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Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor

by G. J. Whyte-Melville · English · Gutenberg #40883 · 513,024 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor

Author: G. J. Whyte-Melville

Illustrator: Henry Hope Crealocke


        
Release date: September 28, 2012 [eBook #40883]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATERFELTO: A STORY OF EXMOOR ***

[Illustration: Front Cover.]


[Illustration: AT GAZE. Frontispiece]



KATERFELTO

A Story of Exmoor.

BY

G.J. WHYTE-MELVILLE,

AUTHOR OF "DIGBY GRAND," "CERISE," "UNCLE JOHN," ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BY COL. H. HOPE CREALOCKE, C.B.

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1875.

  [_All rights reserved._]




LONDON:

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


    "AT GAZE"      (_Frontispiece_)      PAGE

    "UNDER THE GUARD"                       8

    "WESTWARD HO!"                         96

    "WELL OUT OF IT"                      152

    "THE LESSON LEARNT"                   165

    "THE TALE TOLD"                       183

    "MOONLIGHT"                           206

    "MOVED!"                              215

    "BEAT"                                228

    "SET UP"                              229

    "NECK OR NOTHING"                     280

    "THE GIPSY'S BRIDE"                   286








KATERFELTO:

A STORY OF EXMOOR.




CHAPTER I.

DEADMAN'S ALLEY.


On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his
recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed
to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's
two principal Secretaries of State.

Defiance of constituted authority has never wanted sympathy from that
British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for
law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of
beer was thereafter emptied, and many a bottle of wine cracked to his
health, diverse street songs, more or less execrable, were composed in
honour of the so-called patriot, whose personal popularity was
incontestable, notwithstanding the unprepossessing exterior, that has
passed into a proverb.

Of these, none were perhaps so absurd as the following ditty, chanted by
a chairman more than half drunk, under the windows of a tavern in Covent
Garden, notwithstanding the protestations of some half-dozen gentlemen,
who, seated at supper in an upper chamber, held that their tastes and
opinions were equally outraged by the persistency of the singer below.

"King Nabuchodonosor," whined the chairman.

"Hold that cursed noise!" exclaimed one of the gentlemen from the
window.

"King Nabuchodonosor," repeated the chairman in all the aggravating
monotony of a minor key.

"You knave!" roared a second voice--"I'll come down and beat you to a
jelly, if you speak another syllable!"

A volley of oaths succeeded this threat, but their object stood fire
manfully under the discharge, and fixing his eyes on vacancy, proceeded
with his song--

    "'King Nabuchodonosor
      Lived in a golden palace;
    He fed from a golden dish, and drank
      His swipes from a golden chalice.
    _But_ John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
      And they chose him for knight of the shire;
    For he made a fool of Alderman Bull,
      And called Parson Tooke a liar!'

"Hurrah!" continued the vocalist, who had lost his hat, waving a scratch
wig round his bare scalp with an abortive attempt to cheer. "King
Nabu--Nabu--cho--donosor was a mighty man"--shaking his head with
unimpaired solemnity--"a mighty man, no doubt,

    '_But_ John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
      And they chose him for knight of the shire.'

Hip, hip--Hurrah!"

A burst of laughter rang from the party in the tavern, and a gentleman
in a laced waistcoat shut down the window after throwing out a
crown-piece to the singer in the street.

Night was falling, the air felt chilly, though it was summer, and the
party, who had drank several bottles of port, gathered round the fire
over a steaming bowl of punch.

They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig,
another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of
his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were
cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily
bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches,
their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and
snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to "lug out" as it was called, on slight
provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal
of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary
accomplishments of a gentleman.

The room in which these worthies had assembled seemed more comfortable
than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged,
high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the
mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like glass, the wood-fire
blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the
windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of
them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls
were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting
tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have
been painted by the same master:--A fighting-cock, spurred, trimmed, and
prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse
with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail,
galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print
below, "a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas." The portrait of
a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in
position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition,
consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, cocked hats, tired horses and
baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox,
and labelled "The Victory of obtaining the Brush."

One of the party had taken on himself to ladle out the punch. Its
effects soon became apparent in the heightened colour and increased
volubility of the company. Voices rose, two or three at once. A song was
demanded, a glass broken. In the natural course of events, somebody
called a toast.

"Blue-Eyes!" shouted a handsome young fellow flushed with drink, waving
his glass above his head.

"A fine!" objected the punch-ladler, judicially. "By the laws of our
society, no member has leave to pledge a female toast. It leads to
mischief. Gentlemen, we have decided to draw the line, and we draw it at
beauty. Call something else!"

"Then here's John Wilkes!" laughed the first speaker. "He's ugly enough
in all conscience. John Wilkes! His good health and deliverance--with
three!"

"Hold!" exclaimed a beetle-browed, square-shouldered man of forty or
more, turning down his glass; "I protest against the toast. John Wilkes
ought still to be fast by the heels in the Tower of London. If he had
his deserts John Wilkes would never have come out again, alive or dead,
and nobody but a d--d Jacobite, and traitor to His Majesty King George,
would venture to call such a toast in this worshipful company. I stand
to what I say, John Garnet. It's you to play next!"

Each man looked at his neighbour. The punch-ladler half rose to
interfere, but shortly plumped into his seat again, finding himself, it
may be, not quite steady on his legs, while the young gentleman, thus
offensively addressed, clenched his glass, as if to hurl it in the last
speaker's face. Controlling himself, however, with obvious effort, he
broke into a forced laugh, glanced at his rapier, standing in a corner
of the room, and observed quietly, "If you desire to fasten a quarrel
on me, Mr. Gale, this is neither a fitting time nor place."

"Quarrel!" exclaimed the man behind the punch-bowl; "no gentleman, drunk
or sober, would be fain to quarrel on John Wilkes' behalf. Sure, he can
take his own part with the best or worst of us, and Mr. Gale was only
playing the ball back to your service, John Garnet. You began the jest,
bad or good. Be reasonable, gentlemen. Fill your glasses, and let us
wash away all unkindness. Here's to you both!"

Mr. Gale, though something of a bully, was not, in the main, an
ill-natured man. He squared his shoulders, filled his glass, and pledged
the person he had insulted with an indifference that almost amounted to
additional provocation. Confident in his personal strength and skill
with his weapon, Mr. Gale, to use his own phraseology, was accustomed to
consider himself Cock of the Walk in every society he frequented. Nine
men out of ten are willing to accept bluster for courage, and give the
wall readily enough to him who assumes it as a right. The tenth is made
of sterner stuff, resists the pretension, and exposes too often a white
feather lurking under the fowl's wing, that crowed so lustily and
strutted with so defiant a gait.

All this passed through the mind of John Garnet, completely sobered by
his wrangle, while he sipped punch in silence, meditating reprisals
before the night was past.

This young gentleman, whom nature and fortune seemed to have intended
for better things, was at present wasting health and energy in a life of
pleasure that failed egregiously to please, but that succeeded in
draining the resources of a slender purse to their lowest ebb. He came
of an old family, and indeed, but for the attainder that deprived his
father of lands and title, would have been the owner of large estates in
the North, and addressed by tenantry or neighbours as Sir John--that
father, devoted body and soul to the Stuarts, died at Rome, beggared
and broken-hearted, leaving his son little besides his blessing, and an
injunction never to abandon the good cause, but bequeathing to him the
personal beauty and well-knit frame that Acts of Parliament were
powerless to alienate. The young man's laughing eyes, rich colour, dark
hair, and handsome features were in keeping with a light muscular
figure, a stature slightly above the average, and an easy jaunty
bearing, set off by a rich dress, particularly pleasing to feminine
taste. Hence, while he repudiated the title of which he had been
deprived, it became a jest among his intimates to call him "plain John
Garnet," a jest of which the point was perhaps more appreciated by the
other sex, than by his own.

Plain John Garnet looked somewhat preoccupied now, sitting moodily over
his punch, and the influence of his demeanour seemed to steal upon the
company in general. Mr. Gale, indeed, held forth loudly on horse-racing,
cock-fighting, and such congenial topics, but spent his breath for an
inattentive audience, not to be interested even by a dissertation on
West-country wrestling in all its branches--the Cornish hug, the
Devonshire shoulder-grip, and the West Somerset "rough-and-tumble catch
where you can."

At an earlier hour than usual the reckoning was called, and the guests,
not very steady, assumed their swords and hats to pass downstairs into
the street. Mr. Gale by accident, John Garnet by design, were the last
to leave the room.

The latter placed himself before the door, observing in a quiet tone,
that the other's reckoning was not yet wholly paid up. "How so?" asked
Gale, in his loud, authoritative voice. "The oldest member has taken my
half-guinea, and entered it in due course. Will you satisfy yourself, my
young friend, by calling the landlord to produce his club-books? Pooh,
pooh! young sir: the punch is strong, and you have drunk too much!
Stand aside, I say, and let me pass!"

He did not like the set look of John Garnet's mouth; he liked less the
low firm tones in which that gentleman repeated his assertion.

"You may or may not be in debt to the club--it is their affair. You owe
an apology to one of the members--that is mine."

"Apology!" stormed the other. "Apology! what do you mean, sir? This is
insolence. Don't attempt to bully _me_, sir! Again I say, at your peril,
let me pass!"

"Do you refuse it?" asked John Garnet, in a low voice, setting his lips
tighter while he spoke.

"I do!" was the angry reply. "And what then?"

"Nothing unusual," said the other, while he moved out of the way.

"Drawer! Please to show us an empty room."

A frightened waiter, with a face as white as his napkin, opened the door
of an adjoining chamber, set a candle on the chimney-piece, and motioned
the gentlemen in.

Garnet bowed profoundly, making way for his senior to pass. The other
looked about him in uncertainty, and felt his heart sink, while he heard
the voices of their departing companions, already in the street.

He had little inclination to his task. For one moment the burly,
square-shouldered man wished himself safe at home; the next, that
intermittent courage which comes to most of us, in proportion as it is
wanted, braced his nerves for the inevitable encounter and its result.
He grasped his rapier, ready to draw at a moment's notice, while the
other coolly locked the door.

The waiter, fresh on the town, and unused to such brawls, ran down to
summon his master, who was busy over the house accounts in a small
parlour below. Till the landlord had added up one column and carried
its balance to the next, he paid no attention, though his astonished
servant stood pale and trembling before him, with a corkscrew in his
mouth and a bottle under his arm. Then both rushed upstairs in a
prodigious hurry, just too late to prevent mischief.

While yet in the passage they could hear a scuffle of feet, a clink of
steel, a smothered oath, and a groan; but as they reached the door it
was opened from inside, and John Garnet stood before them, panting,
excited, his waistcoat torn, his dress awry, with the candle in his
hand.

"There is a gentleman badly hurt in that room," said he. "Better send
for a surgeon at once, and get a coach to take him home." Then he blew
out the candle, slipped downstairs in the dark, and so into the street.

The gentleman was indeed so badly hurt that all the energies of the
household were concentrated on the sufferer. Nobody had a thought to
spare for the assailant till long after pursuit would have been too
late. Mr. Gale was wounded in the fore-arm, and had received a
sword-thrust through the lungs. With the landlord's assistance he made
shift to walk into a bedchamber, where they undressed and laid him
carefully down; but before a surgeon could arrive there was obviously no
hope, and he only lived long enough to assure the doctor, in the
presence of two witnesses, that the quarrel had been of his own making,
and was fought out according to the usual rules of fair-play.

"I was a fool not to close with him," murmured the dying man, reflecting
ruefully on the personal strength he had misapplied. "But the rogue is a
pretty swordsman; quick, well-taught, supple as an eel, and--I forgive
him!"

Then he turned on his side, as the landlord subsequently stated, and
thereafter spoke never a word more, good or bad.

[Illustration: UNDER THE GUARD.]

John Garnet, meanwhile, made the best of his way into
the street, with the intention of proceeding straight to his lodgings,
and riding out of London next morning at break of day. Duels, though of
no rare occurrence, were serious matters even in a time when every man
carried a small-sword by his breeches-pocket; and to be taken
red-handed, as it were, from the slaughter of an adversary, would have
entailed unpleasant consequences to liberty, if not to life. While it
had been established that a gentleman was bound to defend his honour
with cold steel, it seemed also understood that in such encounters even
victory might be purchased at too dear a price. Nevertheless, so riotous
were the habits of the day, encouraging to the utmost card-playing and
the free use of wine, so lax was the administration of the law, and so
stringent the code of public opinion, that scarcely a week passed
without an encounter, more or less bloody, between men of education and
intellect, who would have considered themselves dishonoured had they not
been ready at any moment to support a jest, an argument, or an insult,
with naked steel. John Garnet, therefore, observing an ancient watchman
pacing his sluggish rounds, turned aside into a bye-street rather than
confront this guardian of the peace; and hastening on as he became less
certain of the locality, was aware that his strength began to fail, and
felt his shirt clinging to his body, wet and clammy with something that
must be blood.

For an instant he thought of turning back into the more frequented
thoroughfare; but the hum of voices, and increasing tread of feet,
seemed too suggestive of discovery, and he stumbled onwards, in faint
hope of reaching the dwelling of some obscure barber-surgeon who might
staunch his wounds, and send for a coach to take him home.

Twice he reeled against the wall of a certain dark passage, called
Deadman's Alley, down which he staggered with uneven steps, and had
almost decided that he must sink into the gutter, and lie where he fell
till a passer-by should pick him up, when he descried a red lamp in a
window ahead, and summoned all his strength to make for it as his last
hope. Half blind, half stupefied, he groped and blundered on, with a
dull, strange fancy that he was on the deck of a ship, labouring in a
heavy sea while she made for a harbour-light, that seemed continually to
dip and disappear behind the waves. The illusion, though not so vivid,
was similar to a dream, and the languor that accompanied it something
akin to sleep; till in a moment, while through his brain there came a
whirr as in the works of a watch when it runs down, the light widened,
broke into a hundred shafts of fire, went out and all was dark.




CHAPTER II.

PORLOCK BAY.


High-water in Porlock Bay. The tide upon the turn--sand-pipers, great
and small, dipping, nodding, stalking to and fro, or flitting along its
margin waiting for the ebb; a gull riding smoothly outside on an
untroubled surface, calm as the soft sky overhead, that smiled lovingly
down on the Severn Sea. Landward, a strip of green and level meadows,
fringed by luxuriant woodlands, fair with the gorgeous hues of summer;
stalwart oak, towering elm, spreading walnut, stately Spanish chestnut,
hardy mountain ash, and scattered high on the steep, above dotted thorns
and spreading hazels, outposts, as it were, of delicate feathering
birches, to guard the borders of the forest and the waste; fairyland
brought here to upper earth, with all its changing phases, and variety
of splendour. The wild-bird from her nest in Horner Woods needed but a
dozen strokes of her wing to reach the open moorland that stretched and
widened ridge by ridge, and shoulder by shoulder, till its rich carpet
of heather was lost in the warm haze that came down on Dunkerry Beacon,
like a veil from the sky.

Far away towards Devon lay a land of freedom and solitude, haunt of the
bittern and the red deer, intersected by many a silent coombe and
brawling river, to expand at last on the purple slopes of Brendon, or
the wet grassy plains of Exmoor. Travelling over that interminable
distance, the sense of sight could not but weary for very gladness, and
turned well pleased to rest itself on the white cliffs of the Welsh
coast opposite, and the faint blue of the intervening waters, calm and
still, like the eyes of a girl, whose being has never yet been stirred
into passion by the storm.

Above, below, around, Porlock Bay was decked in her fairest garb. Earth,
air, and water seemed holding jubilee; but the loveliest object in
earth, air, or water was a maiden seated on a point of rock, washed by
the drowsy lap and murmur of the tide, who seemed pondering deeply yet
in simple happy thought--a maiden of comely features and gracious
presence, the sweetest lass from Bossington Point to Bideford Bay,
nimble with needle, tongue and finger, courteous, quick-witted, brave,
tender-hearted, the light of a household, the darling of a hamlet, the
toast of three counties,--and her name was Nelly Carew.

She had sat the best part of an hour without moving from her place,
therefore she could not be waiting for an expected arrival. She swung
her straw hat backwards and forwards by its broad blue ribbon, with the
regularity of a pendulum; therefore her meditations could have been of
no agitating kind, and she looked straight into the horizon, neither
upward like those who live in the future, nor downwards like those who
ponder on the past. Nevertheless, her reflections must have been of an
engrossing nature, for she started at a man's footstep on the shingle,
and the healthy colour mantled in her cheek, while she rose and put out
her hand to be grasped in that of a square-shouldered, rough-looking
personage, whose greeting, though perfectly respectful, seemed more
cordial than polite.

"Good even, Mistress Nelly," said the new comer, in a deep sonorous
voice; "and a penny for your thoughts, if I may be so bold; for thinking
you were, my pretty lass, I'll wager a bodkin, of something very nigh
your heart."

She turned her blue eyes--and Nelly Carew's blue eyes made fools of the
opposite sex at short notice--full in the speaker's face.

"Indeed, Parson," she answered, "you never spoke a truer word in the
pulpit, nor out of it. I've turned it over in my mind till I'm dazed
with thinking, and I can't get her to sit, do what I will."

"Sit!" exclaimed the other. "Where and how?"

"Why, the speckled hen to be sure!" answered Nelly, rather impatiently.
"If she addles all these as she addled the last hatch, I'll forswear
keeping fowls, that I will--it puts me past my patience. How do you
contrive with yours, Mr. Gale? though to be sure, if I was a parson,
like you, I wouldn't keep game-cocks. I couldn't have the heart to see
the poor things fight!"

Parson Gale made no attempt to justify this secular amusement. He was
one of those ecclesiastics, too common a hundred years ago, who looked
upon his preferment and his parish as a layman of the present day looks
on a sporting manor and a hunting-box. Burly, middle-aged, and athletic,
there were few men between Bodmin and Barnstaple who could vie with the
parson in tying a fly, setting a trimmer, tailing an otter, handling a
game-cock, using fists and cudgel, wrestling a fall, and on occasion
emptying a gallon of cider or a jack of double ale. Nay, he knew how to
harbour a stag, and ride the moor after him when the pack were laid on,
with the keenest sportsman of the West, and if to these accomplishments
are added no little skill in cattle doctoring, and some practical
knowledge of natural history, it is not to be supposed that the Reverend
Abner Gale found much leisure for those classical and theological
studies, to which he had never shown the slightest inclination.

"It is but their nature," said the Parson, reverting to the game-cocks,
of which he owned a choice and undefeated breed. "It comes as natural
for them to fight, as for me to drink when I'm dry, or for your old
grandfather to sit and nod over the fire. Or for yourself, Mistress
Nelly,"--here the parson hesitated and tapped his heavy riding boots
with his heavier whip,--"to bloom here in the fresh air of the Channel,
like a rose in a bow-pot. There's a many would fain gather the rose,
only they dursn't ask for fear of being denied."

The latter part of the sentence was spoken low enough for Nelly, even if
she heard it, to ignore.

"And what brought you here this afternoon?" she inquired in her frankest
tones. "It's a long ride across the moor, Parson, even for _you_, and
not much of a place when you get to it. If it had been Bridgewater now,
or Barnstaple, sure you would have seen a score of neighbours, men and
women, to tell you the news, and wind up the night with a junket or may
be a dance. But here," and Nelly burst into a merry laugh, "our only
news is that the speckled hen seems as obstinate as a mule, and Farmer
Veal brought a roan nag horse home this morning from Exeter. I daresay
you've seen it already. As to dancing, if you must needs dance, Parson
Gale, it will have to be with grandfather or me!"

"And I'd dance all night with both," he answered, "to be sure of a kind
word from one of them in the morning. Do you really care to know what
brought me here to-day, Mistress Nelly, and will you promise not to be
hard on me if I tell you the truth?"

There was something ludicrous in the contrast of his rough exterior and
timid manner while he spoke. He was a thick, square-made man, built for
strength rather than activity, with a coarse though comely face, bearing
the traces of a hard out-of-door life, not without occasional excesses
in feasting and conviviality. His short grizzled hair made him look more
than his age, but in spite of his clumsy figure, there was a lightness
in his step, an activity in his gestures, such as seldom outlasts the
turning point of forty. He was dressed in a full-skirted riding coat, an
ample waistcoat that had once been black, soiled leather breeches, and
rusty boots, garnished with a pair of well-cleaned spurs. Even on foot
and up to his ankles in shingle, the man looked like a good rider, and a
daring resolute fellow in all matters of bodily effort or peril, not
without a certain reckless good humour that often accompanies laxity of
principle and habits of self-indulgence. Many women would have seen
something attractive even now in his burly strength and manly bearing;
would have thought it worth while, perhaps, to wean him from his
game-cocks and his boon companions, to tempt him back into the paths of
sobriety, good government, and moderation. Among such reformers he would
fain have counted Nelly Carew.

"You must tell it me in the house then," said she, rising hastily, and
looking up at the sky, as if in dread of a coming shower. "It's time I
was back with grandfather to give him his posset--I left it simmering on
the hob more than an hour ago. Poor grandfather! He never complains, but
I fear he frets if I keep away from him long. It must be dull for him
sure, after the life he led once, dukes and princes and counts of the
empire and what not--why, his very snuff-box belonged to Prince Eugene;
and now he has nobody to speak to but me! Come in, Mr. Gale, and
welcome; it will freshen him up a bit to see a new face, for I think he
seems poorly this morning; you may walk straight into the parlour; you
know your way well enough--while I go and look after supper. You'll eat
a morsel with us, won't you, before your ride across the moor?"

Thus staving off any further explanation of the parson's hints, Nelly
Carew led the way to the pretty and commodious cottage she called her
home, stopping at the door to prune a broken twig from the myrtle that
flourished by the porch as luxuriously as though North Devon were the
South of France. Parson Gale, noting the trim garden, the well-ordered
flower-beds, the newly-thatched roof, and general air of cleanliness and
decency that pervaded the establishment, could not repress a strong
desire to own the treasure thus comfortably bestowed. There was the
casket. Would he ever succeed in carrying off its jewel to make the
light of his own hearth the ornament on his own breast?

It seemed but yesterday she came here a smiling little lass of nine or
ten, the darling of that worn-out soldier, whose life had commenced so
eventfully, to dribble out its remaining sands in so quiet and obscure a
retreat. Of old Carew's history he only knew thus much, that the veteran
had passed a wild unbridled youth, a stormy and reckless manhood; that
he had been tried for rebellion in '15, and risked his head, already
grey, once more in '45, escaping imprisonment and even death on both
occasions by the interposition of powerful friends and in consideration
of his services on the Continent during the war. Even John, Duke of
Marlborough, spoke out for the man he had seen at Malplaquet, holding
his own with a pike against three of the Black Musketeers, and who
carried his weapon in a cool salute to his commander the instant he had
beaten them off. But Carew never prospered, despite his dauntless
courage and undoubted military skill. Now some fatal duel, now some wild
outrage on discipline and propriety brought him into disgrace with the
authorities, and men who were unborn when he first smelt powder,
commanded regiments and brigades, while he remained a simple lieutenant,
with a slender income, a handsome person, and a reputation for daring
alone.

Such characters marry hastily and improvidently. Carew's wife died when
her first child was born, a handsome little rogue, who grew to man's
estate the very counterpart in person and disposition of his graceless
sire. He, too, married early and in defiance of prudential
considerations, gambled, drank, quarrelled with his father, and lost his
life in a duel before they had made friends. Old Carew's hair turned
grey, and his proud form began to stoop soon after his son's death, for
he loved the boy dearly, none the less perhaps because of those very
qualities he thought it right to reprove. Then he took the widow and her
little girl to live with him at a small freehold he inherited near
Porlock; but young Mistress Carew did not long survive her husband, and
the old man found himself at threescore years and ten the sole companion
of a demure little damsel not yet in her teens, whose every look, word,
and gesture reminded him cruelly of the son he had loved and lost.

These two became inseparable. The child's mother had imparted to her a
few simple accomplishments--needlework, house-keeping, a little singing,
a little music, the French language--as she had herself acquired it in a
convent abroad; above all, those womanly ways that not one woman in ten
really possesses, and that make the charm of what is called society no
less than the happiness of home.

Little Nelly was still in her black frock when, taking a Sunday walk
hand-in-hand with her grandfather, she looked up in his face, and thus
accosted him:--

"When I'm big," said she, "I'll have a little girl of my own. I shall
take her out-a-walking, and be kind to her, as you are to me. You won't
like her better than me, grandfather, will you?"

"You may be sure of that, Nelly," was his answer, while he marvelled how
this blue-eyed mite had come to be dearer to him than all his loves and
memories of the past; wishing he could have shaped his whole life
differently for her sake.

"I shall always be your little girl, grandfather," continued Nelly; "I
couldn't do without _you_, and you couldn't do without _me_, so you need
not be afraid of my ever going away to leave you--I promise--there!"

"But, if you marry, Nelly?" said he, laughing, for to his little maid
this affirmation was the most solemn form of oath.

"I shall _never_ marry," answered Nelly, with exceeding decision, "no
more shall my little girl."

And now it seemed the old warrior's turn to be dependent on the grown
woman he had loved and cherished in her childhood. It was true enough
that he fretted and pined for her if she stayed many hours out of his
sight. It was pitiable to mark how, day by day, the intellect failed in
proportion as the goodly form dwindled to decay. The old oak that had
reared its branches so sturdily was bowed and sapless now. The soldier
of Oudenarde and Malplaquet, who had sat at table with Marlborough and
Prince Eugene, was fit for little more than to doze in an easy-chair,
longing for his grandchild's home-coming, and nodding, as Parson Gale
said, feebly over the fire.

Even that worthy felt struck with something of awe and apprehension
while he looked on the wasted limbs that he had heard quoted by old
neighbours for their strength, and reflected that the time was coming
when he too would no longer be able to sit a horse or wrestle a fall.
What had he to look forward to? What resources against that day of
debility and stagnation, unless, indeed, he could prevail in his suit
with Nelly Carew? Therefore did Parson Gale exert all his powers of
conversation, hoping to render himself agreeable to the girl as she
passed in and out, furthering the preparations for their simple meal. He
drew on his memory, his mother-wit, and his invention for subjects that
might be interesting to both his companions. For old Carew he detailed
at great length the particulars of a wrestling-match, and subsequent
drinking bout, at both of which he had lately assisted in his own
parish; while to Nelly he expatiated on the convenience of his kitchen,
the coolness of his larder, the luxuries of his best parlour in the
parsonage at home; but, in spite of all his efforts, he experienced a
dim sense of failure and depression. Notwithstanding his calling, the
man was superstitious rather than religious; and when he rose to take
leave, could not forbear expressing a conviction that some great
misfortune must be impending on him or his.

"I've heard tell of men feeling just like me," said he, holding Nelly's
hand rather longer than good breeding required, "and being found next
morning stark dead on the moor. There was a woman up at my place only
last Martinmas, and she says, 'Parson,' says she, 'there's something
coming to me that's past praying for; I know as well as if I saw it. I'm
that down-hearted I don't seem to fill my bodice, and there's a din in
both my ears like the waves of a flood-tide, so as I can't scarce hear
myself speak.' It wasn't a month before her only brother got drowned off
the Lizard, and will you tell me now, Mistress Nelly, as you did once
before, that such warnings are but idle fancies and old women's fables?
I'm down-hearted too; I'm not ashamed to say so. And when it's fallen on
me, whatever it is, I should like to know who will care a pinch of snuff
what's gone with wild Abner Gale?"

"I wouldn't speak so, if I were you," answered the girl, who, having
disengaged her hand, was now standing at the cottage door to see him
mount for his homeward ride across the moor. "There are plenty of all
sorts to welcome you when you come, and wish you 'good-speed' when you
go away--you that have so many friends."

"Friends!" repeated the Parson, turning his mare's head homewards, with
a bitter smile. "The church wouldn't hold my acquaintance, but the
pulpit is large enough for my _friends_!"




CHAPTER III.

WAIF.


Deadman's Alley was at all times a secluded thoroughfare; after dark,
indeed, its echoes rarely woke to the sound of a footstep; and the watch
reflecting, perhaps, that such loneliness saved them a deal of trouble,
abstained from disturbing its repose. An empty cask, a bale of goods, or
a human body thrown aside in Deadman's Alley, might have remained there
many hours without attracting the notice or obstructing the transit of a
passenger.

John Garnet, however, was unusually fortunate, for he had wallowed in
the gutter but a few minutes, when a girl's step came dancing along the
alley, and the lightest foot in London tripped over him as he lay at
length upon the stones, not quite unconscious, yet altogether powerless
to move. The girl, who had nearly fallen, recovered her footing with the
activity of a cat; and smothering an exclamation in some outlandish
tongue, peered down through the darkness to discover the nature of her
stumbling-block. Then she felt that her naked ankles, for she wore no
stockings, were wet with blood. In an instant she flew to the little red
lamp, for which John Garnet had been making when he fell, tapped hard at
the latticed window whence it shone; and after a hurried whisper with
some one inside, returned in equal haste, accompanied by an old man
wearing a skull-cap and black velvet gown. Together they lifted their
burden in a deliberate business-like manner, as though they traded
habitually in such goods, and carried it into their dwelling, carefully
securing the shutters of the lattice, and closing the door.

When John Garnet recovered his senses he thought he must be dreaming, so
like a trick of Fancy was the scene to which he awoke. Above him hung
heavy bed-curtains of a rich brocade, under his head was a laced pillow,
and he lay on a scarlet coverlet bound with a border of blue. His eyes,
travelling lazily round the room, rested on a silver lamp, fed by some
aromatic oil; and when he closed them again, wearied by the exertion,
gentle hands pressed a cordial to his lips, and a consoling voice
whispered in his ear:

"Courage, my young friend. Do not attempt to raise your head. Another
sip, Waif. Good. In five minutes he will come-to."

In five minutes he _did_ come to, and found strength to ask what had
happened and where he was?

"The first question you must answer for yourself," said the grave old
man who sat by his bedside, with a finger on his pulse. "To the second I
reply, make your mind easy, you are in the house and under the care of
the celebrated Doctor Katerfelto, who has won more games of skill
against death than any practitioner now alive. Waif, bring me the roll
of lint that stands on the top shelf in the surgery. Look in the middle
drawer for some red salve, and put that flask out of my patient's
reach."

The girl had left the room, and was back again quicker than John
Garnet's languid senses could follow her movements. When she returned
with these simple remedies, he did not fail to mark the softness of her
dark eyes, the subdued grace of her bearing, the sweet and loving pity
that seemed to pervade her whole being while she hovered about his
couch, and administered skilfully to the wants of a wounded man. Nor was
this tenderness, this sympathy, this almost maternal solicitude, in
accordance with her general habits, in keeping with her type of form and
feature. She looked more like a panther of the wilderness than the nurse
in a sick room. The lithe and supple frame, the light and noiseless
gait, the quick stealthy turn of ear and eye and limb, ready on the
instant for attack, defence, or flight, all this partook of the fierce,
feline nature, and all this she inherited from that mysterious race to
which she belonged, whose origin history has failed to discover, whose
destiny conjecture is at a loss to guess. From her gipsy ancestors she
derived her tameless glances, her nimble strength, her shapely limbs
with their delicate extremities, her swarthy savage beauty and light
untiring step. From them, too, came the wild blood that boiled under
restraint or contradiction, the unbridled passions that knew no curb of
custom nor of conscience, the cunning that could conceal them till
occasion offered, the recklessness that would then indulge them freely
without pity or remorse.

John Garnet had never yet seen anything so beautiful as this tawny girl
bending over his couch, with gold coins studding her jetty hair, with
collar and bracelets of gold round her neck and wrists, with a shawled
robe of scarlet and orange reaching to her naked ankles, and broad
buckles of gold in her red-heeled shoes.

He thought of Cleopatra, young whole-hearted, and untainted by the kiss
of an emperor; of the Queen of Sheba, before she fathomed the wisdom of
Solomon. Then he thought the dark eyes looked at him more than kindly,
and fell to wondering how she came here, and what relation she bore to
this old man in the velvet gown who sat by his pillow with a grave
attentive face. But the cordial was doing its work. Ere his wounds had
been dressed, the salve spread, and the lint bandages deftly swathed
round his body, John Garnet's senses lost themselves once more in
oblivion; the last words he heard were in the doctor's voice. Listening
for the girl's answer he fell sound asleep.

"There is no fear now," said Katerfelto reflectively. "Shall I say there
is no hope? He would have made a beautiful subject, and I wanted just
such an one, to bring my new discovery to perfection. Look at his chest,
Waif. Did you ever see a finer specimen? Some men in my place would be
incapable of this self-denial."

Waif, as he called her, turned pale under her tawny skin, but there was
a fierce glitter in her eyes while she answered, "I thought he was dead
you may be sure, that was why I brought you out to him. He'll get well
now. So much the better! Patron! you dare not do it."

The old man smiled, stroking his velvet gown with a white well-cared-for
hand.

"Dare not, or will not, or shall not," he replied. "It little matters
which. No. It is an interesting case as it stands, and to cure him will
be almost as instructive as to cut him up. Science, Waif, exacts from us
great sacrifices, but she has also her rewards. The man will live, I
think. Live probably to be ungrateful. Meanwhile, let us see who and
what he is."

Thus speaking, and with a marvellous dexterity the result of long
practice, he turned every one of the sleeper's pockets inside out, felt
in his cravat, his bosom, his waistband, leaving no part of his dress
unsearched, yet without in the slightest degree disturbing his repose.
The girl, holding the lamp to assist, looked down on the prostrate
figure, with a new sensation growing up in her heart, a vague wild
longing that seemed to covet no less than to pity and admire.

"The outcome is unequal to the pains bestowed," said Katerfelto, holding
up a light purse, a tavern bill, and a valueless snuff-box, as the
fruit of his exertions. "Yet the man is well-born, Waif, and well-to-do,
or I am mistaken. In due time we shall know more about him; there is no
hurry. He cannot leave that bed for a week, nor this house, I should
say, for a month. It's a beautiful case. Beautiful! the other
gentleman's sword must have gone through to the very hilt!"

"Patron! will he die?" asked Waif with a tremble of the lip she tried
hard to conceal.

"Most assuredly!" was the answer. "So will you, and so shall I. But not
of such a scratch as _this_, while under _my_ care! No! No! We will set
him on his legs, Waif, in less than a fortnight. Then he will pay his
doctor's bill, walk off with a huge appetite, and we shall see him no
more."

Her face, over which every shade of hope and fear had passed while she
listened, looked very grave and earnest now.

"Am I to nurse him, Patron?" said she; "we can keep him safe and quiet
in here, and I can see after his wants while you attend to the people
that come to consult you, patients and----"

"Fools--" added the old man. "Fools, who are yet so wise in their folly
as to purchase ease of mind at a price they would grudge for health of
body. It's a worse trade, Waif, to set a broken leg than to heal a
broken heart. We want skill, learning, splints, bandages, and anatomy
for the one, but a little cunning and a bold guess will answer all
purposes for the other. There are many men and more women who would
laugh in my face if I told them their head was a workshop and their
heart a pump; yet they can believe the whole of their future life is
contained in a pack of cards. You and I, Waif, have thriven well in a
world of fools--and the fools thrive too--why, I know not. The wisest
people on earth are _your_ people, but they have never prospered. Is it
best to be true, simple, honest? I cannot answer--I have never tried."

"I will do everything you tell me," persisted Waif, taking for granted
the permission she was so eager to obtain. "I can creep about the
chamber like a mouse; I never want to sleep, nor eat, nor drink, nor go
out into the filthy muddy streets. I know every phial in the surgery as
well as yourself. Hand him over to me, Patron, and I will promise to
bring him through."

He eyed her narrowly, and she seemed conscious of his scrutiny, for she
turned her head away and busied herself in adjustment of the
bed-clothes. Then he laughed a little mocking laugh, and proceeded to
give directions for the treatment of their patient.

"You must watch him," he insisted, and though she muttered, "you needn't
tell me that!" finished his say without noticing the interruption. "You
must watch him narrowly; if he wakes, give him one more spoonful of the
cordial; if he is restless after that, come to me. If he wanders in his
sleep mark every word he utters, and remember it. Such drivellings are
not of the slightest importance, but interesting, very interesting, in a
medical point of view. Good-night, Waif. Do exactly as I bid you, and if
all goes well, do not wake me till sunrise."

Then he trimmed the lamp, listened at the lattice, and retired, leaving
the girl alone with her patient.

How quiet she sat! moving not so much as a finger, with her large dark
eyes fixed on the floor, and her thoughts like restless sea-birds flying
here, there, everywhere; now skimming the Past, now soaring into the
Future, finally gathering out of all quarters to settle themselves on
the Present. From the moment when Katerfelto, or the Patron, as she
called him, left the room, she seemed to have entered on a new life, to
have risen in her own esteem, to have accepted responsibilities of which
she was proud, to have become a gentler, fairer, softer being, more
susceptible to pleasure and to pain. She only knew there was a great
change; she did not know that she was passing into Fairy Land by the
gate through which there is no return.

Behind her lay rugged mountain and dreary moor, paths that soil and
blister weary feet, barren uplands yielding scanty harvest in return for
daily toil, a scorching sun, a drenching rain, mocking winds that whirl,
and buffet, and moan. Before her opened the dazzling vistas of a magic
region: gleaming rivers, golden skies, velvet lawns fretted with gems,
bending flowers laden with perfume; glade and thicket, field and forest
bathed in glows of unearthly beauty, rich in tints of unearthly
splendour, teeming with fruits of unearthly hues. Would she not enter in
and rest? Would she not reach forth her hand to gather, and smell, and
taste? Had she not wild longings, vague curiosity, unreasonable daring?
Was she not a woman to the core? How could she tell that the Fairy Land
was a glamour, the lustre a delusion, the beauty a snare? that serpents
were coiling in the grass, that poison lurked in the flowers, that the
fruits turned to dust and ashes on the lip? How could she foresee the
time when she would yearn and strive and pray to get back to the outer
world? In vain! Those who have once passed its gate and tasted the
fruits in that fairy garden have to do with middle earth no more. Their
phantoms may indeed remain among us, but themselves are far away in the
enchanted country, pacing their weary round without a respite,
fulfilling their endless penance in the listless apathy of despair.

Once the sleeping man turned with a low, deep sigh of comfort, as in
relief from pain. Waifs dark eyes gleamed on him with glances of
unspeakable tenderness and admiration. How noble he looked lying there
in his wounds, like a dead prince. How graceful was the recumbent form;
how luxuriant the dark brown hair escaped from its black riband to
wander over the pillow; how white and shapely the strong hand opened
loosely on the coverlet. This, then, was what they called a gentleman.
She had seen gentlemen in the streets, or when they came to consult the
Patron, but never under such favourable conditions for examination as
now. What was _she_ in comparison? She, the drudge of a charlatan,
half-quack, half-conjuror? How could there be anything in common between
them? She stirred uneasily in her chair, rose, crept to the bedside, and
laid her slim, dusky hand by the side of his.

Waif's hands, in spite of hard work and hard weather, were beautiful
with the beauty of her race; long, lithe, and delicate; the slender
fingers and filbert-shaped nails concealed a vigour of grasp and
tenacity denied to the broad coarse fist of many a powerful man. She
smiled as she compared them with those of the sleeping patient; and her
smile grew brighter while she reflected that she was herself the
superior in those advantages of birth she so esteemed in him. Yes, the
oldest blood in England seemed a mere puddle compared with hers. Where
was the English gentleman who could trace his pedigree back for a
hundred generations without break or blemish, to ancestors who had
served the Pharaohs and set taskwork for the Jews, who even in that
remote time boasted themselves lineal descendants of an illustrious line
that was only lost with every other record of history in the dim
obscurity of the Past.

All this Waif had learned beneath the stars, on Bagshot Heath or Barnes
Common, sitting over the camp-fires in the steam of the camp-kettles,
filled with spoils from neighbouring hen-roosts, stolen by the high-born
patriarchs and princes of her tribe.

But she was a good nurse, notwithstanding her royal descent and
barbarian bringing-up. Twenty times during the night she smoothed her
patient's pillows and straightened his bed-clothes, watching with
experienced eye and ear for symptoms of weakness or relapse. Never once
did she relax her vigilance, nor so much as relieve her slender, supple
form by leaning back in her chair. Unlike most watchers, for _her_ the
minutes seemed to fly on golden wings, and when the grey light of dawn
began to steal through the shutter, dulling the lamp still burning in
that sick chamber, she could have reproached the summer morning for
coming so soon.

Yet it had been a long night to Waif in fact, if not in appearance.
Those watchful hours had brought for her the great change that comes
once in a lifetime. An ancient philosopher compared our terrestrial
career to the letter Y. He has been quoted till we are tired of him, but
none the less must we acknowledge the force of his illustration. As we
travel along the road we must needs arrive, some in the morning, some in
the middle of the day, some (and these last are much to be pitied) not
till the afternoon, at a point where two paths branch out in different
directions. There is a guide-post indeed, but it stands so high above
our heads that we seldom look at it, choosing rather to trust our
passions and inclinations for directions on the way. So we turn to right
or left as nature, habit, or convenience prompts us, and on the turn
thus taken depends our future journey, and the hope of ever reaching
home.

It was broad day when John Garnet woke and tried to sit up in bed.
"Where am I?" was his first exclamation, rubbing his eyes with the hand
his bandages left free. "And why am I trussed up like a fowl that's been
skewered? Ah! I remember now. I _have_ been skewered, and you've been
nursing me, my pretty maid. I fear I have given you a vast deal of
trouble and shall give you more before I can stand up."

She bent over him like a mother over her child. It was such happiness to
protect and soothe him, to feel that he might even owe his life to her.

"Do not try to move yet," said she; "you are safe and in good hands. The
longer you stay with us the better we shall be pleased."

"Will _you_ nurse me?" he asked gaily, unconscious of the tremble that
ran through her frame, while she bowed her head in answer.

"Then I don't care how long it is!" he laughed. "With such a pretty
nurse I should like never to get well!"

The blood flew to her face, reddening brow and temples, with a blush of
pride and exquisite pleasure, rather than of resentment or shame.




CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD STORY.


Katerfelto's business seemed to bring him in contact with persons of
every class and character. Men and women were coming to the surgery at
all hours of the day and night; the former generally armed, the latter
sometimes masked, all muffled in cloaks or riding-hoods, as if their
purpose necessitated secrecy and disguise. It did not escape John
Garnet's observation, lying idle on his sick bed, that the conversations
he overheard were carried on in a subdued voice, and that everything
connected with the doctor's house in Deadman's Alley seemed tainted with
a breath of mystery, suspicion, and intrigue.

To this effect he unburthened his mind while watching Waifs stealthy
movements as she arranged the room some few mornings after his arrival,
and insisted by word and gesture on the necessity of his lying perfectly
still if he wanted to get well.

"Waif," said he, in that pleasant, careless voice, which had already
taught the girl's eye to brighten and her heart to leap, "is the Patron
a wizard, a Jacobite agent, a second Guy Fawkes, or only a great prince
in disguise? Why is everything in this house, even to laying the plates
for dinner, done with secrecy and caution? Why does nobody speak but in
whispers, and why is each succeeding visitor kept waiting in the
passage till his predecessor has been dismissed? Why do the ladies come
here on foot, my pretty lass, and what does it all mean?"

"Don't call me that!" she exclaimed impatiently. "I'm _not_ a pretty
lass! It's the way you would speak to a milkmaid. Call me Waif."

"Waif," he repeated. "There's another mystery. Who ever heard of a girl
like you being called Waif? Who gave you that name? Not that you ever
had godfathers or godmothers, I suppose. But where did you get it and
how?"

"The Patron has called me Waif ever since I was a little child," said
she simply. "I was known as Thyra with our own people, but of course,
when he bought me, he was bound to change my name."

"Bought you!" John Garnet gasped for breath and gave such a bounce among
the bed-clothes as to loosen his bandages. Her clever fingers readjusted
them without delay.

"Bought me," she repeated, "and took me away with him the same day. I
cried to leave Fin and old Broomstick, but to be sure I was very little
and it was very cold."

"Oh! you cried to leave Fin and old Broomstick," said he in undisguised
astonishment. "May I ask who _they_ were?"

"Fin was one of our own lads," she answered; "they said I was to be his
wife when we grew up. I don't think I minded leaving Fin so much, but
Broomstick had carried me ever since I was born, and my heart was sore
to wish the poor old donkey good-bye."

"But how could all this be done against your will?" continued John
Garnet.

"I had no will one way nor the other," she answered. "Of course when I
was paid for he might do as he chose. I felt the change at first, but I
liked it well enough after a time. I am very glad of it now."

This last with her face turned away, and in a whisper that escaped his
notice.

"Was he good to you?" asked the other, feeling his free British
instincts sadly outraged by the girl's disclosures. "If he wasn't, he
ought to have his neck wrung!"

"Oh, yes!" she replied, eagerly, but with a shrinking look in her bright
black eyes. "I have nothing to complain of from the Patron. Nothing! I
hated my shoes at first, and eating with a knife and fork; but the
Patron gave me beautiful clothes, and ornaments of gold, real gold. I
soon learned to like being well-dressed, and after a time I didn't so
much mind sleeping under a roof. But oh! how I missed the lights in the
sky! I used to wake up in the night crying, because I thought they had
gone out for ever, and I should see them shining no more."

"But what on earth did he want you for?" was the natural inquiry. "What
did he do with you after he bought and carried you away?"

"We didn't always live here," she answered. "We do not always live here
now. At first, the Patron took me about all over the country. I daresay
I know a good many more places than you do. We went to every fair and
merry-making, down in the West, as far as the Land's End. It must be a
very dark night for me to lose my way on Dartmoor, or anywhere in the
Valley of the Exe, or among the coombes between Badgeworthy water and
Taunton town. That was the first place I danced at to please the people
in the fair. The Patron gave me this gold collar next morning, and I've
worn it ever since. Would you like me to dance for you now, or sing? Or
shall I tell you your fortune? I'll do anything to please you. Only say
what it shall be."

The shy and pleading glance that accompanied this accommodating avowal
would have melted a harder heart than John Garnet's.

"Tell me of yourself," was his answer; "that pleases me more than
anything else you can talk about."

Her bright smile revealed a dazzling row of teeth. "There is not much to
tell," said she. "We made money, and we spent money. Sometimes we went
to the races, and the Patron used to come in to supper with his pockets
full of gold. Sometimes the people laughed at us, and then we never
stayed till nightfall. Once--it was at Devizes--they hooted us out of
the town; a man threw a stone at me which struck me in the shoulder. It
bled a good deal. Look, there's the mark!"

She pulled her dress down and revealed a cicatrice on a shape that would
have made a model for a sculptor. "I flew at him!" she continued, with a
fierce glitter in her eyes, "and drew my knife. I would have stabbed
him, but the Patron pulled me away. I should like to see that man again.
I should know his face among ten thousand, and I would kill him wherever
we met. Then we came here and the Patron left off travelling so much. He
says he began at the wrong end, and went to seek the fools, instead of
letting the fools come and seek him. I used to think I liked moving
about better than always sticking in the same place, but I don't think
so now."

"And the fools that come so readily to seek the Patron," asked John
Garnet--"what sort of fools are these?"

"The wisest sort," answered the girl. "Many a time I have heard him say
that those who come for information, begin by telling him all they want
to know. The Patron never seems to listen, but his ears are very sharp.
Besides, he can always find out things in a hundred ways, watching the
fire and the stars, or reading the cards. The last is the easiest, only
they sometimes come up wrong, but the stars _never_ deceive."

She spoke with implicit faith. For this girl, there was an inscrutable
power that ruled supreme over all earthly fortunes, and dominated all
mortal efforts. She called it Fate, and believed that its decrees were
revealed in the cracklings of a wood fire, the combinations on a table
of numerals, the presence of the knave of spades in a hand of diamonds,
no less than in those tablets of fire that her ancestors had studied,
when the Pyramids were as yet unfinished, when the Chaldæan was still
learning the alphabet of that wondrous language he discovered in the
stars of heaven.

"Then the Patron is a fortune-teller," continued John Garnet, looking
with undisguised admiration in his companion's face. "I thought he was a
doctor--I am sure he has doctored _me_ to some purpose. I feel as if I
should be out of bed to-morrow, and in the saddle next day. Perhaps it's
your nursing, pretty Waif; but I seem to get stronger every hour."

It was a tell-tale face, and changed colour often under the clear,
swarthy skin. John Garnet, however (and perhaps this was why women liked
him well), detected but slowly the interest he created in the opposite
sex; and Waif might have blushed till she was scarlet before he found
out the truth, had she not pressed both hands to her bosom with a
gesture of pain, and exclaimed, in a choking voice:

"Then you will go away, and I shall never see you again!"

He glanced sharply in her face. The black eyes were fixed and tearless,
but there was a world of patient, hopeless sorrow in their gaze; and
through John Garnet's heart ran a thrill of something sweeter and keener
than pity--something not far removed from love.

"Waif," said he, in the kind, mellow tones she knew so well, "Waif, my
pretty maid, shall you be sorry when I have to go away?"

She looked straight in his eyes while he could have counted ten. Then
over her dark, delicate face came, as it were, a ripple, that told how
deeply she was moved. One instant her slender figure waved like a willow
in the wind, the next she had fallen forward on her knees, clasping his
hand to her lips and forehead, while she wept convulsively; but, before
he had recovered his astonishment sufficiently to soothe her with word
or caress, she leaped to her feet, and glided like a phantom from the
room.

"Here's a coil!" said John Garnet to himself, making an abortive effort
to rise, that sufficiently convinced him he had over-rated his strength.

"Why the devil couldn't I let her go on, and keep my own foolish tongue
between my teeth? It's always the way with _me_. I speak, and then I'm
sorry for it. Am I sorry for it now? I doubt if I am. She's the
prettiest lass, for all her tawny skin, I've seen since I came out of
the North; and there's no harm done after all. I wonder how long I shall
be kept lying here? A week more, at least. Say a week. The time will
pass all the quicker with this gipsy beauty to talk to; and if she _do_
care for me a little more than is good for her, why I suppose she can't
help it. No more can I. What eyes she has, and what hair! I could find
it in my heart to wish she was not quite so handsome; but that's not my
fault. Thyra's a pretty name, though outlandish--much better than Waif.
I shall call her Thyra when she comes back. It won't be long first, I'll
wager a guinea!"

But he would have lost his guinea. Noon passed, and afternoon, and day
drew to an end, but brought no Waif with its lengthening shadows. When
his usual supper-time arrived, he began to grow fretful and impatient,
as much perhaps from cravings of the stomach as the heart. A step in the
passage, the bump of a tray against his door, restored him to good
humour; but it was with a feeling of disappointment, keen enough to dull
the vigorous appetite of convalescence, that he saw the skull-cap and
velvet gown of his host, instead of Waif with her scarlet draperies and
jetty gold-studded hair. When a girl has told a man she likes him, he
always wants to hear the avowal again.

"My young friend," said Katerfelto, in the low grave voice to which he
owed so much of his influence, "I have brought you to eat and drink:
food plain and nourishing, drink that shall restore, and not inflame.
The tongue is clean, the eye clear, the pulse full, if a little
irregular. My coming into the room suddenly flurried you, no doubt. If
you go on well through the night, to-morrow I shall pronounce you
convalescent. I never speak without being sure. When Constantine
Katerfelto uses the word 'convalescent,' a patient may order his boots
to be blacked and his spurs cleaned."

"You've brought me through right well, Doctor," replied John Garnet,
glancing at the door, "you and Waif together. You must give the nurse
some of the credit! She's been very careful and attentive. I think she
has hardly left me for an hour at a time, till--till to-day."

How differently thirty and sixty look upon the absence of eighteen!

"Waif's a good girl," answered the Doctor, coolly; "and for a mere
child, shows a fair amount of intelligence. I am glad you are satisfied
with her."

"She--she's not ill to-day, I hope," hazarded the patient, eating,
however, heartily enough, notwithstanding the anxiety to be inferred
from his inquiry.

"Ah!" was the answer; "you know very little of Waif, or you would
scarcely ask such a question. None of her race are ever _ill_, any more
than the beasts of prey. They die, indeed, but it is like the wolf and
the jackal, in some forest-den. Skill, science, experience, are of no
avail. It's in the blood--nothing can cure them when they have once lain
down. I've tried it a score of times, and failed."

"Is she a thorough-bred gipsy?" he asked, for it was pleasant to talk of
her, even to this unsympathising old man.

"As the Queen of Sheba," assented the other. "Some day, perhaps, when we
are better acquainted, I may tell you more of her history; but I give
not my friendship lightly," he added, with a scrutinising glance from
his shining grey eyes; "it is offered only to those who owe me, or to
whom I owe, a heavy debt of gratitude."

"I am sure I ought to be grateful to you," said John Garnet, "and so I
_am_; but I can do nothing to prove it till you get me off this bed, and
out of this room. Then, Doctor, speak up boldly. Say what you want, and
I am your man!"

The other laughed a noiseless laugh, peculiar to himself. "You owe me
but little as yet," said he; "perhaps you may live to be deeper in my
debt than for the healing of a scratch. Not that I mean to say the
scratch was a trifling one. I tell you honestly, many a surgeon would
have given your case up as hopeless; and you ought to be thankful, if
you young men ever _are_ thankful, that you fell into my hands. No; for
a bold, enterprising fellow, in the prime of life and strength, whose
fingers, as I guess, close round his hilt pretty readily, I might do
something better than stop a hole in the side. There are paths to
fortune, plenty of them, for men who look upward and onward, steep it
may be, and leading through miry places, not seldom slippery with blood.
To a bold spirit this is half the charm! You are lying here, unable to
leave your bed to-day; but do you not long for the time when you shall
be riding wild horses, pledging lawless healths, drinking, dicing, and
brawling once more? When the frost is bitter, and the earth white with
snow, and the robin hops to your window for crumbs, do you not look
forward to the opening spring, the soft south wind, the coming of the
blackbird at last?"

A look of intelligence passed between them, and the sick man's eye
brightened. It was the pass-word of a losing, nay, of a ruined cause.
The handful of Jacobites remaining in England had not yet relinquished
all hope of his return, who had proved indeed a bird of ill-omen,
blacker than night, to those whose loyalty waged life and lands on his
behalf.

"Nay, Doctor," said the other, with a flush of pride on his face, "the
blackbird's whistle has cost us simply all we had, but not one of us
ever complained; we bought defeat too dear."

"I know you, John Garnet," answered Katerfelto. "You come of a trusty
race."

"Know me!" repeated the other, "How did you find me out? I would have
told you without hesitation, but you never asked my name--no more did
Waif."

"I know a great many things," replied the charlatan. "In many ways you
could not understand, unless you had studied, as I have, the hidden
mysteries of Heaven and Earth, and of places under the Earth. I know
that the Garnets lost titles and lands for the--for the Black-bird--we
will say. I know that the last of them would leap from that bed,
bandages and all, to burn powder and draw steel if the yellow beak did
but so much as whistle from its garden in the South."

"You learned all that in the 'Annual Register' or the 'North Britain,'"
said John Garnet, proudly, "but how did you guess I belonged to the
family who have been so loyal, so constant, and proved themselves
such--fools?"

Katerfelto smiled. "Fools," he replied, "are my special study. As the
worm feeds the blackbird, so the fool feeds the philosopher. You are no
fool notwithstanding, and yet I know all about you. There was a
supper-party t'other night--a jest--an altercation--a duel--without
witnesses--without witnesses, mark you. When a man is killed under those
circumstances, the law sometimes brings it in--murder!"

John Garnet turned pale. The truth of his host's surmises affected him
no less than the consideration of the danger he had incurred. It did not
strike him that Katerfelto's guesses, however shrewd, were the mere
offspring of analogy and observation. A wounded man at midnight inferred
an after-supper brawl, while the fact of his staggering into Deadman's
Alley faint from loss of blood, alone and unassisted, argued the absence
of seconds, one of whom would doubtless have conveyed his principal to a
place of safety, while the identity of that principal must long since
have become the talk of this town.

"You know everything," he murmured. "Everything--I wish you could tell
me whether the poor fellow I ran through the brisket is alive."

For reasons of his own the charlatan was anxious to impress his patient
with a conviction of his powerful character and superior intelligence.

"Not so," said he, with an air of extreme frankness. "I have no
knowledge, for I have taken no trouble to learn. If I can spare the time
to-night, when the moon goes down, I will set those to work who shall
bring me all the information I require in less than forty-eight hours."

John Garnet, though scarcely a model Christian, was a good Catholic. He
crossed himself and faltered a feeble protest against the employment of
evil spirits or unorthodox powers of the air.

"I had rather not get well at all," said he, "than be cured by magic or
witchcraft! I would leave the house this minute if I believed you were
more than a doctor! I'll wager a fair stake and risk my life any day,
but I won't sit down to play for my soul!"

"Your soul!" echoed Katerfelto, with his characteristic laugh. "My young
friend, what should I do with your soul if I won it? My concern is with
men's bodies, their energies, their courage, and their intellect. I
shall set you on your legs in a week, and you can carry your soul about
with you, if you have one, wherever you like. In the meantime keep
quiet, take your medicine, drugs of the veriest earth--earthy; eat your
food and drink your posset, prepared by no fairy hands, but those of a
woman, real flesh and blood, with a human temper, worse, I daresay, than
that of many average fiends, and so get well. In a few days I will talk
to you again on matters of business to our mutual advantage. Meantime I
relegate you once more to the care of Waif."

His spirits rose at once, and he bade the charlatan good-night with an
excess of cordiality not lost on that shrewd observer, who was as good
as his word, for his voice could be heard in the passage bidding Waif
hasten her house-work and watch by the patient till he slept, a mandate
the gipsy-girl obeyed to the letter, returning without delay to her
former post, but taking up a station in the obscurity where John Garnet
could not see her face. Neither did she vouchsafe a syllable of greeting
or explanation, so that the patient felt uncomfortably hurt and
perplexed.

"Have I offended you?" he asked at length, in an humble tone,
contrasting piteously with the coldness of that in which she replied.

"Who am I, to be offended? My only business is to obey. The Patron bids
me watch here till you sleep."

So he shut his eyes, yet not too tight, and scanned her the while
covertly beneath their lids, thus detecting on her face, when she turned
it towards him, a look of tender wistful longing, that told only too
plainly the secret of her love.

Then he drew a deep breath of relief and contentment, satisfied he would
rise a winner from the unequal game and so fell sound asleep.




CHAPTER V.

A CHARLATAN.


In the surgery Katerfelto began to prepare for the reception of his
visitors. Standing at a bright little mirror, he was soon immersed in
the task. A spot of carmine on the cheek-bones, a line or two of paint
round the mouth, about the eyes, and across the forehead added a score
of years to his appearance and made him look a man of eighty. A flowing
white beard, in which his own grey tresses mingled freely, and a black
cloak bordered with crimson, drawn over the velvet gown, completed his
equipment. Surveying the whole in his glass, he drew himself up, with
something of the confidence a knight must have felt when armed from head
to heel. "Come one, come all," he seemed to say, "I am a match for the
best of you, and profitable as is the victory, I am not sure but the
real pleasure consists in the strife!--"

The plot thickened with nightfall. He was hardly ready before a cautious
tap made itself heard at the street door. Waif, watching her patient's
slumbers, flew to admit the visitor, and was at her post again ere he
had time to pay a single compliment on her good looks.

In his own opinion, this gentleman was a consummate judge of such
matters. On the points of a horse, or a woman, he held no man so well
qualified to give an opinion, and indeed had spent the greater part of
his fortune in researches after speed and beauty. His accomplishments
were those of his time and class. A better and bolder card-player than
Lord Bellinger never held a trump. He cracked his bottle like an honest
fellow without flinching, played tennis, danced a minuet to admiration,
bowed and took snuff with inimitable grace, fenced beautifully, swore
fearfully, and corrupted his mother tongue into a jargon only
intelligible at Ranelagh or the Cocoa Tree.

When the cloak was thrown open in which this paragon was enveloped,
Katerfelto did not fail to recognise in that worn, handsome face and
attenuated form the most frequent and productive of his customers.

"Your lordship is welcome," said the Charlatan, with gracious dignity.
"How liable is our poor glimmering of human science to error; the
mistake of a decimal caused me to expect you nearly an hour ago."

"What? You knew it!" replied the other, not without an oath. "Why,
Katerfelto, you know everything! Yes, here I am. It's not very difficult
to guess why. Have you found out anything more? Who is she? And what is
she? How much longer am I to go on toasting her without so much as
knowing her name, haunted by those clear, cold eyes, that proud,
delicate face, that queenly shape and air? Tell me all about her, now at
once! Here! I've brought you the stuff in a bag. Look at it, man. Does
it make your eyes shine and your mouth water? It cost me six hours' work
to get that little purse together last night at the Cocoa Tree. Never
_were_ such cards! Never _was_ such luck!"

"Fortune is a woman," answered the other. "Like all women, coy to be
wooed, but grateful to be won."

"She hath played me more slippery tricks than I choose to count,"
laughed his lordship. "It may be that I solicit her too often, and trust
her too fondly. Last night she did me a rare jade's turn! Look ye here,
man; I had won a cool four thousand at picquet, and St. Leger wanted to
leave off. I was always too strong for him at picquet. Well, sir, four
thousand was no use to me, but eight would have taken my lady's diamonds
out of pawn, and I offered him one more chance, double or quits."

"I know you did," observed Katerfelto with the utmost effrontery, "and
left off quits; I wish I had been at your lordship's elbow."

"I wish you had!" replied the other; "for I believe you are the devil
himself, or in close league with him. However, I did not come here to
prate about my luck, and I have little time to waste; my lady thinks I
am at Ranelagh. She's to meet me there later. Now business is business,
my good friend; what have you done for me?"

"Little and yet enough," answered the other. "You will meet somebody at
Ranelagh to-night; you are to be wary and cautious. Do not seem to
recognise her till you find her unattended. You may then speak three
words, no more. It is her express stipulation. They will be answered in
due time. She goes to Ranelagh early and remains only an hour."

"Then I had better be off!" exclaimed his lordship, pressing a purse
into Katerfelto's hand. "What? are you so ceremonious? Must you needs
come to the door yourself? Where's the pretty gipsy lass? I saw her not
ten minutes ago. I say, Katerfelto, if ever you sell her back into
bondage, let me have the refusal. By Jupiter! if I was to put that girl
into velvet and brocade I could take the town by storm."

"Your lordship does her too much honour," answered Katerfelto, bowing
profoundly while he opened the door, but there was a malicious twinkle
in his eye, and a curl of scorn about the corners of his mouth, to belie
the outward show of deference with which he dismissed his visitor.

The latter had been gone but a few minutes ere a sedan-chair was set
down at the end of Deadman's Alley, and a lady closely veiled, carrying
a riding mask, not over her face, but in her hand, alighted with some
trepidation, peering up and down the passage, as if fearful of being
observed, while she made for the red lamp in Katerfelto's window. This
visitor was also admitted after a little cautious tap, but, unlike her
predecessor, looked with scorn rather than admiration on Waif's dark
locks and flashing glances. "Tell the Doctor, child," said she, "that I
am not to be disturbed while I consult him, and beware of
eaves-dropping. I do not choose to share my secrets with a waiting-maid,
for all her saucy looks and sallow skin!"

Waif scarcely heard and certainly did not heed, for her heart was in the
sick-chamber with John Garnet, whither her agile body lost no time in
following it.

"Your ladyship is early," said Katerfelto, with an obeisance courtly,
but not subservient. "Ranelagh need wait the less impatiently for its
fairest ornament."

"La, Doctor!" was the answer, "who could have told you I was going to
Ranelagh? I protest you know everything. My lord thinks I am there now."

"My lord will be there as surely as my lady," answered the other. "But
it was not to learn his lordship's movements that your ladyship came
here!"

"Fie, Doctor!" she replied; "what woman of fashion cares to know the
doings of a husband? I have a crow to pluck with you. Do you remember
what you promised me the last time I was here?"

"Triumphs by the hundred," said he; "compliments by the thousand;
conquests and flatteries innumerable. Better than these, a run of luck
with the cards that should last a week."

"And I wore it out in a night," she complained. "Whist, ombre, picquet,
and three-card loo, I have never risen a winner but once since I came
here last. You dare not deceive me, Doctor; nay, you would not deceive a
woman, I am sure. Can you--_couldn't_ you put me in the way of winning a
game or two? I protest I shall have to pawn my diamonds else."

No one knew better than the doctor that this expedient had been resorted
to long ago, and her ladyship was at present wearing paste; but he did
not say so.

"Are you willing to learn?" he asked, with his quiet sarcastic smile.
"An hour's practice every day for ten days would make your ladyship
independent of chance and all its fluctuations. Chance, forsooth!
there's no such thing. Do you think I trust to chance when I direct your
actions and forecaste your future? Fate is the ruling power of the
universe; but science and skill, the quick brain and the ready
hand--these may control Fate."

On a weak mind so high-sounding a sentence, meaning nothing, took no
small effect. She blushed, she simpered, she bit her lips, she
hesitated.

"I should like it prodigiously," she said, with a nervous laugh, "if--if
it wasn't dishonest, you know; and--and if it couldn't be found out!"

He took a pack of cards from a drawer. "Observe my fingers," he began,
but she interrupted him with a faint scream.

"Not now!" she exclaimed; "some other time, Doctor. I'm so frightened!
I'm sure I heard somebody at the door. It _is_ cheating, you know.
Besides, I must be at Ranelagh in an hour, and I have to dress, all but
my head, that was done this morning. I wish I hadn't come. La! I know I
could never find courage. Let me out, please. This is between ourselves,
of course. Shall I find you to-morrow night at the same time?"

Assuring her that he never left his post, Katerfelto ushered her
ladyship with much ceremony to the door, which was opened by Waif, on
whom the departing visitor found nothing better to bestow than a look of
supreme indifference and scorn.

Not so the next comer. Hardly had the chairmen, who winked at each other
as they took up their precious burden, moved a dozen paces, when a heavy
step was heard in Deadman's Alley, and a burly figure, that seemed to
ignore all considerations of secrecy and disguise, stopped at
Katerfelto's door to thump till it shook again.

Undoing the fastening, hastily as she might, Waif found herself
confronted by a stout middle-aged person, in a rusty black riding suit,
who looked as if he had been taking hasty refreshment, washed down by
strong potations, as indeed was the case.

Parson Gale--for it was none other--had ridden post from Exmoor to
London on receiving the news of his brother's death in a midnight brawl.
Arrived in the metropolis, he lost no time in communicating with the
officers of justice; and from the particulars thus furnished, satisfied
himself that the affray took place without witnesses, and that the
survivor had escaped. The Parson swore a great oath that he would avenge
the crime, and if the perpetrator was above ground, hunt him down to
death. His difficulty was to find out where John Garnet lay concealed.
Every day, and all day long, he pursued his inquiries, without success.
Tired and hungry, while sitting at his tavern supper he chanced to hear
Katerfelto spoken of as a cunning man, for whom there were no secrets in
this world or the next; and having ascertained the locality of Deadman's
Alley, finished his bottle, and started without delay on his search.

The apparition of Waif, in answer to his summons, may have surprised him
a little; but when a pretty lass was in question, Parson Gale was never
at a loss; he recovered his astonishment in time to chuck her under the
chin, and bestow on her a most unwelcome caress. The girl's eyes
glittered, and her lithe fingers stole to the knife at her girdle. He
caught her by the wrist, and kissed her again. She disengaged herself,
with one dexterous twirl, and pushed rather than ushered this unwelcome
admirer into the presence of Katerfelto; muttering, in her own
outlandish tongue, something that sounded less like a blessing than a
curse.

When roused to wrath, it was her nature to resent an insult or an injury
on the spot; but if immediate retaliation seemed impossible, to wait for
an opportunity with untiring patience, not to be diverted from its
purpose by any considerations of clemency or forgiveness.

"If I can learn something about _you_," she thought, "I shall know when
and where to strike. Before our reckoning is over, you will wish your
lips had been seared with a red-hot iron, rather than laid to mine
against my will!" Then, casting one loving look towards the chamber in
which John Garnet was sleeping, she took up her post at the door of the
surgery, and listened eagerly to the conversation within.

"I'm a plain man, Doctor," began Parson Gale, in his rough, frank tones.
"I speak the truth mostly myself, and expect others will speak it to me.
Now I am told that you know more, good and bad, than ever another person
in this great wicked town. That's what brought me here."

Katerfelto nodded gravely. "Good and bad," said he, "are relative terms.
Knowledge cannot of itself be evil, whether it be gleaned from the
crowded footway or the solitary moor. Wisdom crieth aloud, could we but
hear her, from the dome of St. Paul's, no less than from the purple
outline of the Quantock Hills and the brown ridge under Dunkerry
Beacon."

The mention of these familiar places startled his listener; and
Katerfelto, who had already detected the kindly West-country accent, did
not fail to notice his surprise.

"I believe you _are_ a conjuror," said the Parson, "as sure as I am not!
Well--if you can tell me where I came _from_, perhaps you will tell me
what I came _for_."

The charlatan smiled. "You wish to learn something very near your
heart," said he, watching the other's countenance.

"Not quite the nearest and dearest of all! yet a matter of great
importance. A matter of life and death."

For a bow drawn at a venture, it was a good shot, and the arrow reached
its mark.

"That's enough!" exclaimed the Parson. "You're the man to tell me what I
want. Name your price. 'Tis blood-money, and I'm not going to stand for
a guinea one way or the other!"

"Justice must be done first!" said Katerfelto with exceeding gravity.
"Let me hear your own tale in your own words, and rely on my help."

Thus encouraged, the Parson embarked on a narrative of his brother's
duel, but little exaggerated, nor indeed very different from the facts
set forth above, interspersing his account with dire threats of
vengeance and solemn oaths, whereat Waif's blood ran cold, that he would
take no rest till he had discovered and hunted down the perpetrator of
this _murder_, as he persisted in calling it, to the death!

Listening at the keyhole, she lost not a syllable of their conversation,
and the gipsy-girl vowed in her heart to come between the avenger and
his victim, aye, even though she must steep her hands in blood, and
swing for it on Tyburn-tree.

Little by little Katerfelto gathered enough from Parson Gale's
repetitions, threats, and assertions, to feel sure that his patient in
the next room was the individual whom the visitor wished to identify and
bring to justice. In his plotting brain such a complication was simply
a problem to be solved, a sum to be worked out, a plot to be elaborated
for his own advantage. With a gravity not lost on the West-country
parson, who, for all his mother wit, felt overawed by the other's
assumption of superior intelligence, he promised to furnish the
information required, as soon as he should himself have consulted those
spiritual intelligences he held at command.

"You shall come again when the moon is full," said he, accepting the
broad pieces which his visitor thrust on him clumsily enough. "Ere then
I shall discover his hiding-place, though he have taken refuge forty
fathoms deep, below the sea. But, mark you--I am not a man of blood, and
I make no promise to deliver him into your hand."

Again Waif's fingers stole to her knife, while the Parson's savage laugh
grated on her ear.

"Show me where the deer is harboured," said he, passing into the street.
"I can do all the rest myself. The Lord have mercy on him, for I will
not, when once I set him up to bay!"




CHAPTER VI.

MY LORD AND MY LADY.


They occupied separate apartments now. There had been a time indeed when
Lord and Lady Bellinger might have competed for the flitch of bacon at
Dunmow, so well satisfied was each with the other, for weeks, nay
months, after a marriage of vanity, with some little inclination. Was
not my lord the best-dressed man at court? Had not my lady the finest
hand, the tightest waist, the loftiest head-gear in London? Did not both
exist only in the atmosphere of the great world, sacrificing to the airs
and graces time, health, money, and reputation? Many tastes had they in
common, some vices, not a few follies, prejudices, and frivolities; yet
they soon began to differ, and after passing through the customary
phases of disappointment, pique, resentment, and disgust, subsided into
a sullen, stony indifference that was perhaps the most hopeless
condition of all. Rarely meeting, except at meals, or in the presence of
others, they had few opportunities for quarrelling; when they did fall
out, it is only fair to say that her ladyship usually took the
initiative. Let us give her precedence, therefore, now.

She is seldom stirring before noon. The sun is already at mid-heaven
when she rings for her chocolate, sighs, yawns, thrusts on her small
feet her smaller slippers, wriggles into a much-embroidered morning
gown, and totters across the room to look at herself in the glass. The
face she sees therein reflected affords, alas! a history and a moral.

Its features are delicate, and the smile that has now become rigid from
force of habit was once very flexible and sweet, but late hours and
false excitement have scored premature wrinkles round the eyes, and the
free use of paint has served to deaden, and, as it were, rough-cast the
surface of the skin. Lady Bellinger was never _quite_ a pretty woman,
though with the advantages of dress, manner, and candle-light she could
hold her own in general society against many a professed beauty, and
counted her ball-room conquests in numbers that, if they did not satisfy
her rapacity, were quite enough for her reputation. This border-land
between good looks and an ordinary exterior is, perhaps, the most
dangerous ground of all. Vanity is excited, but not gratified. Wit,
vivacity, freedom of gesture and conversation are called in to
supplement the charms that nature has left imperfect. The player grows
more reckless as the game goes on, and at last no stake is thought too
high to risk on a winning card.

The face she is studying wears a mournful expression to-day. Weary,
perhaps, rather than dissatisfied, for she won twenty guineas last night
at _ombre_, and overheard Sir Hector Bellairs ask who she was; that
refined young gentleman, a rising light at Newmarket and the Cocoa Tree,
adding with an oath, "She has a game look about her, like a wild,
thoroughbred mare!"

And yet, was it worth while, she pondered lazily, to tremble half an
hour over the cards for twenty guineas? Were the pains lavished on dress
and toilet to yield no higher triumph than Sir Hector's silly
comparison, or the sneer with which it was received by the man he
addressed? Harry St. Leger used to admire her once, at least he told her
so, and now--he only smiled at Sir Hector's idle talk, and turned away
to a little bread-and-butter miss, whose round blue eyes were becoming
the rage of the town. What could men see to rave about in such chits as
these? Why, the little creature was not even well-dressed, and had
hardly so much as learned to ogle and handle a fan! Was it possible that
innocence, simplicity, natural red and white, could presume to contend
with such a position, such millinery, and such experiences as hers? Lady
Bellinger sighed to think how she was thrown away. What depths there
were in her loving heart that had never been fathomed; what passions in
her mature womanhood that had never been aroused. Alas! those depths
could have been baled out with a thimble; those passions, affections,
caprices, call them what you will, were three parts simulated, and the
fourth only skin-deep. Nevertheless, she esteemed herself a lovable
woman, wasted and misunderstood. She had a headache, she had the spleen,
the vapours. Ranelagh was very tiresome last night. The lights still
danced before her eyes, the hum of conversation still vibrated in her
ears. Resting her heavy head on the dressing-table, she seemed to live
the whole scene over again.

What a medley and confusion it was! Women with enormous head-dresses,
wide hoops and high-heeled shoes, patched, powdered, painted,
courtesying, smirking, and grimacing. "Your ladyship is vastly kind.
Shall wait on you with pleasure. Not _real_ di'monds, ma'am? I protest.
I have it from the best authority. Fie! my lord, I thought you were more
gallant. The Earl, as I live. Come back from the grand tour with a wife!
Whose wife? La! Sir Marmaduke, I vow you make me blush. The king hath
had another interview with the favourite. Angry words, and post-horses
ordered on the north road. Too good news to be true. Mrs. Betty, you
look charmingly. What conquests you must have made at the Bath. Here's
the bishop! Madam, your humble servant;" and so on till the stream of
nothings swelled into an unintelligible babble. And out of this
concourse of so-called friends, this turmoil of so-called conversation,
was there one form amongst the throng that could call the blood to her
cheek, the light to her eye? One voice that fell sweetly on her ear,
that woke an echo responsive in her heart? Yes, on reflection there was
one--nay, there were two or three--half-a-dozen--a score--but it seemed
that, of late, her charms had ceased to work, her glances to fascinate.
Ten compliments--she counted them on her fingers--made the sum total of
her triumphs last night. Harry St. Leger devoted himself to the
bread-and-butter hoyden. The handsome colonel had drunk too freely of
claret to be available. The marquis was wholly taken up with Mistress
Masters (who, and what, she was nobody knew!) Two or three snuff-taking
admirers simpered, but did not commit themselves. The duke passed her
with a bow, and it was a weary world!

As she came to this conclusion, a tap at the door announced the arrival
of her waiting-maid with the daily dish of chocolate. Contrary to
custom, that demure person did not depart after she set it down.

"What is it, child?" asked Lady Bellinger, not very good-humouredly,
because of her reflections. "Speak up, and don't stand staring there as
if you'd seen a ghost!"

"It's my lord," answered the waiting-maid, tossing her head, in
imitation of her mistress. "My lord bade me ask your ladyship if you
were up, and if you could see him now directly, before he gets into his
coach."

"My lord!" repeated his wife, in a tone of surprise, that sufficiently
attested the infrequency of such visits, "what _can_ my lord want with
me at this early hour? How am I looking, child? Quick! Give me those
drops off the chimney-piece--a clean cap, the one trimmed with pink,
you fool!--Put a touch of colour in my cheeks; I declare my face is like
death! Draw that window-curtain. Now you may tell him he can come in."

Lord Bellinger entered accordingly, dressed in great splendour, with
cane, hat, and snuff-box in hand. Thus encumbered, he made shift,
nevertheless, to take the tips of his wife's fingers and carry them to
his lips, inquiring at the same time how her ladyship did, and whether
she had slept well.

Her ladyship had not closed an eye, of course. She was feverish, poorly,
and far from strong! Thus establishing a position of defence from the
first.

"Zounds! madam," exclaimed he, "so much the better--you will the more
readily hear what I have to say."

My lord, to do him justice, was a good-tempered man enough, but this
morning found him, for many reasons, in the worst of humours. Last
night's gathering to him, no less than to his lady, had been replete
with disappointment and vexation. Like many others, he attended Ranelagh
with a variety of motives, among which, pleasure, even in his own sense
of the term, was perhaps the least engrossing. In the first place, he
desired to show himself before the world accompanied by her ladyship,
scandal having been busy with both their names of late, and "the town"
telling each other significantly that "there must soon be a break-up in
_that_ establishment. My lady's goings on, madam, I protest, are
inexcusable, and my lord's extravagance, I have it from the best
authority, really beyond belief!" Therefore he thought well to appear in
this public place prosperous, smiling, debonair, and on the best of
terms with his wife.

Their exit, however, like their entrance, had been badly timed. They
neither came nor went away together; and his own staunch ally, Harry St.
Leger, who was also a professed admirer of Lady Bellinger, thought well
to whisper in his ear, "Look ye, Fred, I never turn my back on a friend.
If it _must_ come to a smash, or a split, remember I stand fast by your
lordship, sink or swim!" This was failure the first.

Then a great man, one of his Majesty's ministers, had informed him
pretty roundly that the appointment he held at Court was not wholly a
sinecure, and the time had come at which he must prove his loyalty by
activity in the service of his king. That he was expected, in short, to
proceed without delay to his own western county, of which he held the
lieutenancy, there to carry out certain instructions which he would
receive next day at the minister's private residence, in time to
commence his journey the same afternoon. To a man for whom the pleasures
of London were as the air he breathed, such a notification was like a
sentence of death. Yet he dared not and could not refuse. This was
trouble the second.

Many minor matters helped to swell the list of his annoyances. Bellairs
gave him the latest news from Newmarket, to the effect that his own
horse had been beaten in the great race by a head. Sir Horace had it
from the best authority that his nominee would lose his election. One
neighbouring landowner in the West took him by the button-hole, to
impart grievous suspicions of his lordship's steward, and another
announced threatenings of disease amongst the sheep. Altogether, had it
not been for the interview with his unknown charmer, promised by
Katerfelto, he would have passed a sadly uncomfortable evening. This
anticipation, however, was the drop that sweetened the whole cup, and
when amongst the crowd he caught a glimpse of her graceful head and
white shoulders, the world's malice, the minister's injunctions, the
lost race, the dishonest steward, and the foot-rot in West Somerset,
were alike obliterated and forgotten.

He waited for some time, as directed, to accost her when alone. At last,
her cavalier crossed the room on some errand of his own, and he found
his opportunity. "Madam," he whispered, "this is the moment for which I
have languished ever since I had the privilege of beholding your face.
Do not deny me now the happiness of hearing your voice."

She looked at him over her fan, with large eyes of astonishment, in
which, nevertheless, his experience detected a gleam of gratified vanity
and amusement.

The fan was not withdrawn; the gloved-hand that held it was taper and
well-shaped--the rounded arm, white and beautiful. For the hundredth
time Lord Bellinger believed that for the _first_ time he was in love.
Still she spoke not, and the moments were precious. Her cavalier would
surely return without delay.

"Only tell me, I implore you," continued his lordship, "when we shall
meet again--where can I see you? Where can I write to you? In what way
can I prove how ardently I long to cast myself at your feet--to serve
you as the humblest of your slaves?"

He spoke in an agitated whisper; not without its effect--a softer
expression shone in her eyes, and she lowered her fan to reply. Alas,
for the disillusion! instantaneous as it was complete!

The beautiful face might only be beautiful while the lips were closed;
when they parted for speech they discovered black and unsightly teeth,
separated by gaps and cavities neither few nor far between.

Quick as Lord Bellinger had been to fall in love, he was yet quicker to
fall out. Ere a word could escape the lady, his cure had been effected,
and with a dexterity that nothing but long practice could have ensured,
he effected his retreat after a profound bow, a devoted glance, and a
deep sigh.

"You are watched," he whispered, "so I will take my leave. Do not forget
me. Soon we shall meet again."

Nevertheless he went home from Ranelagh feeling strongly at variance
with the world in general, and himself in particular.

Therefore his mood, notwithstanding his courteous entrance, was none of
the most amiable when he paid this morning visit to her ladyship;
therefore the tone in which he couched it was little calculated to
sweeten the unpalatable communication he had to make.

"Zounds! madam," said his lordship, "you will the more readily hear what
I have to say."

"Sure you need not swear," she replied, with frigid dignity. "No
gentleman swears so early in the day."

He laughed, and continued more good-humouredly, "Your ladyship is very
happy in town, are you not?"

"Your lordship must be a fool to ask such a question," she returned
sharply. "If you neglected me less, you would know that in my position,
and with my health, it is ridiculous to talk of being happy anywhere!"

"And yet you look charmingly," continued her husband, scanning his own
handsome person in the glass.

"Compared to faces which your lordship is in the habit of studying, mine
is perhaps tolerably well-favoured," said she; "but nothing is so
deceptive as one's appearance, and the air of this town is simply
killing me by inches."

"Then it shall do murder no longer," he answered kindly; "I must leave
for the West this very afternoon. My coach is waiting at the door to
take me to the minister's. There is not a moment to be lost. It is the
king's business; I suppose I ought to say, God bless him!"

"Well?" she asked coldly, "what concern is that of mine?"

"Will you not come with me?" was his reply. "We have been living
separate lives too long. Perhaps each of us is better than the other
thinks. Let us give it a trial and see if we cannot be happy together
for a few weeks. We have been very uncomfortable apart for a good many
years."

The tears were rising to her eyes. A kind word or a caress might have
turned the balance even now; but it was his lordship's habit to assume
carelessness of manner at the moment he was most interested, and instead
of putting his arm round her waist, he busied himself adjusting cravat
and ruffles in the glass. She felt and showed she was annoyed.

"I cannot leave town," she objected, "at a moment's notice. I wonder you
can ask such a thing."

He looked in her face disappointed, and perhaps a little hurt.

"My lady," said he, "you're a puzzle!"

"My lord," said she, "you're a brute!"




CHAPTER VII.

READY AND WILLING.


They left town together notwithstanding; and although my lady altered
her mind with every mile, now extolling her own sense of wifely duty,
now bewailing her want of firmness and consistency, yet by the time she
arrived at Hounslow, where they were to sleep, she had become reconciled
to the society of her husband and her enforced journey to the West.

Such impressionable natures, from which emotion so easily passes away,
enjoy at least this advantage--that one swallow makes for them an
immediate summer, one glimpse of sunshine absorbs the memory of a month
of storms.

Lord Bellinger, too, seemed in the highest spirits. Though his back must
be turned on London and all its pleasures, his inconstant nature could
nevertheless find enjoyment in the mere act of change. Moreover, an hour
before departure, he had effected a loan of ready-money from the
accommodating Katerfelto, who waited on him at his residence in
Leicester Square, so completely disguised that Waif herself could hardly
have recognised the respectable-looking citizen, in a brown suit and
tie-wig, with ample cambric neckerchief concealing his long beard, who
was ushered into his lordship's own apartment the moment he entered the
house.

Lord Bellinger prided himself on the rapidity with which he transacted
affairs of moment. No doubt his method was peculiar to himself.

"Katerfelto," said he, surveying the brown suit and tie-wig with grave
curiosity, "I must have five hundred guineas in gold--now, in half an
hour."

"Impossible, my lord," answered his visitor. "The time is too short; but
you can have it in three-quarters."

"I like doing business with _you_," rejoined his lordship. "I never knew
you _make_ difficulties, nor found you unable to overcome them. I want
the money directly, because I leave for the West this afternoon; but I
consent to give you another quarter of an hour."

"Your lordship is vastly obliging," replied Katerfelto, with his
peculiar smile. "I must trouble you to sign this little acknowledgment
of the debt."

He drew a sheet of paper from his pocket, filled in certain blank spaces
at the writing-table, and spread it before his lordship, with an air of
excusing himself for the liberty he was obliged to take.

It was Lord Bellinger's boast that he never refused to draw his sword,
drink his bottle, stake his money, or sign his name; yet he made a wry
face, and threw his pen into the inkstand with a curse, after it had
performed its office.

"I'm in a corner," said he, "or you would never have had me on such
exorbitant terms. The king's business must not stand to cool. Hang it,
man! if it had been my own, not a usurer in the town should have bit me
like this!"

"Your lordship is in haste," answered Katerfelto; "and his Majesty's
commands cannot be too speedily obeyed. I trust," he added, carelessly,
"there is no fear of disaffection in the West."

"State secrets!" answered Bellinger, with a laugh. "How can I tell? I
have not yet seen the minister. I go to him in an hour for final
instructions."

Though Katerfelto was pondering deeply, his tone seemed lighter than
usual, while he asked how the other had been amused the night before at
Ranelagh; observing, "It is not your lordship's custom to leave an
adventure half accomplished."

"No more of that!" exclaimed Lord Bellinger. "These are but the pastimes
of a man who has little serious business on hand. Ambition, you know, is
a specific for love. If I play my part well, Katerfelto, I have reason
to believe that the next time I borrow your money it will be for an
earl!"

"Good luck attend your lordship," answered the other, turning to depart.
"As you are strong, be merciful."

My lord laughed, and snapped his fingers. "In half an hour," said he, "I
shall have the lives and estates of some half-dozen gentlemen in my
pocket. Intrigue, my good friend, is all very well; but for real sport,
give me the great game. If your spiritual informants can travel so far,
they will shortly bring you stirring news from the West."

"The vicissitudes of this material world affect me but little," answered
Katerfelto, "save in so far as they aid my researches among the
boundless regions of science and futurity. I am but a man of thought,
while your lordship is a man of action. If, in my humble capacity, I can
serve you, command me; and so I take my leave."

"He's an honest fellow enough, I protest," thought his lordship, as the
door closed, "though his terms are confoundedly high! Money seems like
everything else; if you want it, you must pay for it--through the nose
too! But he's an honest fellow, no doubt."

The "honest fellow," meantime, plodding thoughtfully home to Deadman's
Alley, busied himself in elaborate calculations of time, distance,
expense, and other matters tending to subvert the minister's intention,
and render nugatory Lord Bellinger's mission to the West.

He lost not a moment in visiting John Garnet, whom he found sitting up
in an easy-chair, half-dressed, but so swathed in bandages that he could
hardly move.

Dismissing Waif, who was in attendance as usual, he laid a finger on his
patient's wrist, and marked the strong full beat of the pulse in grave
approval.

"How much longer are you going to keep me here?" exclaimed John Garnet,
with some impatience. "I've been telling Waif, for the last three days,
I am as strong as I ever was in my life."

"Get up," replied the doctor, "and lift that chair from the floor. So.
Do you feel as if a dog were licking a raw place in your side?"

"I feel that I ought to be in the saddle," replied the other, "a hundred
miles from your close, smoky town. If it wasn't for these cursed
bandages, I should never know that I had a side at all."

"Off with them, then!" said Katerfelto, suiting the action to the word
by unwinding their folds. "See now the fruits of a little knowledge and
a little patience. These wounds have healed, as we call it, at the first
intention. Do not be so ready with bare steel again; or, if you must
needs brawl, keep your sword-arm bent, and your point moving in a
narrower circle."

John Garnet's eyes brightened with pleasure, but his face fell a moment
afterwards.

"You have restored me to life," said he, "and I cannot even pay you a
surgeon's fee. I tell you plainly, I have not ten guineas in the world."

"We are comrades in the same service," answered the Doctor, quietly.
"There is no question of guineas between you and me. Will you ride a
hundred miles on an errand, in which we are equally interested, and cry
quits?"

"To the end of the world!" answered John Garnet; "only I have not a
horse to my name."

There was a simple earnestness in his tone that sufficiently vouched for
his fidelity. Katerfelto, scanning narrowly the resolute countenance and
strong active frame, smiled to think that here was a tool shaped
expressly for his purpose.

"I might find horseflesh," said he, "if you can find spurs. Will you be
ready to mount to-night on my errand, if it should be necessary? My
errand," he repeated, in a low, impressive whisper, "and the king's!"

"God bless him!" answered Garnet, while each looked meaningly in the
other's face. "I have those in my interest," continued the Charlatan,
"aye, at the very council table, who keep me well informed from hour to
hour. You will dine as usual. You will crack a bottle of our best, to
the king's health. Before sunset, I will tell you when to pull on your
boots."

While he spoke a knock was heard at the door, and Waif, glancing softly
at John Garnet, brought the Patron a letter left by a man who looked
like the light-porter of some city warehouse. It contained these lines:

"The invoices are already forwarded. Prices ruling high; hemp likely to
rise. Realise at once, not a moment to be lost."

Twice Katerfelto perused it with an anxious brow, then he turned to John
Garnet, and observed, carelessly:

"A stroll before dinner will do you no harm. Come with me to the next
street, I want your opinion of a horse I keep there."

So congenial a request met with an eager affirmative. In the flush of
returning health, John Garnet longed keenly for the fresh outward air.
And to see a horse again, even in another man's stable, was a return to
life and all that made life enjoyable once more.

The Doctor wrapped himself, though it was summer, in a long black cloak
and drew a square cap down to his very eyebrows, before he crossed the
threshold, precautions which seemed scarcely necessary for purposes of
concealment, inasmuch as he led his visitor along two or three
unfrequented bye-lanes, to an old tumble-down building, that looked more
like a dilapidated pigeon-house, than the dwelling of so noble an animal
as the horse.

"Enter," said he, unlocking the door. "The husk looks of the roughest,
but there is a kernel within."

John Garnet was surprised to find the stable roomy, commodious, well
ventilated, and amply supplied with all necessaries for the comfort of
its inmate. "If the casket is mean," said he, "at least it seems well
lined, and water-tight. Let us open that shutter, Doctor, for a glimpse
at the jewel it contains."

It was a jewel! An exclamation of wonder and admiration escaped the
visitor's lips, as daylight, thus admitted, revealed to him the beauty
and symmetry of the animal he came to inspect. From boyhood he had spent
much of his time in the saddle, found a store of pleasure and legitimate
excitement in the companionship of his horse, and here seemed the very
flower and perfection of the whole equine race.

It was not that the sloping shoulders, the deep girth, the flat legs,
the round firm feet, the full, well-turned back, and lengthy quarters
denoted strength and speed unequalled, but there was also that
proportion and harmony of all the parts, which Nature is careful to
preserve when she means to turn out some masterpiece of her craft. John
Garnet said as much; and Katerfelto, man of science though he was, could
not conceal a certain prim satisfaction, which every man alive betrays
when congratulated on the superiority of his steed.

"I am a poor judge," observed the Charlatan, whom no earthly
consideration would have induced to bestride the paragon before them;
"but I imagine the creature is as good as it looks."

"That I'll swear he is!" replied John Garnet, fairly putting his arm
round the taper muzzle, that nestled kindly to his embrace. "If I had
seen nothing but this beautiful little head, with its full bright eyes,
and fine transparent ears, I would have backed him against any horse in
England for all I am worth in the world. Not much to be sure," he added,
with a laugh, "but you should have carried it for me, old man; and I
don't think the additional weight would have caused you to falter at the
post."

He patted the hard, smooth neck, and strong, firm crest while he spoke;
and the animal, though an entire horse, in the full vigour of good food
and high condition, responded lovingly and gently to his caress.

"He knows you already," said Katerfelto; "he will know you better before
you have done with him. Listen, John Garnet: what would you give me for
that grey horse as he stands?"

"Five hundred guineas!" answered John Garnet, laughing, "if I had them.
Ten years of my life, as I haven't five hundred pence in the world!"

"He is yours!" replied the other. "You shall ride him out of London
to-night."

John Garnet's eyes brightened. "I do not know who and what you are even
now," said he, "but you seem the best friend I ever had. Frankly,
Doctor, I already owe you more than I can hope to pay. In my opinion,
you have bought me, body and bones, at a high price; and I am ready to
do your bidding, be it what it will."

"You speak like a man of sense," answered Katerfelto. "Come back to the
house, Waif shall find us some dinner, with a bottle of good old
Burgundy, and I will give you instructions at once."

They returned, therefore, to Deadman's Alley, threading the bye-streets
with the same secrecy as before. Katerfelto informed his companion, as
they walked, how he became the owner of so matchless an animal--the last
possession, it must be admitted, with which John Garnet would have
credited his physician. "I obtained him," said the latter, "even as I
obtained Waif, and from the same people. Only, I paid hard gold for the
child; whereas, they let me have the horse for nothing."

"And yet, they may have stolen both," observed his listener.

The other shook his head. "Waif is a gipsy," said he, "pure bred, or I
should never have encumbered myself with her. No; they are a strange
people. Their honesty is not like our honesty, neither, indeed, is their
fraud; but they have their notions of fair dealing too. They brought me
the horse to pay a debt of honour."

John Garnet opened his eyes. "A debt of honour!" repeated the Charlatan.

"The rogues had robbed me of some valuable jewels while I was sojourning
in their tents during the illness of an old reprobate, whom they called
their duke, and whom I attended without demanding a fee. Repenting of
such ingratitude too late, for the jewels were beyond recovery, they
sent me the highest-priced article they could lay hands on, and it
proved to be the very horse you are to ride out of London to-night. How
they came by him, it was useless to inquire; but they assured me--and I
have no reason to doubt their word--that the owner would never cause
inconvenience by appearing to assert his claim."

"Do you think, then, they _murdered_ him?" exclaimed John Garnet, in an
accent of dismay.

"Very probably!" replied the other. "But I had little curiosity on the
subject; it was no affair of mine."

The silence that ensued, lasted to the door of the surgery, and, indeed,
with small interruption during the progress of dinner. When that meal
was taken away, and Waif, with many a backward glance, had departed and
shut the door, Katerfelto filled the glasses, smacked his lips over the
Burgundy, and thus delivered himself:

"They would hang you, my good sir, if they could catch you; and this I
consider a sufficient reason for your leaving London to-night."

John Garnet gasped, and set his wine down untasted. For some time he had
entertained uncomfortable misgivings to this effect. It was not
reassuring to hear them corroborated by so sagacious a person as his
host. "Chance-medley is not a hanging matter," said he, in a shaking
voice.

"But _murder_ is," answered Katerfelto; "and murder I fear they would
bring it in. Why, in the name of all that is hasty, my young friend, did
you not take a couple of gentlemen into that dark room, and exchange a
pass or two in the presence of witnesses? See how the matter stands as
it would be submitted to a jury. An altercation, brooded over for more
than an hour; a quarrel, not in hot blood, but on reflection; and the
company gone. The lights out; the younger man escapes, and the elder is
found stabbed to death on the floor! It looks ugly, you must confess."

"I have thought so more than once," replied John Garnet, much disturbed.
"Do you mean they will try me for--for--my life?" He got the question
out with difficulty, and swallowing a mouthful of wine fancied it tasted
like blood.

"I mean nothing of the kind," said the other. "I mean you never to be
placed in such a position. I mean you to be a score of miles away
to-night. I mean to rescue your name, to save your life, and to make
your fortune."

"How so?" asked John Garnet, taking comfort while he emptied his glass.

For answer, Katerfelto made an almost imperceptible sign with one of his
fingers, to which the other responded by a word, whispered so low that
its import was to be gathered less by the sound than the movement of his
lips.

"I was sure of it!" exclaimed the Charlatan. "I could have sworn from
the first you were one of _us_. I may speak freely now. John Garnet, I
call upon you this day to ride for the king!"

"To the gates of hell!" was the reckless answer. "And as much farther as
your good horse will carry me. I am ready to start this minute."

"Softly," said the other. "I neither require so prompt a departure, nor
so long a journey. You need not mount for another hour. You need not
ride so far as the Land's End. The business I shall entrust you with
demands courage, secrecy, and some little ingenuity. I believe you
possess all. To win, opens a path to rank, fortune, and the choicest
honours royal gratitude can bestow. To lose, leaves you no worse than
you are now, for at least you will have a fair chance of escape."

"I ask for nothing better," replied the young man. "Only tell me what to
do, and how to do it."

Katerfelto pushed the bottle to his guest. "You will need a good horse,"
said he, "and good pistols. These I can supply. You have a good sword
and a good mother-wit of your own. It may be you will want them all to
carry out our plans. Success is a peerage at least. Failure means high
treason, so you know what you undertake."

"I never shrank from a large stake," replied John Garnet, excitedly.
"Deal out the cards, and leave me to play the hand!"

"This then is the game," continued his host. "Lord Bellinger took coach
to-day for his lieutenancy in the West, carrying with him certain
warrants from the Secretary of State, which must never reach their
destination. You understand. His lordship travels with his own horses,
and can scarce perform the journey in less than a week. Her ladyship
accompanies her husband, and they sleep to-night at Hounslow, fourteen
miles from here at the farthest. Such, my young friend, is the alacrity
with which his servants obey the commands of King George. Without a
boast, I think our side could give them a lesson in promptitude. I
myself knew all about those warrants before the ink was dry. I could
tell you now every word that passed between Lord Bellinger and the
minister, far more accurately than my lord himself, who, to do him
justice, has a retentive memory for trifles, but entertains the
profoundest aversion to every kind of business. Briefly, these warrants
must be destroyed before the end of the week, and I look to you for a
speedy completion of the job."

John Garnet pondered. Pledged as he had been from boyhood, to the losing
cause, compromised, by the fatal termination of his late brawl, with the
laws of his country, and indebted for life, no less than the means of
living, to this strange practitioner of many mysterious arts, the
thought of shrinking from the task, thus thrust upon him, never entered
his mind; but he could not conceal from himself that the undertaking was
one of life and death, to be accepted resolutely indeed, but not without
every precaution to ensure success.

"My lord travels in his own coach, you say," he observed, thoughtfully.
"How many servants does he take, and are they well armed?"

"Three or four at most," replied Katerfelto, "without counting her
ladyship's waiting-maid, and one of these rides on ahead to prepare for
his reception, stage by stage, during the journey. They carry a
blunderbuss and two brace of pistols among them, no more."

"How far will he proceed in a day?" asked the other. "The roads are at
their best just now and the nights at their shortest."

"From twenty to thirty miles," answered Katerfelto. "His lordship
travels in a light coach with six good horses. You had better not
overtake him till to-morrow night. But these details I confide to your
own wisdom and discernment. In this purse are a hundred guineas. In that
cupboard a saddle, bridle, and brace of pistols. Spend the money,
founder the horse, use the weapons at your discretion, but the warrants
must be in the fire before his lordship crosses the borders of Somerset,
and the gentlemen named in them must be warned, at all risks of life and
death."

"I understand," said John Garnet, "though I do not yet see how to set
about the job."

"It can be done in three ways," observed Katerfelto. "The warrants will
be carefully looked after. To put them in your own pocket, you must
corrupt the servants, make love to my lady, or rob my lord."

John Garnet considered a moment before he answered. "I think the best
plan will be to rob my lord."




CHAPTER VIII.

A HEAVY STAKE.


The travellers spent their first night agreeably enough. The weather was
fine, the inn at Hounslow roomy and luxurious. My lady seemed pleased
with the fresh eggs, the country cream. My lord found amusement in the
airs and graces of his hostess, who was more than flattered by the
notice of so fine a gentleman. Even the servants were good enough to
express approval of the ale, the lodging, and the change. Our whole
party started next morning in good humour, and the very waiting-maid,
who had been in tears for the first six miles out of London, protested
that under certain conditions the country might be almost tolerable.

My lord's first footman, a stout high-coloured personage in charge of
the blunderbuss, was unremitting in his attentions, and Mistress Rachel,
as she was called, in the absence of higher game, condescended to
receive his homage with the favour five-and-forty shows to
five-and-twenty. At a subsequent period indeed she declared "he hadn't
the heart of a hen!" but for the present seemed satisfied to accept him
as he was.

Such a favourable state of things could not be expected to last
four-and-twenty hours. At noon of the second day it began to rain, a
trace broke, a horse cast a shoe, the man with the blunderbuss proved
useless in a difficulty, Mistress Rachel grew despondent, my lady
sulked, my lord swore, the unwieldy vehicle creaked, groaned, swung, and
finally stopped in the middle of a hill.

"Let me out!" screamed Lady Bellinger, whose nervous system was of the
weakest, and on whose temper fear had an exasperating effect. "I'd
rather walk. I _will_ get out, I'll go back,--Richard!--Robin! open the
door."

"Don't be a fool!" exclaimed my lord, as the carriage got into motion
once more. "How can you go back, Ellen? You're forty miles from London
if you're a yard."

My lady's head-dress vibrated with anger. "I am a fool indeed," she
replied, "or I shouldn't be here! And this is the reward of my devotion
as a wife. This is your return for my accompanying you into exile. Lord
Bellinger, I _will_ speak. Indifference I am accustomed to. Unkindness I
have put up with for many a long day, patient, and forbearing, while my
heart was broke, but I have a spirit ("you have indeed," muttered his
lordship), though you try your best to crush it, and ill-usage I will
submit to no longer."

It is possible her husband might have entered a more energetic protest
than the "d--d nonsense" he whispered under his breath, but that his
attention was diverted at this juncture to the beauty and action of a
horse passing at a gallop, ridden by a young man whose seat and bearing
did justice to the animal he bestrode. When Lord Bellinger, who thrust
himself half out of the carriage to follow the pair with his eyes,
subsided into his seat, he had forgotten all about their dispute in this
new excitement; my lady, however, with her face buried in a
handkerchief, continued to sob at intervals, till they reached their
destination for the night.

This was a comfortable hostelry enough, yet lacking many of the luxuries
that rendered the inn at Hounslow so agreeable a resting-place. Mistress
Rachel, alighting with a hand on the shoulder of her admirer, expressed
alarm lest it might be tenanted by ghosts; whereat the latter's comely
cheek turned pale, while he resolved incontinently to fortify his
courage with beer. The new arrivals had no reason to complain of their
reception. The servants were amply regaled in the kitchen, a good supper
was served for my lord and my lady in the parlour. The choicer meal
vanished in profound silence, which Lord Bellinger tried more than once
to break; but, finding his efforts ineffectual, and knowing by
experience the obstinacy of his wife's reserve when she was "out of
spirits," he gave up the attempt, and applied himself to the Burgundy
his host brought in person. He finished the bottle as her ladyship, in
dignified silence, retired to bed; and ringing the bell for another,
felt creeping over him the accustomed longing for cards, dice,
company--some excitement in which to spend the evening.

"Landlord," said he, as that stout and stolid personage entered the room
with a cobwebbed bottle and a corkscrew, "can you play picquet?"

The landlord smiled foolishly. He did not know what his lordship was
driving at.

"Fetch a pack of cards," continued my lord, "and I will teach you."

The landlord excused himself in considerable alarm. "It was too much
honour," he said; "he doubted he was too old to learn. Would his
lordship like a toast of bread and an olive with his wine?"

"I had rather deal than drink," answered Lord Bellinger, "though I'm in
the humour for both. If there's nobody in the house to play a game at
whist or ombre, send round to the stable, and tell the ostler I will try
my luck with him at all-fours."

The landlord stared; but a bright thought struck him, and he observed:
"There's a gentleman in the Sunflower who arrived this afternoon. He
looks like a gentleman who wouldn't object to a game of cards, or
anything in that way."

"Bravo, Boniface," was the answer. "Carry him my respects--Lord
Bellinger's respects--with a bottle of your best, and say, if he is at
leisure I shall be happy to wait on him at once."

The landlord delivered his message with alacrity, and in less than five
minutes John Garnet answered it in person at his lordship's door. He had
come to this hostelry for the very purpose of obtaining the introduction
he now found so easy; and rather regretted the amount of thought he had
wasted after supper in considering how he should make Lord Bellinger's
acquaintance, and gain his confidence sufficiently to betray it. With
his best bow and pleasantest smile, "plain John Garnet" stood on the
threshold, and assured the other that no consideration would have
induced him to permit his lordship to ascend to the Sunflower till he
had himself come down to conduct him upstairs, if he would so far honour
his humble apartment, where he would at once direct preparations to be
made for the reception of his noble visitor.

"Zounds, man!" answered the other, who at this period of the evening was
seldom disposed to stand on ceremony, "we want nothing but a bottle of
Burgundy and a pack of cards. They are both on that table. Let us sit
down at once and make the most of our time."

"Agreed," replied his guest; "and your lordship shall choose the game
and the stakes."

"What say you to picquet?" asked the nobleman, opening the Burgundy,
"Ten guineas a game. Twenty--fifty, if you like?"

John Garnet, reflecting that he knew nothing of his adversary's force,
and was himself no great performer, modestly chose the lowest stake, and
proceeded to play his hand with as much care as his own preoccupation
and the strange position in which he found himself permitted. Picquet is
a game requiring, no less than skill and practice, undivided attention.
John Garnet could not forbear glancing about the room for some symptoms
of the documents he desired to make his own; wondering if they were kept
in his lordship's pockets, in her ladyship's baggage, under charge of
the servants. It is not surprising that at the end of the first game he
found himself the better by two glasses of moderate Burgundy, and the
worse by ten golden pieces stamped with the image of King George. He
ventured a second game, and with the same result.

To do Lord Bellinger justice, he was not a rapacious gambler. He loved
winning well enough, but would rather lose heavily than not play at all.
"I am too strong for you," said he; "I ought to have told you picquet is
my especial game."

But when did a loser ever admit the superiority of an adversary's skill?

"Your lordship held good cards," answered John Garnet; "my luck is the
likelier to turn. I call for a fresh pack."

So the waiter was summoned, and more cards, with another bottle of wine,
were brought in. Lord Bellinger began to feel the old wild impulses
rising in his heart; and John Garnet, a desperate man, bound on a
desperate errand, had no disinclination to venture Katerfelto's money in
an undertaking that compromised his own head.

After two more games, Lord Bellinger had won a hundred guineas; and John
Garnet was at the end of his resources.

"My lord," said he, "a man does not journey a-horseback with the Bank of
England in his pocket. I have lost to your lordship as much as I can
afford to pay."

He spoke with some ill-humour, and rose from the table as though to take
his leave.

"One more game," pleaded Lord Bellinger, who would have paid his last
guinea rather than go to bed before midnight. "Sit down again, my good
sir; if we cannot play for money, we can play for money's worth."

John Garnet obeyed, with a forced smile. To be a good loser was
considered one of the essentials in the character of a gentleman; and he
would have sunk in his own, no less than in his companion's esteem, had
he declined the unequal contest for so paltry an excuse as want of
means.

"That is a fine horse you rode here," continued his lordship, shuffling
the cards. "If you like to put a price on him, I will stake the sum
named against the animal."

"Five hundred!" answered John Garnet.

"Agreed," said the other, though the five hundred guineas he had
borrowed from Katerfelto constituted all the funds he possessed in the
world.

So they played one more game, and again Fortune smiled on Lord
Bellinger, who emptied his glass with a smack, having despoiled his
adversary of the grey horse and one hundred guineas in gold.

It seemed an unpromising beginning, but John Garnet's courage rose with
the exigencies of his position. He pulled a purse from his pocket, and
counted down on the table one hundred guineas, piece by piece, with a
good-humoured smile.

"No doubt," said he, "your lordship will give me my revenge at some
future time. I shall leave the horse in charge of your lordship's
servants to-morrow morning. I can pledge you my word he is as good as he
looks."

"What do you call him?" asked the other, carelessly.

"Katerfelto," answered John Garnet, taken by surprise, and blurting out
the word that first occurred to him, because it would have seemed so
strange to hesitate at the name of his own horse.

Lord Bellinger started. "Do _you_ know Katerfelto?" said he. "I have
always believed that man must be the devil in person!"

"I got the horse with that name," answered John Garnet, "and his new
owner can alter it at pleasure; but as I must be a-foot, literally
a-foot, early to-morrow morning, I will now take my leave, and wish your
lordship good-night."

So, with many profound bows, the pair separated, and the loser, to his
extreme disgust, heard Lord Bellinger's door carefully locked on the
inside.




CHAPTER IX.

STRONG AS DEATH.


To have lost a hundred guineas after supper was bad enough, but to yield
possession of the best horse he ever owned, and pursue Lord Bellinger
into the West on foot, or by the tardy progress of a stage-waggon, was
not to be thought of.

He never intended permanently to part with either, or John Garnet would
have been more loth to risk his horse and to pay up his gold. The money
must be recovered, and Katerfelto, as he now determined to call the
animal, must be retained at all hazards. Pondering these matters deeply,
the unlucky card-player only waited till the lights were out and the
hotel became quiet, to put his plans in execution. An hour after
midnight he had drawn off his boots, and satisfied himself that his
lordship's door was securely fastened. He must find another opportunity
of taking by violence that which he now despaired of gaining by
artifice; and he stole out to the stable, there to saddle his horse and
effect his escape. Though by no means satisfied with his night's work,
he did not consider he had entirely wasted time or money. In the course
of conversation, he had made himself acquainted with Lord Bellinger's
intended movements, and could prepare for a bold stroke. "If I had been
more fortunate with the cards," he thought, "I might have improved my
acquaintance sufficiently to join them as a travelling-companion,
perhaps accompanying my lord and my lady in their coach. It would have
been easier then to effect my purpose, though I do _not_ think I could
have found it in me to make love to her ladyship any more than to her
waiting-maid. But I never held a card! That hundred guineas I paid down
on the table I must have back again, as surely as I do not mean to part
with my good grey horse. There is only one way. I must seize the
warrants, and recover my money with the strong hand. Some unknown
highwayman may bear the blame, and if I can get off, I will lose no time
in gaining the West Country, and warning the honest squires of Devon and
Somerset that they are in danger. Nothing venture, nothing have! I'm in
it now, over shoes, over boots! Let me think. Highway robbery. It's an
ugly word, and a hanging matter, but so is high treason; and if every
neck that risks the noose must be stretched, why, as I heard those
player fellows sing last winter--

    "I wonder there ain't better companie
    Under Tyburn tree!"

Thus meditating, John Garnet, who had made himself acquainted with the
geography of the hotel and its surroundings, proceeded noiselessly to
the stable, not without anxious glances toward the East, where that
forerunner of morning, the false dawn, was already visible.

A true horseman, he had identified himself so completely with his steed,
and busied himself so earnestly about its wants, that Katerfelto neighed
with pleasure to acknowledge the friendly presence as he approached its
stall thus stealthily and in the dark. While he hurried to the horse's
head, that he might silence this untoward greeting, a slim figure rose
from below the manger and glided like a phantom to the door. John Garnet
was no less prompt than resolute. In an instant he had seized this
shadowy intruder by the throat. Outcry and escape were alike
impossible; but his hand opened as if it grasped a red-hot iron, when a
half-stifled voice, that he remembered only too well, murmured, "Hold!
do not hurt me. I am here to serve you. I will follow you to the end of
the world."

"Waif!" he exclaimed, in an accent that, smothered as it was, denoted
the very extremity of surprise; but even while he spoke, the figure slid
through the dark stable out into the night.

For a few seconds John Garnet was persuaded that he must be
dreaming--the meeting had been so sudden, so unexpected, and so soon
over. When he realised the fact, his surprise amounted to dismay. That
this impracticable gipsy-girl should have followed him, watched him, and
made herself acquainted with his movements, seemed a fatal climax to the
disasters of the night. For one disheartening minute he thought of
riding back to London, returning Katerfelto to his former owner, and
abandoning the whole project. Then he reflected, that under any
circumstances he must make his escape before daylight, and so saddled
his horse with what alacrity he might. Dawn was breaking as he led the
animal out of the court-yard softly and at a walk, though its tramp was
smothered in the snores of a stalwart ostler who slept in a loft above,
for protection of the stables, and a red streak of sunrise bound the
eastern horizon, to which he looked back on emerging from a belt of
coppice that skirted the high-road a mile from the inn. Bold as he was,
Katerfelto shied at an object moving in the brushwood, while a slim
boyish figure sprang out, laid its hand on the horse's shoulder, and
looked wistfully up in the rider's face.

Waif--for it was none other--attired as a country lad, and only the more
beautiful for her disguise, seemed to anticipate no less affectionate a
greeting than she was prepared to offer. But already she knew every
change of the face she had studied so fatally, and her own fell, while
she marked the displeasure that settled on the brows and about the lips
she loved.

"Speak to me," she murmured, "for pity's sake. I tracked you so
patiently, and followed you so far!"

"Waif, why are you here?" he asked, while his heart smote him to think
of the distance travelled by that slender form, those shapely delicate
limbs.

"I could not bear you to go away," replied the girl, laying his hand to
her heart and pressing her cheek against Katerfelto's warm shoulder. "I
could not live without you; and for the matter of that, you could not
live without _me_. If I had let you go by yourself, every mile you rode
was a mile towards your grave."

They were pacing on together, Waif walking at his stirrup with a free
untiring step, that the good horse must have fairly broken into a trot
to leave behind. John Garnet looked at her with an astonishment in which
there was no little interest and admiration.

"What mean you?" said he, "and how came the Doctor to let you go?"

"I never asked the Patron's leave," was her answer, "because, if he had
forbidden me, I should have lain down to die. No; when you rode out of
London, I was scarcely half an hour behind. The Patron must have been
very angry when he found me gone. What do I care? I care for nobody but
_you_. I knew where to get these clothes well enough. Do you like me in
them? I might have had a horse from our people before I had done a day's
journey, but I thought I could be nearer you on foot, and I've walked
all the way. I'm not tired. I'd walk as far again only to hear your
voice."

John Garnet was in utter perplexity. Such a phase in his affairs he had
never contemplated, yet there seemed something so ridiculous in his
position, bound on a political adventure thus attended, that he could
not forbear a laugh.

"Nonsense, my lass!" said he kindly enough. "You must go back; indeed
you must. I won't have you come a step farther. You ought never to have
followed me at all."

The tears were in Waif's dark eyes, and she raised them to his face with
the pleading, reproachful look of a dog that you chide when he knows he
is doing right.

"Not follow you!" she repeated. "How am I not to follow you, when you
are going into danger? I can share it even if I cannot keep it off; and
you tell me I must go back to London! You cannot mean it. I don't think
you quite understand."

"That's the truest word you have said yet," was his answer; "but I do
understand that, for your own sake, you ought not to be here now. Still,
if you persist in accompanying 'a beggar on horseback,' you ought to
have your share of the saddle, till we get down."

With these words, he took her by the hand, and braced his foot in the
stirrup to afford a purchase for her ascent. In one bound she stood on
his instep, light and buoyant as a bird; in another, she was seated
before him with her arm round his neck, and her comely smiling face very
near his own. It might have been the exertion, or the novelty of the
position, or something he whispered, with his lips close to hers, that
turned Waif crimson, and then deadly pale. She seemed more out of breath
now, clinging to the rider, than she had been awhile ago walking beside
his horse. Katerfelto, in obedience to his master's hand, broke into a
canter; before she spoke another word, they were nearing a hamlet, of
which the smoke was visible above the trees, when she made shift to ask
in a trembling voice if she might not be set down, and taken up again
when they had passed through? For answer, John Garnet laughed, and
increasing his pace, dashed along the street at a gallop. When he
relapsed once more into a walk, the startled villagers had been left
two miles behind.

Waif's nerves were of the firmest, and she had now recovered some of her
self-possession, no easy matter for a woman who finds herself seated on
the same horse with the man she loves. Her heart beat fast indeed, and
the colour came and went in her cheek; but she could review the
situation calmly, and resolved that now was the time to explain all she
had done, all she intended to do in John Garnet's behalf. Even those
women, whose station renders them slaves of custom, like other slaves,
assume the wildest freedom when they have elected to throw off the yoke;
but this gipsy-girl, an unsophisticated child of nature, had no scruples
to vanquish, no social laws to break, found nothing to restrain the
ardent expression of her feelings, save the innate delicacy of a proud
and loving heart.

It was not, therefore, without such a blush and downward glance, as few
men could have withstood, and none, perhaps, less firmly than John
Garnet, that she announced her resolution.

"I shall hold by you to the last. I shall never desert you till you have
performed your task in safety. It is right you should know it.
But--but--I cannot expect to accompany you like this. Only promise that
you will not try to leave me behind, and never fear, but I can find my
way from place to place, and be at hand when I am wanted, without
shaming you by my presence. The gipsy-girl is proud to give her life for
_you_, though you may blush to acknowledge one of my people as your
friend!"

"Blush!" repeated John Garnet, and perhaps because their faces were so
near together, the blushing seemed all on the other side. "I would never
blush to own a true friend; and Waif, my pretty lass, you have proved
yourself more than a friend to-day. You say that I am in danger; I know
well enough that I soon shall be; but my head is out of the halter as
yet, and I see not how you could help if it were in!"

"Out of the halter!" said Waif. "How little you fear and how little you
seem to care! Do you think I was not listening at the door when Abner
Gale came to the Patron thirsting for the man's blood who took his
brother's life? You know not our people, John Garnet, nor the gifts that
nature bestows on us, instead of hearth and home, bed and board, gold
and silver, houses and land. Do you believe the gipsy can forget a path
once trod, a voice once heard, a face once seen? I was dancing in
Taunton Fair, when Abner Gale, one of your priests, as you call them,
tossed me a bit of silver, with a coarse laugh and a brutal jest. The
gipsy has no feelings to wound, no character to sustain, no honour to
defend, but she has the instincts and the memory of a dog for friend or
foe! Parson Gale had better have bitten his tongue through and kept his
silver in his pocket. I know his home, his habits, his haunts, his
vices, as I know my own ten fingers. I listened because I hated _him_.
But when I heard more, I listened on, because--because I loved _you_!"

It was wrong, no doubt, scandalous, shocking, if not entirely without
excuse; but something in the proximity of those two young faces again
made the girl blush deeper than before.

"There are no secrets too close for the Patron," continued Waif, "and as
you have seen, people come from far and near to consult his art. This
man's errand was to discover your hiding-place and hunt you down to
death. He gave the Patron money--golden guineas--I heard them jingle. He
was in earnest--bitter earnest, and so am I!"

"But what said the Patron?" asked her listener. "I thought he was my
friend."

"The Patron is every man's friend," answered Waif, "who is willing to do
him service, or to pay him gold. He promised to betray you when the moon
was full, but that very night he sent you out of London on his own
affairs, and I followed close, lest evil should befall, for I knew you
were journeying to the West."

Laughing lightly, he asked if that was a dangerous quarter, and whether
the Wise Men, who came there from the East, were ancestors of her own?

But Waif scorned to enter on the subject of genealogy with one who could
neither believe nor understand her claims to a descent co-eval with the
earliest history of man. Her tone was grave and almost stern, while she
looked him steadfastly in the face, and proceeded with her warning.

"When a stag goes down to the water, where an enemy waits to take away
his life, the voice of a child, or the wave of a woman's hand, is enough
to turn him back into the moor. Abner Gale lives in the very country to
which you are bound. I know the man, John Garnet, and I will save you
from his vengeance, though I swing for it--there! Now will you let me
come with you and help you as best I can?"

John Garnet did not hesitate long. True, he was unable to stifle certain
scruples, while he reflected on the dangers into which this wilful girl
was running of her own accord, on her loss of character, if indeed she
had any character to lose, and the inconvenience he would himself
experience in accounting for such a travelling companion, however well
disguised; above all, on the advantage he was taking of a professed
devotion, that exchanged, as he could not but admit, the pure gold of
sincere affection for a baser metal, compounded of gratitude, vanity,
and self-indulgence. But men have seldom far to seek for an excuse when
they would do that which is pleasant and convenient rather than right;
so John Garnet persuaded himself that to make this beautiful girl an
assistant of his schemes, and comrade in his dangers, was an act of
self-denial and loyalty vouching for his fealty to the exile whom he
called his lawful king.

"Agreed!" said he; "and, now, Waif, if you are really to help me, I must
tell you my plans."

He never forgot this ride through the summer's afternoon. The yellow
light that glimmered in copse and dingle. The glare on the white road
they travelled. The distant lake that gleamed like a sheet of
silver--the brook at his feet, that brawled and gurgled and broke into
bubbles of gold. The bloom of wild flowers, the song of birds, the
murmur of the breeze, the lowing of kine, the deep rich meadows, the
stretching uplands, and, over all, that sunny haze which veiled without
hiding the distance, and added its crowning grace to the beauties of a
landscape that became fairer and fairer, the further he journeyed
towards the West.

Katerfelto paced proudly on, while John Garnet poured in a willing ear
the details of his journey, and the manner in which he proposed to turn
the tables on an adversary who had despoiled him of his money, and could
lay claim to his horse. It was difficult to make her understand how the
stake could have been lost.

"For," said Waif, "the Patron bids the cards come out just as he likes.
It seems so easy, if a man has only the use of eyes and hands! This lord
must be very clever with his fingers, cleverer even than _you_!"

"It's not all cleverness," he answered, impatiently. "There's such a
thing as luck, and I never held a card all night."

Waif stared and made a motion with her slender fingers, the import of
which it was impossible to misunderstand.

"But that would have been dishonourable," protested John Garnet.

"Dishonourable!" repeated Waif. "Why? When you sit down, you do not mean
to be beat. It is only a trial of skill, like a race or a
wrestling-match. Let the best man win. Why is it dishonourable?"

Despairing to explain to this untutored mind the code of fair-play as
practised amongst so-called men of honour, John Garnet proceeded to
discuss the means by which, in a few hours, he hoped to equalise the
chances of Fortune, and reimburse himself for his previous losses. Of
his scheme Waif greatly approved, holding, nevertheless, to her first
opinion, that it would have been wiser to win by fraud than to lose by
ill-luck, but promising her hearty assistance in all parts of the plan
he proposed to carry out.

Thus conversing, they arrived at the outskirts of a country town; and
here, before John Garnet could suggest that he should alight and lead
the horse on foot, thus to avoid the remarks that might be provoked by
its double burden, Waif glided like water from the saddle, slipped
through a tangled hedge by the way-side, and disappeared. In vain,
standing high in his stirrups, he peeped and peered over the obstacle;
in vain he galloped to the gate, and searched and traversed the whole
meadow, calling her loudly by name. The girl had vanished; and riding
thoughtfully into the town, her late companion, for the second time
since daybreak, wondered whether he was under the spell of some unholy
witchcraft, or was really awake and in his right mind.




CHAPTER X.

MARLBOROUGH DOWNS.


"Ah! them was good times for we! I often wish as we'd Galloping Jack
back again."

The speaker, a lame old ostler, clattering about his stable-yard in
wooden clogs, with a bucket in each hand, addressed himself to an unseen
individual at the taproom window, who blew out large clouds of
tobacco-smoke in reply.

"He was free, he was!" continued the ostler, "as free with a guinea as
you and me with a shilling. I'll wager a quart as he was a gentleman
born, right or wrong. Such gold lace as he wore! and such horses as he
rode, to be sure!"

The old man seemed lost in admiration of the memories called up by
Galloping Jack.

"What's gone with him?" asked the unseen smoker in the taproom.

"What's gone with 'em all?" said the other, angrily. "A nightcap and a
nosegay, I doubt, like the rest. But he loved his perfession, did
Galloping Jack; an' many's the pleasant ride he took across the Down,
and what not, afore he mounted his wooden horse on Tyburn Hill."

"We'll hope it never came to that," replied the other, with something of
amusement in his tone.

"Ah! I'm afeared it's past hoping and praying for too," said the ostler.
"But it's a gentleman's trade," he added, reverting to his own
professional view of the highwayman's calling; "a gentleman's
trade--I've always said so. Look what cattle they can afford to keep!"

"You're a judge of such matters, I suppose," observed the smoker in the
taproom.

"Man and boy," answered the other, "I've been about horses nigh fifty
year. If I don't know a good nag when I see 'un, master, well, I'd
better give out, an' take on with some likelier trade."

"That's the right sort you dressed over awhile ago," continued the
smoker, leaning out of window, and showing a tall, active frame,
surmounted by a swarthy face, with the eager expression of a hawk.

The ostler set his bucket down, and winked.

"You're a judge," said he, "_you_ are, and so you ought. There's a many
passes through your hands, Master Cooper, but I never see you with such
a nag as this here. He's a cut above _you_, everyway--he is."

"That's a good one!" answered the dark man, with a boastful laugh. "Why,
Ike, you old fool! I tell you I owned that very horse myself, and I
_gave_ him--gave him away as a present to a friend of mine."

"But how came Galloping Jack to part with him?" asked the ostler, much
interested. "I knowed the horse, bless ye, as well as the horse knowed
me, when he came into the yard not two hours back; but he's in the hands
of a real gentleman now, and as pretty a rider as ever drew a rein
through his fingers. There was something about his seat as put me in
mind of Jack, too, and something in the way he carried his hands; but I
can't call to mind seeing Jack without a mask on. Speak up, Master
Cooper: it couldn't be the man himself, could it now? I never heerd as
he'd swung for sure."

"Who knows!" answered the other, with a harsh laugh. "_You_ water your
horses, and mind your own business, Ike, and I'll tell the drawer to
give you a pot of ale when you come into the house."

Now John Garnet, sitting after dinner at an open window above the
stable-yard, overheard the foregoing conversation, and resolved
straightway to take advantage of his own likeness to the missing hero,
whose horse he had so strangely appropriated. Katerfelto seemed well
known in these parts as the property of Galloping Jack, and, indeed, an
animal of such remarkable beauty was sure to be recognised by anyone
concerned with horses who had ever seen it before. If the rider's
figure, too, resembled the highwayman, who had been in the habit of
concealing his features in a mask, it was quite possible that he, John
Garnet, riding the best horse in England, might, so long as it suited
his purpose, be mistaken for the enterprising person known on the Great
Western Road as Galloping Jack.

At a glance he perceived how such a confusion of characters would
facilitate a project he had been maturing all day--a project that, after
a few hours' rest and refreshment at the wayside inn, it seemed quite
practicable to carry out before nightfall. To rob a coach single-handed,
that contained four well-armed men, of whom he had reason to suppose one
at least would fight to the death, seemed a bold stroke; but while he
looked to the loading of his pistols, the fitting of his saddle, the
feeding and bridling of his horse, and all the details on which his very
life depended, he entertained but little fear for the result. His plan,
though desperate in its nature, was not without discretion. He had
ridden for two days ahead of Lord Bellinger's carriage, and had now
turned back on his track. By sunset he calculated that the travellers
would arrive at a solitary clump of trees he had marked in the lonely
plain, on Marlborough Downs. Here he might conceal himself, shoot one of
the horses, as it passed, and leaping out, stun my lord with the
butt-end of his pistol. The servants, he hoped, would be so
panic-stricken, that in the confusion he might possess himself of the
papers he required, and rely on Katerfelto's speed to make his escape.
All this he had confided to Waif, and now Waif was not forthcoming,
though she had promised him assistance, of some mysterious nature she
seemed unwilling to explain. Well, he must do it single-handed, that was
all, and let Galloping Jack bear the blame.

The landlord looked after him with approval as he rode out of the inn
yard an hour before sunset. His wife and her maids lavished admiring
glances on the handsome coat and graceful seat of this comely horseman;
while old Ike, drawing his hand down Katerfelto's firm smooth quarters,
blessed him as he went. Golden opinions had the stranger won from each
and all; yet each and all, if examined on oath, would have sworn they
believed him to be a man who earned his daily bread by crimes that the
law punished with death. Who but a highwayman would order so costly a
dinner, such choice wine, and leave both almost untouched? Who but a
highwayman would bow to the very kitchen scullion like a courtier, while
he scattered a handful of silver in her dirty apron, or fling a guinea
(his last guinea) at old Ike's head, whilst the ostler held the stirrup
for him to get on. They looked meaningly in each other's faces as he
disappeared, riding steadily towards the endless down, and old Ike, with
the tears standing in his eyes, clattered back to his brooms and
stable-pails, muttering, "He always wur free-handed, an' now he's gone
his ways again for good, an' I sha'n't never see him no more!"

John Garnet rode slowly on at a pace that should husband Katerfelto's
powers. The sun was already set when he arrived at the clump of trees
where he meant to lie in ambush; but he passed it, unwillingly enough,
and affected to proceed on his journey; for lonely as seemed the wide
expanse of down, its solitude was broken by a motionless figure, to all
appearance intently on the watch.

His business admitted of no observers. After a moment's hesitation he
turned on his track, and rode straight to the figure, as if to ask his
way.

In the twilight, he made out a tall dark man, who might have been a
shepherd but for want of sheep and sheep-dog, and who never moved a limb
while he approached.

"My friend," said the horseman, "I have forgotten something at the inn I
left an hour ago. If you will take a message back you shall have a
crown-piece for your pains."

The other pointed to the London road. "I can earn a crown-piece without
walking three miles for it," said he, "and so can _you_, Master Garnet,
if you'll stay where you are."

John Garnet fairly started at the sound of his own name.

"Who the devil are _you_?" he exclaimed, "and what are you doing here?"

"I am here on _your_ business," was the unexpected answer. "You're about
a tough job, sir, and you'll do it, never fear, but not single-handed."

"I don't know what you mean," replied the other; adding, after a
moment's consideration, "did I not see you this afternoon smoking in the
taproom of the inn?"

"Very like," said the man, composedly. "I've seen _you_ many more times
than ever you've seen _me_. Why, now, you look quite astonished that a
gentleman can be put down by a plain man! Well, it's no use beating
about the bush, I'm here to look after you because Thyra bade me come."

"Thyra!" repeated John Garnet, with an air of sudden enlightenment:
"what, Waif do you mean? Why you must be Fin Cooper."

"That's my name in your patter," said the gipsy; "now I'll tell you my
business. Stay, all that will keep: I hear the roll of wheels. In ten
minutes the coach we are both looking for will be plodding up the hill.
Go in with a will! Do it your own way, there'll be plenty to help when
the time comes. Take what you want, and leave us, Romanies, the
pickings. There's half a score here that go share and share alike."

John Garnet had little time to demand an explanation, or indeed to make
up his mind. Already he could distinguish Lord Bellinger's coach
labouring slowly up a slight ascent, crowned by the clump of trees
before mentioned. He withdrew himself into their shelter, and scanned,
as well as the failing light permitted, the strength of the party he had
determined to attack. It happened that the servant whose duty it was to
ride ahead from stage to stage had fallen to the rear; and this
accounted for his missing that fore-runner, on whom he had calculated to
warn him that his prey was drawing near. This increased the defending
force to five; including my lord, a coachman, and two footmen; of whom
one carried a blunderbuss, and was impeded moreover by the charge of
Mistress Rachel.

Of his own auxiliaries he knew nothing. Wherever the half-score
mentioned by Fin Cooper were concealed, not a man but the tall gipsy had
yet shown himself, and _he_ seemed unarmed by so much as a stick.
Nevertheless, the coach was close upon them now. Lady Bellinger's
peevish tones might already be heard from the inside.

Unseen in the black shadow of the trees, he took a pistol from his
holsters--Katerfelto standing like a rock--and sighted the near wheeler.
Simultaneously with the report of the weapon and two female shrieks, the
animal fell dead, shot through the brain, bringing down its coach-fellow
across its body, in a confused turmoil of snortings, plungings, and
broken harness.

In an instant my lord had whipped out of the carriage, sword in hand,
with his coat torn up the back from the vigour with which my lady pulled
at it in her fright. Determined, nevertheless, to sell his life dearly,
and ready, to do him justice, for a fight at any odds, right or wrong.

The mounted servant, crying "Thieves!" and "Murder!" turned his horse,
and rode away at a gallop; while the footman who carried the
blunderbuss, shaking himself clear of Mistress Rachel, dropped on his
knees, and begged pitifully for life.

His fellow, however, being of a bolder nature, snatched the weapon out
of his hand to point it full in John Garnet's face, and pulled the
trigger like a hero.

It only flashed in the pan; somebody had been tampering with the
firearms at the last stopping-place. The assailant was in no real danger
but from Lord Bellinger's naked steel. That nobleman made at him
fiercely enough; and though Katerfelto answered rein and spur, as if
well-trained in such hand-to-hand conflicts, John Garnet might have been
obliged to use fatal means in self-defence, but that half-a-dozen
figures sprang like magic from amongst the trees; a cloak was thrown
over my lord's head, while he was dragged to the earth; the servants
were securely gagged and bound; my lady and Mistress Rachel compelled
with hideous threats to keep silence; and the original aggressor found
himself at liberty to rifle the carriage unmolested, and take what he
required.

There was no difficulty in finding the warrants. With these, and the
hundred guineas he had lost, safe in his pocket, John Garnet turned
Katerfelto's head towards the down, pausing one moment to thank the
gipsies for their timely aid, and impress on them the necessity of mercy
towards their captives. In that moment Waif's hand clasped his own, and
Waif's voice murmured in his ear:

[Illustration: WESTWARD-HO!]

"My tribe have done you good service, leave the rest to me. I do not say
farewell, for it would break my heart to think we should not meet
again!"




CHAPTER XI.

A PECULIAR PEOPLE.


It is only fair to state that Lord Bellinger writhed and struggled with
a vigour not to have been expected from his attenuated frame, much to
the delight of his captors, who were inclined to treat him more
leniently than if he had submitted, like his footman, without show of
resistance. This champion they kicked and belaboured to some purpose,
while they pinioned his fellow-servant, from whose readier hands they
had wrested the harmless blunderbuss, and threatened him in frightful
language if he ventured to stir a finger. To my lady, though insisting
that she should retain her seat in the carriage, they behaved with
extreme politeness. She was afterwards heard, indeed, to protest that
the robber-chief, as she called Fin Cooper, seemed a perfect gentleman;
that he had a distinguished air, and for a black man--though, in a
general way, she could not abide black men (Lord Bellinger being as
black as a crow)--was by no means ill-looking.

Mistress Rachel, too, while frightened and hysterical, as behoved her
station, clung persistently to the arm of a stout gipsy, who mounted
guard over her person, entreating him, in piteous terms, to respect her
youth, and, above all, to protect her from the insults of his comrades;
lavishing on him tender glances, and contrasting his assured demeanour
with the cowardice of her late admirer, whose very teeth chattered for
dismay. My lord, in the meantime, with a swarthy fellow at each limb,
lay helpless on his back, cursing volubly, but losing neither presence
of mind nor temper. Indeed, when he had sufficiently relieved his
feelings by such ebullitions, and perceived that no violence was offered
to Lady Bellinger or her maid, the situation seemed to strike him as
ludicrous, and, bursting into a laugh, he called on the gipsies to
release him, promising, on his honour, that no further resistance should
be offered by himself, or his servants, to the continuation of their
frolic.

Fin Cooper took him at his word. Exchanging a few short sentences with
Waif in his own Romany language, unintelligible to the captives, he
raised Lord Bellinger to his feet and restored the rapier which had been
wrested from that struggling nobleman.

"You are a _Gorgio Raia_," said he, "and I but a _Romany Chal_.
Nevertheless, there is honour among thieves, and I'll trust yours if
you'll trust mine." "I cannot speak your language," answered his
lordship; "but your manners are those of a perfect gentleman. Pray
select from my coach whatever articles you fancy, except her ladyship,
my wife, whose health does not admit of her taking exercise on foot, and
I would venture to suggest that, in rifling the sword case, no violence
be used. It contains three bottles of excellent Chambertin, which it
would be a pity to break. I can only regret that I am not better
prepared to entertain so large a party."

"You're made of the right stuff," answered Fin Cooper; "and another time
you'll know that a _Romany Chal_ means a gipsy lad, and a _Gorgio Raia_
a nobleman of the Gentiles. We'll drink your health, my lord, never
fear, and give yourself and your lady a share, if you'll condescend to
wet your lips on the same cup with us. Now, pals," he added, turning to
the gang, "take what you want and let us be off. High Toby's a good game
for the winner, but it's best to play it out before the moon gets up."

The gipsies then proceeded to appropriate the contents of the coach,
exchanging grins and smiles and whispered congratulations in their own
language on the value of their prize.

Only Waif stood aloof, gazing into the darkness, where the grey horse
and his rider had long ago disappeared.

Presently a scream from my lady announced that some tawny hand was laid
on her jewel-case. "My diamonds!" she exclaimed; and tears of real
distress rose in her eyes, as she raised them to Fin Cooper's face. "Oh!
sir! I beseech you, let me keep my diamonds. For pity's sake, do not
send me back into the great world naked and ashamed, without so much as
a clasp of brilliants to fasten round my neck!"

"I do believe as her ladyship would rather lose her maid than her
jewels," whispered Rachel, with a glance at her swarthy guardian, that
intimated no great disinclination to be retained as a pledge instead.

My lord laughed. "I would play you for the set, and welcome," said he.
"But though you will find a pack of cards in every pocket of the coach,
the devil a guinea have I left to stake. It's a pity," he added, "for
just now I'm in a vein of luck. Only last night I won five games running
of our friend on the grey horse, though it seems to be his turn now!"

"Galloping Jack is hard to beat at any game he chooses to play,"
answered the gipsy, in whose ear Waif had whispered a few hurried words.
"Nevertheless, win or lose, he's far enough by this time. It takes a
bird of the air to catch Jack when he gets his spurs into the grey."

"Confound him!" said his lordship heartily, reflecting that, by all the
rules of fair-play, this enterprising highwayman was now riding into
safety with _his_ money on _his_ horse. "Drink up your liquor, my good
friends, and let us make some arrangements for the future. I presume
you do not wish us to remain unsheltered on the downs all night?"

"Not an inch will I stir without my diamonds!" exclaimed his wife. "Mind
that, my lord. If they go into captivity, I go too!"

"And I humbly hope, as is my bounden duty, to attend your ladyship,"
added Mistress Rachel, trying hard to blush, while she stole another
look in her guardian's gipsy face.

Fin Cooper scratched his handsome black head in some perplexity. Of all
incumbrances, the last he would have chosen was a lady of quality, with
her waiting gentlewoman. How was he to get them to the tents? What was
he to do with them when there? If retained as hostages they would give
more trouble than they were worth; and such a speculation promised no
great profit, for Lord Bellinger's easy indifference seemed to infer
neither high ransom nor prompt payment. Fin would rather have foregone
jewels, lady, and lady's-maid, than be hampered with all three.

Again he consulted Waif, and, after the interchange of a few brief
sentences in their own language, of which my lord, listening intently
for all his assumed carelessness, could only catch the words "fakement"
(a piece of work), "fashono" (fictitious), and "balanser" (a pound
sterling), cleared his brows, and made a profound bow to her ladyship,
with all the politeness of a dancing-master.

"The Romany in his tent," said he, "can be courteous as the Gorgio in
his castle. If the Rawnie (lady) sets such store by her gew-gaws, let
her keep them and welcome! When she walks in her jewels among the great
ones of the earth, she will think not unkindly of the Romany raklo (the
gipsy lad) who wished her good luck and good speed on Marlborough
Downs."

He had learned from Waif, whose experience while in the Patron's service
taught her many a strange secret, that the diamonds were but paste,
and, with characteristic promptitude, seized the opportunity of
affecting a princely magnificence at trifling cost.

Her ladyship, who must have known, while she obstinately ignored, the
truth, was disappointed beyond measure. In her own circle many romantic
stories were told of the courtesy shown by highwaymen to ladies of
gentle birth. She expected no less than to redeem her jewels by some
such harmless gallantries as those practised in a game of forfeits, and
would have felt little disinclination to dance a rigadoon by moonlight
on the level turf with this well-made gipsy for a partner. It seemed a
bad compliment that he should give her up the best share of his booty,
and never so much as ask to kiss her hand in return.

My lord burst out laughing, and offered his snuff-box. "By St. George,"
said he, "you must be the king of the gipsies himself. A man who
presents a lady with a set of diamonds, and makes no more to-do than I
would about a bunch of flowers, ought to sit on a throne; and, excuse my
freedom, in an unpatched pair of breeches. May I ask the gentleman's
name to whom her ladyship is so deeply indebted, and whose generosity is
only equalled by the simplicity of his dress?"

The gipsy's black eyes shot a cunning glance in his lordship's face. Its
expression was so good-humoured and mirthful, that it was obvious no
insult could be intended; and the slender hand that had stolen like
lightning to a knife in his girdle was as quickly withdrawn.

"They call me Fin Cooper," said he, frankly, "in the patter of the
Gorgios; but if your lordship ever condescends to visit our
camping-ground, ask for Kaulo Vardo-mescro (Black Cooper), and you shall
receive a brother's welcome in the tents. Prala (brother), there is my
hand upon it!"

With a gravity that was in itself ridiculous, the pair shook hands;
while my lady, in tones of extreme impatience, demanded "how much longer
they were to remain on the open down, and what was to be done next?"

Again there was a whispered consultation among the gipsies, and again
Waif was called into council. Fin Cooper then addressed his prisoners
with a calm dignity, such as Lord Bellinger had many times seen
attempted unsuccessfully in the legislative chamber to which he
belonged.

"My lord," said he, "and especially my lady, it gives me great
uneasiness that I should be obliged to cause you inconvenience. My
brothers, however, will not hear of your being released till they have
gained two hours' start. By that time," he added, looking up at the
stars, "it will be nearly eleven o'clock. You will find a good inn, not
three miles from this spot, where I will take care that beds and supper
are prepared. You will, I hope, be comfortably lodged before midnight.
In the meantime, it will be necessary to secure your acquiescence by
binding you hand and foot. Excuse the liberty, my lord and my lady, it
is but for a couple of hours."

"And who is to unbind us when eleven o'clock strikes?" asked her
ladyship, in tones of exceeding disquiet.

"Unless you leave somebody on purpose!" added Mistress Rachel, with a
titter.

"I don't see the necessity," observed my lord, tapping his snuff-box;
"you have trusted my honour once to-night, why not put me on my _parole_
again?"

Fin Cooper pondered. It seemed a good jest enough to leave the party he
had captured huddled together on the open down, tied hand and foot, as
it were, in imaginary fetters by Lord Bellinger's word of honour alone;
but how if his lordship, treating the whole affair also as a jest,
should turn the tables, and proceed to raise the country in pursuit
directly his captors had withdrawn? On whose side would the laugh be
then?

It speaks well, both for gipsy and nobleman, that Fin's hesitation was
of no long continuance.

"I think the Gorgio means fair," he whispered to Waif, "for all he wears
a clean shirt on his back. Am I a fool to trust him, my sister, or is he
fool enough to respect my trust? We could hardly, without hurting them,
tie them up so tight but that they might release one another in the
space of two hours; and this job will look quite black enough as it
stands, without cruelty. It's highway robbery, Thyra, and, I fear,
something like what the Gorgios call high treason to boot! You are wise,
my sister, and know these Gentiles well; counsel me what to do."

Waif reflected for a moment ere she answered, gipsy-like, by a parable.

"Do you remember, brother," said she, "how one night in the apple-water
country, on the banks of the Wye, we took a rooster off his perch, and
brought the poor dazed chiriclo (bird) into our empty barn by the light
of a single lanthorn? How Mother Stanley bade us lay the fowl's bill
against the bare boards, and draw from it a line of white chalk to the
far edge of the threshing-floor? and how the helpless creature never so
much as lifted its beak from the spot to which it believed itself tied?
Brother, you speak the truth when you say I know the Gorgios. They are
like that foolish barn-door fowl. This Raya here is a game-cock of their
choicest breed. At his own time, in his own way, he will strut, and
fight, and crow as lustily as the best chanticleer of them all; but tie
him up in his word of honour, and he will no more stir an inch out of
that imaginary circle than Aunt Stanley's fowl moved from the line of
chalk on our barn floor. I have spoken brother, let us go hence."

The gipsy turned to his prisoner. "My lord," said he, "I will trust
your lordship's word. You shall promise, as a gentleman, not to stir in
your own person, nor to permit one of your people to leave this spot,
till two hours of the night are fairly past. On this understanding your
whole party shall at once be set free, and the Romanies will take their
leave, humbly wishing your lordship good-night."

"You'll give me back my watch," said Lord Bellinger, feeling in his
empty fob, with a shrug of his shoulders, "or how shall I know when the
time is expired, and we may put the horses to?"

Fin Cooper laughed. He liked a man who never threw a chance away, while
at the same time he knew the value of a heavy gold watch set in
diamonds.

"Look well at that fir-tree, my lord," said he, pointing upwards; "when
the moon, now rising, has cleared the second branch from the top two
hours will have elapsed, and you can depart."

"If you know the time so exactly without a watch," replied his lordship,
"you can have no use for mine. However, it's a pretty keepsake enough,
and you're welcome to it. But harky'e, my friend, one word before you
go. Is there no chance of our being beset by other gentlemen of your
profession? You've left nothing for them to take, 'tis true, except the
clothes on our backs; but the disappointment might make them harder to
deal with than you have been yourselves. You couldn't afford us a guard,
could you? That pretty boy, for instance," glancing at Waif, who shrank
hastily behind the others, "and a couple of stout fellows, in case there
should be a fight."

Nobody but Mistress Rachel seemed disappointed at the gipsy's answer.

"It is needless," he said; "our patrin will hold you unharmed, as if
your coach was surrounded by an escort of Light Horse."

"Your patrin? What is that?" asked my lord.

"The sign that none of our people will pass unnoticed," said the gipsy;
"that not one of the profession dare disregard, from the best galloping
gentleman on the road to the poor cly-faker who pulls an old woman's
petticoat off a hedge. I will set it for you at once."

Thus speaking, he drew his knife from the sheath, and cut three crosses,
side by side, in the turf, north, south, east, and west of the party.
This done, the word was given to march; and in less than a minute these
strange assailants, who seemed to have the facility of deer and other
wild animals in availing themselves of any irregularity in the ground,
had disappeared from the surface of the downs, though a moon already
nearly full was shining brightly above the horizon.

My lord looked after them in silence as they vanished. Then, turning to
his wife, observed, with a meaning smile, "They have left you your
diamonds, my dear. I wonder where they learned to know brilliants from
paste?"

Her ladyship, an image of outraged dignity, was sitting bolt upright in
the back of the coach.

"Their leader is a perfect gentleman," she replied, "and would no more
rob a lady of her trinkets than he would allude to her misfortunes.
There are noblemen of position who might take example by the gracious
manners and high bearing of this mysterious gipsy."

The taunt, if meant for such, was lost on her husband. "Two hours," he
yawned; "two hours all but five minutes at the best. How shall we get
through two mortal hours? There is moonlight--that's a comfort; and our
friends have left us the cards. I will sit in the coach, and play your
ladyship a game at picquet."

"What shall we play for?" said my lady.

"For love!" said my lord, and began to deal.




CHAPTER XII.

MARY LEE.


Threading like a herd of red deer the slight undulations of the down, it
took the gipsies but a few minutes to withdraw from the scene of their
late outrage. In less than an hour they had approached their own
camping-ground, where the tents were already pitched by wives and
comrades, the kettles already singing over the twinkling fires of their
bivouac. They travelled fast, at a long swinging trot, shifting their
bundles from one to another as they went. Fin Cooper and Waif remained
in rear of the party, the former arguing that it was the post of danger,
and, on this consideration, though she seemed unwilling to lag behind
the others, insisting that the girl should bear him company.

Waif was anxious and preoccupied, strangely unlike herself. The black
Vardo-mescro had not failed to notice the change, nor was it in his
nature to keep silence when aroused. Looking suspiciously in his
companion's face, he sang a scrap of an old Romany ditty, that may be
thus rendered:--

  "In the month of flowers, between the showers, the cuckoo sings
    all day.
  But the maiden weeps, while the Romany sleeps, and the Gorgio
    gallops away.
  Too soon, too soon, they are fading in June, and the cuckoo has
    changed his say.
  And the maiden is dead, and the spring-time fled, when the Gorgio
    galloped away."

His voice was rich and mellow, yet something of harshness in its tones
betrayed the discord within.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Waif, her black eyebrows coming down
in an angry scowl over her black eyes.

"You can interpret it for yourself," was his answer. "Thyra, do you
remember the red Quantock hills, and the deep leafy coombes in the
'broom-pickers' country' long ago?"

He spoke in Romany, and she replied in the same language. It stung him
to observe that she could not express herself so readily in their own
gipsy tongue as in that of the Gentiles, with whom she had passed so
many years.

"I remember," said Waif, carelessly. "What of that?"

He looked hurt, and a fierce gleam shot from his dark eyes.

"There was a little gipsy-girl on those red hills," he answered, "who
came to her gipsy-boy for every earthly thing she wanted, from a bunch
of violets in the ditch to a bit of mistletoe on the topmost branch of
the old oak-tree, who stretched her little arms for him to carry her on
the tramp when she was tired, who stroked his face every morning at
sunrise, and kissed him every night when he lay down to sleep.

"For that little lass the gipsy-boy would have shed all the blood in his
young body, and he was but ten years old and five--not yet a man, nor
grown to man's stature, but a man in heart, and a giant in his love for
the comely, delicate gipsy-girl. So he begged hard of father and mother,
uncles and aunts, and he went into her tent with a gift, and prayed of
her people that they would give him Thyra to be his wife. They promised,
Thyra, do you remember? They promised. They were of the old black race,
and the promise of a Lovel is like the oath of a Stanley or a Lee."

"It was so long ago!" pleaded Waif, in rather a trembling voice. "You
were always very good to me, Fin. I won't deny it; but it was so long
ago!"

His face softened; his voice was very sad and tender, while he repeated
her words.

"So long ago! and yet I see it as clear as if it had been but
yesterday--the fire smouldering at the tent-door--the moonshine,
silver-white on the Severn Sea--the old grandfather sitting within,
shaping a wooden peg with his knife--and my little wife crouching in the
corner with her black eyes wide open, like the red hind's calf I had
noosed a week before in Cloutsham Ball. Long ago! Yes, Thyra, it _is_
long ago; and every day that has gone by, every night that I have seen
it all again in my dreams, scores and brands it deeper and deeper in my
true gipsy heart. There is no 'long ago' for you and me, Thyra. We have
been one ever since that night when you were promised me by the comely
Lovels over the camp-fire. Nothing but death can part us now. My sweet
lass, I will be kind and true, for mine you surely are, and always will
be."

To a woman whose heart was still in her own keeping, there would have
been something inexpressibly touching in the tender glance of those
eyes, naturally so fierce and keen; in the gentle tones of that voice,
usually so hard, imperious, and clear. She could not but contrast the
gipsy's absorbing devotion with John Garnet's joyous, good-humoured
carelessness, and shuddered to think how she loved the first and how she
was beloved by the second! She temporised--she prevaricated--she said
one thing and meant another. Was she not a woman, though a gipsy?

"There would be time enough," she protested, "to consider all these
matters when the tribe moved farther West to take up their winter
quarters in the 'wrestlers' country,' amongst the Cornish tors and
valleys. There was much to be done first; tents to strike, a long
journey to be made, to-night's job to be effaced by a speedy change of
quarters; and you know as well as I do, Fin," she added, smiling sweetly
in his face, "that a storm is brewing down in the West where we are
bound, and the same wind that brings the Kaulo-chiriclo--the blackbird,
as the Gorgios call him--back to his own nest, will blow many a
'balanser' of good red gold into the pockets of the Romany lad who runs
his errands. For my part, I hope with all my heart he'll win!"

"What matters it to us?" he replied. "Let the Gorgios fight it out among
themselves, and cut each other's throats for a name, like fools as they
are! King George, or King Charles, or King James, none of them will put
a fowl in the Romany's kettle, nor a broad piece in his palm, but for
service rendered and risk run. We must help ourselves, Thyra, take what
we want, and keep all we can. Our hand may well be against every man,
for is not every man's hand against us? For ages we have been a race
apart, and we must continue so for ever. No Romany lad may wed with the
noblest lady of the Gorgios; and for the Romany lass who listens to love
in another tongue, we do not shame her before our people, but we conceal
her, Thyra, we hide her away, where neither father nor mother, uncle nor
aunt, Romany nor Gorgio, shall ever find her again!"

His voice had grown thick and hoarse, while drops of sweat stood on the
tawny face, now turned to ashen grey. Waif trembled like a leaf.

"I know it," she said; "our people never forgive, Fin, and they never
forget."

There was a ring of pride in the last sentence--tribute to the absent
lover, whom even now she could not bring herself to wish she might put
out of her mind.

They walked on in silence. She had taken his bundle, and thus laden
carried it with a step as free and untiring as his own. They were half a
mile behind the other gipsies, pacing side by side in the moonshine over
the lonely down. A light twinkled from a solitary farm many a mile away,
and once only was the stillness broken by the honest bark of a
sheep-dog. The calm pure air, the sweet summer night, the quiet, the
expanse, were all suggestive of those dreams which have so large a
portion in life's reality. Her thoughts were far away beyond that
western horizon, with the grey horse and its rider. She absolutely
started when her companion's voice roused her from the abstraction in
which she was plunged.

He had been watching her narrowly. Fin Cooper was as dexterous a gipsy
as ever stalked a red-deer, noosed a hare, or swung a kettle. Versed in
the lore, as in the malpractices of his people, he knew how to tell
fortunes by cards or palmistry; to interpret the _patrin_ of his
comrades, the signs of the zodiac, even the stars of heaven; but he
could not read a woman's heart. This was the last moment he should have
chosen to inculcate a lesson of fidelity and obedience on his promised
wife.

"Thyra," said he, while she turned on him a pale and dreamy face, "did
your people never tell you the story of Mary Lee?"

"I have heard something about her," she stammered, with a frightened
look. "She died, didn't she? or was lost? I--I forget the rights of it."

"I will tell it you now," said he. "Take every word to heart, Thyra, and
forget rather the mother that bore you, than Mary Lee's fault and its
punishment.

"She was a beautiful gipsy-girl, sister, such another as yourself, with
eyes like stars, and a voice to coax the bird off a tree. She lived with
her grandam, old Mother Lee, and her uncle, a stern, thick-set Romany,
who seldom spoke, and never smiled. They said he killed a squire's
keeper before their tribe came south out of the potato-country, and knew
Norwich gaol, inside and out, as well as I know the knife in my belt.
Many a time, when I was a little lad, I've seen Mary lifting the kettle
off its hook before their tent; and if it hadn't been for _you_, Thyra,
and the word of the Lovels, I should have thought her the likeliest lass
that ever put a bodkin in a knot of black hair; so did a good many
more--Stanleys, Hearnes, Coopers; she might have had the pick of them,
besides the best of her own tribe, and the comeliest of the comely
Lovels to boot. I've seen many a good round fought, aye, and knives
drawn, too, for a chance word from Mary Lee.

"And she wouldn't so much as throw away a look on the best of us! When
Jack Marshall beat the Gorgio light-weight in fifty minutes, and brought
her the battle-money before he had scarce washed his face or pulled his
shirt on, she called him a fighting blackguard for his pains. We said in
the tents that, gipsy or gentile, the man wasn't born yet who could put
the charm on Mary Lee.

"She did little work at home; and, except for lifting a kettle, or
setting a tent-peg, kept her hands as clean as a lady's; but she went
out by herself to fairs and races, _dukkering_ for the Gorgios and those
who tell fortunes to the gentlefolks, and came back with gold in both
hands. The old grandmother's kettle was never empty, and they gave her
plenty of liberty to do what she liked. Sometimes she would stay away a
month at a time.

"One summer afternoon a little boy, who had been stealing nuts in a wood
a mile or two from the camp, came back with a gentleman's riding-glove
that he had picked up amongst the hazels. Mary laughed when she saw it,
and bought it of the child for a crooked sixpence and a whistle. A week
after, when they asked her what she had done with the glove, she said it
was lost. That set some of our people thinking.

"Then she went off again about harvest; and after she'd been gone a
week, Barney Smith came into the camp, with a strange story that he had
seen a Gorgio lady, the living image of Mary Lee, sitting at an open
window in 'the book-fellows' town' at the time of Oxford Races. Barney
was doing a little business there with a pedlar's box on his own
account. Though it was a hundred miles off, he came back directly; but
when he talked of the pearls and satins she wore, and the black spots on
her face, with powder in her hair, we all said Barney must have been
drunk or dreaming. That night her uncle sat up to put new soles on his
shoes, and next morning he left the camp at daybreak.

"I was but a lad, Thyra, and as busy as a squirrel. When a week passed,
then a month, and still no tidings came of Mary Lee, I went across the
Vinney Ridge to the tents of her people and watched. We were lingering
in the 'swine-herds' country,' among the deer in the New Forest, and
good times we had, I can tell you, with fat venison in the kettles, and
firewood for the cutting. I harboured a buck in Bolderwood once, and
watched him for seven hours on a stretch. I've watched longer than that
for _you_, Thyra. I watched nearly as long on behalf of Mary Lee.

"The moon had gone down, and the false dawn was peeping between the
stems of the old oaks, when I caught sight of a square, thick figure
threading the track among the trees that led to the Lees' camp. I leaped
up, and took him by the hand. He was trembling all over. 'You are
welcome back, Uncle Ryley,' says I. 'You have made a long journey,
uncle; have you returned empty-handed, or did you find what you went to
seek?'

"'The shoes are worn from my feet, brother,' was his answer. 'For three
days and three nights I have gone without food or rest; but I took what
I wanted, Fin, and I can hold up my head once more among my people.'

"'Did you hear any news of Mary?' was my next question, and my heart
rose to my mouth while I asked it, for he was a strong, fierce man, who
would strike with fist or steel if he was angered, and never give you a
chance. I could scarce believe it was Ryley Lee who answered in that
weak, low voice, with a cheek that had turned grey, like the ashes of a
wood-fire in the dim morning light.

"'It is well with her,' was all he said, 'but you will see Mary in our
tents no more.'

"'She is dead!' burst from my lips, for there seemed a smell of blood in
my nostrils, and the pale streaks of dawn grew crimson between the
trees.

"'It is well with her,' he repeated, turning from me into his tent.
'Mary Lee has left her people--dead or alive we shall see her no more.'

"Then I knew she had paid the price it costs the Romany maiden who loves
a Gorgio too well!"

Waif had changed colour more than once during the above recital; but
though she looked very pale now, there was a firm, hard expression in
her face that denoted some fixed purpose no consideration should set
aside.

"'The hawk does not mate with the barn-door fowl,' said she, 'and the
Romany chal marries with the Romany chi, for surely we are one people;
but this affects neither you nor me, Fin. If gipsies cannot trust each
other, how shall we hold our own against the Gentiles? Mary Lee was a
good-for-nothing hussey; Uncle Ryley a cruel, blood-thirsty monster; and
here we are at the camp. Take your bundle, Fin, I've carried it till I'm
tired. Yes; I'll shake hands with you. Good-night.'"

Extricating herself impatiently from the embrace of her affianced
husband, who succeeded, however, in pressing his lips against her brow,
she disappeared within one of the tents, leaving Fin Cooper outside, a
prey to contending feelings, among which jealousy and suspicion were in
the ascendant. He loved the girl: of that he was quite sure, and in such
a character, love is a fearful motive power for good or evil. It
possesses also a keen instinct of reciprocity, not to be deceived, and
few conditions are more pitiable than that of a strong wilful
temperament, persuading itself, against its own convictions, that it is
not exchanging gold for silver, that the ship which carries its whole
freight is not sinking hourly beneath its feet.

The gipsy would have been angered, even to baring of steel, by any
comrade who had warned him of that which his heart began to tell him too
plainly, though he dared not admit it to himself, who had hinted that
Thyra loved another, and that other, one of the forbidden race--which,
for all his Romany pride and Romany prejudices, he could not but
acknowledge superior in every respect to his own. But he knew it,
nevertheless, and only waited an opportunity to avenge himself on the
rival, whom he had identified, almost to certainty, with John Garnet,
_alias_ Galloping Jack, the highwayman. Even now, he thought it might
not be too late to detach Waif from her unworthy and impossible
attachment. Far into the night Fin Cooper tossed and turned from side to
side, restless and sleepless, because of his wrongs, his memories, and
his feverish longing to have his hand on John Garnet's throat.

Waif, too, was uneasy and wakeful. She had not listened to the tale of
Mary Lee, without accepting its moral for a warning to herself. Well she
knew that in the bloody code of her people, to love a Gorgio was an
offence punished by death. And she loved a Gorgio! Aye, loved him, as
she thought with a thrill of pride, essentially womanly in the exquisite
pleasure it evoked, the more deeply and dearly for the penalty. No
pale-faced girl could care for him like that! When the time came, she
would give him her life, as she had given him her love, without a murmur
or a reproach.

Perhaps, at that moment, he was looking at the very star on which her
eyes were fixed, as it twinkled through the gaps in her brown
weather-worn tent. Perhaps, who knows, in another life, to be spent up
there amongst those stars, they might find themselves together? and so
Waif's dark eyes closed in that other life, on which we enter every
night, and the girl sank into a peaceful sleep, dreaming calmly of her
love.




CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE SCENT.


Wittingly or unwittingly, nobody ever offended Katerfelto without
regretting it. To do him justice, the Charlatan had every intention of
screening John Garnet from the avenger of blood, when he started his
patient on the Western Road, in pursuit of Lord Bellinger's ponderous
coach-and-six. The young man, he thought, would prove a useful tool
enough, and he had no objection to do him a kindness into the bargain,
provided it cost nothing, and would turn to his own advantage; but, when
he discovered Waif was missing too, before the good grey horse and its
rider had been six hours out of London, he at once connected the girl's
flight with _his_ absence, whom she had nursed so tenderly, and in a
quiet, remorseless way vowed vengeance upon both.

John Garnet's mission, if fulfilled at all, must be carried out within
three days at farthest. When accomplished, it mattered little what
became of the messenger. Perhaps the sooner he was set aside the better.
What was the cost of a man and horse, valuable as might be the latter,
compared with the interest at stake, with the gains and losses of the
great game in which every player waged life and fortune on the result?

Parson Gale, wearying sadly of London, and longing for his moorland
hills, found himself no longer put off with mysterious hints, and
unintelligible jargon; but, to use his own metaphor, was laid on the
line, like a bloodhound resolving to track it, inch for inch, till he
pinned his quarry by the throat.

Many misgivings had the Parson during this, perhaps the most
unpleasant, week he ever spent in his life. Orthodox in his opinions,
however lax in his practice, it went cruelly against the grain to
believe that in seeking Katerfelto's assistance he was tampering with
the powers of darkness. Many a time, after his coarse pot-house
supper, was his sleep haunted by grotesque visions of the evil one,
carrying to eternal torment a figure in boots, bands, and cassock,
that he recognised for his own. His knees used to shake, and his short
grizzled hair to stand on end, when the Charlatan, leading him into a
dark room, bade him wait patiently, while inquiries were made of
certain intelligences that ought to have done with things of earth,
yet betrayed a marvellous interest in earthly trifles, earthly
follies, and earthly cares. The minutes seemed lengthened into hours
while he sat motionless, expecting every moment to behold the pale
violet gleam of a corpse-light, to feel the faint flutter of
spirit-fingers, catch the faint breath of spirit-whispers--worst of
all, to be threatened with the personal manifestation of some
obtrusive spirit itself.

Katerfelto, who possessed a strong sense of humour, and enjoyed a joke
for its own sake, even though he had none with whom to share it, used to
describe at length the discipline, the gradations, the daily life,
scenery, and vegetable productions of the spirit-world; counting its
spheres, explaining its mysteries, and insisting strongly on the
somewhat thick-witted good-nature of its inhabitants.

The Parson's nerves were of no sensitive fibre. He possessed his share
of English bull-dog courage. Give him a beef-steak, a tankard of ale,
and,

    "Had a Paynim host before him stood,
    He had charged them through and through;"

but he was not proof against dangers of which he had no experience, and
could form no conception. The crowning dread of his life at this period
was the apparition of some luminous figure, clad in misty robes of
white, prepared to answer his questions evasively in a hollow whisper,
lift him bodily into space for pure fun, and lay in his hand a flower of
no terrestrial growth, fresh and fragrant, but wet with the dews of
another world. It never _did_ appear to him, and very thankful he felt
that it did not!

It was, therefore, with no slight feelings of relief, that on his last
visit to Deadman's Alley, he found the Charlatan dressed to go abroad,
and was invited by that unaccountable person to partake of a bottle by
daylight, rather than await a manifestation, fasting, in the dark.

"Your servant, sir," said the Parson, flinging his shovel hat in the
corner, while he filled his glass without a second bidding. "This looks
like business, Doctor, at last. Indeed, I am sick to death of the town
life, and the town ways. But for your message, I should have been on the
good bay nag horse, half a day's journey towards Exeter by this time."

"Do they use you so badly, then?" asked Katerfelto with a smile, while
he scanned him keenly from under his bushy eyebrows. "Do they not treat
Abner Gale with proper respect as a West-country gentleman, a noted
sportsman, and a pillar of the Church? In sad truth, it is a perverse
and ignorant generation."

"Now you're bamming me, Doctor," replied the other, good-humouredly.
"But a man is entitled to his jest who gives such wine as this. My
service to you. Yes, I'll take a second glass the more willingly, as I
shall not have another chance. I leave London to-morrow at sunrise,
weather permitting, and before high noon, as we say in the West, whether
or no!"

"Is it purse or patience that you

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