharp woman’s wit, scenting danger, had whisked herself and her children out of the hall at the first moment, and taken them down to the kitchen, where modelling with a batch of dough occupied both of them. Meantime the alderman flatly denied the presence of the jester, or the harbouring of the gipsy. He allowed that the jester was of kin to his son-in-law, but the good man averred in all honesty that he knew nought of any escape, and was absolutely certain that no such person was in the court. Then, as Stephen entered, doffing his cap to the King’s officer, the alderman continued, “There, fair son, this is what these gentlemen have come about. Thy kinsman, it seemeth, hath fled from Windsor, and his Grace is mightily incensed. They say he changed clothes with a gipsy, and was traced hither this morn, but I have told them the thing is impossible.” “Will the gentlemen search?” asked Stephen. The gentlemen did search, but they only saw the smiths in full work; and in Smallbones’ forge, there was a roaring glowing furnace, with a bare-armed fellow feeding it with coals, so that it fairly scorched them, and gave them double relish for the good wine and beer that was put out on the table to do honour to them. Stephen had just with all civility seen them off the premises when Perronel came sobbing into the court. They had visited her first, for Cromwell had evidently known of Randall’s haunts; they had turned her little house upside down, and had threatened her hotly in case she harboured a disloyal spy, who deserved hanging. She came to consult Stephen, for the notion of her husband wandering about, as a sort of outlaw, was almost as terrible as the threat of his being hanged. Stephen beckoned her to a store-room full of gaunt figures of armour upon blocks, and there brought up to her his extremely grimy new hand! There was much gladness between them, but the future had to be considered. Perronel had a little hoard, the amount of which she was too shrewd to name to any one, even her husband, but she considered it sufficient to enable him to fulfil the cherished scheme of his life, of retiring to some small farm near his old home, and she was for setting off at once. But Harry Randall declared that he could not go without having offered his services to his old master. He had heard of his “good lord” as sick, sad, and deserted by those whom he had cherished, and the faithful heart was so true in its loyalty that no persuasion could prevail in making it turn south. “Nay,” said the wife, “did he not cast thee off himself, and serve thee like one of his dogs? How canst thou be bound to him?” “There’s the rub!” sighed Hal. “He sent me to the King deeming that he should have one full of faithful love to speak a word on his behalf, and I, brutish oaf as I was, must needs take it amiss, and sulk and mope till the occasion was past, and that viper Cromwell was there to back up the woman Boleyn and poison his Grace’s ear.” “As if a man must not have a spirit to be angered by such treatment.” “Thou forgettest, good wife. No man, but a fool, and to be entreated as such! Be that as it may, to York I must. I have eaten of my lord’s bread too many years, and had too much kindness from him in the days of his glory, to seek mine own ease now in his adversity. Thou wouldst have a poor bargain of me when my heart is away.” Perronel saw that thus it would be, and that this was one of the points on which, to her mind, her husband was more than half a veritable fool after all. There had long been a promise that Stephen should, in some time of slack employment, make a visit to his old comrade, Edmund Burgess, at York; and as some new tools and patterns had to be conveyed thither, a sudden resolution was come to, in family conclave, that Stephen himself should convey them, taking his uncle with him as a serving-man, to attend to the horses. The alderman gave full consent, he had always wished Stephen to see York, while he himself, with Tibble Steelman, was able to attend to the business; and while he pronounced Randall to have a heart of gold, well worth guarding, he still was glad when the risk was over of the King’s hearing that the runaway jester was harboured at the Dragon. Dennet did not like the journey for her husband, for to her mind it was perilous, but she had had a warm affection for his uncle ever since their expedition to Richmond together, and she did her best to reconcile the murmuring and wounded Perronel by praises of Randall, a true and noble heart; and that as to setting her aside for the Cardinal, who had heeded him so little, such faithfulness only made her more secure of his true-heartedness towards her. Perronel was moreover to break up her business, dispose of her house, and await her husband’s return at the Dragon. Stephen came back after a happy month with his friend, stored with wondrous tales and descriptions which would last the children for a month. He had seen his uncle present himself to the Cardinal at Cawood Castle. It had been a touching meeting. Hal could hardly restrain his tears when he saw how Wolsey’s sturdy form had wasted, and his round ruddy cheeks had fallen away, while the attitude in which he sat in his chair was listless and weary, though he fitfully exerted himself with his old vigour. Hal on his side, in the dark plain dress of a citizen, was hardly recognisable, for not only had he likewise grown thinner, and his brown cheeks more hollow, but his hair had become almost white during his miserable weeks at Windsor, though he was not much over forty years old. He came up the last of a number who presented themselves for the Archiepiscopal blessing, as Wolsey sat under a large tree in Cawood Park. Wolsey gave it with his raised fingers, without special heed, but therewith Hal threw himself on the ground, kissed his feet, and cried, “My lord, my dear lord, your pardon.” “What hast done, fellow? Speak!” said the Cardinal. “Grovel not thus. We will be merciful.” “Ah! my lord,” said Randall, lifting himself up, but with clasped hands and tearful eyes, “I did not serve you as I ought with the King, but if you will forgive me and take me back—” “How now? How couldst thou serve me? What!” —as Hal made a familiar gesture—“thou art not the poor fool; Quipsome Patch? How comest thou here? Methought I had provided well for thee in making thee over to the King.” “Ah! my lord, I was fool, fool indeed, but all my jests failed me. How could I make sport for your enemies?” “And thou hast come, thou hast left the King to follow my fallen fortunes?” said Wolsey. “My poor boy, he who is sitting in sackcloth and ashes needs no jester.” “Nay, my lord, nor can I find one jest to break! Would you but let me be your meanest horse-boy, your scullion!” Hal’s voice was cut short by tears as the Cardinal abandoned to him one hand. The other was drying eyes that seldom wept. “My faithful Hal!” he said, “this is love indeed!” And Stephen ere he came away had seen his uncle fully established, as a rational creature, and by his true name, as one of the personal attendants on the Cardinal’s bed-chamber, and treated with the affection he well deserved. Wolsey had really seemed cheered by his affection, and was devoting himself to the care of his hitherto neglected and even unvisited diocese, in a way that delighted the hearts of the Yorkshiremen. The first idea was that Perronel should join her husband at York, but safe modes of travelling were not easy to be found, and before any satisfactory escort offered, there were rumours that made it prudent to delay. As autumn advanced, it was known that the Earl of Northumberland had been sent to attach the Cardinal of High Treason. Then ensued other reports that the great Cardinal had sunk and died on his way to London for trial; and at last, one dark winter evening, a sorrowful man stumbled up the steps of the Dragon, and as he came into the bright light of the fire, and Perronel sprang to meet him, he sank into a chair and wept aloud. He had been one of those who had lifted the broken-hearted Wolsey from his mule in the cloister of Leicester Abbey, he had carried him to his bed, watched over him, and supported him, as the Abbot of Leicester gave him the last Sacraments. He had heard and treasured up those mournful words which are Wolsey’s chief legacy to the world, “Had I but served my God, as I have served my king, He would not have forsaken me in my old age.” For himself, he had the dying man’s blessing, and assurance that nothing had so much availed to cheer in these sad hours as his faithful love. Now, Perronel might do what she would with him—he cared not. And what she did was to set forth with him for Hampshire, on a pair of stout mules with a strong serving-man behind them.

24

THE SOLDIER

“Of a worthy London prentice My purpose is to speak, And tell his brave adventures Done for his country’s sake. Seek all the world about And you shall hardly find A man in valour to exceed A prentice’ gallant mind.” _The Homes of a London Prentice_. SIX more years had passed over the Dragon court, when, one fine summer evening, as the old walls rang with the merriment of the young boys at play, there entered through the gateway a tall, well-equipped, soldierly figure, which caught the eyes of the little armourer world in a moment. “Oh, that’s a real Milan helmet!” exclaimed the one lad. “And oh, what a belt and buff coat!” cried another. The subject of their admiration advanced muttering, “As if I’d not been away a week,” adding, “I pray you, pretty lads, doth Master Alderman Headley still dwell here?” “Yea, sir, he is our grandfather,” said the elder boy, holding a lesser one by the shoulder as he spoke. “Verily! And what may be your names?” “I am Giles Birkenholt, and this is my little brother, Dick.” “Even as I thought. Wilt thou run in to your grandsire, and tell him?” The bigger boy interrupted, “Grandfather is going to bed. He is old and weary, and cannot see strangers so late. ’Tis our father who heareth all the orders.” “And,” added the little one, with wide open grave eyes, “Mother bade us run out and play and not trouble father, because uncle Ambrose is so downcast because they have cut off the head of good Sir Thomas More.” “Yet,” said the visitor, “methinks your father would hear of an old comrade. Or stay, where be Tibble Steelman and Kit Smallbones?” “Tibble is in the hall, well-nigh as sad as uncle Ambrose,” began Dick; but Giles, better able to draw conclusions, exclaimed, “Tibble! Kit! You know them, sir! Oh! are you the Giles Headley that ran away to be a soldier ere I was born? Kit! Kit! see here—” as the giant, broader and perhaps a little more bent, but with little loss of strength, came forward out of his hut, and taking up the matter just where it had been left fourteen years before, demanded as they shook hands, “Ah! Master Giles, how couldst thou play me such a scurvy trick?” “Nay, Kit, was it not best for all that I turned my back to make way for honest Stephen?” By this time young Giles had rushed up the stair to the hall, where, as he said truly, Stephen was giving his brother such poor comfort as could be had from sympathy, when listening to the story of the cheerful, brave resignation of the noblest of all the victims of Henry VIII. Ambrose had been with Sir Thomas well-nigh to the last, had carried messages between him and his friends during his imprisonment, had handed his papers to him at his trial, had been with Mrs. Roper when she broke through the crowd and fell on his neck as he walked from Westminster Hall with the axe-edge turned towards him; had received his last kind farewell, counsel, and blessing, and had only not been with him on the scaffold because Sir Thomas had forbidden it, saying, in the old strain of mirth, which never forsook him, “Nay, come not, my good friend. Thou art of a queasy nature, and I would fain not haunt thee against thy will.” All was over now, the wise and faithful head had fallen, because it would not own the wrong for the right; and Ambrose had been brought home by his brother, a being confounded, dazed, seeming hardly able to think or understand aught save that the man whom he had above all loved and looked up to was taken from him, judicially murdered, and by the King. The whole world seemed utterly changed to him, and as to thinking or planning for himself, he was incapable of it; indeed, he looked fearfully ill. His little nephew came up to his father’s knee, pausing, though open-mouthed, and at the first token of permission, bursting out, “Oh! father! Here’s a soldier in the court! Kit is talking to him. And he is Giles Headley that ran away. He has a beauteous Spanish leathern coat, and a belt with silver bosses—and a morion that Phil Smallbones saith to be of Milan, but I say it is French.” Stephen had no sooner gathered the import of this intelligence than he sprang down almost as rapidly as his little boy, with his welcome. Nor did Giles Headley return at all in the dilapidated condition that had been predicted. He was stout, comely, and well fleshed, and very handsomely clad and equipped in a foreign style, with nothing of the lean wolfish appearance of Sir John Fulford. The two old comrades heartily shook one another by the hand in real gladness at the meeting. Stephen’s welcome was crossed by the greeting and inquiry whether all was well. “Yea. The alderman is hale and hearty, but aged. Your mother is tabled at a religious house at Salisbury.” “I know. I landed at Southampton and have seen her.” “And Dennet,” Stephen added with a short laugh, “she could not wait for you.” “No, verily. Did I not wot well that she cared not a fico for me? I hoped when I made off that thou wouldst be the winner, Steve, and I am right glad thou art, man.” “I can but thank thee, Giles,” said Stephen, changing to the familiar singular pronoun. “I have oft since thought what a foolish figure I should have cut had I met thee among the Badgers, after having given leg bail because I might not brook seeing thee wedded to her. For I was sore tempted—only thou wast free, and mine indenture held me fast.” “Then it was so! And I did thee a good turn! For I tell thee, Steve, I never knew how well I liked thee till I was wounded and sick among those who heeded neither God nor man! But one word more, Stephen, ere we go in. The Moor’s little maiden, is she still unwedded?” “Yea,” was Stephen’s answer. “She is still waiting-maid to Mistress Roper, daughter to good Sir Thomas More; but alack, Giles, they are in sore trouble, as it may be thou hast heard—and my poor brother is like one distraught.” Ambrose did indeed meet Giles like one in a dream. He probably would have made the same mechanical greeting, if the Emperor or the Pope had been at that moment presented to him; but Dennet, who had been attending to her father, made up all that was wanting in cordiality. She had always had a certain sense of shame for having flouted her cousin, and, as his mother told her, driven him to death and destruction, and it was highly satisfactory to see him safe and sound, and apparently respectable and prosperous. Moreover, grieved as all the family were for the fate of the admirable and excellent More, it was a relief to those less closely connected with him to attend to something beyond poor Ambrose’s sorrow and his talk, the which moreover might be perilous if any outsider listened and reported it to the authorities as disaffection to the King. So Giles told his story, sitting on the gallery in the cool of the summer evening, and marvelling over and over again how entirely unchanged all was since his first view of the Dragon court as a proud, sullen, raw lad twenty summers ago. Since that time he had seen so much that the time appeared far longer to him than to those who had stayed at home. It seemed that Fulford had from the first fascinated him more than any of the party guessed, and that each day of the free life of the expedition, and of contact with the soldiery, made a return to the monotony of the forge, the decorous life of a London citizen, and the bridal with a child, to whom he was indifferent, seem more intolerable to him. Fulford imagining rightly that the knowledge of his intentions might deter young Birkenholt from escaping, enjoined strict secrecy on either lad, not intending them to meet till it should be too late to return, and therefore had arranged that Giles should quit the party on the way to Calais, bringing with him Will Wherry, and the horse he rode. Giles had then been enrolled among the Badgers. He had little to tell about his life among them till the battle of Pavia, where he had had the good fortune to take three French prisoners; but a stray shot from a fugitive had broken his leg during the pursuit, and he had been laid up in a merchant’s house at Pavia for several months. He evidently looked back to the time with gratitude, as having wakened his better associations, which had been well-nigh stifled during the previous years of the wild life of a soldier of fortune. His host’s young daughter had eyes like Aldonza, and the almost forgotten possibility of returning to his love a brave and distinguished man awoke once more. His burgher thrift began to assert itself again, and he deposited a nest-egg from the ransoms of his prisoners in the hands of his host, who gave him bonds by which he could recover the sum from Lombard correspondents in London. He was bound by his engagements to join the Badgers again, or he would have gone home on his recovery; and he had shared in the terrible taking of Rome, of which he declared that he could not speak—with a significant look at Dennet and her children, who were devouring his words. He had, however, stood guard over a lady and her young children whom some savage Spaniards were about to murder, and the whole family had overpowered him with gratitude, lodged him sumptuously in their house, and shown themselves as grateful to him as if he had given them all the treasure which he had abstained from seizing. The sickness brought on by their savage excesses together with the Roman summer had laid low many of the Badgers. When the Prince of Orange drew off the army from the miserable city, scarce seven score of that once gallant troop were in marching order, and Sir John Fulford himself was dying. He sent for Giles, as less of a demon than most of the troop, and sent a gold medal, the only fragment of spoil remaining to him, to his daughter Perronel. To Giles himself Fulford bequeathed Abenali’s well-tested sword, and he died in the comfortable belief—so far as he troubled himself about the matter at all—that there were special exemptions for soldiers. The Badgers now incorporated themselves with another broken body of Landsknechts, and fell under the command of a better and more conscientious captain. Giles, who had been horrified rather than hardened by the experiences of Rome, was found trustworthy and rose in command. The troop was sent to take charge of the Pope at Orvieto, and thus it was that he had fallen in with the Englishmen of Gardiner’s suite, and had been able to send his letter to Ambrose. Since he had found the means of rising out of the slough, he had made up his mind to continue to serve till he had won some honour, and had obtained enough to prevent his return as a hungry beggar. His corps became known for discipline and valour. It was trusted often, was in attendance on the Emperor, and was fairly well paid. Giles was their “ancient” and had charge of the banner, nor could it be doubted that he had flourished. His last adventure had been the expedition to Tunis, when 20,000 Christian captives had been set free from the dungeons and galleys, and so grand a treasure had been shared among the soldiery that Giles, having completed the term of service for which he was engaged, decided on returning to England, before, as he said, he grew any older, to see how matters were going. “For the future,” he said, “it depended on how he found things. If Aldonza would none of him, he should return to the Emperor’s service. If she would go with him, he held such a position that he could provide for her honourably. Or he could settle in England. For he had a good sum in the hands of Lombard merchants; having made over to them spoils of war, ransoms, and arrears when he obtained them; and having at times earned something by exercising his craft, which he said had been most valuable to him. Indeed he thought he could show Stephen and Tibble a few fresh arts he had picked up at Milan. Meantime his first desire was to see Aldonza. She was still at Chelsea with her mistress, and Ambrose, to his brother’s regret, went thither every day, partly because he could not keep away, and partly to try to be of use to the family. Giles might accompany him, though he still looked so absorbed in his trouble that it was doubtful whether he had really understood what was passing, or that he was wanted to bring about an interview between his companion and Aldonza. The beautiful grounds at Chelsea, in their summer beauty, looked inexpressibly mournful, deprived of him who had planted and cherished the trees and roses. As they passed along in the barge, one spot after another recalled More’s bright jests or wise words; above all, the very place where he had told his son-in-law Roper that he was merry, not because he was safe, but because the fight was won, and his conscience had triumphed against the King he loved and feared. Giles told of the report that the Emperor had said he would have given a hundred of his nobles for one such councillor as More, and the prospect of telling this to the daughters had somewhat cheered Ambrose. They found a guard in the royal livery at the stairs to the river, and at the door of the house, but these had been there ever since Sir Thomas’s apprehension. They knew Ambrose Birkenholt, and made no objection to his passing in and leaving his companion to walk about among the borders and paths, once so trim, but already missing their master’s hand and eye. Very long it seemed to Giles, who was nearly despairing, when a female figure in black came out of one of the side doors, which were not guarded, and seemed to be timidly looking for him. Instantly he was at her side. “Not here,” she said, and in silence led the way to a pleached alley out of sight of the windows. There they stood still. It was a strange meeting of two who had not seen each other for fourteen years, when the one was a tall, ungainly youth, the other well-nigh a child. And now Giles was a fine, soldierly man in the prime of life, with a short, curled beard, and powerful, alert bearing, and Aldonza, though the first flower of her youth had gone by, yet, having lived a sheltered and far from toilsome life, was a really beautiful woman, gracefully proportioned, and with the delicate features and clear olive skin of the Andalusian Moor. Her eyes, always her finest feature, were sunken with weeping, but their soft beauty could still be seen. Giles threw himself on his knee and grasped at her hand. “My love! —my only love!” he cried. “Oh! how can I think of such matters now—now, when it is thus with my dear mistress,” said Aldonza, in a mournful voice, as though her tears were all spent—yet not withholding her hand. “You knew me before you knew her,” said Giles. “See, Aldonza, what I have brought back to you.” And he half drew the sword her father had made. She gave a gasp of delight, for well she knew every device in the gold inlaying of the blade, and she looked at Giles with eyes fall of gratitude. “I knew thou wouldst own me,” said Giles. “I have fought and gone far from thee, Aldonza. Canst not spare one word for thine old Giles?” “Ah, Giles—there is one thing which if you will do for my mistress, I would be yours from—from my heart of hearts.” “Say it, sweetheart, and it is done.” “You know not. It is perilous, and may be many would quail. Yet it may be less perilous for you than for one who is better known.” “Peril and I are well acquainted, my heart.” She lowered her voice as her eyes dilated, and she laid her hand on his arm. “Thou wottest what is on London Bridge gates?” “I saw it, a sorry sight.” “My mistress will not rest till that dear and sacred head, holy as any blessed relic, be taken down so as not to be the sport of sun and wind, and cruel men gaping beneath. She cannot sleep, she cannot sit or stand still, she cannot even kiss her child for thinking of it. Her mind is set on taking it down, yet she will not peril her husband. Nor verily know I how any here could do the deed.” “Ha! I have scaled a wall ere now. I bare our banner at Goletta, with the battlements full of angry Moors, not far behind the Emperor’s.” “You would? And be secret? Then indeed nought would be overmuch for you. And this very night—” “The sooner the better.” She not only clasped his hand in thanks, but let him raise her face to his, and take the reward he felt his due. Then she said she must return, but Ambrose would bring him all particulars. Ambrose was as anxious as herself and her mistress that the thing should be done, but was unfit by all his habits, and his dainty, scholarly niceness, to render such effectual assistance as the soldier could do. Giles offered to scale the gate by night himself, carry off the head, and take it to any place Mrs. Roper might appoint, with no assistance save such as Ambrose could afford. Aldonza shuddered a little at this, proving that her heart had gone out to him already, but with this he had to be contented, for she went back into the house, and he saw her no more. Ambrose came back to him, and, with something more like cheerfulness than he had yet seen, said, “Thou art happy, Giles.” “More happy than I durst hope—to find her—” “Tush! I meant not that. But to be able to do the work of the holy ones of old who gathered the remnants of the martyrs, while I have indeed the will, but am but a poor craven! It is gone nearer to comfort that sad-hearted lady than aught else.” It appeared that Mrs. Roper would not be satisfied unless she herself were present at the undertaking, and this was contrary to the views of Giles, who thought the further off women were in such a matter the better. There was a watch at the outer entrance of London Bridge, the trainbands taking turns to supply it, but it was known by experience that they did not think it necessary to keep awake after belated travellers had ceased to come in; and Sir Thomas More’s head was set over the opposite gateway, looking inwards at the City. The most suitable hour would be between one and two o’clock, when no one would be stirring, and the summer night would be at the shortest. Mrs. Roper was exceedingly anxious to implicate no one, and to prevent her husband and brother from having any knowledge of an act that William Roper might have prohibited, as if she could not absolutely exculpate him, it might be fatal to him. She would therefore allow no one to assist save Ambrose, and a few more devoted old servants, of condition too low for anger to be likely to light upon them. She was to be rowed with muffled oars to the spot, to lie hid in the shadow of the bridge till a signal like the cry of the pee-wit was exchanged from the bridge, then approach the stairs at the inner angle of the bridge where Giles and Ambrose would meet her. Giles’s experience as a man-at-arms stood him in good stead. He purchased a rope as he went home, also some iron ramps. He took a survey of the arched gateway in the course of the afternoon, and shutting himself into one of the worksheds with Ambrose, he constructed such a rope ladder as was used in scaling fortresses, especially when seized at night by surprise. He beguiled the work by a long series of anecdotes of adventures of the kind, of all of which Ambrose heard not one word. The whole court, and especially Giles number three, were very curious as to their occupation, but nothing was said even to Stephen, for it was better, if Ambrose should be suspected, that he should be wholly ignorant, but he had—they knew not how—gathered somewhat. Only Ambrose was, at parting for the night, obliged to ask him for the key of the gate. “Brother,” then he said, “what is this work I see? Dost think I can let thee go into a danger I do not partake? I will share in this pious act towards the man I have ever reverenced.” So at dead of night the three men stole out together, all in the plainest leathern suits. The deed was done in the perfect stillness of the sleeping City, and without mishap or mischance. Stephen’s strong hand held the ladder securely and aided to fix it to the ramps, and just as the early dawn was touching the summit of St. Paul’s spire with a promise of light, Giles stepped into the boat, and reverently placed his burden within the opening of a velvet cushion that had been ripped up and deprived of part of the stuffing, so as to conceal it effectually. The brave Margaret Roper, the English Antigone, well knowing that all depended on her self-control, refrained from aught that might shake it. She only raised her face to Giles and murmured from dry lips, “Sir, God must reward you!” And Aldonza, who sat beside her, held out her hand. Ambrose was to go with them to the priest’s house, where Mrs. Roper was forced to leave her treasure, since she durst not take it to Chelsea, as the royal officers were already in possession, and the whole family were to depart on the ensuing day. Stephen and Giles returned safely to Cheapside.