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Johnny Ludlow, First Series

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Title: Johnny Ludlow, First Series

Author: Mrs. Henry Wood


        
Release date: October 2, 2012 [eBook #40915]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNNY LUDLOW, FIRST SERIES ***

  JOHNNY LUDLOW.




    "We spake of many a vanished scene,
      Of what we once had thought and said,
    Of what had been, and might have been,
      And who was changed, and who was dead."
                                      LONGFELLOW.




  JOHNNY LUDLOW.

  BY

  MRS. HENRY WOOD,
  AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE," "THE CHANNINGS," ETC.

  _FIRST SERIES._

  [Illustration]

  +Fiftieth Thousand.+

  LONDON:
  RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
  +Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.+
  1895.

  (_All rights reserved._)




CONTENTS.


                                   PAGE

      I. LOSING LENA                  1

     II. FINDING BOTH OF THEM        16

    III. WOLFE BARRINGTON'S TAMING   28

     IV. MAJOR PARRIFER              48

      V. COMING HOME TO HIM          64

     VI. LEASE, THE POINTSMAN        80

    VII. AUNT DEAN                   98

   VIII. GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL   117

     IX. DICK MITCHEL               133

      X. A HUNT BY MOONLIGHT        150

     XI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END   165

    XII. "JERRY'S GAZETTE"          182

   XIII. SOPHIE CHALK               203

    XIV. AT MISS DEVEEN'S           219

     XV. THE GAME FINISHED          238

    XVI. GOING TO THE MOP           256

   XVII. BREAKING DOWN              275

  XVIII. REALITY OR DELUSION?       293

    XIX. DAVID GARTH'S NIGHT-WATCH  308

     XX. DAVID GARTH'S GHOST        329

    XXI. SEEING LIFE                348

   XXII. OUR STRIKE                 368

  XXIII. BURSTING-UP                389

   XXIV. GETTING AWAY               409

    XXV. OVER THE WATER             427

   XXVI. AT WHITNEY HALL            447




JOHNNY LUDLOW.




I.

LOSING LENA.


We lived chiefly at Dyke Manor. A fine old place, so close upon the
borders of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, that many people did not
know which of the two counties it was really in. The house was in
Warwickshire, but some of the land was in Worcestershire. The Squire
had, however, another estate, Crabb Cot, all in Worcestershire, and very
many miles nearer to Worcester.

Squire Todhetley was rich. But he lived in the plain, good old-fashioned
way that his forefathers had lived; almost a homely way, it might be
called, in contrast with the show and parade that have sprung up of
late years. He was respected by every one, and though hotheaded and
impetuous, he was simple-minded, open-handed, and had as good a heart as
any one ever had in this world. An elderly gentleman now, was he, of
middle height, with a portly form and a red face; and his hair, what was
left of it, consisted of a few scanty, lightish locks, standing up
straight on the top of his head.

The Squire had married, but not very early in life. His wife died in
a few years, leaving one child only; a son, named after his father,
Joseph. Young Joe was just the pride of the Manor and of his father's
heart.

I, writing this, am Johnny Ludlow. And you will naturally want to hear
what I did at Dyke Manor, and why I lived there.

About three-miles' distance from the Manor was a place called the Court.
Not a property of so much importance as the Manor, but a nice place,
for all that. It belonged to my father, William Ludlow. He and Squire
Todhetley were good friends. I was an only child, just as Tod was; and,
like him, I had lost my mother. They had christened me John, but always
called me Johnny. I can remember many incidents of my early life now,
but I cannot recall my mother to my mind. She must have died--at least I
fancy so--when I was two years old.

One morning, two years after that, when I was about four, the servants
told me I had a new mamma. I can see her now as she looked when she came
home: tall, thin, and upright, with a long face, pinched nose, a meek
expression, and gentle voice. She was a Miss Marks, who used to play the
organ at church, and had hardly any income at all. Hannah said she was
sure she was thirty-five if she was a day--she was talking to Eliza
while she dressed me--and they both agreed that she would probably turn
out to be a tartar, and that the master might have chosen better. I
understood quite well that they meant papa, and asked why he might have
chosen better; upon which they shook me and said they had not been
speaking of my papa at all, but of the old blacksmith round the corner.
Hannah brushed my hair the wrong way, and Eliza went off to see to her
bedrooms. Children are easily prejudiced: and they prejudiced me against
my new mother. Looking at her with the eyes of maturer years, I know
that though she might be poor in pocket, she was good and kindly, and
every inch a lady.

Papa died that same year. At the end of another year, Mrs. Ludlow, my
step-mother, married Squire Todhetley, and we went to live at Dyke
Manor; she, I, and my nurse Hannah. The Court was let for a term of
years to the Sterlings.

Young Joe did not like the new arrangements. He was older than I, could
take up prejudices more strongly, and he took a mighty strong one
against the new Mrs. Todhetley. He had been regularly indulged by his
father and spoilt by all the servants; so it was only to be expected
that he would not like the invasion. Mrs. Todhetley introduced order
into the profuse household, hitherto governed by the servants. They and
young Joe equally resented it; they refused to see that things were
really more comfortable than they used to be, and at half the cost.

Two babies came to the Manor; Hugh first, Lena next. Joe and I were sent
to school. He was as big as a house, compared with me, tall and strong
and dark, with an imperious way and will of his own. I was fair, gentle,
timid, yielding to him in all things. His was the master-spirit, swaying
mine at will. At school the boys at once, the very first day we entered,
shortened his name from Todhetley to Tod. I caught up the habit, and
from that time I never called him anything else.

And so the years went on. Tod and I at school being drilled into
learning; Hugh and Lena growing into nice little children. During the
holidays, hot war raged between Tod and his step-mother. At least
_silent_ war. Mrs. Todhetley was always kind to him, and she never
quarrelled; but Tod opposed her in many things, and would be generally
sarcastically cool to her in manner.

We did lead the children into mischief, and she complained of that. Tod
did, that is, and of course I followed where he led. "But we can't let
Hugh grow up a milksop, you know, Johnny," he would say to me; "and he
would if left to his mother." So Hugh's clothes in Tod's hands came to
grief, and sometimes Hugh himself. Hannah, who was the children's nurse
now, stormed and scolded over it: she and Tod had ever been at daggers
drawn with each other; and Mrs. Todhetley would implore Tod with tears
in her eyes to be careful with the child. Tod appeared to turn a deaf
ear to them, and marched off with Hugh before their very eyes. He really
loved the children, and would have saved them from injury with his life.
The Squire drove and rode his fine horses. Mrs. Todhetley had set up a
low basket-chaise drawn by a mild she-donkey: it was safer for the
children, she said. Tod went into fits whenever he met the turn-out.

But Tod was not always to escape scot-free, or incite the children to
rebellion with impunity. There came a day when he brought himself,
through it, to a state of self-torture and repentance.

It occurred when we were at home for the summer holidays, just after
the crop of hay was got in, and the bare fields looked as white in
the blazing sun as if they had been scorched. Tod and I were in the
three-cornered meadow next the fold-yard. He was making a bat-net with
gauze and two sticks. Young Jacobson had shown us his the previous day,
and a bat he had caught with it; and Tod thought he would catch bats
too. But he did not seem to be making much hand at the net, and somehow
managed to send the pointed end of the stick through a corner of it.

"I don't think that gauze is strong enough, Tod."

"I am afraid it is not, Johnny. Here, catch hold of it. I'll go indoors,
and see if they can't find me some better. Hannah must have some."

He flew off past the ricks, and leaped the little gate into the
fold-yard--a tall, strong fellow, who might leap the Avon. In a few
minutes I heard his voice again, and went to meet him. Tod was coming
away from the house with Lena.

"Have you the gauze, Tod!"

"Not a bit of it; the old cat won't look for any; says she hasn't time.
I'll hinder her time a little. Come along, Lena."

The "old cat" was Hannah. I told you she and he were often at daggers
drawn. Hannah had a chronic complaint in the shape of ill-temper, and
Tod called her names to her face. Upon going in to ask her for the
gauze, he found her dressing Hugh and Lena to go out, and she just
turned him out of the nursery, and told him not to bother her then with
his gauze and his wants. Lena ran after Tod; she liked him better than
all of us put together. She had on a blue silk frock, and a white straw
hat with daisies round it; open-worked stockings were on her pretty
little legs. By which we saw she was about to be taken out for show.

"What are you going to do with her, Tod?"

"I'm going to hide her," answered Tod, in his decisive way. "Keep where
you are, Johnny."

Lena enjoyed the rebellion. In a minute or two Tod came back alone. He
had left her between the ricks in the three-cornered field, and told her
not to come out. Then he went off to the front of the house, and I stood
inside the barn, talking to Mack, who was hammering away at the iron of
the cart-wheel. Out came Hannah by-and-by. She had been dressing herself
as well as Hugh.

"Miss Lena!"

No answer. Hannah called again, and then came up the fold-yard, looking
about.

"Master Johnny, have you seen the child?"

"What child?" I was not going to spoil Tod's sport by telling her.

"Miss Lena. She has got off somewhere, and my mistress is waiting for
her in the basket-chaise."

"I see her just now along of Master Joseph," spoke up Mack, arresting
his noisy hammer.

"See her where?" asked Hannah.

"Close here, a-going that way."

He pointed to the palings and gate that divided the yard from the
three-cornered field. Hannah ran there and stood looking over. The ricks
were within a short stone's throw, but Lena kept close. Hannah called
out again, and threw her gaze over the empty field.

"The child's not there. Where can she have got to, tiresome little
thing?"

In the house, and about the house, and out of the house, as the old
riddle says, went Hannah. It was jolly to see her. Mrs. Todhetley and
Hugh were seated patiently in the basket-chaise before the hall-door,
wondering what made Hannah so long. Tod, playing with the mild
she-donkey's ears, and laughing to himself, stood talking graciously to
his step-mother. I went round. The Squire had gone riding into Evesham;
Dwarf Giles, who made the nattiest little groom in the county, for all
his five-and-thirty years, behind him.

"I can't find Miss Lena," cried Hannah, coming out.

"Not find Miss Lena!" echoed Mrs. Todhetley. "What do you mean, Hannah?
Have you not dressed her?"

"I dressed her first, ma'am, before Master Hugh, and she went out of
the nursery. I can't think where she can have got to. I've searched
everywhere."

"But, Hannah, we must have her directly; I am late as it is."

They were going over to the Court to a children's early party at the
Sterlings'. Mrs. Todhetley stepped out of the basket-chaise to help in
the search.

"I had better fetch her, Tod," I whispered.

He nodded yes. Tod never bore malice, and I suppose he thought Hannah
had had enough of a hunt for that day. I ran through the fold-yard to
the ricks, and called to Lena.

"You can come out now, little stupid."

But no Lena answered. There were seven ricks in a group, and I went into
all the openings between them. Lena was not there. It was rather odd,
and I looked across the field and towards the lane and the coppice,
shouting out sturdily.

"Mack, have you seen Miss Lena pass indoors?" I stayed to ask him, in
going back.

No: Mack had not noticed her; and I went round to the front again, and
whispered to Tod.

"What a muff you are, Johnny! She's between the ricks fast enough. No
danger that she'd come out when I told her to stay!"

"But she's not there indeed, Tod. You go and look."

Tod vaulted off, his long legs seeming to take flying leaps, like a
deer's, on his way to the ricks.

To make short of the story, Lena was gone. Lost. The house, the outdoor
buildings, the gardens were searched for her, and she was not to be
found. Mrs. Todhetley's fears flew to the ponds at first; but it was
impossible she could have come to grief in either of the two, as they
were both in view of the barn-door where I and Mack had been. Tod avowed
that he had put her amid the ricks to hide her; and it was not to be
imagined she had gone away. The most feasible conjecture was, that she
had run from between the ricks when Hannah called to her, and was hiding
in the lane.

Tod was in a fever, loudly threatening Lena with unheard-of whippings,
to cover his real concern. Hannah looked red, Mrs. Todhetley white. I
was standing by him when the cook came up; a sharp woman, with red-brown
eyes. We called her Molly.

"Mr. Joseph," said she, "I have heard of gipsies stealing children."

"Well?" returned Tod.

"There was one at the door a while agone--an insolent one, too. Perhaps
Miss Lena----"

"Which way did she go?--which door was she at?" burst forth Tod.

"'Twas a man, sir. He came up to the kitchen-door, and steps inside as
bold as brass, asking me to buy some wooden skewers he'd cut, and saying
something about a sick child. When I told him to march, that we never
encouraged tramps here, he wanted to answer me, and I just shut the door
in his face. A regular gipsy, if ever I see one," continued Molly; "his
skin tawny and his wild hair jet-black. Maybe, in revenge, he have stole
off the little miss."

Tod took up the notion, and his face turned white. "Don't say anything
of this to Mrs. Todhetley," he said to Molly. "We must just scour the
country."

But in departing from the kitchen-door, the gipsy man could not by any
possibility have made his way to the rick-field without going through
the fold-yard. And he had not done that. It was true that Lena might
have run round and got into the gipsy's way. Unfortunately, none of
the men were about, except Mack and old Thomas. Tod sent these off in
different directions; Mrs. Todhetley drove away in her pony-chaise to
the lanes round, saying the child might have strayed there; Molly and
the maids started elsewhere; and I and Tod went flying along a by-road
that branched off in a straight line, as it were, from the kitchen-door.
Nobody could keep up with Tod, he went so fast; and I was not tall and
strong as he was. But I saw what Tod in his haste did not see--a dark
man with some bundles of skewers and a stout stick, walking on the other
side of the hedge. I whistled Tod back again.

"What is it, Johnny?" he said, panting. "Have you seen her?"

"Not her. But look there. That must be the man Molly spoke of."

Tod crashed through the hedge as if it had been so many cobwebs,
and accosted the gipsy. I followed more carefully, but got my face
scratched.

"Were you up at the great house, begging, a short time ago?" demanded
Tod, in an awful passion.

The man turned round on Tod with a brazen face. I say brazen, because he
did it so independently; but it was not an insolent face in itself;
rather a sad one, and very sickly.

"What's that you ask me, master?"

"I ask whether it was you who were at the Manor-house just now,
begging?" fiercely repeated Tod.

"I was at a big house offering wares for sale, if you mean that, sir. I
wasn't begging."

"Call it what you please," said Tod, growing white again. "What have you
done with the little girl?"

For, you see, Tod had caught up the impression that the gipsy _had_
stolen Lena, and he spoke in accordance with it.

"I've seen no little girl, master."

"You have," and Tod gave his foot a stamp. "What have you done with
her?"

The man's only answer was to turn round and walk off, muttering to
himself. Tod pursued him, calling him a thief and other names; but
nothing more satisfactory could he get out of him.

"He can't have taken her, Tod. If he had, she'd be with him now. He
couldn't eat her, you know."

"He may have given her to a confederate."

"What to do? What do gipsies steal children for?"

Tod stopped in a passion, lifting his hand. "If you torment me with
these frivolous questions, Johnny, I'll strike you. How do I know what's
done with stolen children? Sold, perhaps. I'd give a hundred pounds
out of my pocket at this minute if I knew where those gipsies were
encamped."

We suddenly lost the fellow. Tod had been keeping him in sight in the
distance. Whether he disappeared up a gum-tree, or into a rabbit-hole,
Tod couldn't tell; but gone he was.

Up this lane, down that one; over this moor, across that common; so
raced Tod and I. And the afternoon wore away, and we had changed our
direction a dozen times: which possibly was not wise.

The sun was getting low as we passed Ragley gates, for we had finally
got into the Alcester road. Tod was going to do what we ought to have
done at first: report the loss at Alcester. Some one came riding along
on a stumpy pony. It proved to be Gruff Blossom, groom to the Jacobsons.
They called him "Gruff" because of his temper. He did touch his hat to
us, which was as much as you could say, and spurred the stumpy animal
on. But Tod made a sign to him, and he was obliged to stop and listen.

"The gipsies stole off little Miss Lena!" cried old Blossom, coming out
of his gruffness. "That's a rum go! Ten to one if you find her for a
year to come."

"But, Blossom, what do they do with the children they steal?" I asked,
in a sort of agony.

"They cuts their hair off and dyes their skins brown, and then takes 'em
out to fairs a ballad-singing," answered Blossom.

"But why need they do it, when they have children of their own?"

"Ah, well, that's a question I couldn't answer," said old Blossom.
"Maybe their'n arn't pretty children--Miss Lena, she is pretty."

"Have you heard of any gipsies being encamped about here?" Tod demanded
of him.

"Not lately, Mr. Joseph. Five or six months ago, there was a lot 'camped
on the Markis's ground. They warn't there long."

"Can't you ride about, Blossom, and see after the child?" asked Tod,
putting something into his hand.

Old Blossom pocketed it, and went off with a nod. He was riding
about, as we knew afterwards, for hours. Tod made straight for the
police-station at Alcester, and told his tale. Not a soul was there but
Jenkins, one of the men.

"I haven't seen no suspicious characters about," said Jenkins, who
seemed to be eating something. He was a big man, with short black hair
combed on his forehead, and he had a habit of turning his face upwards,
as if looking after his nose--a square ornament, that stood up straight.

"She is between four and five years old; a very pretty child, with blue
eyes and a good deal of curling auburn hair," said Tod, who was growing
feverish.

Jenkins wrote it down--"Name, Todhetley. What Christian name?"

"Adalena, called 'Lena.'"

"Recollect the dress, sir?"

"Pale blue silk; straw hat with wreath of daisies round it; open-worked
white stockings, and thin black shoes; white drawers," recounted Tod, as
if he had prepared the list by heart coming along.

"That's bad, that dress is," said Jenkins, putting down the pen.

"Why is it bad?"

"'Cause the things is tempting. Quite half the children that gets stole
is stole for what they've got upon their backs. Tramps and that sort
will run a risk for a blue silk that they'd not run for a brown holland
pinafore. Auburn curls, too," added Jenkins, shaking his head; "that's a
temptation also. I've knowed children sent back home with bare heads
afore now. Any ornaments, sir?"

"She was safe to have on her little gold neck-chain and cross. They are
very small, Jenkins--not worth much."

Jenkins lifted his nose--not in disdain, it was a habit he had. "Not
worth much to you, sir, who could buy such any day, but an uncommon bait
to professional child-stealers. Were the cross a coral, or any stone of
that sort?"

"It was a small gold cross, and the chain was thin. They could only be
seen when her cloak was off. Oh, I forgot the cloak; it was white:
llama, I think they call it. She was going to a child's party."

Some more questions and answers, most of which Jenkins took down.
Handbills were to be printed and posted, and a reward offered on the
morrow, if she was not previously found. Then we came away; there was
nothing more to do at the station.

"Wouldn't it have been better, Tod, had Jenkins gone out seeking her and
telling of the loss abroad, instead of waiting to write all that down?"

"Johnny, if we don't find her to night, I shall go mad," was all he
answered.

He went back down Alcester Street at a rushing pace--not a run but a
quick walk.

"Where are you going now?" I asked.

"I'm going up hill and down dale until I find that gipsies' encampment.
You can go on home, Johnny, if you are tired."

I had not felt tired until we were in the police-station. Excitement
keeps off fatigue. But I was not going to give in, and said I should
stay with him.

"All right, Johnny."

Before we were clear of Alcester, Budd the land-agent came up. He was
turning out of the public-house at the corner. It was dusk then. Tod
laid hold of him.

"Budd, you are always about, in all kinds of nooks and by-lanes: can you
tell me of any encampment of gipsies between here and the Manor-house?"

The agent's business took him abroad a great deal, you know, into the
rural districts around.

"Gipsies' encampment?" repeated Budd, giving both of us a stare.
"There's none that I know of. In the spring, a lot of them had the
impudence to squat down on the Marquis's----"

"Oh, I know all that," interrupted Tod. "Is there nothing of the sort
about now?"

"I saw a miserable little tent to-day up Cookhill way," said Budd. "It
might have been a gipsy's or a travelling tinker's. 'Twasn't of much
account, whichever it was."

Tod gave a spring. "Whereabouts?" was all he asked. And Budd explained
where. Tod went off like a shot, and I after him.

If you are familiar with Alcester, or have visited at Ragley or anything
of that sort, you must know the long green lane leading to Cookhill; it
is dark with overhanging trees, and uphill all the way. We took that
road--Tod first, and I next; and we came to the top, and turned in the
direction Budd had described the tent to be in.

It was not to be called dark; the nights never are at midsummer; and
rays from the bright light in the west glimmered through the trees. On
the outskirts of the coppice, in a bit of low ground, we saw the tent,
a little mite of a thing, looking no better than a funnel turned upside
down. Sounds were heard within it, and Tod put his finger on his lip
while he listened. But we were too far off, and he took his boots off,
and crept up close.

Sounds of wailing--of some one in pain. But that Tod had been three
parts out of his senses all the afternoon, he might have known at
once that they did not come from Lena, or from any one so young. Words
mingled with them in a woman's voice; uncouth in its accents, nearly
unintelligible, an awful sadness in its tones.

"A bit longer! a bit longer, Corry, and he'd ha' been back. You needn't
ha' grudged it to us. Oh----h! if ye had but waited a bit longer!"

I don't write it exactly as she spoke; I shouldn't know how to spell it:
we made a guess at half the words. Tod, who had grown white again, put
on his boots, and lifted up the opening of the tent.

I had never seen any scene like it; I don't suppose I shall ever see
another. About a foot from the ground was a raised surface of some sort,
thickly covered with dark green rushes, just the size and shape of a
gravestone. A little child, about as old as Lena, lay on it, a white
cloth thrown over her, and just touching the white, still face. A torch,
blazing and smoking away, was thrust into the ground and lighted up the
scene. Whiter the face looked now, because it had been tawny in life. I
would rather see one of our faces in death than a gipsy's. The contrast
between the white face and dress of the child, and the green bed of
rushes it lay on was something remarkable. A young woman, dark too, and
handsome enough to create a commotion at the fair, knelt down, her brown
hands uplifted; a gaudy ring on one of the fingers, worth sixpence
perhaps when new, sparkled in the torchlight. Tod strode up to the dead
face and looked at it for full five minutes. I do believe he thought at
first that it was Lena.

"What is this?" he asked.

"It is my dead child!" the woman answered. "She did not wait that her
father might see her die!"

But Tod had his head full of Lena, and looked round. "Is there no other
child here?"

As if to answer him, a bundle of rags came out of a corner and set up a
howl. It was a boy of about seven, and our going in had wakened him up.
The woman sat down on the ground and looked at us.

"We have lost a child--a little girl," explained Tod. "I thought she
might have been brought here--or have strayed here."

"I've lost _my_ girl," said the woman. "Death has come for her!" And,
when speaking to us, she spoke more intelligibly than when alone.

"Yes; but this child has been lost--lost out of doors! Have you seen or
heard anything of one?"

"I've not been in the way o' seeing or hearing, master; I've been in
the tent alone. If folks had come to my aid, Corry might not have died.
I've had nothing but water to put to her lips all day?"

"What was the matter with her?" Tod asked, convinced at length that Lena
was not there.

"She have been ailing long--worse since the moon come in. The sickness
took her with the summer, and the strength began to go out. Jake have
been down, too. He couldn't get out to bring us help, and we have had
none."

Jake was the husband, we supposed. The help meant food, or funds to get
it with.

"He sat all yesterday cutting skewers, his hands a'most too weak to
fashion 'em. Maybe he'd sell 'em for a few ha'pence, he said; and he
went out this morning to try, and bring home a morsel of food."

"Tod," I whispered, "I wish that hard-hearted Molly had----"

"Hold your tongue, Johnny," he interrupted sharply. "Is Jake your
husband?" he asked of the woman.

"He is my husband, and the children's father."

"Jake would not be likely to steal a child, would he?" asked Tod, in a
hesitating manner, for him.

She looked up, as if not understanding. "Steal a child, master! What
for?"

"I don't know," said Tod. "I thought perhaps he had done it, and had
brought the child here."

Another comical stare from the woman. "We couldn't feed these of ours;
what should we do with another?"

"Well: Jake called at our house to sell his skewers; and, directly
afterwards, we missed my little sister. I have been hunting for her ever
since."

"Was the house far from here!"

"A few miles."

"Then he have sunk down of weakness on his way, and can't get back."

Putting her head on her knees, she began to sob and moan. The child--the
living one--began to bawl; one couldn't call it anything else; and
pulled at the green rushes.

"He knew Corry was sick and faint when he went out. He'd have got back
afore now if his strength hadn't failed him; though, maybe, he didn't
think of death. Whist, then, whist, then, Dor," she added, to the boy.

"Don't cry," said Tod to the little chap, who had the largest, brightest
eyes I ever saw. "That will do no good, you know."

"I want Corry," said he. "Where's Corry gone?"

"She's gone up to God," answered Tod, speaking very gently. "She's gone
to be a bright angel with Him in heaven."

"Will she fly down to me?" asked Dor, his great eyes shining through
their tears at Tod.

"Yes," affirmed Tod, who had a theory of his own on the point, and used
to think, when a little boy, that his mother was always near him, one of
God's angels keeping him from harm. "And after a while, you know, if you
are good, you'll go to Corry, and be an angel, too."

"God bless you, master!" interposed the woman. "He'll think of that
always."

"Tod," I said, as we went out of the tent, "I don't think they are
people to steal children."

"Who's to know what the man would do?" retorted Tod.

"A man with a dying child at home wouldn't be likely to harm another."

Tod did not answer. He stood still a moment, deliberating which way to
go. Back to Alcester?--where a conveyance might be found to take us
home, for the fatigue was telling on both of us, now that disappointment
was prolonged, and I, at least, could hardly put one foot before
another. Or down to the high-road, and run the chance of some vehicle
overtaking us? Or keep on amidst these fields and hedgerows, which would
lead us home by a rather nearer way, but without chance of a lift? Tod
made up his mind, and struck down the lane the way we had come up. He
was on first, and I saw him suddenly halt, and turn to me.

"Look here, Johnny!"

I looked as well as I could for the night and the trees, and saw
something on the ground. A man had sunk down there, apparently from
exhaustion. His face was a tawny white, just like the dead child's. A
stout stick and the bundles of skewers lay beside him.

"Do you see the fellow, Johnny? It is the gipsy."

"Has he fainted?"

"Fainted, or shamming it. I wonder if there's any water about?"

But the man opened his eyes; perhaps the sound of voices revived him.
After looking at us a minute or two, he raised himself slowly on his
elbow. Tod--the one thought uppermost in his mind--said something about
Lena.

"The child's found, master!"

Tod seemed to give a leap. I know his heart did. "Found!"

"Been safe at home this long while."

"Who found her?"

"'Twas me, master."

"Where was she?" asked Tod, his tone softening. "Let us hear about it."

"I was making back for the town" (we supposed he meant Alcester), "and
missed the way; land about here's strange to me. A-going through a bit
of a groove, which didn't seem as if it was leading to nowhere, I heard
a child crying. There was the little thing tied to a tree, stripped,
and----"

"Stripped!" roared Tod.

"Stripped to the skin, sir, save for a dirty old skirt that was tied
round her. A woman carried her off to that spot, she told me, robbed her
of her clothes, and left her there. Knowing where she must ha' been
stole from--through you're accusing _me_ of it, master--I untied her to
lead her home, but her feet warn't used to the rough ground, and I made
shift to carry her. A matter of two miles it were, and I be not good for
much. I left her at home safe, and set off back. That's all, master."

"What were you doing here?" asked Tod, as considerately as if he had
been speaking to a lord. "Resting?"

"I suppose I fell, master. I don't remember nothing, since I was
tramping up the lane, till your voices came. I've had naught inside my
lips to-day but a drink o' water."

"Did they give you nothing to eat at the house when you took the child
home?"

He shook his head. "I saw the woman again, nobody else. She heard what I
had to say about the child, and she never said 'Thank ye.'"

The man had been getting on his feet, and took up the skewers, that were
all tied together with string, and the stick. But he reeled as he stood,
and would have fallen again but for Tod. Tod gave him his arm.

"We are in for it, Johnny," said he aside to me. "Pity but I could be
put in a picture--the Samaritan helping the destitute!"

"I'd not accept of ye, sir, but that I have a child sick at home, and
want to get to her. There's a piece of bread in my pocket that was give
me at a cottage to-day."

"Is your child sure to get well?" asked Tod, after a pause; wondering
whether he could say anything of what had occurred, so as to break the
news.

The man gazed right away into the distance, as if searching for an
answer in the far-off star shining there.

"There's been a death-look in her face this day and night past, master.
But the Lord's good to us all."

"And sometimes, when He takes children, it is done in mercy," said Tod.
"Heaven is a better place than this."

"Ay," rejoined the man, who was leaning heavily on Tod, and could never
have got home without him, unless he had crawled on hands and knees.
"I've been sickly on and off for this year past; worse lately; and I've
thought at times that if my own turn was coming, I'd be glad to see my
children gone afore me."

"Oh, Tod!" I whispered, in a burst of repentance, "how could we have
been so hard with this poor fellow, and roughly accused him of stealing
Lena?" But Tod only gave me a knock with his elbow.

"I fancy it must be pleasant to think of a little child being an angel
in heaven--a child that we have loved," said Tod.

"Ay, ay," said the man.

Tod had no courage to say more. He was not a parson. Presently he asked
the man what tribe he belonged to--being a gipsy.

"I'm not a gipsy, master. Never was one yet. I and my wife are
dark-complexioned by nature; living in the open air has made us darker;
but I'm English born; Christian, too. My wife's Irish; but they do say
she comes of a gipsy tribe. We used to have a cart, and went about the
country with crockery; but a year ago, when I got ill and lay in a
lodging, the things were seized for rent and debt. Since then it's been
hard lines with us. Yonder's my bit of a tent, master, and now I can get
on alone. Thanking ye kindly."

"I am sorry I spoke harshly to you to-day," said Tod. "Take this: it is
all I have with me."

"I'll take it, sir, for my child's sake; it may help to put the strength
into her. Otherwise I'd not. We're honest; we've never begged. Thank ye
both, masters, once again."

It was only a shilling or two. Tod spent, and never had much in his
pockets. "I wish it had been sovereigns," said he to me; "but we will do
something better for them to-morrow, Johnny. I am sure the Pater will."

"Tod," said I, as we ran on, "had we seen the man close before, and
spoken with him, I should never have suspected him. He has a face to be
trusted."

Tod burst into a laugh. "There you are Johnny, at your faces again!"

I was always reading people's faces, and taking likes and dislikes
accordingly. They called me a muff for it at home (and for many other
things), Tod especially; but it seemed to me that I could read people as
easily as a book. Duffham, our surgeon at Church Dykely, bade me _trust
to it_ as a good gift from God. One day, pushing my straw hat up to draw
his fingers across the top of my brow, he quaintly told the Squire that
when he wanted people's characters read, to come to me to read them. The
Squire only laughed in answer.

As luck had it, a gentleman we knew was passing in his dog-cart when we
got to the foot of the hill. It was old Pitchley. He drove us home: and
I could hardly get down, I was so stiff.

Lena was in bed, safe and sound. No damage, except fright and the loss
of her clothes. From what we could learn, the woman who took her off
must have been concealed amidst the ricks, when Tod put her there. Lena
said the woman laid hold of her very soon, caught her up, and put her
hand over her mouth, to prevent her crying out; she could only give one
scream. I ought to have heard it, only Mack was making such an awful
row, hammering that iron. How far along fields and by-ways the woman
carried her, Lena could not be supposed to tell: "Miles!" she said. Then
the thief plunged amidst a few trees, took the child's things off, put
on an old rag of a petticoat, and tied her loosely to a tree. Lena
thought she could have got loose herself, but was too frightened to try;
and just then the man, Jake, came up.

"I liked _him_," said Lena. "He carried me all the way home, that my
feet should not be hurt; but he had to sit down sometimes. He said he
had a poor little girl who was nearly as badly off for clothes as that,
but she did not want them now, she was too sick. He said he hoped my
papa would find the woman, and put her in prison."

It is what the Squire intended to do, chance helping him. But he did not
reach home till after us, when all was quiet again: which was fortunate.

"I suppose you blame me for that?" cried Tod, to his step-mother.

"No, I don't, Joseph," said Mrs. Todhetley. She called him Joseph nearly
always, not liking to shorten his name, as some of us did. "It is so
very common a thing for the children to be playing in the three-cornered
field amidst the ricks; and no suspicion that danger could arise from it
having ever been glanced at, I do not think any blame attaches to you."

"I am very sorry now for having done it," said Tod. "I shall never
forget the fright to the last hour of my life."

He went straight to Molly, from Mrs. Todhetley, a look on his face that,
when seen there, which was rare, the servants did not like. Deference
was rendered to Tod in the household. When anything should take off the
good old Pater, Tod would be master. What he said to Molly no one heard;
but the woman was banging at her brass things in a tantrum for three
days afterwards.

And when we went to see after poor Jake and his people, it was too late.
The man, the tent, the living people, and the dead child--all were
gone.




II.

FINDING BOTH OF THEM.


Worcester Assizes were being held, and Squire Todhetley was on the grand
jury. You see, although Dyke Manor was just within the borders of
Warwickshire, the greater portion of the Squire's property lay in
Worcestershire. This caused him to be summoned to serve. We were often
at his house there, Crabb Cot. I forget who was foreman of the jury that
time: either Sir John Pakington, or the Honourable Mr. Coventry.

The week was jolly. We put up at the Star-and-Garter when we went
to Worcester, which was two or three times a-year; generally at the
assizes, or the races, or the quarter-sessions; one or other of the busy
times.

The Pater would grumble at the bills--and say we boys had no business to
be there; but he would take us, if we were at home, for all that. The
assizes came on this time the week before our summer holidays were up;
the Squire wished they had not come on until the week after. Anyway,
there we were, in clover; the Squire about to be stewed up in the county
courts all day; I and Tod flying about the town, and doing what we
liked.

The judges came in from Oxford on the usual day, Saturday. And, to
make clear what I am going to tell about, we must go back to that
morning and to Dyke Manor. It was broiling hot weather, and Mrs.
Todhetley, Hugh, and Lena, with old Thomas and Hannah, all came on the
lawn after breakfast to see us start. The open carriage was at the
door, with the fine dark horses. When the Squire did come out, he
liked to do things well; and Dwarf Giles, the groom, had gone on to
Worcester the day before with the two saddle-horses, the Pater's and
Tod's. They might have ridden them in this morning, but the Squire
chose to have his horses sleek and fresh when attending the high
sheriff.

"Shall I drive, sir?" asked Tod.

"No," said the Pater. "These two have queer tempers, and must be handled
carefully." He meant the horses, Bob and Blister. Tod looked at me; he
thought he could have managed them quite as well as the Pater.

"Papa," cried Lena, as we were driving off, running up in her white
pinafore, with her pretty hair flying, "if you can catch that naughty
kidnapper at Worcester, you put her in prison."

The Squire nodded emphatically, as much as to say, "Trust me for that."
Lena alluded to the woman who had taken her off and stolen her clothes
two or three weeks before. Tod said, afterwards, there must have been
some prevision on the child's mind when she said this.

We reached Worcester at twelve. It is a long drive, you know. Lots of
country-people had arrived, and the Squire went off with some of them.
Tod and I thought we'd order luncheon at the Star--a jolly good one;
stewed lampreys, kidneys, and cherry-tart; and let it go into the
Squire's bill.

I'm afraid I envied Tod. The old days of travelling post were past, when
the sheriff's procession would go out to Whittington to meet the judges'
carriage. They came now by rail from Oxford, and the sheriff and his
attendants received them at the railway station. It was the first time
Tod had been allowed to make one of the gentlemen-attendants. The Squire
said now he was too young; but he looked big, and tall, and strong. To
see him mount his horse and go cantering off with the rest sent me into
a state of envy. Tod saw it.

"Don't drop your mouth, Johnny," said he. "You'll make one of us in
another year or two."

I stood about for half-an-hour, and the procession came back, passing
the Star on its way to the county courts. The bells were ringing, the
advanced heralds blew their trumpets, and the javelin-guard rode at a
foot-pace, their lances in rest, preceding the high sheriff's grand
carriage, with its four prancing horses and their silvered harness. Both
the judges had come in, so we knew that business was over at Oxford;
they sat opposite to the sheriff and his chaplain. I used to wonder
whether they travelled all the way in their wigs and gowns, or robed
outside Worcester. Squire Todhetley rode in the line next the carriage,
with some more old ones of consequence; Tod on his fine bay was nearly
at the tail, and he gave me a nod in passing. The judges were going to
open the commission, and Foregate Street was crowded.

The high sheriff that year was a friend of ours, and the Pater had an
invitation to the banquet he gave that evening. Tod thought he ought to
have been invited too.

"It's sinfully stingy of him, Johnny. When I am pricked for sheriff--and
I suppose my turn will come some time, either for Warwickshire or
Worcestershire--I'll have more young fellows to my dinner than old
ones."

The Squire, knowing nothing of our midday luncheon, was surprised that
we chose supper at eight instead of dinner at six; but he told the
waiter to give us a good one. We went out while it was getting ready,
and walked arm-in-arm through the crowded streets. Worcester is always
full on a Saturday evening; it is market-day there, as every one knows;
but on Assize Saturday the streets are almost impassable. Tod, tall and
strong, held on his way, and asked leave of none.

"Now, then, you two gents, can't you go on proper, and not elbow
respectable folks like that?"

"Holloa!" cried Tod, turning at the voice. "Is it you, old Jones?"

Old Jones, the constable of our parish, touched his hat when he saw it
was us, and begged pardon. We asked what he was doing at Worcester; but
he had only come on his own account. "On the spree," Tod suggested to
him.

"Young Mr. Todhetley," cried he--the way he chiefly addressed Tod--"I'd
not be sure but that woman's took--her that served out little Miss
Lena."

"That woman!" said Tod. "Why do you think it?"

Old Jones explained. A woman had been apprehended near Worcester the
previous day, on a charge of stripping two little boys of their clothes
in Perry Wood. The description given of her answered exactly, old Jones
thought, to that given by Lena.

"She stripped 'em to the skin," groaned Jones, drawing a long face as he
recited the mishap, "two poor little chaps of three years, they was,
living in them cottages under the Wood--not as much as their boots did
she leave on 'em. When they got home their folks didn't know 'em; quite
naked they was, and bleating with terror, like a brace of shorn sheep."

Tod put on his determined look. "And she is taken, you say, Jones?"

"She was took yesterday, sir. They had her before the justices this
morning, and the little fellows knowed her at once. As the 'sizes was
on, leastways as good as on, their worships committed her for trial
there and then. Policeman Cripp told me all about it; it was him that
took her. She's in the county gaol."

We carried the tale to the Pater that night, and he despatched a
messenger to Mrs. Todhetley, to say that Lena must be at Worcester on
the Monday morning. But there's something to tell about the Sunday yet.

If you have been in Worcester on Assize Sunday, you know how the
cathedral is on that morning crowded. Enough strangers are in the town
to fill it: the inhabitants who go to the churches at other times
attended it then; and King Mob flocks in to see the show.

Squire Todhetley was put in the stalls; Tod and I scrambled for places
on a bench. The alterations in the cathedral (going on for years before
that, and going on for years since, and going on still) caused space
to be limited, and it was no end of a cram. While people fought for
standing-places, the procession was played in to the crash of the organ.
The judges came, glorious in their wigs and gowns; the mayor and
aldermen were grand as scarlet and gold chains could make them; and
there was a large attendance of the clergy in their white robes. The
Bishop had come in from Hartlebury, and was on his throne, and the
service began. The Rev. Mr. Wheeler chanted; the Dean read the lessons.
Of course the music was all right; they put up fine services on Assize
Sundays now; and the sheriff's chaplain went up in his black gown to
preach the sermon. Three-quarters of an hour, if you'll believe me,
before that sermon came to an end!

Ere the organ had well played its Amen to the Bishop's blessing, the
crowd began to push out. We pushed with the rest and took up our places
in the long cathedral nave to see the procession pass back again. It
came winding down between the line of javelin-men. Just as the judges
were passing, Tod motioned me to look opposite. There stood a young boy
in dreadful clothes, patched all over, but otherwise clean; with great
dark wondering eyes riveted on the judges, as if they had been stilted
peacocks; on their wigs, their solemn countenances, their held-up
scarlet trains.

Where had I seen those eyes, and their brightness? Recollection flashed
over me before Tod's whisper: "Jake's boy; the youngster we saw in the
tent."

To get across the line was impossible: manners would not permit it, let
alone the javelin-guard. And when the procession had passed, leaving
nothing but a crowd of shuffling feet and the dust on the white
cathedral floor, the boy was gone.

"I say, Johnny, it is rather odd we should come on those tent-people,
just as the woman has turned up," exclaimed Tod, as we got clear of the
cathedral.

"But you don't think they can be connected, Tod?"

"Well, no; I suppose not. It's a queer coincidence, though."

_This_ we also carried to the Squire, as we had the other news. He was
standing in the Star gateway.

"Look here, you boys," said he, after a pause given to thought; "keep
your eyes open; you may come upon the lad again, or some of his folk. I
should like to do something for that poor man; I've wished it ever since
he brought home Lena, and that confounded Molly drove him out by way of
recompense."

"And if they should be confederates, sir?" suggested Tod.

"Who confederates? What do you mean, Joe?"

"These people and the female-stripper. It seems strange they should both
turn up again in the same spot."

The notion took away the Pater's breath. "If I thought that; if I find
it is so," he broke forth, "I'll--I'll--transport the lot."

Mrs. Todhetley arrived with Lena on Sunday afternoon. Early on Monday,
the Squire and Tod took her to the governor's house at the county
prison, where she was to see the woman, as if accidentally, nothing
being said to Lena.

The woman was brought in: a bold jade with a red face: and Lena nearly
went into convulsions at the sight of her. There could be no mistake the
woman was the same: and the Pater became redhot with anger; especially
to think he could not punish her in Worcester.

As the fly went racing up Salt Lane after the interview, on its way to
leave the Squire at the county courts, a lad ran past. It was Jake's
boy; the same we had seen in the cathedral. Tod leaped up and called to
the driver to stop, but the Pater roared out an order to go on. His
appearance at the court could not be delayed, and Tod had to stay with
Lena. So the clue was lost again. Tod brought Lena to the Star, and then
he and I went to the criminal court, and bribed a fellow for places. Tod
said it would be a sin not to hear the kidnapper tried.

It was nearly the first case called on. Some of the lighter cases were
taken first, while the grand jury deliberated on their bills for the
graver ones. Her name, as given in, was Nancy Cole, and she tried to
excite the sympathies of the judge and jury by reciting a whining
account of a deserting husband and other ills. The evidence was quite
clear. The two children (little shavers in petticoats) set up a roar in
court at sight of the woman, just as Lena had done in the governor's
house; and a dealer in marine stores produced their clothes, which
he had bought of her. Tod whispered to me that he should go about
Worcester after this in daily dread of seeing Lena's blue-silk frock
and open-worked stockings hanging in a shop window. Something was said
during the trial about the raid the prisoner had also recently made on
the little daughter of Mr. Todhetley, of Dyke Manor, Warwickshire, and
of Crabb Cot, Worcestershire, "one of the gentlemen of the grand jury at
present sitting in deliberation in an adjoining chamber of the court."
But, as the judge said, that could not be received in evidence.

Mrs. Cole brazened it out: testimony was too strong for her to attempt
denial. "And if she _had_ took a few bits o' things, 'cause she was
famishing, she didn't hurt the childern. She'd never hurt a child in
her life; couldn't do it. Just contrairy to that; she gave 'em sugar
plums--and candy--and a piece of a wig,[1] she did. What was she to do?
Starve? Since her wicked husband, that she hadn't seen for this five
year, deserted of her, and her two boys, fine grown lads both of 'em,
had been accused of theft and got put away from her, one into prison,
t'other into a 'formitory, she hadn't no soul to care for her nor help
her to a bit o' bread. Life was hard, and times was bad; and--there it
was. No good o' saying more."

      [1] A small plain bun sold in Worcester.

"Guilty," said the foreman of the jury, without turning round. "We find
the prisoner guilty, my lord."

The judge sentenced her to six months' imprisonment with hard labour.
Mrs. Cole brazened it out still.

"Thank you," said she to his lordship, dropping a curtsey as they were
taking her from the dock; "and I hope you'll sit there, old gentleman,
till I come out again."

When the Squire was told of the sentence that evening, he said it was
too mild by half, and talked of bringing her also to book at Warwick.
But Mrs. Todhetley said, "No; forgive her." After all, it was only the
loss of the clothes.

Nothing whatever had come out during the trial to connect Jake with the
woman. She appeared to be a waif without friends. "And I watched and
listened closely for it, mind you, Johnny," remarked Tod.

                 *       *       *       *       *

It was a day or two after this--I think, on the Wednesday evening. The
Squire's grand-jury duties were over, but he stayed on, intending to
make a week of it; Mrs. Todhetley and Lena had left for home. We had
dined late, and Tod and I went for a stroll afterwards; leaving the
Pater, and an old clergyman, who had dined with us, to their wine.
In passing the cooked-meat shop in High-street, we saw a little chap
looking in, his face flattened against the panes. Tod laid hold of
his shoulder, and the boy turned his brilliant eyes and their hungry
expression upon us.

"Do you remember me, Dor?" You see, Tod had not forgotten his name.

Dor evidently did remember. And whether it was that he felt frightened
at being accosted, or whether the sight of us brought back to him the
image of the dead sister lying on the rushes, was best known to himself;
but he burst out crying.

"There's nothing to cry for," said Tod; "you need not be afraid. Could
you eat some of that meat?"

Something like a shiver of surprise broke over the boy's face at the
question; just as though he had had no food for weeks. Tod gave him a
shilling, and told him to go in and buy some. But the boy looked at the
money doubtingly.

"A whole shilling! They'd think I stole it."

Tod took back the money, and went in himself. He was as proud a fellow
as you'd find in the two counties, and yet he would do all sorts of
things that many another glanced askance at.

"I want half-a-pound of beef," said he to the man who was carving, "and
some bread, if you sell it. And I'll take one of those small pork-pies."

"Shall I put the meat in paper, sir?" asked the man: as if doubting
whether Tod might prefer to eat it there.

"Yes," said Tod. And the customers, working-men and a woman in a drab
shawl, turned and stared at him.

Tod paid; took it all in his hands, and we left the shop. He did not
mind being seen carrying the parcels; but he would have minded letting
them know that he was feeding a poor boy.

"Here, Dor, you can take the things now," said he, when we had gone a
few yards. "Where do you live?"

Dor explained after a fashion. We knew Worcester well, but failed to
understand. "Not far from the big church," he said; and at first we
thought he meant the cathedral.

"Never mind," said Tod; "go on, and show us."

He went skimming along, Tod keeping him within arm's-length, lest he
should try to escape. Why Tod should have suspected he might, I don't
know; nothing, as it turned out, could have been farther from Dor's
thoughts. The church he spoke of proved to be All Saints'; the boy
turned up an entry near to it, and we found ourselves in a regular
rookery of dirty, miserable, tumble-down houses. Loose men stood about,
pipes in their mouths, women, in tatters, their hair hanging down.

Dor dived into a dark den that seemed to be reached through a hole you
had to stoop under. My patience! what a close place it was, with a smell
that nearly knocked you backwards. There was not an earthly thing in the
room that we could see, except some straw in a corner, and on that Jake
was lying. The boy appeared with a piece of lighted candle, which he had
been upstairs to borrow.

Jake was thin enough before; he was a skeleton now. His eyes were sunk,
the bones of his face stood out, the skin glistened on his shapely nose,
his voice was weak and hollow. He knew us, and smiled.

"What's the matter?" asked Tod, speaking gently. "You look very ill."

"I be very ill, master; I've been getting worse ever since."

His history was this. The same night that we had seen the tent at
Cookhill, some travelling people of Jake's fraternity happened to encamp
close to it for the night. By their help, the dead child was removed as
far as Evesham, and there buried. Jake, his wife, and son, went on to
Worcester, and there the man was taken worse; they had been in this room
since; the wife had found a place to go to twice a week washing, earning
her food and a shilling each time. It was all they had to depend upon,
these two shillings weekly; and the few bits o' things they had, to use
Jake's words, had been taken by the landlord for rent. But to see Jake's
resignation was something curious.

"He was very good," he said, alluding to the landlord and the seizure;
"he left me the straw. When he saw how bad I was, he wouldn't take it.
We had been obliged to sell the tent, and there was a'most nothing for
him."

"Have you had no medicine? no advice?" cried Tod, speaking as if he had
a lump in his throat.

Yes, he had had medicine; the wife went for it to the free place (he
meant the dispensary) twice a week, and a young doctor had been to see
him.

Dor opened the paper of meat, and showed it to his father. "The
gentleman bought it me," he said; "and this, and this. Couldn't you eat
some?"

I saw the eager look that arose for a moment to Jake's face at sight of
the meat: three slices of nice cold boiled beef, better than what we got
at school. Dor held out one of them; the man broke off a morsel, put it
into his mouth, and had a choking fit.

"It's of no use, Dor."

"Is his name 'Dor'?" asked Tod.

"His name is James, sir; same as mine," answered Jake, panting a little
from the exertion of swallowing. "The wife, she has called him 'Dor' for
'dear,' and I've fell into it. She has called me Jake all along."

Tod felt something ought to be done to help him, but he had no more
idea what than the man in the moon. I had less. As Dor piloted us to
the open street, we asked him where his mother was. It was one of her
working-days out, he answered; she was always kept late.

"Could he drink wine, do you think, Dor?"

"The gentleman said he was to have it," answered Dor, alluding to the
doctor.

"How old are you, Dor?"

"I'm anigh ten." He did not look it.

"Johnny, I wonder if there's any place where they sell beef-tea?" cried
Tod, as we went up Broad Street. "My goodness! lying there in that
state, with no help at hand!"

"I never saw anything so bad before, Tod."

"Do you know what I kept thinking of all the time? I could not get it
out of my head."

"What?"

"Of Lazarus at the rich man's gate. Johnny, lad, there seems an awful
responsibility lying on some of us."

To hear Tod say such a thing was stranger than all. He set off running,
and burst into our sitting-room in the Star, startling the Pater, who
was alone and reading one of the Worcester papers with his spectacles
on. Tod sat down and told him all.

"Dear me! dear me!" cried the Pater, growing red as he listened. "Why,
Joe, the poor fellow must be dying!"

"He may not have gone too far for recovery, father," was Tod's answer.
"If we had to lie in that close hole, and had nothing to eat or drink,
we should probably soon become skeletons also. He may get well yet with
proper care and treatment."

"It seems to me that the first thing to be done is to get him into the
Infirmary," remarked the Pater.

"And it ought to be done early to-morrow morning, sir; if it's too late
to-night."

The Pater got up in a bustle, put on his hat, and went out. He was going
to his old friend, the famous surgeon, Henry Carden. Tod ran after him
up Foregate Street, but was sent back to me. We stood at the door of the
hotel, and in a few moments saw them coming along, the Pater arm-in-arm
with Mr. Carden. He had come out as readily to visit the poor helpless
man as he would to visit a rich one. Perhaps more so. They stopped when
they saw us, and Mr. Carden asked Tod some of the particulars.

"You can get him admitted to the Infirmary at once, can you not?" said
the Pater, impatiently, who was all on thorns to have something done.

"By what I can gather, it is not a case for the Infirmary," was the
answer of its chief surgeon. "We'll see."

Down we went, walking fast: the Pater and Mr. Carden in front, I and Tod
at their heels; and found the room again with some difficulty. The wife
was in then, and had made a handful of fire in the grate. What with the
smoke, and what with the other agreeable accompaniments, we were nearly
stifled.

If ever I wished to be a doctor, it was when I saw Mr. Carden with
that poor sick man. He was so gentle with him, so cheery and so kind.
Had Jake been a duke, I don't see that he could have been treated
differently. There was something superior about the man, too, as though
he had seen better days.

"What is your name?" asked Mr. Carden.

"James Winter, sir, a native of Herefordshire. I was on my way there
when I was taken ill in this place."

"What to do there? To get work?"

"No, sir; to die. It don't much matter, though; God's here as well as
there."

"You are not a gipsy?"

"Oh dear no, sir. From my dark skin, though, I've been taken for one. My
wife's descended from a gipsy tribe."

"We are thinking of placing you in the Infirmary, Jake," cried the
Pater. "You will have every comfort there, and the best of attendance.
This gentleman----"

"We'll see--we'll see," interposed Mr. Carden, breaking in hastily on
the promises. "I am not sure that the Infirmary will do for him."

"It is too late, sir, I think," said Jake, quietly, to Mr. Carden.

Mr. Carden made no reply. He asked the woman if she had such a thing as
a tea-cup or wine-glass. She produced a cracked cup with the handle off
and a notch in the rim. Mr. Carden poured something into it that he had
brought in his pocket, and stooped over the man. Jake began to speak in
his faint voice.

"Sir, I'd not seem ungrateful, but I'd like to stay here with the wife
and boy to the last. It can't be for long now."

"Drink this; it will do you good," said Mr. Carden, holding the cup to
his lips.

"This close place is a change from the tent," I said to the woman, who
was stooping over the bit of fire.

Such a look of regret came upon her countenance as she lifted it: just
as if the tent had been a palace. "When we got here, master, it was
after that two days' rain, and the ground was sopping. It didn't do for
_him_"--glancing round at the straw. "He was getting mighty bad then,
and we just put our heads into this place--bad luck to us!"

The Squire gave her some silver, and told her to get anything in she
thought best. It was too late to do more that night. The church clocks
were striking ten as we went out.

"Won't it do to move him to the Infirmary?" were the Pater's first words
to Mr. Carden.

"Certainly not. The man's hours are numbered."

"There is no hope, I suppose?"

"Not the least. He may be said to be dying now."

No time was lost in the morning. When Squire Todhetley took a will to
heart he carried it out, and speedily. A decent room with an airy window
was found in the same block of buildings. A bed and other things were
put in it; some clothes were redeemed; and by twelve o'clock in the day
Jake was comfortably lying there. The Pater seemed to think that this
was not enough: he wanted to do more.

"His humanity to my child kept him from seeing the last moments of his,"
said he. "The little help we can give him now is no return for that."

Food and clothes, and a dry, comfortable room, and wine and proper
things for Jake--of which he could not swallow much. The woman was not
to go out to work again while he lasted, but to stay at home and attend
to him.

"I shall be at liberty by the hop-picking time," she said, with a sigh.
Ah, poor creature! long before that.

When Tod and I went in later in the afternoon, she had just given Jake
some physic, ordered by Mr. Carden. She and the boy sat by the fire, tea
and bread-and-butter on the deal table between them. Jake lay in bed,
his head raised on account of his breathing, I thought he was better;
but his thin white face, with the dark, earnest, glistening eyes, was
almost painful to look upon.

"The reading-gentleman have been in," cried the woman suddenly. "He's
coming again, he says, the night or the morning."

Tod looked puzzled, and Jake explained. A good young clergyman, who had
found him out a day or two before, had been in each day since with his
Bible, to read and pray. "God bless him!" said Jake.

"Why did you go away so suddenly?" Tod asked, alluding to the hasty
departure from Cookhill. "My father was intending to do something for
you."

"I didn't know that, sir. Many thanks all the same. I'd like to thank
_you_ too, sir," he went on, after a fit of coughing. "I've wanted to
thank you ever since. When you gave me your arm up the lane, and said
them pleasant things to me about having a little child in heaven, you
knew she was gone."

"Yes."

"It broke the trouble to me, sir. My wife heard me coughing afar off,
and came out o' the tent. She didn't say at first what there was in the
tent, but began telling how you had been there. It made me know what had
happened; and when she set on a-grieving, I told her not to: Carry was
gone up to be an angel in heaven."

Tod touched the hand he put out, not speaking.

"She's waiting for me, sir," he continued, in a fainter voice. "I'm as
sure of it as if I saw her. The little girl I found and carried to the
great house has rich friends and a fine home to shelter her; mine had
none, and so it was for the best that she should go. God has been very
good to me. Instead of letting me fret after her, or murmur at lying
helpless like this, He only gives me peace."

"That man must have had a good mother," cried out Tod, as we went away
down the entry. And I looked up at him, he spoke so queerly.

"Do you think he will get better, Tod? He does not seem as bad as he did
last night."

"Get better!" retorted Tod. "You'll always be a muff, Johnny. Why, every
breath he takes threatens to be his last. He is miles worse than he was
when we found him. This is Thursday: I don't believe he can last out
longer than the week; and I think Mr. Carden knows it."

He did not last so long. On the Saturday morning, just as we were going
to start for home, the wife came to the Star with the news. Jake had
died at ten the previous night.

"He went off quiet," said she to the Squire. "I asked if he'd not like
a dhrink; but he wouldn't have it: the good gentleman had been there
giving him the bread and wine, and he said he'd take nothing, he
thought, after that. 'I'm going, Mary,' he suddenly says to me about ten
o'clock, and he called Dor up and shook hands with him, and bade him be
good to me, and then he shook hands with me. 'God bless ye both,' says
he, 'for Christ's sake; and God bless the friends who have been kind to
us!' And with that he died."

That's all, for now. And I hope no one will think I invented this
account of Jake's death, for I should not like to do it. The wife
related it to us in the exact words written.

"And I able to do so little for him," broke forth the Squire, suddenly,
when we were about half-way home; and he lashed up Bob and Blister
regardless of their tempers. Which the animals did not relish.

And so that assize week ended the matter. Bringing imprisonment to the
kidnapping woman, and to Jake death.




III.

WOLFE BARRINGTON'S TAMING.


This is an incident of our school life; one that I never care to look
back upon. All of us have sad remembrances of some kind living in
the mind; and we are apt in our painful regret to say, "If I had but
done this, or had but done the other, things might have turned out
differently."

The school was a large square house, built of rough stone, gardens and
playgrounds and fields extending around it. It was called Worcester
House: a title of the fancy, I suppose, since it was some miles away
from Worcester. The master was Dr. Frost, a tall, stout man, in white
frilled shirt, knee-breeches and buckles; stern on occasion, but a
gentleman to the back-bone. He had several under-masters. Forty boys
were received; we wore the college cap and Eton jacket. Mrs. Frost
was delicate: and Hall, a sour old woman of fifty, was manager of the
eatables.

Tod and I must have been in the school two years, I think, when Archie
Hearn entered. He was eleven years old. We had seen him at the house
sometimes before, and liked him. A regular good little fellow was
Archie.

Hearn's father was dead. His mother had been a Miss Stockhausen, sister
to Mrs. Frost. The Stockhausens had a name in Worcestershire: chiefly, I
think, for dying off. There had been six sisters; and the only two now
left were Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Hearn: the other four quietly faded away
one after another, not living to see thirty. Mr. Hearn died, from an
accident, when Archie was only a year old. He left no will, and there
ensued a sharp dispute about his property. The Stockhausens said it all
belonged to the little son; the Hearn family considered that a portion
of it ought to go back to them. The poor widow was the only quiet spirit
amongst them, willing to be led either way. What the disputants did was
to put it into Chancery: and I don't much think it ever came out again.

It was the worst move they could have made for Mrs. Hearn. For it
reduced her to a very slender income indeed, and the world wondered how
she got on at all. She lived in a cottage about three miles from the
Frosts, with one servant and the little child Archibald. In the course
of years people seemed to forget all about the property in Chancery, and
to ignore her as quite a poor woman.

Well, we--I and Tod--had been at Dr. Frost's two years or so, when
Archibald Hearn entered the school. He was a slender little lad with
bright brown eyes, a delicate face and pink cheeks, very sweet-tempered
and pleasant in manner. At first he used to go home at night, but when
the winter weather set in he caught a cough, and then came into the
house altogether. Some of the big ones felt sure that old Frost took him
for nothing: but as little Hearn was Mrs. Frost's nephew and we liked
_her_, no talk was made about it. The lad did not much like coming into
the house: we could see that. He seemed always to be hankering after his
mother and old Betty the servant. Not in words: but he'd stand with his
arms on the play-yard gate, his eyes gazing out towards the quarter
where the cottage was; as if he would like his sight to penetrate the
wood and the two or three miles beyond, and take a look at it. When any
of us said to him as a bit of chaff, "You are staring after old Betty,"
he would say Yes, he wished he could see her and his mother; and then
tell no end of tales about what Betty had done for him in his illnesses.
Any way, Hearn was a straightforward little chap, and a favourite in the
school.

He had been with us about a year when Wolfe Barrington came. Quite
another sort of pupil. A big, strong fellow who had never had a mother:
rich and overbearing, and cruel. He was in mourning for his father, who
had just died: a rich Irishman, given to company and fast living. Wolfe
came in for all the money; so that he had a fine career before him and
might be expected to set the world on fire. Little Hearn's stories had
been of home; of his mother and old Betty. Wolfe's were different. He
had had the run of his father's stables and knew more about horses and
dogs than the animals knew about themselves. Curious things, too, he'd
tell of men and women, who had stayed at old Barrington's place: and
what he said of the public school he had been at might have made old
Frost's hair stand on end. Why he left the public school we did not find
out: some said he had run away from it, and that his father, who'd
indulged him awfully, would not send him back to be punished; others
said the head-master would not receive him back again. In the nick of
time the father died; and Wolfe's guardians put him to Dr. Frost's.

"I shall make you my fag," said Barrington, the day he entered, catching
hold of little Hearn in the playground, and twisting him round by the
arm.

"What's that?" asked Hearn, rubbing his arm--for Wolfe's grasp had not
been a light one.

"What's that!" repeated Barrington, scornfully. "What a precious young
fool you must be, not to know. Who's your mother?"

"She lives over there," answered Hearn, taking the question literally,
and nodding beyond the wood.

"Oh!" said Barrington, screwing up his mouth. "What's her name? And
what's yours?"

"Mrs. Hearn. Mine's Archibald."

"Good, Mr. Archibald. You shall be my fag. That is, my servant. And
you'll do every earthly thing that I order you to do. And mind you do it
smartly, or may be that girl's face of yours will show out rather blue
sometimes."

"I shall not be anybody's servant," returned Archie, in his mild,
inoffensive way.

"Won't you! You'll tell me another tale before this time to-morrow. Did
you ever get licked into next week?"

The child made no answer. He began to think the new fellow might be in
earnest, and gazed up at him in doubt.

"When you can't see out of your two eyes for the swelling round them,
and your back's stiff with smarting and aching--_that's_ the kind of
licking I mean," went on Barrington. "Did you ever taste it?"

"No, sir."

"Good again. It will be all the sweeter when you do. Now look you here,
Mr. Archibald Hearn. I appoint you my fag in ordinary. You'll fetch and
carry for me: you'll black my boots and brush my clothes; you'll sit up
to wait on me when I go to bed, and read me to sleep; you'll be dressed
before I am in the morning, and be ready with my clothes and hot water.
Never mind whether the rules of the house are against hot water, _you'll
have to provide it_, though you boil it in the bedroom grate, or out in
the nearest field. You'll attend me at my lessons; look out words for
me; copy my exercises in a fair hand--and if you were old enough to
_do_ them, you'd _have_ to. That's a few of the items; but there are
a hundred other things, that I've not time to detail. If I can get
a horse for my use, you'll have to groom him. And if you don't put out
your mettle to serve me in all these ways, and don't hold yourself in
readiness to fly and obey me at any minute or hour of the day, you'll
get daily one of the lickings I've told you of, until you are licked
into shape."

Barrington meant what he said. Voice and countenance alike wore a
determined look, as if his words were law. Lots of the fellows,
attracted by the talking, had gathered round. Hearn, honest and
straightforward himself, did not altogether understand what evil might
be in store for him, and grew seriously frightened.

The captain of the school walked up--John Whitney. "What is that you say
Hearn has to do?" he asked.

"_He_ knows now," answered Barrington. "That's enough. They don't allow
servants here: I must have a fag in place of one."

In turning his fascinated eyes from Barrington, Hearn saw Blair standing
by, our mathematical master--of whom you will hear more later. Blair
must have caught what passed: and little Hearn appealed to him.

"Am I obliged to be his fag, sir?"

Mr. Blair put us leisurely aside with his hands, and confronted the new
fellow. "Your name is Barrington, I think," he said.

"Yes, it is," said Barrington, staring at him defiantly.

"Allow me to tell you that 'fags' are not permitted here. The system
would not be tolerated by Dr. Frost for a moment. Each boy must wait on
himself, and be responsible for himself: seniors and juniors alike. You
are not at a public-school now, Barrington. In a day or two, when you
shall have learnt the customs and rules here, I dare say you will find
yourself quite sufficiently comfortable, and see that a fag would be an
unnecessary appendage."

"Who is that man?" cried Barrington, as Blair turned away.

"Mathematical master. Sees to us out of hours," answered Bill Whitney.

"And what the devil did you mean by making a sneaking appeal to _him_?"
continued Barrington, seizing Hearn roughly.

"I did not mean it for sneaking; but I could not do what you wanted,"
said Hearn. "He had been listening to us."

"I wish to goodness that confounded fool, Taptal, had been sunk in his
horse-pond before he put me to such a place as this," cried Barrington,
passionately. "As to you, you sneaking little devil, it seems I can't
make you do what I wanted, fags being forbidden fruit here, but it
shan't serve you much. There's to begin with."

Hearn got a shake and a kick that sent him flying. Blair was back on the
instant.

"Are you a coward, Mr. Barrington?"

"A coward!" retorted Barrington, his eyes flashing. "You had better try
whether I am or not."

"It seems to me that you act like one, in attacking a lad so much
younger and weaker than yourself. Don't let me have to report you to Dr.
Frost the first day of your arrival. Another thing--I must request you
to be a little more careful in your language. You have come amidst
gentlemen here, not blackguards."

The matter ended here; but Barrington looked in a frightful rage. It
was unfortunate that it should have occurred the day he entered; but it
did so, word for word, as I have written it. It set some of us rather
against Barrington, and it set _him_ against Hearn. He didn't "lick him
into next week," but he gave him many a blow that the boy did nothing to
deserve.

Barrington won his way, though, as the time went on. He had a liberal
supply of money, and was open-handed with it; and he would often do a
generous turn for one and another. The worst of him was his roughness.
At play he was always rough; and, when put out, savage as well. His
strength and activity were something remarkable; he would not have
minded hard blows himself, and he showered them out on others with no
more care than if we had been made of pumice-stone.

It was Barrington who introduced the new system at football. We had
played it before in a rather mild way, speaking comparatively, but he
soon changed that. Dr. Frost got to know of it in time, and he appeared
amongst us one day when we were in the thick of it, and stopped the
game with a sweep of his hand. They play it at Rugby now very much as
Barrington made us play it then. The Doctor--standing with his face
unusually red, and his shirt and necktie unusually white, and his
knee-buckles gleaming--asked whether we were a pack of cannibals, that
we should kick at one another in that dangerous manner. If we ever
attempted it again, he said, football should be stopped.

So we went back to the old way. But we had tried the new, you see: and
the consequence was that a great deal of rough play would creep into it
now and again. Barrington led it on. No cannibal (as old Frost put it)
could have been more carelessly furious at it than he. To see him with
his sallow face in a heat, his keen black eyes flashing, his hat off,
and his straight hair flung back, was not the pleasantest sight to my
mind. Snepp said one day that he looked just like the devil at these
times. Wolfe Barrington overheard him, and kicked him right over the
hillock. I don't think he was ill-intentioned; but his strong frame
had been untamed; it required a vent for its superfluous strength: his
animal spirits led him away, and he had never been taught to put a curb
on himself or his inclinations. One thing was certain--that the name,
Wolfe, for such a nature as his, was singularly appropriate. Some of
us told him so. He laughed in answer; never saying that it was only
shortened from Wolfrey, his real name, as we learnt later. He could be
as good a fellow and comrade as any of them when he chose, and on the
whole we liked him a great deal better than we had thought we should at
first.

As to his animosity against little Hearn, it was wearing off. The lad
was too young to retaliate, and Barrington grew tired of knocking him
about: perhaps a little ashamed of it when there was no return. In a
twelvemonth's time it had quite subsided, and, to the surprise of many
of us, Barrington, coming back from a visit to old Taptal, his guardian,
brought Hearn a handsome knife with three blades as a present.

And so it would have gone on but for an unfortunate occurrence. I shall
always say and think so. But for that, it might have been peace between
them to the end. Barrington, who was defiantly independent, had betaken
himself to Evesham, one half-holiday, without leave. He walked straight
into some mischief there, and broke a street boy's head. Dr. Frost was
appealed to by the boy's father, and of course there was a row. The
Doctor forbade Barrington ever to stir beyond bounds again without first
obtaining permission; and Blair had orders that for a fortnight to come
Barrington was to be confined to the playground in after-hours.

Very good. A day or two after that--on the next Saturday afternoon--the
school went to a cricket-match; Doctor, masters, boys, and all;
Barrington only being left behind.

Was he one to stand this? No. He coolly walked away to the high-road,
saw a public conveyance passing, hailed it, mounted it, and was carried
to Evesham. There he disported himself for an hour or so, visited the
chief fruit and tart shops; and then chartered a gig to bring him back
to within half-a-mile of the school.

The cricket-match was not over when he got in, for it lasted up to the
twilight of the summer evening, and no one would have known of the
escapade but for one miserable misfortune--Archie Hearn happened to have
gone that afternoon to Evesham with his mother. They were passing along
the street, and he saw Barrington amidst the sweets.

"There's Wolfe Barrington!" said Archie, in the surprise of the moment,
and would have halted at the tart-shop; but Mrs. Hearn, who was in a
hurry, did not stop. On the Monday, she brought Archie back to school:
he had been at home, sick, for more than a week, and knew nothing of
Barrington's punishment. Archie came amongst us at once, but Mrs. Hearn
stayed to take tea with her sister and Dr. Frost. Without the slightest
intention of making mischief, quite unaware that she was doing
so, Mrs. Hearn mentioned incidentally that they had seen one of the
boys--Barrington--at Evesham on the Saturday. Dr. Frost pricked up his
ears at the news; not believing it, however: but Mrs. Hearn said yes,
for Archie had seen him eating tarts at the confectioner's. The Doctor
finished his tea, went to his study, and sent for Barrington. Barrington
denied it. He was not in the habit of telling lies, was too fearless of
consequences to do anything of the sort; but he denied it now to the
Doctor's face; perhaps he began to think he might have gone a little too
far. Dr. Frost rang the bell and ordered Archie Hearn in.

"Which shop was Barrington in when you saw him on Saturday?" questioned
the Doctor.

"The pastrycook's," said Archie, innocently.

"What was he doing?" blandly went on the Doctor.

"Oh! no harm, sir; only eating tarts," Archie hastened to say.

Well--it all came out then, and though Archie was quite innocent of
wilfully telling tales; would have cut out his tongue rather than have
said a word to injure Barrington, he received the credit of it now.
Barrington took his punishment without a word; the hardest caning old
Frost had given for many a long day, and heaps of work besides, and a
promise of certain expulsion if he ever again went off surreptitiously
in coaches and gigs. But Barrington thrashed Hearn worse when it was
over, and branded him with the name of Sneak.

"He will never believe otherwise," said Archie, the tears of pain and
mortification running down his cheeks, fresh and delicate as a girl's.
"But I'd give the world not to have gone that afternoon to Evesham."

A week or two later we went in for a turn at "Hare and Hounds."
Barrington's term of punishment was over then. Snepp was the hare; a
fleet, wiry fellow who could outrun most of us. But the hare this time
came to grief. After doubling and turning, as Snepp used to like to do,
thinking to throw us off the scent, he sprained his foot, trying to leap
a hedge and dry ditch beyond it. We were on his trail, whooping and
halloaing like mad; he kept quiet, and we passed on and never saw him.
But there was no more scent to be seen, and we found we had lost it, and
went back. Snepp showed up then, and the sport was over for the day.
Some went home one way, and some another; all of us were as hot as fire,
and thirsting for water.

"If you'll turn down here by the great oak-tree, we shall come to my
mother's house, and you can have as much water as you like," said little
Hearn, in his good-nature.

So we turned down. There were only six or seven of us, for Snepp and his
damaged foot made one, and most of them had gone on at a quicker pace.
Tod helped Snepp on one side, Barrington on the other, and he limped
along between them.

It was a narrow red-brick house, a parlour window on each side the
door, and three windows above; small altogether, but very pretty, with
jessamine and clematis climbing up the walls. Archie Hearn opened the
door, and we trooped in, without regard to ceremony. Mrs. Hearn--she
had the same delicate face as Archie, the same pink colour and bright
brown eyes--came out of the kitchen to stare at us. As well she might.
Her cotton sleeves were turned up to the elbows, her fingers were
stained red, and she had a coarse kitchen cloth pinned round her. She
was pressing black currants for jelly.

We had plenty of water, and Mrs. Hearn made Snepp sit down, and looked
at his foot, and put a wet bandage round it, kneeling before him to do
it. I thought I had never seen so nice a face as hers; very placid, with
a sort of sad look in it. Old Betty, that Hearn used to talk about,
appeared in a short blue petticoat and a kind of brown print jacket. I
have seen the homely servants in France, since, dressed very similarly.
Snepp thanked Mrs. Hearn for giving his foot relief, and we took off our
hats to her as we went away.

The same night, before Blair called us in for prayers, Archie Hearn
heard Barrington giving a sneering account of the visit to some of the
fellows in the playground.

"Just like a cook, you know. Might be taken for one. Some coarse bunting
tied round her waist, and hands steeped in red kitchen stuff."

"My mother could never be taken for anything but a lady," spoke up
Archie bravely. "A lady may make jelly. A great many ladies prefer to do
it themselves."

"Now you be off," cried Barrington, turning sharply on him. "Keep at a
distance from your betters."

"There's nobody in the world better than my mother," returned the boy,
standing his ground, and flushing painfully: for, in truth, the small
way they were obliged to live in, through Chancery retaining the
property, made a sore place in a corner of Archie's heart. "Ask Joseph
Todhetley what he thinks of her. Ask John Whitney. _They_ recognize her
for a lady."

"But then they are gentlemen themselves."

It was I who put that in. I couldn't help having a fling at Barrington.
A bit of applause followed, and stung him.

"If you shove in your oar, Johnny Ludlow, or presume to interfere with
me, I'll pummel you to powder. There."

Barrington kicked out on all sides, sending us backward. The bell rang
for prayers then, and we had to go in.

The game the next evening was football. We went out to it as soon as tea
was over, to the field by the river towards Vale Farm. I can't tell much
about its progress, except that the play seemed rougher and louder than
usual. Once there was a regular skirmish: scores of feet kicking out at
once; great struggling, pushing and shouting: and when the ball got off,
and the tail after it in full hue and cry, one was left behind lying on
the ground.

I don't know why I turned my head back; it was the merest chance that I
did so: and I saw Tod kneeling on the grass, raising the boy's head.

"Holloa!" said I, running back. "Anything wrong? Who is it?"

It was little Hearn. He had his eyes shut. Tod did not speak.

"What's the matter, Tod? Is he hurt?"

"Well, I think he's hurt a little," was Tod's answer. "He has had a kick
here."

Tod touched the left temple with his finger, drawing it down as far as
the back of the ear. It must have been a good wide kick, I thought.

"It has stunned him, poor little fellow. Can you get some water from the
river, Johnny?"

"I could if I had anything to bring it in. It would leak out of my straw
hat long before I got here."

But little Hearn made a move then, and opened his eyes. Presently he sat
up, putting his hands to his head. Tod was as tender with him as a
mother.

"How do you feel, Archie?"

"Oh, I'm all right, I think. A bit giddy."

Getting on to his feet, he looked from me to Tod in a bewildered manner.
I thought it odd. He said he wouldn't join the game again, but go in and
rest. Tod went with him, ordering me to keep with the players. Hearn
walked all right, and did not seem to be much the worse for it.

"What's the matter now?" asked Mrs. Hall, in her cranky way; for she
happened to be in the yard when they entered, Tod marshalling little
Hearn by the arm.

"He has had a blow at football," answered Tod. "Here"--indicating the
place he had shown me.

"A kick, I suppose you mean," said Mother Hall.

"Yes, if you like to call it so. It was a blow with a foot."

"Did you do it, Master Todhetley?"

"No, I did not," retorted Tod.

"I wonder the Doctor allows that football to be played!" she went on,
grumbling. "I wouldn't, if I kept a school; I know that. It is a
barbarous game, only fit for bears."

"I am all right," put in Hearn. "I needn't have come in, but for feeling
giddy."

But he was not quite right yet. For without the slightest warning,
before he had time to stir from where he stood, he became frightfully
sick. Hall ran for a basin and some warm water. Tod held his head.

"This is through having gobbled down your tea in such a mortal hurry,
to be off to that precious football," decided Hall, resentfully. "The
wonder is, that the whole crew of you are not sick, swallowing your food
at the rate you do."

"I think I'll lie on the bed for a bit," said Archie, when the sickness
had passed. "I shall be up again by supper-time."

They went with him to his room. Neither of them had the slightest notion
that he was seriously hurt, or that there could be any danger. Archie
took off his jacket, and lay down in his clothes. Mrs. Hall offered to
bring him up a cup of tea; but he said it might make him sick again, and
he'd rather be quiet. She went down, and Tod sat on the edge of the bed.
Archie shut his eyes, and kept still. Tod thought he was dropping off to
sleep, and began to creep out of the room. The eyes opened then, and
Archie called to him.

"Todhetley?"

"I am here, old fellow. What is it?"

"You'll tell him I forgive him," said Archie, speaking in an earnest
whisper. "Tell him I know he didn't think to hurt me."

"Oh, I'll tell him," answered Tod, lightly.

"And be sure give my dear love to mamma."

"So I will."

"And now I'll go to sleep, or I shan't be down to supper. You will come
and call me if I am not, won't you?"

"All right," said Tod, tucking the counterpane about him. "Are you
comfortable, Archie?"

"Quite. Thank you."

Tod came on to the field again, and joined the game. It was a little
less rough, and there were no more mishaps. We got home later than
usual, and supper stood on the table.

The suppers at Worcester House were always the same--bread and cheese.
And not too much of it. Half a round off the loaf, with a piece of
cheese, for each fellow; and a drop of beer or water. Our other meals
were good and abundant; but the Doctor waged war with heavy suppers. If
old Hall had had her way, we should have had none at all. Little Hearn
did not appear; and Tod went up to look after him. I followed.

Opening the door without noise, we stood listening and looking. Not that
there was much good in looking, for the room was in darkness.

"Archie," whispered Tod.

No answer. No sound.

"Are you asleep, old fellow?"

Not a word still. The dead might be there; for all the sound there was.

"He's asleep, for certain," said Tod, groping his way towards the bed.
"So much the better, poor little chap. I won't wake him."

It was a small room, two beds in it; Archie's was the one at the end by
the wall. Tod groped his way to it: and, in thinking of it afterwards, I
wondered that Tod did go up to him. The most natural thing would have
been to come away, and shut the door. Instinct must have guided him--as
it guides us all. Tod bent over him, touching his face, I think. I stood
close behind. Now that our eyes were accustomed to the darkness, it
seemed a bit lighter.

Something like a cry from Tod made me start. In the dark, and holding
the breath, one is easily startled.

"Get a light, Johnny. A light!-quick! for the love of Heaven."

I believe I leaped the stairs at a bound. I believe I knocked over
Mother Hall at the foot. I know I snatched the candle that was in her
hand, and she screamed after me as if I had murdered her.

"Here it is, Tod."

He was at the door waiting for it, every atom of colour gone clean out
of his face. Carrying it to the bed, he let its light fall full on
Archie Hearn. The face was white and cold; the mouth covered with froth.

"Oh, Tod! What is it that's the matter with him?"

"Hush', Johnny! I fear he's dying. Good Lord! to think we should have
been such ignorant fools as to leave him by himself!--as not have sent
for Featherstone!"

We were down again in a moment. Hall stood scolding still, demanding her
candle. Tod said a word that silenced her. She backed against the wall.

"Don't play your tricks on me, Mr. Todhetley."

"Go and see," said Tod.

She took the light from his hand quietly, and went up. Just then, the
Doctor and Mrs. Frost, who had been walking all the way home from Sir
John Whitney's, where they had spent the evening, came in, and learnt
what had happened.

Featherstone was there in no time, so to say, and shut himself into the
bedroom with the Doctor and Mrs. Frost and Hall, and I don't know how
many more. Nothing could be done for Archibald Hearn: he was not quite
dead, but close upon it. He was dead before any one thought of sending
to Mrs. Hearn. It came to the same. Could she have come upon telegraph
wires, she would still have come too late.

When I look back upon that evening--and a good many years have gone by
since then--nothing arises in my mind but a picture of confusion, tinged
with a feeling of terrible sorrow; ay, and of horror. If a death happens
in a school, it is generally kept from the pupils, as far as possible;
at any rate they are not allowed to see any of its attendant stir and
details. But this was different. Upon masters and boys, upon mistress
and household, it came with the same startling shock. Dr. Frost said
feebly that the boys ought to go up to bed, and then Blair told us to
go; but the boys stayed on where they were. Hanging about the passages,
stealing upstairs and peeping into the room, questioning Featherstone
(when we could get the chance of coming upon him), as to whether Hearn
would get well or not. No one checked us.

I went in once. Mrs. Frost was alone, kneeling by the bed; I thought she
must have been saying a prayer. Just then she lifted her head to look at
him. As I backed away again, she began to speak aloud--and oh! what a
sad tone she said it in!

"The only son of his mother, and she was a widow!"

There had to be an inquest. It did not come to much. The most that could
be said was that he died from a kick at football. "A most unfortunate
but an accidental kick," quoth the coroner. Tod had said that he saw the
kick given: that is, had seen some foot come flat down with a bang on
the side of little Hearn's head; and when Tod was asked if he recognized
the foot, he replied No: boots looked very much alike, and a great many
were thrust out in the skirmish, all kicking together.

Not one would own to having given it. For the matter of that, the fellow
might not have been conscious of what he did. No end of thoughts glanced
towards Barrington: both because he was so ferocious at the game, and
that he had a spite against Hearn.

"I never touched him," said Barrington, when this leaked out; and his
face and voice were boldly defiant. "It wasn't me. I never so much as
saw that Hearn was down."

And as there were others quite as brutal at football as Barrington, he
was believed.

We could not get over it any way. It seemed so dreadful that he should
have been left alone to die. Hall was chiefly to blame for that; and it
cowed her.

"Look here," said Tod to us, "I have a message for one of you. Whichever
the cap fits may take it to himself. When Hearn was dying he told me to
say that he forgave the fellow who kicked him."

This was the evening of the inquest-day. We had all gathered in the
porch by the stone bench, and Tod took the opportunity to relate what
he had not related before. He repeated every word that Hearn had said.

"Did Hearn know who it was, then?" asked John Whitney.

"I think so."

"Then why didn't you ask him to name him!"

"Why didn't I ask him to name him," repeated Tod, in a fume. "Do you
suppose I thought he was going to die, Whitney?--or that the kick was to
turn out a serious one? Hearn was growing big enough to fight his own
battles: and I never thought but he would be up again at supper-time."

John Whitney pushed his hair back, in his quiet, thoughtful way, and
said no more. He was to die, himself, the following year--but that has
nothing to do with the present matter.

I was standing away at the gate after this, looking at the sunset, when
Tod came up and put his arms on the top bar.

"What are you gazing at, Johnny?"

"At the sunset. How red it is! I was thinking that if Hearn's up there
now he is better off. It is very beautiful."

"I should not like to have been the one to send him there, though," was
Tod's answer. "Johnny, I am certain Hearn knew who it was," he went on
in a low tone. "I am certain he thought the fellow, himself, knew, and
that it had been done for the purpose. I think I know also."

"Tell us," I said. And Tod glanced over his shoulders, to make sure no
one was within hearing before he replied.

"Wolfe Barrington."

"Why don't you accuse him, Tod?"

"It wouldn't do. And I am not absolutely sure. What I saw, was this. In
the rush, one of them fell: I saw his head lying on the ground. Before I
could shout out to the fellows to take care, a boot with a grey trouser
over it came stamping down (not kicking) on the side of the head. If
ever anything was done deliberately, that stamp seemed to be; it could
hardly have been chance. I know no more than that: it all passed in a
moment. I didn't _see_ that it was Barrington. But--what other fellow is
there among us who would have wilfully harmed little Hearn? It is that
thought that brings conviction to me."

I looked round to where a lot of them stood at a distance. "Wolfe has
got on grey trousers, too."

"That does not tell much," returned Tod. "Half of us wear the same.
Yours are grey; mine are grey. It's just this: While I am convinced in
my own mind that it was Barrington, there's no sort of proof that it was
so, and he denies it. So it must rest, and die away. Keep counsel,
Johnny."

The funeral took place from the school. All of us went to it. In the
evening, Mrs. Hearn, who had been staying at the house, surprised us by
coming into the tea-room. She looked very small in her black gown. Her
thin cheeks were more flushed than usual, and her eyes had a great
sadness in them.

"I wished to say good-bye to you; and to shake hands with you before I
go home," she began, in a kind tone, and we all got up from the table to
face her.

"I thought you would like me to tell you that I feel sure it must have
been an accident; that no harm was intended. My dear little son said
this to Joseph Todhetley when he was dying--and I fancy that some
prevision of death must have lain then upon his spirit and caused him to
say it, though he himself might not have been quite conscious of it. He
died in love and peace with all; and, if he had anything to forgive--he
forgave freely. I wish to let you know that I do the same. Only try to
be a little less rough at play--and God bless you all. Will you shake
hands with me?"

John Whitney, a true gentleman always, went up to her first, meeting her
offered hand.

"If it had been anything but an accident, Mrs. Hearn," he began in
tones of deep feeling: "if any one of us had done it wilfully, I think,
standing to hear you now, we should shrink to the earth in our shame and
contrition. You cannot regret Archibald much more than we do."

"In the midst of my grief, I know one thing: that God has taken him from
a world of care to peace and happiness; I try to _rest_ in that. Thank
you all. Good-bye."

Catching her breath, she shook hands with us one by one, giving each a
smile; but did not say more.

And the only one of us who did not feel her visit as it was intended,
was Barrington. But he had no feeling: his body was too strong for it,
his temper too fierce. He would have thrown a sneer of ridicule after
her, but Whitney hissed it down.

Before another day had gone over, Barrington and Tod had a row. It was
about a crib. Tod could be as overbearing as Barrington when he pleased,
and he was cherishing ill-feeling towards him. They went and had it out
in private--but it did not come to a fight. Tod was not one to keep
in matters till they rankled, and he openly told Barrington that he
believed it was he who had caused Hearn's death. Barrington denied it
out-and-out; first of all swearing passionately that he had not, and
then calming down to talk about it quietly. Tod felt less sure of it
after that: as he confided to me in the bedroom.

Dr. Frost forbid football. And the time went on.

                 *       *       *       *       *

What I have further to relate may be thought a made-up story, such as we
find in fiction. It is so very like a case of retribution. But it is all
true, and happened as I shall put it. And somehow I never care to dwell
long upon the calamity.

It was as nearly as possible a year after Hearn died. Jessup was captain
of the school, for John Whitney was too ill to come. Jessup was almost
as rebellious as Wolfe; and the two would ridicule Blair, and call him
"Baked pie" to his face. One morning, when they had given no end of
trouble to old Frost over their Greek, and laid the blame upon the hot
weather, the Doctor said he had a great mind to keep them in until
dinner-time. However, they ate humble-pie, and were allowed to escape.
Blair was taking us for a walk. Instead of keeping with the ranks,
Barrington and Jessup fell out, and sat down on the gate of a field
where the wheat was being carried. Blair said they might sit there if
they pleased, but forbid them to cross the gate. Indeed, there was a
standing interdiction against our entering any field whilst the crops
were being gathered. We went on and left them.

Half-an-hour afterwards, before we got back, Barrington had been carried
home, dying.

Dying, as was supposed. He and Jessup had disobeyed Blair, disregarded
orders, and rushed into the field, shouting and leaping like a couple of
mad fellows--as the labourers afterwards said. Making for the waggon,
laden high with wheat, they mounted it, and started on the horses. In
some way, Barrington lost his balance, slipped over the side and the
hind wheel went over him.

I shall never forget the house when we got back. Jessup, in his terror,
had made off for his home, running most of the way--seven miles. He was
in the same boat as Wolfe, except that he escaped injury--had gone over
the stile in defiance of orders, and got on the waggon. Barrington was
lying in the blue-room; and Mrs. Frost, frightened out of bed, stood on
the landing in her night-cap, a shawl wrapped round her loose white
dressing-gown. She was ill at the time. Featherstone came striding up
the road wiping his hot face.

"Lord bless me!" cried Featherstone when he had looked at Wolfe and
touched him. "I can't deal with this single-handed, Dr. Frost."

The doctor had guessed that. And Roger was already away on a galloping
horse, flying for another. He brought little Pink: a shrimp of a
man, with a fair reputation in his profession. But the two were more
accustomed to treating rustic ailments than grave cases, and Dr. Frost
knew that. Evening drew on, and the dusk was gathering, when a carriage
with post-horses came thundering in at the front gates, bringing Mr.
Carden.

They did not give to us boys the particulars of the injuries; and
I don't know them to this day. The spine was hurt; the right ankle
smashed: we heard that much. Taptal, Barrington's guardian, came over,
and an uncle from London. Altogether it was a miserable time. The
masters seized upon it to be doubly stern, and read us lectures upon
disobedience and rebellion--as though we had been the offenders! As to
Jessup, his father handed him back again to Dr. Frost, saying that in
his opinion a taste of birch would much conduce to his benefit.

Barrington did not seem to suffer as keenly as some might have done;
perhaps his spirits kept him up, for they were untamed. On the very day
after the accident, he asked for some of the fellows to go in and sit
with him, because he was dull. "By-and-by," the doctors said. And the
next day but one, Dr. Frost sent me in. The paid nurse sat at the end of
the room.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Ludlow! Where's Jessup?"

"Jessup's under punishment."

His face looked the same as ever, and that was all that could be seen of
him. He lay on his back, covered over. As to the low bed, it might have
been a board, to judge by its flatness. And perhaps was so.

"I am very sorry about it, Barrington. We all are. Are you in much
pain?"

"Oh, I don't know," was his impatient answer. "One has to grin and bear
it. The cursed idiots had stacked the wheat sloping to the sides, or it
would never have happened. What do you hear about me?"

"Nothing but regret that it----"

"I don't mean that stuff. Regret, indeed! regret won't undo it. I mean
as to my getting about again. Will it be ages first?"

"We don't hear a word."

"If they were to keep me here a month, Ludlow, I should go mad. Rampant.
You shut up, old woman."

For the nurse had interfered, telling him he must not excite himself.

"My ankle's hurt; but I believe it is not half as bad as a regular
fracture: and my back's bruised. Well, what's a bruise? Nothing. Of
course there's pain and stiffness, and all that; but so there is after
a bad fight, or a thrashing. And they talk about my lying here for
three or four weeks! Catch me."

One thing was evident: they had not allowed Wolfe to suspect the gravity
of the case. Downstairs we had an inkling, I don't remember whence
gathered, that it might possibly end in death. There was a suspicion of
some internal injury that we could not get to know of; and it is said
that even Mr. Carden, with all his surgical skill, could not get at it,
either. Any way, the prospect of recovery for Barrington was supposed to
be of the scantiest; and it threw a gloom over us.

A sad mishap was to occur. Of course no one in their senses would
have let Barrington learn the danger he was in; especially while there
was just a chance that the peril would be surmounted. I read a book
lately--I, Johnny Ludlow--where a little child met with an accident; and
the first thing the people around him did, father, doctors, nurses, was
to inform him that he would be a cripple for the rest of his days. That
was common sense with a vengeance: and about as likely to occur in real
life as that I could turn myself into a Dutchman. However, something of
the kind did happen in Barrington's case, but through inadvertence.
Another uncle came over from Ireland; an old man; and in talking with
Featherstone he spoke out too freely. They were outside Barrington's
door, and besides that, supposed that he was asleep. But he had awakened
then; and heard more than he ought. The blue-room always seemed to have
an echo in it.

"So it's all up with me, Ludlow?"

I was by his bedside when he suddenly said this, in the twilight of the
summer evening. He had been lying quite silent since I entered, and his
face had a white, still look on it, never before noticed there.

"What do you mean, Barrington?"

"None of your shamming here. I know; and so do you, Johnny Ludlow. I
say, though it makes one feel queer to find the world's slipping away.
I had looked for so much jolly _life_ in it."

"Barrington, you may get well yet; you may, indeed. Ask Pink and
Featherstone, else, when they next come; ask Mr. Carden. I can't think
what idea you have been getting hold of."

"There, that's enough," he answered. "Don't bother. I want to be quiet."

He shut his eyes; and the darkness grew as the minutes passed.
Presently some one came into the room with a gentle step: a lady in a
black-and-white gown that didn't rustle. It was Mrs. Hearn. Barrington
looked up at her.

"I am going to stay with you for a day or two," she said in a low sweet
voice, bending over him and touching his forehead with her cool fingers.
"I hear you have taken a dislike to the nurse: and Mrs. Frost is really
too weakly just now to get about."

"She's a sly cat," said Barrington, alluding to the nurse, "and watches
me out of the tail of her eye. Hall's as bad. They are in league
together."

"Well, they shall not come in more than I can help. I will nurse you
myself."

"No; not you," said Barrington, his face looking red and uneasy. "I'll
not trouble _you_."

She sat down in my chair, just pressing my hand in token of greeting.
And I left them.

In the ensuing days his life trembled in the balance; and even when part
of the more immediate danger was surmounted, part of the worst of the
pain, it was still a toss-up. Barrington had no hope whatever: I don't
think Mrs. Hearn had, either.

She hardly left him. At first he seemed to resent her presence; to wish
her away; to receive unwillingly what she did for him; but, in spite of
himself he grew to look round for her, and to let his hand lie in hers
whenever she chose to take it.

Who can tell what she said to him? Who can know how she softly and
gradually awoke the better feelings within him, and won his heart from
its hardness? She did do it, and that's enough. The way was paved for
her. What the accident had not done, the fear of death had. Tamed him.

One evening when the sun had sunk, leaving only a fading light in
the western sky, and Barrington had been watching it from his bed, he
suddenly burst into tears. Mrs. Hearn busy amongst the physic bottles,
was by his side in a moment.

"Wolfe!"

"It's very hard to have to die."

"Hush, my dear, you are not worse: a little better. I think you may be
spared; I do indeed. And--in any case--you know what I read to you this
evening: that to die is gain."

"Yes, for some. I've never had my thoughts turned that way."

"They are turned now. That is quite enough."

"It is such a little while to have lived," went on Barrington, after a
pause. "Such a little while to have enjoyed earth. What are my few years
compared with the ages that have gone by, with the ages and ages that
are to come. Nothing. Not as much as a drop of water to the ocean."

"Wolfe, dear, if you live out the allotted years of man, three score
and ten, what would even that be in comparison? As you say--nothing. It
seems to me that our well-being or ill-being here need not much concern
us: the days, whether short or long, will pass as a dream. Eternal life
lasts for ever; soon we must all be departing for it."

Wolfe made no answer. The clear sky was assuming its pale tints, shading
off one into another, and his eyes were looking at them. But it was as
if he saw nothing.

"Listen, my dear. When Archibald died, _I_ thought I should have died;
died of grief and pain. I grieved to think how short had been his span
of life on this fair earth; how cruel his fate in being taken from it
so early. But, oh, Wolfe, God has shown me my mistake. I would not have
him back again if I could."

Wolfe put up his hand to cover his face. Not a word spoke he.

"I wish you could see things as I see them, now that they have been
cleared for me," she resumed. "It is so much better to be in heaven than
on earth. We, who are here, have to battle with cares and crosses; and
shall have to do so to the end. Archie has thrown-off all care. He is in
happiness amidst the redeemed."

The room was growing dark. Wolfe's face was one of intense pain.

"Wolfe, dear, do not mistake me; do not think me hard if I say that you
would be happier there than here. There is nothing to dread, dying in
Christ. Believe me, I would not for the world have Archie back again:
how could I then make sure what the eventual ending would be? You and he
will know each other up there."

"Don't," said Wolfe.

"Don't what?"

Wolfe drew her hand close to his face, and she knelt down to catch his
whisper.

"I killed him."

A pause: and a sort of sob in her throat. Then, drawing away her hand,
she laid her cheek to his.

"My dear, I think I have known it."

"You--have--known--it?" stammered Wolfe in disbelief.

"Yes. I thought it was likely. I felt nearly sure of it. Don't let it
trouble you now. Archie forgave, you know, and I forgave; and God will
forgive."

"How could you come here to nurse me--knowing that?"

"It made me the more anxious to come. You have no mother."

"No." Wolfe was sobbing bitterly. "She died when I was born. I've never
had anybody. I've never had a chapter read to me, or a prayer prayed."

"No, no, dear. And Archie--oh, Archie had all that. From the time he
could speak, I tried to train him for heaven. It has seemed to me,
since, just as though I had foreseen he would go early, and was
preparing him for it."

"I never meant to kill him," sobbed Wolfe. "I saw his head down, and I
put my foot upon it without a moment's thought. If I had taken thought,
or known it would hurt him seriously, I wouldn't have done it."

"He is better off, dear," was all she said. "You have that comfort."

"Any way, I am paid out for it. At the best, I suppose I shall go upon
crutches for life. That's bad enough: but dying's worse. Mrs. Hearn, I
am not ready to die."

"Be you very sure God will not take you until you are ready, if you only
wish and hope to be made so from your very heart," she whispered. "I
pray to Him often for you, Wolfe."

"I think you must be one of heaven's angels," said Wolfe, with a burst
of emotion.

"No, dear; only a weak woman. I have had so much sorrow and care,
trial upon trial, one disappointment after another, that it has left me
nothing but Heaven to lean upon. Wolfe, I am trying to show you a little
bit of the way there; and I think--I do indeed--that this accident,
which seems, and is, so dreadful, may have been sent by God in mercy.
Perhaps, else, you might never have found Him: and where would you have
been in all that long, long eternity? A few years here; never-ending
ages hereafter!--Oh, Wolfe! bear up bravely for the little span, even
though the cross may be heavy. Fight on manfully for the real life to
come."

"If you will help me."

"To be sure I will."

                 *       *       *       *       *

Wolfe got about again, and came out upon crutches. After a while they
were discarded, first one, then the other, and he took permanently to a
stick. He would never go without that. He would never run or leap again,
or kick much either. The doctors looked upon it as a wonderful cure--and
old Featherstone was apt to talk to us boys as if it were he who had
pulled him through. But not in Henry Carden's hearing.

The uncles and Taptal said he would be better now at a private tutor's.
But Wolfe would not leave Dr. Frost's. A low pony-carriage was bought
for him, and all his spare time he would go driving over to Mrs.
Hearn's. He was as a son to her. His great animal spirits had been
taken out of him, you see; and he had to find his happiness in quieter
grooves. One Saturday afternoon he drove me over. Mrs. Hearn had asked
me to stay with her until the Monday morning. Barrington generally
stayed.

It was in November. Considerably more than a year after the accident.
The guns of the sportsmen were heard in the wood; a pack of hounds and
their huntsmen rode past the cottage at a gallop, in full chase after a
late find. Barrington looked and listened, a sigh escaping him.

"These pleasures are barred to me now."

"But a better one has been opened to you," said Mrs. Hearn, with a
meaning smile, as she took his hand in hers.

And on Wolfe's face, when he glanced at her in answer, there sat a look
of satisfied rest that I am sure had never been seen on it before he
fell off the waggon.




IV.

MAJOR PARRIFER.


He was one of the worst magistrates that ever sat upon the bench of
justices. Strangers were given to wonder how he got his commission. But,
you see, men are fit or unfit for a post according to their doings in
it; and, generally speaking, people cannot tell what those doings will
be beforehand.

They called him Major: Major Parrifer: but he only held rank in a
militia regiment, and every one knows what that is. He had bought the
place he lived in some years before, and christened it Parrifer Hall.
The worst title he could have hit upon; seeing that the good old Hall,
with a good old family in it, was only a mile or two distant. Parrifer
Hall was only a stone's throw, so to say, beyond our village, Church
Dykely.

They lived at a high rate; money was not wanting; the Major, his wife,
six daughters, and a son who did not come home very much. Mrs. Parrifer
was stuck-up: it is one of our county sayings, and it applied to her.
When she called on people her silk gowns rustled as if lined with
buckram; her voice was loud, her manner patronizing; the Major's voice
and manner were the same; and the girls took after them.

Close by, at the corner of Piefinch Lane, was a cottage that belonged
to me. To me, Johnny Ludlow. Not that I had as yet control over that
or any other cottage I might possess. George Reed rented the cottage.
It stood in a good large garden which touched Major Parrifer's side
fence. On the other side the garden, a high hedge divided it from the
lane: but it had only a low hedge in front, with a low gate in the
middle. Trim, well-kept hedges: George Reed took care of that.

There was quite a history attaching to him. His father had been indoor
servant at the Court. When he married and left it, my grandfather gave
him a lease of this cottage, renewable every seven years. George was
the only son, had been very decently educated, but turned out wild
when he grew up and got out of everything. The result was, that he was
only a day-labourer, and never likely to be anything else. He took to
the cottage after old Reed's death, and worked for Mr. Sterling; who
had the Court now. George Reed was generally civil, but uncommonly
independent. His first wife had died, leaving a daughter, Cathy; later
on he married again. Reed's wild oats had been sown years ago; he was
thoroughly well-conducted and industrious now, working in his own garden
early and late.

When Cathy's mother died, she was taken to by an aunt, who lived near
Worcester. At fifteen she came home again, for the aunt had died. Her
ten years' training there had done very little for her, except make her
into a pretty girl. Cathy had been trained to idleness, but to very
little else. She could sing; self-taught of course; she could embroider
handkerchiefs and frills; she could write a tolerable letter without
many mistakes, and was great at reading, especially when the literature
was of the halfpenny kind issued weekly. These acquirements (except the
last) were not bad things in themselves, but quite unsuited to Cathy
Reed's condition and her future prospects in life. The best that she
could aspire to, the best her father expected for her, was that of
entering on a light respectable service, and later to become, perhaps,
a labourer's wife.

The second Mrs. Reed, a quiet kind of young woman, had one little girl
only when Cathy came home. She was almost struck dumb when she found
what had been Cathy's acquirements in the way of usefulness; or rather
what were her deficiencies. The facts unfolded themselves by degrees.

"Your father thinks he'd like you to get a service with some of the
gentlefolks, Cathy," her step-mother said to her. "Perhaps at the
Court, if they could make room for you; or over at Squire Todhetley's.
Meanwhile you'll help me with the work at home for a few weeks first;
won't you, dear? When another little one comes, there'll be a good deal
on my hands."

"Oh, I'll help," answered Cathy, who was a good-natured, ready-speaking
girl.

"That's right. Can you wash?"

"No," said Cathy, with a very decisive shake of the head.

"Not wash?"

"Oh dear, no."

"Can you iron?"

"Pocket-handkerchiefs."

"Your aunt was a seamstress; can you sew well?"

"I don't like sewing."

Mrs. Reed looked at her, but said no more then, rather leaving practice
instead of theory to develop Cathy's capabilities. But when she came to
put her to the test, she found Cathy could not, or would not, do any
kind of useful work whatever. Cathy could not wash, iron, scour, cook,
or sweep; or even sew plain coarse things, such as are required in
labourers' families. Cathy could do several kinds of fancy-work. Cathy
could idle away her time at the glass, oiling her hair, and dressing
herself to the best advantage; Cathy had a smattering of history and
geography and chronology; and of polite literature, as comprised in the
pages of the aforesaid halfpenny and penny weekly romances. The aunt had
sent Cathy to a cheap day-school where such learning was supposed to be
taught: had let her run about when she ought to have been cooking and
washing; and of course Cathy had acquired a distaste for work. Mrs. Reed
sat down aghast, her hands falling helpless on her lap, a kind of fear
of what might be Cathy's future stealing into her heart.

"Child, what is to become of you?"

Cathy had no qualms upon the point herself. She gave a laughing kiss to
the little child, toddling round the room by the chairs, and took out of
her pocket one of those halfpenny serials, whose thrilling stories of
brigands and captive damsels she had learnt to make her chief delight.

"I shall have to teach her everything," sighed disappointed Mrs. Reed.
"Catherine, I don't think the kind of useless things your aunt has
taught you are good for poor folk like us."

Good! Mrs. Reed might have gone a little further. She began her
instruction, but Cathy would not learn. Cathy was always good-humoured;
but of work she would do none. If she attempted it, Mrs. Reed had to do
it over again.

"Where on earth will the gentlefolks get their servants from, if the
girls are to be like you?" cried honest Mrs. Reed.

Well, time went on; a year or two. Cathy Reed tried two or three
services, but did not keep them. Young Mrs. Sterling at the Court at
length took her. In three months Cathy was home again, as usual. "I do
not think Catherine will be kept anywhere," Mrs. Sterling said to her
step-mother. "When she ought to have been minding the baby, the nurse
would find her with a strip of embroidery in her hand, or buried in the
pages of some bad story that can only do her harm."

Cathy was turned seventeen when the warfare set in between her father
and Major Parrifer. The Major suddenly cast his eyes on the little
cottage outside his own land and coveted it. Before this, young Parrifer
(a harmless young man, with no whiskers, and sandy hair parted down the
middle) had struck up an acquaintance with Cathy. When he left Oxford
(where he got plucked twice, and at length took his name off the books)
he would often be seen leaning over the cottage-gate, talking to Cathy
in the garden, with the two little half-sisters that she pretended to
mind. There was no harm: but perhaps Major Parrifer feared it might
grow into it; and he badly wanted the plot of ground, that he might pull
down the cottage and extend his own boundaries to Piefinch Lane.

One fine day in the holidays, when Tod and I were indoors making flies
for fishing, our old servant, Thomas, appeared, and said that George
Reed had come over and wanted to speak to me. Which set us wondering.
What could he want with me?

"Show him in here," said Tod.

Reed came in: a tall, powerful man of forty; with dark, curling hair,
and a determined, good-looking face. He began saying that he had heard
Major Parrifer was after his cottage, wanting to buy it; so he had come
over to beg me to interfere and stop the sale.

"Why, Reed, what can I do?" I asked. "You know I have no power."

"You wouldn't turn me out of it yourself, I know, sir."

"That I wouldn't."

Neither would I. I liked George Reed. And I remembered that he used to
have me in his arms sometimes when I was a little fellow at the Court.
Once he carried me to my mother's grave in the churchyard, and told me
she had gone to live in heaven.

"When a rich gentleman sets his mind on a poor man's bit of a cottage,
and says, 'That shall be mine,' the poor man has not much chance against
him, sir, unless he that owns the cottage will be his friend. I know you
have no power at present, Master Johnny; but if you'd speak to Mr.
Brandon, perhaps he would listen to you."

"Sit down, Reed," interrupted Tod, putting his catgut out of hand. "I
thought you had the cottage on a lease."

"And so I have, sir. But the lease will be out at Michaelmas next, and
Mr. Brandon can turn me from it if he likes. My father and mother died
there, sir; my wife died there; my children were born there; and the
place is as much like my homestead as if it was my own."

"How do you know old Parrifer wants it?" continued Tod.

"I have heard it from a safe source. I've heard, too, that his lawyer
and Mr. Brandon's lawyer have settled the matter between their two
selves, and don't intend to let me as much as know I'm to go out till
the time comes, for fear I should make a row over it. Nobody on earth
can stop it except Mr. Brandon," added Reed, with energy.

"Have you spoken to Mr. Brandon, Reed?"

"No, sir. I was going up to him; but the thought took me that I'd better
come off at once to Master Ludlow; his word might be of more avail than
mine. There's no time to be lost. If once the lawyers get Mr. Brandon's
consent, he may not be able to recall it."

"What does Parrifer want with the cottage?"

"I fancy he covets the bit of garden, sir; he sees the order I've
brought it into. If it's not that, I don't know what it can be. The
cottage can be no eyesore to him; he can't see it from his windows."

"Shall I go with you, Johnny?" said Tod, as Reed went home, after
drinking the ale old Thomas had given him. "We will circumvent that
Parrifer, if there's law or justice in the Brandon land."

We went off to Mr. Brandon's in the pony-carriage, Tod driving. He lived
near Alcester, and had the management of my property whilst I was a
minor. As we went along who should ride past, meeting us, but Major
Parrifer.

"Looking like the bull-dog that he is," cried Tod, who could not bear
the man. "Johnny, what will you lay that he has not been to Mr.
Brandon's? The negotiations are becoming serious."

Tod did not go in. On second thought, he said it might be better to
leave it to me. The Squire must try, if I failed. Mr. Brandon was at
home; and Tod drove on into Alcester by way of passing the time.

"But I don't think you can see him," said the housekeeper, when she came
to me in the drawing-room. "This is one of his bad days. A gentleman
called just now, and I went in to the master, but it was of no use."

"I know; it was Major Parrifer. We thought he might have been calling
here."

Mr. Brandon was thin and little, with a shrivelled face. He lived alone,
except for three or four servants, and always fancied himself ill with
one ailment or another. When I went in, for he said he'd see me, he was
sitting in an easy-chair, with a geranium-coloured Turkish cap on his
head, and two bottles of medicine at his elbow.

"Well, Johnny, an invalid as usual, you see. And what is it you so
particularly want?"

"I want to ask you a favour, Mr. Brandon, if you'll be good enough to
grant it me."

"What is it?"

"You know that cottage, sir, at the corner of Piefinch Lane. George
Reed's."

"Well?"

"I have come to ask you not to let it be sold."

"Who wants to sell it?" asked he, after a pause.

"Major Parrifer wants to buy it; and to turn Reed out. The lawyers are
going to arrange it."

Mr. Brandon pushed the cap up on his brow and gave the tassel over his
ear a twirl as he looked at me. People thought him incapable; but it was
only because he had no work to do that he seemed so. He would get a bit
irritable sometimes; very rarely though; and he had a squeaky voice: but
he was a good and just man.

"How did you hear this, Johnny?"

I told him all about it. What Reed had said, and of our having met the
Major on horseback as we drove along.

"He came here, but I did not feel well enough to see him," said Mr.
Brandon. "Johnny, you know that I stand in place of your father, as
regards your property; to do the best I can with it."

"Yes, sir. And I am sure you do it."

"If Major Parrifer--I don't like the man," broke off Mr. Brandon, "but
that's neither here nor there. At the last magistrates' meeting I
attended he was so overbearing as to shut us all up. My nerves were
unstrung for four-and-twenty hours afterwards."

"And Squire Todhetley came home swearing," I could not help putting in.

"Ah," said Mr. Brandon. "Yes; some people can throw bile off in that
way. I can't. But, Johnny, all that goes for nothing, in regard to the
matter in hand: and I was about to point out to you that if Major
Parrifer has set his mind upon buying Reed's cottage and the bit of land
attached to it, he is no doubt prepared to offer a good price; more,
probably, than it is worth. If so, I should not, in your interests, be
justified in refusing this."

I could feel my face flush with the sense of injustice, and the tears
come into my eyes. They called me a muff for many things.

"I would not touch the money myself, sir. And if you used it for me, I'm
sure it would never bring any good."

"What's that, Johnny?"

"Money got by oppression or injustice never does. There was a fellow at
school----"

"Never mind the fellow at school. Go on with your own argument."

"To turn Reed out of the place where he has always lived, out of the
garden he has done so well by, just because a rich man wants to get
possession of it, would be fearfully unjust, sir. It would be as bad as
the story of Naboth's vineyard, that we heard read in church last
Sunday, for the First Lesson. Tod said so as we came along."

"Who's Tod?"

"Joseph Todhetley. If you turned Reed out, sir, for the sake of
benefiting me, I should be ashamed to look people in the face when they
talked of it. If you please, sir, I do not think my father would allow
it if he were living. Reed says the place is like his homestead."

Mr. Brandon measured two tablespoonfuls of medicine into a glass, drank
it off, and ate a French plum afterwards. The plums were on a plate, and
he handed them to me. I took one, and tried to crack the stone.

"You have taken up a strong opinion on this matter, Master Johnny."

"Yes, sir. I like Reed. And if I did not, he has no more right to be
turned out of his home than Major Parrifer has out of his. How would
_he_ like it, if some rich and powerful man came down on his place and
turned him out?"

"Major Parrifer can't be turned out of his, Johnny. It is his own."

"And Reed's place is mine, sir--if you won't be angry with me for saying
it. Please don't let it be done, Mr. Brandon."

The pony-carriage came rattling up at this juncture, and we saw Tod look
at the windows impatiently. I got up, and Mr. Brandon shook hands with
me.

"What you have said is all very good, Johnny, right in principle;
but I cannot let it quite outweigh your interests. When this proposal
shall be put before me--as you say it will be--it must have my full
consideration."

I stopped when I got to the door and turned to look at him. If he would
only have given me an assurance! He read in my face what I wanted.

"No, Johnny, I can't do that. You may go home easy for the present,
however; for I will promise not to accept the offer to purchase without
first seeing you again and showing you my reasons."

"I may have gone back to school, sir."

"I tell you I will see you again if I decide to accept the offer," he
repeated emphatically. And I went out to the pony-chaise.

"Old Brandon means to sell," said Tod, when I told him. And he gave the
pony an angry cut, that made him fly off at a gallop.

Will anybody believe that I never heard another word upon the subject,
except what people said in the way of gossip? It was soon known that
Mr. Brandon had declined to sell the cottage; and when his lawyer
wrote him word that the sum, offered for it, was increased to quite an
unprecedented amount, considering the value of the cottage and garden
in question, Mr. Brandon only sent a peremptory note back again,
saying he was not in the habit of changing his decisions, and the
place _was not for sale_. Tod threw up his hat.

"Bravo, old Brandon! I thought he'd not go quite over to the enemy."

George Reed wanted to thank me for it. One evening, in passing his
cottage on my way home from the Court, I leaned over the gate to speak
to his little ones. He saw me and came running out. The rays of the
setting sun shone on the children's white corded bonnets.

"I have to thank you for this, sir. They are going to renew my lease."

"Are they? All right. But you need not thank me; I know nothing about
it."

George Reed gave a decisive nod. "If you hadn't got the ear of Mr.
Brandon, sir, I know what box I should have been in now. Look at them
girls!"

It was not a very complimentary mode of speech, as applied to the Misses
Parrifer. Three of them were passing, dressed outrageously in the
fashion as usual. I lifted my straw hat, and one of them nodded in
return, but the other two only looked out of the tail of their eyes.

"The Major has been trying it on with me now," remarked Reed, watching
them out of sight. "When he found he could not buy the place, he thought
he'd try and buy out me. He wanted the bit of land for a kitchen-garden,
he said; and would give me a five-pound bank-note to go out of it. Much
obliged, Major, I said; but I'd not go for fifty."

"As if he had not heaps of land himself to make kitchen-gardens of!"

"But don't you see, Master Johnny, to a man like Major Parrifer, who
thinks the world was made for him, there's nothing so mortifying as
being balked. He set his mind upon this place; he can't get it; and he
is just boiling over. He'd poison me if he could. Now then, what's
wanted?"

Cathy had come up, with her pretty dark eyes, whispering some question
to her father. I ran on; it was growing late, and the Manor ever-so-far
off.

                 *       *       *       *       *

From that time the feud grew between Major Parrifer and George Reed.
Not openly; not actively. It could not well be either when their
relative positions were so different. Major Parrifer was a wealthy
landed proprietor, a county magistrate (and an awfully overbearing
one); and George Reed was a poor cottager who worked for his bread as
a day-labourer. But that the Major grew to abhor and hate Reed; that
the man, inhabiting the place at his very gates in spite of him, and
looking at him independently, as if to say he knew it, every time he
passed, had become an eyesore to him; was easily seen.

The Major resented it on us all. He was rude to Mr. Brandon when they
met; he struck out his whip once when he was on horse-back, and I
passed him, as if he would like to strike me. I don't know whether he
was aware of my visit to Mr. Brandon; but the cottage was mine, I was
friendly with Reed, and that was enough. Months, however, went on, and
nothing came of it.

One Sunday morning in winter, when our church-bells were going for
service, Major Parrifer's carriage turned out with the ladies all in
full fig. The Major himself turned out after it, walking, one of his
daughters with him, a young man who was on a visit there, and a couple
of servants. As they passed George Reed's, the sound of work being done
in the garden at the back of the cottage caught the Major's quick ears.
He turned softly down Piefinch Lane, stole on tiptoe to the high hedge,
and stooped to peep through it.

Reed was doing something to his turnips; hoeing them, the Major said. He
called the gentleman to him and the two servants, and bade them look
through the hedge. Nothing more. Then the party came on to church.

On Tuesday, the Major rode out to take his place on the magisterial
bench at Alcester. It was bitterly cold January weather, and only one
magistrate besides himself was on it: _a clergyman_. Two or three petty
offenders were brought before them, who were severely sentenced--as
prisoners always were when Major Parrifer was presiding. Another
magistrate came in afterwards.

Singular to say, Tod and I had gone to the town that day about a new
saddle for his horse; singular on account of what happened. In saying
we were there I am telling the truth; it is not invented to give
colour to the tale. Upon turning out of the saddler's, which is near
the justice-room, old Jones the constable was coming along with a
prisoner handcuffed, a tail after him.

"Halloa!" cried Tod. "Here's fun!"

But I had seen what Tod did not, and rubbed my eyes, wondering if they
saw double.

"_Tod!_ It is George Reed!"

Reed's face was as white as a sheet, and he walked along, not
unwillingly, but as one in a state of sad shame, of awful rage. Tod
made only one bound to the prisoner; and old Jones knowing us, did not
push him back again.

"As I'm a living man, I do not know what this is for, or why I am
paraded through the town in disgrace," spoke Reed, in answer to Tod's
question. "If I'm charged with wrong-doing, I am willing to appear and
answer for it, without being turned into a felon in the face and eyes of
folks, beforehand."

"Why do you bring Reed up in this manner--handcuffed?" demanded Tod of
the constable.

"Because the Major telled me to, young Mr. Todhetley."

Be you very sure Tod pushed after them into the justice-room: the
police saw him, but he was a magistrate's son. The crowd would have
liked to push in also, but were sent to the right-about. I waited, and
was presently admitted surreptitiously. Reed was standing before Major
Parrifer and the other two, handcuffed still; and I gathered what the
charge was.

It was preferred by Major Parrifer, who had his servants there and a
gentleman as witnesses. George Reed had been working in his garden on
the previous Sunday morning--which was against the law. Old Jones had
gone to Mr. Sterling's and taken him on the Major's warrant, as he was
thrashing corn.

Reed's answer was to the following effect.

He was _not_ working. His wife was ill--her little boy being only four
days old--and Dr. Duffham ordered her some mutton broth. He went to the
garden to get the turnips to put into it. It was only on account of her
illness that he didn't go to church himself, he and Cathy. They might
ask Dr. Duffham.

"Do you dare to tell me you were not hoeing turnips?" cried Major
Parrifer.

"I dare to say I was not doing it as work," independently answered the
man. "If you looked at me, as you say, Major, through the hedge, you
must have seen the bunch of turnips I had got up, lying near. I took the
hoe in my hand, and I did use it for two or three minutes. Some dead
weeds had got thrown along the bed, by the children, perhaps, and I
pulled them away. I went indoors directly: before the clock struck
eleven the turnips were on, boiling with the scrag of mutton. I peeled
them and put them in myself."

"I see the bunch of turnips," cried one of the servants. "They was
lying----"

"Hold your tongue, sir," roared his master; "if your further evidence
is wanted, you'll be asked for it. As to this defence"--and the Major
turned to his brother-magistrates with a scornful smile--"it is quite
ingenious; one of the clever excuses we usually get here. But it will
not serve your turn, George Reed. When the sanctity of the Sabbath is
violated----"

"Reed is not a man to say he did not do a thing if he did," interrupted
Tod.

The Major glared at him for an instant, and then put out of hand a big
gold pencil he was waving majestically.

"Clear the room of spectators," said he to the policeman.

Which was all Tod got for interfering. We had to go out: and in a minute
or two Reed came out also, handcuffed as before; not in charge of old
Jones, but of the county police. He had been sentenced to a month's
imprisonment. Major Parrifer had wanted to make it three months; he
said something about six; but the other two thought they saw some
slightly extenuating circumstances in the case. A solicitor who was
intimate with the Sterlings, and knew Reed very well, had been present
towards the end.

"Could you not have spoken in my defence, sir?" asked Reed, as he passed
this gentleman in coming out.

"I would had I been able. But you see, my man, when the law gets
broken----"

"The devil take the law," said Reed, savagely. "What I want is justice."

"And the administrators of it are determined to uphold it, what can
be said?" went on the solicitor equably, as if there had been no
interruption.

"You would make out that I broke the law, just doing what I did; and I
swear it was no more? That I can be legally punished for it?"

"Don't, Reed; it's of no use. The Major and his witnesses swore you were
at work. And it appears that you were."

"I asked them to take a fine--if I must be punished. I might have found
friends to advance it for me."

"Just so. And for that reason of course they did not take it," said the
candid lawyer.

"What is my wife to do while I am in prison? And the children? I may
come out to find them starved. A month's long enough to starve them in
such weather as this."

Reed was allowed time for no more. He would not have been allowed that,
but for having been jammed by the crowd at the doorway. He caught my eye
as they were getting clear.

"Master Johnny, will you go to the Court for me--your own place,
sir--and tell the master that I swear I am innocent? Perhaps he'll let
a few shillings go to the wife weekly; tell him with my duty that I'll
work it out as soon as I am released. All this is done out of revenge,
sir, because Major Parrifer couldn't get me from my cottage. May the
Lord repay him!"

It caused a commotion, I can tell you, this imprisonment of Reed's; the
place was ringing with it between the Court and Dyke Manor. Our two
houses seemed to have more to do with it than other people's; first,
because Reed worked at the Court; secondly, because I, who owned both
the Court and the cottage, lived at the Manor. People took it up pretty
warmly, and Mrs. Reed and the children were cared for. Mr. Sterling paid
her five shillings a week; and Mr. Brandon and the Squire helped her on
the quiet, and there were others also. In small country localities
gentlemen don't like to say openly that their neighbours are in the
wrong: at any rate, they rarely _do_ anything by way of remedy. Some
spoke of an appeal to the Home Secretary, but it came to nothing, and no
steps were taken to liberate Reed. Bill Whitney, who was staying a week
with us, wrote and told his mother about it; she sent back a sovereign
for Mrs. Reed; we three took it to her, and went about saying old
Parrifer ought to be kicked, which was a relief to our feelings.

But there's something to tell about Cathy. On the day that Reed was
taken up, it was not known at his home immediately. The neighbours,
aware that the wife was ill, said nothing to her--for old Duffham
thought she was going to have a fever, and ordered her to be kept quiet.
For one thing, they did not know what there was to tell; except that
Reed had been marched off from his work in handcuffs by Jones the
constable. In the evening, when news came of his committal, it was
agreed that an excuse should be made to Mrs. Reed that her husband had
gone out on a business job for his master; and that Cathy--who could not
fail to hear the truth from one or another--should be warned not to say
anything.

"Tell Cathy to come out here," said the woman, looking over the gate. It
was the little girl they spoke to; who could talk well: and she answered
that Cathy was not there. So Ann Perkins, Mrs. Reed's sister, was called
out.

"Where's Cathy?" cried they.

Ann Perkins answered in a passion--that she did not know where Cathy
was, but would uncommonly like to know, and she only wished she was
behind her--keeping her there with her sister when she ought to be at
her own home! Then the women told Ann Perkins what they had intended to
tell Cathy, and looked out for the latter.

She did not come back. The night passed, and the next day passed, and
Cathy was not seen or heard of. The only person who appeared to have
met her was Goody Picker. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon,
Tuesday, and Cathy had her best bonnet on. Mother Picker remarked upon
her looking so smart, and asked where she was going to. Cathy answered
that her uncle (who lived at Evesham) had sent to say she must go over
there at once. "But when she came to the two roads, she turned off
quite on the contrairy way to Evesham, and I thought the young woman
must be daft," concluded Mrs. Picker.

The month passed away, and Reed came out; but Cathy had not returned.
He got home on foot, in the afternoon, his hair cut close, and seemed
as quiet as a lamb. The man had been daunted. It was an awful insult
to put upon him; a slur on his good name for life; and some of them
said George Reed would never hold up his head again. Had he been cruel
or vindictive, he might have revenged himself on Major Parrifer,
personally, in a manner the Major would have found it difficult to
forget.

The wife was about again, but sickly: the little ones did not at first
know their father. One of the first people he asked after was Cathy.
The girl was not at hand to welcome him, and he took it in the light of
a reproach. When men come for the first time out of jail, they are
sensitive.

"Mr. Sterling called in yesterday, George, to say you were to go to your
work again as soon as ever you came home," said the wife, evading the
question about Cathy. "Everybody has been so kind; they know you didn't
deserve what you got."

"Ah," said Reed, carelessly. "Where's Cathy?"

Mrs. Reed felt obliged to tell him. No diplomatist, she brought out the
news abruptly: Cathy had not been seen or heard of since the afternoon
he was sent to prison. That aroused Reed: nothing else seemed to have
done it: and he got up from his chair.

"Why, where is she? What's become of her?"

The neighbours had been indulging in sundry speculations on the same
question, which they had obligingly favoured Mrs. Reed with; but she did
not think it necessary to impart them to her husband.

"Cathy was a good girl on the whole, George; putting aside that she'd do
no work, and spent her time reading good-for-nothing books. What I think
is this--that she heard of your misfortune after she left, and wouldn't
come home to face it. She is eighteen now, you know."

"Come home from where?"

Mrs. Reed had to tell the whole truth. That Cathy, dressed up in her
best things, had left home without saying a word to any one, stealing
out of the house unseen; she had been met in the road by Mrs. Picker,
and told her what has already been said. But the uncle at Evesham had
seen nothing of her.

Forgetting his cropped hair--as he would have to forget it until it
should grow again--George Reed went tramping off, there and then, the
nearly two miles of way to Mother Picker's. She could not tell him much
more than he already knew. "Cathy was all in her best, her curls 'iled,
and her pink ribbons as fresh as her cheeks, and said in answer to
questions that she had been sent for sudden to her uncle's at Evesham:
but she had turned off quite the contrairy road." From thence, Reed
walked on to his brother's at Evesham; and learnt that Cathy had not
been sent for, and had not come.

When Reed got home, he was dead-beat. How many miles the man had walked
that bleak February day, he did not stay to think--perhaps twenty. When
excitement buoys up the spirit, the body does not feel fatigue. Mrs.
Reed put supper before her husband, and he ate mechanically, lost in
thought.

"It fairly 'mazes me," he said, presently, in local phraseology. "But
for going out in her best, I should think some accident had come to her.
There's ponds about, and young girls might slip in unawares. But the
putting on her best things shows she was going somewhere."

"She put 'em on, and went off unseen," repeated Mrs. Reed, snuffing the
candle. "_I_ should have thought she'd maybe gone off to some wake--only
there wasn't one agate within range."

"Cathy had no bad acquaintance to lead her astray," he resumed. "The
girls about here are decent, and mind their work."

"Which Cathy didn't," thought Mrs. Reed. "Cathy held her head above
'em," she said, aloud. "It's my belief she used to fancy herself one
o' them fine ladies in her halfpenny books. She didn't seem to make
acquaintance with nobody but that young Parrifer. She'd talk to him by
the hour together, and I couldn't get her indoors."

Reed lifted his head. "Young Parrifer!--what--_his_ son?" turning his
thumb in the direction of Parrifer Hall. "Cathy talked to him?"

"By the hour together," reiterated Mrs. Reed. "He'd be on that side the
gate, a-talking, and laughing, and leaning on it; and Cathy, she'd be in
the path by the tall hollyhocks, talking back to him, and fondling the
children."

Reed rose up, a strange look on his face. "How long was that going on?"

"Ever so long; I can't just remember. But young Parrifer is only at the
Hall by fits and starts."

"And you never told me, woman!"

"I thought no harm of it. I don't think harm of it now," emphatically
added Mrs. Reed. "The worst of young Parrifer, that I've seen, is that
he's as soft as a tomtit."

Reed put on his hat without another word, and walked out. Late as it
was, he was going to the Hall. He rang a peal at it, more like a lord
than a labourer just let out of prison. There was some delay in opening
the door: the household had gone upstairs; but a man came at last.

"I want to see Major Parrifer."

The words were so authoritative; the man's appearance so strange, with
his tall figure and his clipped hair, as he pushed forward into the
hall, that the servant momentarily lost his wits. A light, in a room on
the left, guided Reed; he entered it, and found himself face to face
with Major Parrifer, who was seated in an easy-chair before a good fire,
spirits on the table, and a cigar in his mouth. What with the smoke from
that, what with the faint light--for all the candles had been put out
but one--the Major did not at first distinguish his late visitor's face.
When the bare head and the resolute eyes met his, he certainly paled a
little, and the cigar fell on to the carpet.

"I want my daughter, Major Parrifer."

To hear a demand made for a daughter when the Major had possibly been
thinking the demand might be for his life, was undoubtedly a relief. It
brought back his courage.

"What do you mean, fellow?" he growled, stamping out the fire of the
cigar. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Not quite. You might have driven some men out of theirs, though, by
what you've done. _We'll let that part be_, Major. I have come to-night
about my daughter. Where is she?"

They stood looking at each other. Reed stood just inside the door, hat
in hand; he did not forget his manners even in the presence of his
enemy; they were a habit with him. The Major, who had risen in his
surprise, stared at him: he really knew nothing whatever of the matter,
not even that the girl was missing; and he did think Reed's imprisonment
must have turned his brain. Perhaps Reed saw that he was not understood.

"I come home from prison, into which you put me, Major Parrifer, to find
my daughter Catherine gone. She went away the day I was taken up. Where
she went, or what she's doing, Heaven knows; but you or yours are
answerable for it, whichever way it may be."

"You have been drinking," said Major Parrifer.

"_You_ have, maybe," returned Reed, glancing at the spirits on the
table. "Either Cathy went out on a harmless jaunt, and is staying away
because she can't face the shame at home which you have put there; or
else she went out to meet your son, and has been taken away by him. I
think it must be the last; my fears whisper it to me; and, if so, you
can't be off knowing something of it. Major Parrifer, I must have my
daughter."

Whether the hint given about his son alarmed the Major, causing him to
forget his bluster for once, and answer civilly, he certainly did it.
His son was in Ireland with his regiment, he said; had not been at the
Hall for weeks and weeks; he could answer for it that Lieutenant
Parrifer knew nothing of the girl.

"He was here at Christmas," said George Reed. "I saw him."

"And left two or three days after it. How dare you, fellow, charge him
with such a thing? He'd wring your neck for you if he were here."

"Perhaps I might find cause to wring his first. Major Parrifer, I want
my daughter."

"If you do not get out of my house, I'll have you brought before me
to-morrow for trespassing, and give you a second month's imprisonment,"
roared the Major, gathering bluster and courage. "You want another month
of it: this one does not appear to have done you the good it ought.
Now--go!"

"I'll go," said Reed, who began to see the Major really did not know
anything of Cathy--and it had not been very probable that he did. "But
I'd like to leave a word behind me. You have succeeded in doing me a
great injury, Major Parrifer. You are rich and powerful, I am poor and
lowly. You set your mind on my bit of a home, and because you could
not drive me from it, you took advantage of your magistrate's post to
sentence me to prison, and so be revenged. It has done me a great deal
of harm. What good has it done you?"

Major Parrifer could not speak for rage.

"It will come home to you, sir, mark me if it does not. God has seen my
trouble, and my wife's trouble, and I don't believe He ever let such a
wrong pass unrewarded. _It will come home to you, Major Parrifer._"

George Reed went out, quietly shutting the hall-door behind him, and
walked home through the thick flakes of snow that had begun to fall.




V.

COMING HOME TO HIM.


The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm
spring, and hot weather was upon us early.

One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned
up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in
their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone
into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in
attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put
him into prison. The month's imprisonment had altered him; his daughter
Cathy's mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to
face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping
away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby's illness. Reed
said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep
the place quiet.

Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him
she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that
she was "all right, and he had no call to fret after her." Whether this
was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he
used to be.

Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his
garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to
the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had
taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was passing along
slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop
of grass was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the
hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and
looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in
Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.

Major Parrifer had been suffering from a slight temporary indisposition.
He did not consider himself sufficiently recovered to attend service,
but neither was he ill enough to lie in bed. With the departure of his
family for church, the Major had come strolling out in the garden in an
airy dressing-gown, and there saw his gardener picking peas.

"Halloa, Hotty! This ought to have been done before."

"Yes, sir, I know it; I'm a little late," answered Hotty; "I shall have
done in two or three minutes. The cook makes a fuss if I pick 'em too
early; she says they don't eat so well."

The peas were for the gratification of the Major's own palate, so he
found no more fault. Hotty went on with his work, and the Major gave
a general look round. On a near wall, at right angles with the hedge
through which Reed was then peering, some fine apricots were growing,
green yet.

"These apricots want thinning, Hotty," observed the Major.

"I have thinned 'em some, sir."

"Not enough. Our apricots were not as fine last year as they ought to
have been. I said then they had not had sufficient room to grow. Green
apricots are always useful; they make the best tart known."

Major Parrifer walked to the greenhouse, outside which a small basket
was hanging, brought it back, and began to pick some of the apricots
where they looked too thick. Reed, outside, watched the process--not
alone. As luck had it, a man appeared on the field-path, who proved to
be Gruff Blossom, the Jacobsons' groom, coming home to spend Sunday with
his friends. Reed made a sign to Blossom to be silent, and caused him to
look on also.

With the small basket half full, the Major desisted, thinking possibly
he had plucked enough, and turned away carrying it. Hotty came out from
the peas, his task finished. They strolled slowly down the path by the
hedge; the Major first, Hotty a step behind, talking about late and
early peas, and whether Prussian blues or marrowfats were the best
eating.

"Do you see those weeds in the onion-bed?" suddenly asked the Major,
stopping as they were passing it.

Hotty turned his head to look. A few weeds certainly had sprung up. He'd
attend to it on the morrow, he told his master; and then said something
about the work accumulating almost beyond him, since the under-gardener
had been at home ill.

"Pick them out now," said the Major; "there's not a dozen of them."

Hotty stooped to do as he was bid. The Major made no more ado but
stooped also, uprooting quite half the weeds himself. Not much more, in
all, than the dozen he had spoken of: and then they went on with their
baskets to the house.

Never had George Reed experienced so much gratification since the day
he came out of prison. "Did you see the Major at it?--thinning his
apricots and pulling up his weeds?" he asked of Gruff Blossom. And
Blossom's reply, gruff as usual, was to ask what might be supposed to
ail his eyes that he shouldn't see it.

"Very good," said Reed.

One evening in the following week, when we were sitting out on the
lawn, the Squire smoking, Mrs. Todhetley nursing her face in her hand,
with toothache as usual, Tod teasing Hugh and Lena, and I up in the
beech-tree, a horseman rode in. It proved to be Mr. Jacobson. Giles took
his horse, and he came and sat down on the bench. The Squire asked him
what he'd take, and being thirsty, he chose cider. Which Thomas brought.

"Here's a go," began Mr. Jacobson. "Have you heard what's up?"

"I've not heard anything," answered the Squire.

"Major Parrifer has a summons served on him for working in his garden
on a Sunday, and is to appear before the magistrates at Alcester
to-morrow," continued old Jacobson, drinking off a glass of cider at a
draught.

"No!" cried Squire Todhetley.

"It's a fact. Blossom, our groom, has also a summons served on him to
give evidence."

Mrs. Todhetley lifted her face; Tod left Hugh and Lena to themselves: I
slid down from the beech-tree; and we listened for more.

But Mr. Jacobson could not give particulars, or say much more than he
had already said. All he knew was, that on Monday morning George Reed
had appeared before the magistrates and made a complaint. At first they
were unwilling to grant a summons; laughed at it; but Reed, in a burst
of reproach, civilly delivered, asked why there should be a law for
the poor and not for the rich, and in what lay the difference between
himself and Major Parrifer; that the one should be called to account and
punished for doing wrong, and the other was not even to be accused when
he had done it.

"Brandon happened to be on the bench," continued Jacobson. "He appeared
struck with the argument, and signed the summons."

The Squire nodded.

"My belief is," continued old Jacobson, with a wink over the rim of
the cider glass, "that granting that summons was as good as a play to
Brandon and the rest. I'd as lieve, though, that they'd not brought
Blossom into it."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Todhetley, who had been grieved at the time at the
injustice done to Reed.

"Well, Parrifer is a disagreeable man to offend. And he is sure to visit
Blossom's part in this on me."

"Let him," said Tod, with enthusiasm. "Well done, George Reed!"

Be you very sure we went over to the fight. Squire Todhetley did not
appear: at which Tod exploded a little: he only wished _he_ was a
magistrate, wouldn't he take his place and judge the Major! But the
Pater said that when people had lived to his age, they liked to be at
peace with their neighbours--not but what he hoped Parrifer would "get
it," for having been so cruelly hard upon Reed.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Major Parrifer came driving to the Court-house in his high carriage
with a great bluster, his iron-grey hair standing up, and two grooms
attending him. Only the magistrates who had granted the summons sat.
The news had gone about like wild-fire, and several of them were in and
about the town, but did not take their places. I don't believe there
was one would have lifted his finger to save the Major from a month's
imprisonment; but they did not care to sentence him to it.

It was a regular battle. Major Parrifer was in an awful passion the
whole time; asking, when he came in, how they dared summon him. _Him!_
Mr. Brandon, cool as a cucumber, answered in his squeaky voice, that
when a complaint of breaking the law was preferred before them and sworn
to by witnesses, they could only act upon it.

First of all, the Major denied the facts. _He_ work in his garden on a
Sunday!--the very supposition was preposterous! Upon which George Reed,
who was in his best clothes, and looked every bit as good as the Major,
and far pleasanter, testified to what he had seen.

Major Parrifer, dancing with temper when he found he had been looked at
through the hedge, and that it was Reed who had looked, gave the lie
direct. He called his gardener, Richard Hotty, ordering him to testify
whether he, the Major, ever worked in his garden, either on Sundays or
week-days.

"Hotty was working himself, gentlemen," interposed George Reed. "He was
picking peas; and he helped to weed the onion-bed. But it was done by
his master's orders, so it would be unjust to punish him."

The Major turned on Reed as if he would strike him, and demanded of the
magistrates why they permitted the fellow to interrupt. They ordered
Reed to be quiet, and told Hotty to proceed.

But Hotty was one of those slow men to whom anything like evasion is
difficult. His master had thinned the apricot tree that Sunday morning;
he had helped to weed the onion-bed; Hotty, conscious of the fact, but
not liking to admit it, stammered and stuttered, and made a poor figure
of himself. Mr. Brandon thought he would help him out.

"Did you see your master pick the apricots?"

"I see him pick--just a few; green 'uns," answered Hotty, shuffling from
one leg to the other in his perplexity. "'Twarn't to be called work,
sir."

"Oh! And did he help you to weed the onion-bed?"

"There warn't a dozen weeds in it in all, as the Major said to me at the
time," returned Hotty. "He see 'em, and stooped down on the spur o' the
moment, and me too. We had 'em up in a twinkling. 'Twarn't work, sir;
couldn't be called it nohow. The Major, he never do work at no time."

Blossom had not arrived, and it was hard to tell how the thing would
terminate: the Major had this witness, Hotty, such as he was, protesting
that nothing to be called work was done. Reed had no witness, as yet.

"Old Jacobson is keeping Blossom back, Johnny," whispered Tod. "It's a
sin and a shame."

"No, he is not," I said. "Look there!"

Blossom was coming in. He had walked over, and not hurried himself.
Major Parrifer plunged daggers into him, if looks could do it, but it
made no difference to Blossom.

He gave his evidence in his usual surly manner. It was clear and
straightforward. Major Parrifer had thinned the apricot tree for its own
benefit; and had weeded the onion-bed, Hotty helping at the weeds by
order.

"What brought _you_ spying at the place, James Blossom?" demanded a
lawyer on the Major's behalf.

"Accident," was the short answer.

"Indeed! You didn't go there on purpose, I suppose?--and skulk under the
hedge on purpose?--and peer into the Major's garden on purpose?"

"No, I didn't," said Blossom. "The field is open to every one, and I was
crossing it on my way to old father's. George Reed made me a sign afore
I came up to him, to look in, as he was doing; and I did so, not knowing
what there might be to see. It would be nothing to me if the Major
worked in his garden of a Sunday from sunrise to sunset; he's welcome to
do it; but if you summon me here and ask me, did I see him working, I
say yes, I did. Why d'you send me a summons if you don't want me to tell
the truth? Let me be, and I'd ha' said nothing to mortal man."

Evidently nothing favourable to the defence could be got out of James
Blossom. Mr. Brandon began saying to the Major that he feared there was
no help for it; they should be obliged to convict him: and he was met by
a storm of reproach.

_Convict_ him! roared the Major. For having picked two or three green
apricots--and for stooping to pull up a couple or so of worthless weeds?
He would be glad to ask which of them, his brother-magistrates sitting
there, would not pick an apricot, or a peach, or what not, on a Sunday,
if he wanted to eat one. The thing was utterly preposterous.

"And what was it _I_ did?" demanded George Reed, drowning voices that
would have stopped him. "I went to the garden to get up a bunch of
turnips for my sick wife, and seeing some withered weeds flung on the
bed I drew them off with the hoe. What was that, I ask? And it was no
more. No more, gentlemen, in the sight of Heaven."

No particular answer was given to this; perhaps the justices had none
ready. Mr. Brandon was beginning to confer with the other two in an
undertone, when Reed spoke again.

"I was dragged up here in handcuffs, and told I had broken the law;
Major Parrifer said to me himself that I had violated the sanctity of
the Sabbath (those were the words), and therefore I must be punished;
there was no help for it. What has he done? I did not do as much as he
has."

"Now you know, Reed, this is irregular," said one of the justices. "You
must not interrupt the Court."

"You put me in prison for a month, gentlemen," resumed Reed, paying no
attention to the injunction. "They cut my hair close in the prison, and
they kept me to hard labour for the month, as if I did not have enough
of hard labour out of it. My wife was sick and disabled at the time, my
three little children are helpless: it was no thanks to the magistrates
who sentenced me, gentlemen, or to Major Parrifer, that they did not
starve."

"Will you be quiet, Reed?"

"If I deserved one month of prison," persisted Reed, fully bent on
saying what he had to say, "Major Parrifer must deserve two months, for
his offence is greater than mine. The law is the same for both of us, I
suppose. He----"

"Reed, if you say another word, I will order you at once from the room,"
interrupted Mr. Brandon, his thin voice sharp and determined. "How dare
you persist in addressing the Bench when told to be quiet!"

Reed fell back and said no more. He knew that Mr. Brandon had a habit
of carrying out his own authority, in spite of his nervous health and
querulous way of speaking. The justices spoke a few words together, and
then said they found the offence proved, and inflicted a fine on Major
Parrifer.

He dashed the money down on the table, in too great a rage to do it
politely, and went out to his carriage. No other case was on, that day,
and the justices got up and mixed with the crowd. Mr. Brandon, who felt
chilly on the hottest summer's day, and was afraid of showers, buttoned
on a light overcoat.

"Then there are _two_ laws, sir?" said Reed to him, quite civilly, but
in a voice that every one might hear. "When the law was made against
Sabbath-breaking, those that made it passed one for the rich and another
for the poor!"

"Nonsense, Reed."

"_Nonsense_, sir? I don't see it. _I_ was put in prison; Major Parrifer
has only to pay a bit of money, which is of no more account to him than
dirt, and that he can't feel the loss of. And my offence--if it was an
offence--was less than his."

"Two wrongs don't make a right," said Mr. Brandon, dropping his voice to
a low key. "You ought not to have been put in prison, Reed; had I been
on the bench it should not have been done."

"But it was done, sir, and my life got a blight on it. It's on me yet;
will never be lifted off me."

Mr. Brandon smiled one of his quiet smiles, and spoke in a whisper. "He
has got it too, Reed, unless I am mistaken. He'll carry that fine about
with him always. Johnny, are you there? Don't go and repeat what you've
heard me say."

Mr. Brandon was right. To have been summoned before the Bench, where he
had pompously sat to summon others, and for working on a Sunday above
all things, to have been found guilty and fined, was as the most bitter
potion to Major Parrifer. The bench would never again be to him the seat
it had been; the remembrance of the day when he was before it would, as
Mr. Brandon expressed it, be carried about with him always.

They projected a visit to the sea-side at once. Mrs. Parrifer, with
three of the Miss Parrifers, came dashing up to people's houses in the
carriage, finer and louder than ever; she said that she had not been
well, and was ordered to Aberystwith for six weeks. The next day
they and the Major were off; and heaps of cards were sent round with
"P. P. C." in the corner. I think Mr. Brandon must have laughed when he
got his.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The winter holidays came round again. We went home for Christmas, as
usual, and found George Reed down with some sort of illness. There's
an old saying, "When the mind's at ease the body's delicate," but Mr.
Duffham always maintained that though that might apply to a short period
of time, in the long-run mind and body sympathized together. George Reed
had been a very healthy man, and as free from care as most people; this
last year care and trouble and mortification had lain on his mind, and
at the beginning of winter his health broke down. It was quite a triumph
(in the matter of opinion) for old Duffham.

The illness began with a cough and low fever, neither of which can
labourers afford time to lie up for. It went on to more fever, and to
inflammation of the lungs. There was no choice then, and Reed took to
his bed. For the most part, when our poor people fell ill, they had to
get well again without notice being taken of them; but events had drawn
attention to Reed, and made him a conspicuous character. His illness was
talked of, and so he received help. Ever since the prison affair I had
felt sorry for Reed, as had Mrs. Todhetley.

"I have had some nice strong broth made for Reed, Johnny," she said to
me one day in January; "it's as good and nourishing as beef-tea. If you
want a walk, you might take it to him."

Tod had gone out with the Squire; I felt dull, as I generally did
without him, and put on my hat and coat. Mrs. Todhetley had the broth
put into a bottle, and brought it to me wrapped in paper.

"I would send him a drop of wine as well, Johnny, if you'd take care not
to break the bottles, carrying two of them."

No fear. I put the one bottle in my breast-pocket, and took the other
in my hand. It was a cold afternoon, the sky of a steely-blue, the sun
bright, the ground hard. Major Parrifer and two of his daughters, coming
home from a ride, were cantering in at the gates as I passed, the groom
riding after them. I lifted my hat to the girls, but they only tossed
their heads.

Reed was getting over the worst then, and I found him sitting by the
kitchen fire, muffled in a bed-rug. Mrs. Reed took the bottles from me
in the back'us--as they called the place where the washing was done--for
Reed was sensitive, and did not like things to be sent to him.

"Please God, I shall be at work next week," said Reed, with a groan: and
I saw he knew that I had brought something.

He had been saying that all along; four or five weeks now. I sat down
opposite to him, and took up the boy, Georgy. The little shaver had come
round to me, holding by the chairs.

"It's going to be a hard frost, Reed."

"Is it, sir? Out-o'-door weather don't seem to be of much odds to me
now."

"And a fall o' some sort's not far off, as my wrist tells me," put in
Mrs. Reed. Years ago she had broken her wrist, and felt it always in
change of weather. "Maybe some snow's coming."

I gave Georgy a biscuit; the two little girls, who had been standing
against the press, began to come slowly forward. They guessed there was
a supply in my pocket. I had dipped into the biscuit-basket at home
before coming away. The two put out a hand each without being told, and
I dropped a biscuit into them.

It had taken neither time nor noise, and yet there was some one
standing inside the door when I looked up again, who must have come
in stealthily; some one in a dark dress, and a black and white plaid
shawl. Mrs. Reed looked and the children looked; and then Reed turned
his head to look also.

I think I was the first to know her. She had a thick black veil before
her face, and the room was not light. Reed's illness had left him thin,
and his eyes appeared very large: they assumed a sort of frightened
stare.

"Father! you are sick!"

Before he could answer, she had run across the brick floor and thrown
her arms round his neck. Cathy! The two girls were frightened and flew
to their mother; one began to scream and the other followed suit.
Altogether there was a good deal of noise and commotion. Georgy, like
a brave little man, sucked his biscuit through it all with great
composure.

What Reed said or did, I had not noticed; I think he tried to fling
Cathy from him--to avoid suffocation perhaps. She burst out laughing in
her old light manner, and took something out of the body of her gown,
under the shawl.

"No need, father: I am as honest as anybody," said she. "Look at this."

Reed's hand shook so that he could not open the paper, or understand it
at first when he had opened it. Cathy flung off her bonnet and caught
the children to her. They began to know her then and ceased their cries.
Presently Reed held the paper across to me, his hand trembling more than
before, and his face, that illness had left white enough, yet more
ghastly with emotion.

"Please read it, sir."

I did not understand it at first either, but the sense came to me soon.
It was a certificate of the marriage of Spencer Gervoise Daubeney
Parrifer and Catherine Reed. They had been married at Liverpool the very
day after Cathy disappeared from home; now just a year ago.

A sound of sobbing broke the stillness. Reed had fallen back in his
chair in a sort of hysterical fit. Defiant, hard, strong-minded Reed!
But the man was three parts dead from weakness. It lasted only a minute
or two; he roused himself as if ashamed, and swallowed down his sobs.

"How came he to marry you, Cathy?"

"Because I would not go away with him without it father. We have been
staying in Ireland."

"And be you repenting of it yet?" asked Mrs. Reed, in ungracious tones.

"Pretty near," answered Cathy, with candour.

It appeared that Cathy had made her way direct to Liverpool when she
left home the previous January, travelling all night. There she met
young Parrifer, who had preceded her and made arrangements for the
marriage. They were married that day, and afterwards went on to Ireland,
where he had to join his regiment.

To hear all this, sounding like a page out of a romance, would be
something wonderful for our quiet place when it came to be told. You
meet with marvellous stories in towns now and then, but with us they are
almost unknown.

"Where's your husband?" asked Reed.

Cathy tossed her head. "Ah! Where! That's what I've come home about,"
she answered: and it struck me at once that something was wrong.

What occurred next we only learnt from hearsay. I said good day to them,
and came away, thinking it might have been better if Cathy had not
married and left home. It was a fancy of mine, and I don't know why it
should have come to me, but it proved to be a right one. Cathy put on
her bonnet again to go to Parrifer Hall: and the particulars of her
visit were known abroad later.

It was growing rather dark when she approached it; the sun had set, the
grey of evening was drawing on. Two of the Misses Parrifer were at the
window and saw her coming, but Cathy had her veil down and they did not
recognize her. The actions and manners and air of a lady do not come
suddenly to one who has been differently bred; and the Misses Parrifer
supposed the visitor to be for the servants.

"Like her impudence!" said Miss Jemima. "Coming to the front entrance!"

For Cathy, whose year's experience in Ireland had widely changed her,
had no notion of taking up her old position. She meant to hold her own;
and was capable of doing it, not being deficient in the quality just
ascribed to her by Miss Jemima Parrifer.

"What next!" cried Miss Jemima, as a ring and a knock resounded through
the house, waking up the Major: who had been dozing over the fire
amongst his daughters.

The next was, that a servant came to the room and told the Major a lady
wanted him. She had been shown into the library.

"What name?" asked the Major.

"She didn't give none, sir. I asked, but she said never mind the name."

"Go and ask it again."

The man went and came back. "It is Mrs. Parrifer, sir."

"Mrs. who?"

"Mrs. Parrifer, sir."

The Major turned and stared at his servant. They had no relatives
whatever. Consequently the only Mrs. Parrifer within knowledge was his
wife.

Staring at the man would not bring him any elucidation. Major Parrifer
went to the library, and there saw the lady standing on one side of the
fender, holding her foot to the fire. She had her back to him, did not
turn, and so the Major went round to the other side of the hearth-rug
where he could see her.

"My servant told me a Mrs. Parrifer wanted me. Did he make a mistake in
the name?"

"No mistake at all, sir," said Cathy, throwing up her thick veil, and
drawing a step or two back. "I am Mrs. Parrifer."

The Major recognized her then. Cathy Reed! He was a man whose bluster
rarely failed him, but he had none ready at that moment. Three-parts
astounded, various perplexities held him tongue-tied.

"That is to say, Mrs. Spencer Parrifer," continued Cathy. "And I have
come over from Ireland on a mission to you, sir, from your son."

The Major thought that of all the audacious women it had ever been his
lot to meet, this one was the worst: at least as much as he could think
anything, for his wits were a little confused just then. A moment's
pause, and then the storm burst forth.

Cathy was called various agreeable names, and ordered out of the room
and the house. The Major put up his hands to "hurrish" her out--as we
say in Worcestershire by the cows, though I don't think you would find
the word in the dictionary. But Cathy stood her ground. He then went
ranting towards the door, calling for the servants to come and put her
forth. Cathy, quicker than he, gained it first and turned to face him,
her back against it.

"You needn't call me those names, Major Parrifer. Not that I care--as I
might if I deserved them. I am your son's wife, and have been such ever
since I left father's cottage last year; and my baby, your grandson,
sir, which it's seven weeks old he is, is now at the Red Lion, a mile
off. I've left it there with the landlady."

He could not put her out of the room unless by force; he looked ready to
kick and strike her; but in the midst of it a horrible dread rose up in
his heart that the calmly spoken words were true. Perhaps from the hour
when Reed had presented himself at the house to ask for his daughter,
the evening of the day he was discharged from prison, up to this time,
Major Parrifer had never thought of the girl. It had been said in his
ears now and again that Reed was grieving for his daughter; but the
matter was altogether too contemptible for Major Parrifer to take note
of. And now to hear that the girl had been with his son all the time,
his wife! But that utter disbelief came to his aid, the Major might have
fallen into a fit on the spot. For young Mr. Parrifer had cleverly
contrived that neither his father away at home nor his friends on the
spot should know anything about Cathy. He had been with his regiment in
quarters; she had lived privately in another part of the town. Mrs. Reed
had once called Lieutenant Parrifer as soft as a tomtit. He was a great
deal softer.

"Woman! if you do not quit my house, with your shameless lies, you shall
be flung out of it."

"I'll quit it as soon as I have told you what I came over the sea to
tell. Please to look at this first, sir?"

Major Parrifer snatched the paper that she held out, carried it to
the window, and put his glasses across his nose. It was a copy of the
certificate of marriage. His hands shook as he read it, just as Reed's
had shaken a short time before; and he tore it passionately in two.

"It is only the copy," said Cathy calmly, as she picked up the pieces.
"Your son--if he lives--is about to be tried for his life, sir. He is in
custody for wilful murder!"

"How dare you!" shrieked Major Parrifer.

"It is what they have charged him with. I have come all the way to tell
it you, sir."

Major Parrifer, brought to his senses by fright, could only listen.
Cathy, her back against the door still, gave him the heads of the story.

Young Parrifer was so soft that he had been made a butt of by sundry of
his brother-officers. They might not have tolerated him at all, but for
winning his money. He drank, and played cards, and bet upon horses; they
encouraged him to drink, and then made him play and bet, and altogether
cleared him out: not of brains, he had none to be cleared of: but of
money. Ruin stared him in the face: his available cash had been parted
with long ago; his commission (it was said) was mortgaged: how many
promissory notes, bills, I O U's he had signed could not even be guessed
at. In a quarrel a few nights before, after a public-house supper, when
some of them were the worse for drink, young Parrifer, who could on rare
occasions go into frightful passions, flung a carving-knife at one of
the others, a lieutenant named Cook; it struck a vital part and killed
him. Mr. Parrifer was arrested by the police at once; he was in plain
clothes and there was nothing to show that he was an officer. They had
to strap him down to carry him to prison: between drink, rage, and
fever, he was as a maniac. The next morning he was lying in brain fever,
and when Cathy left he had been put into a strait-waistcoat.

She gave the heads of this account in as few words as it is written.
Major Parrifer stood like a helpless man. Taking one thing with another,
the blow was horrible. Parents don't often see the defects in their own
children, especially if they are only sons. Far from having thought his
son soft, unfit (as he nearly was) to be trusted about, the Major had
been proud of him as his heir, and told the world he was perfection.
Soft as young Parrifer was, he had contrived to keep his ill-doings from
his father.

Of course it was only natural that the Major's first relief should be
abuse of Cathy. He told her all that had happened to his son _she_ was
the cause of, and called her a few more genteel names in doing it.

"Not at all," said Cathy; "you are wrong there, sir. His marriage with
me was a little bit of a stop-gap and served to keep him straight for a
month or two; but for that, he would have done for himself before now.
Do you think I've had a bargain in him, sir? No. Marriage is a thing
that can't be undone, Major Parrifer: but I wish to my heart that I was
at home again in father's cottage, light-hearted Cathy Reed."

The Major made no answer. Cathy went on.

"When the news was brought to me by his servant, that he had killed a
man and was lying raving, I thought it time to go and see about him.
They would not let me into the lock-up where he was lying--and you might
have heard his ravings outside. _I_ did. I said I was his wife; and then
they told me I had better see Captain Williams. I went to head-quarters
and saw Captain Williams. He seemed to doubt me; so I showed him the
certificate, and told him my baby was at home, turned six weeks old. He
was very kind then, sir; took me to see my husband; and advised me to
come over here at once and give you the particulars. I told him what was
the truth--that I had no money, and the lodgings were owing for. He
said the lodgings must wait: and he would lend me enough money for the
journey."

"Did you see him?" growled Major Parrifer.

Cathy knew that he alluded to his son, though he would not speak the
name.

"I saw him, sir; I told you so. He did not know me or anybody else; he
was raving mad, and shaking so that the bed shook under him."

"How is it that they have not written to me?" demanded Major Parrifer.

"I don't think anybody liked to do it. Captain Williams said the best
plan would be for me to come over. He asked me if I'd like to hear the
truth of the past as regarded my husband; or if I would just come here
and tell you the bare facts that were known about his illness and the
charge against him. I said I'd prefer to hear the truth--it couldn't be
worse than I suspected. Then he went on to the drinking and the gambling
and the debts, just as I have repeated it to you, sir. He was very
gentle; but he said he thought it would be mistaken kindness not to let
me fully understand the state of things. He said Mr. Parrifer's father,
or some other friend, had better go over to Ireland."

In spite of himself, a groan escaped Major Parrifer. The blow was the
worst that could have fallen upon him. He had not cared much for his
daughters; his ambition was centred in his son. Visions of a sojourn at
Dublin, and of figuring off at the Vice-Regal Court, himself, his wife,
and his son, had floated occasionally in rose-coloured clouds before his
eyes, poor pompous old simpleton. And now--to picture the visit he must
set out upon ere the night was over, nearly drove him wild with pain.
Cathy unlatched the door, but waited to speak again before she opened
it.

"I'll rid the house of me now that I have broke it to you, sir. If you
want me I shall be found at father's cottage; I suppose they'll let
me stay there: if not, you can hear of me at the place where I've left
my baby. And if your son should ever wake out of his delirium, Major
Parrifer, he will be able to tell you that if he had listened to me and
heeded me, or even only come to spend his evenings with me--which it's
months since he did--he would not have been in this plight now. Should
they try him for murder; and nothing can save him from it if he gets
well; I----"

A succession of screams cut short what Cathy was about to add. In her
surprise she drew wide the door, and was confronted by Miss Jemima
Parrifer. That young lady, curious upon the subject of the visit and
visitor, had thought it well to put her ear to the library door. With no
effect, however, until Cathy unlatched it. And then she heard more than
she had thought for.

"Is it _you_!" roughly cried Miss Jemima, recognizing her for the
ill-talked-of Cathy Reed, the daughter of the Major's enemy. "What do
you want here?"

Cathy did not answer. She walked to the hall-door and let herself out.
Miss Jemima went on into the library.

"Papa, what was it she was saying about Spencer, that vile girl? What
did she do here? Why did she send in her name as Mrs. Parrifer?"

The Major might have heard the questions, or he might not; he didn't
respond to them. Miss Jemima, looking closely at him in the darkness of
the room, saw a grey, worn, terror-stricken face, that looked as her
father's had never looked yet.

"Oh, papa! what is the matter? Are you ill?"

He walked towards her in the quietest manner possible, took her arm and
pushed her out at the door. Not rudely; softly, as one might do who is
in a dream.

"Presently, presently," he muttered in quite an altered voice, low and
timid. And Miss Jemima found the door bolted against her.

It must have been an awful moment with him. Look on what side he would,
there was no comfort. Spencer Parrifer was ruined past redemption. He
might die in this illness, and then, what of his soul? Not that the
Major was given to that kind of reflection. Escaping the illness, he
must be tried--for his life, as Cathy had phrased it. And escaping that,
if the miracle were possible, there remained the miserable debts and the
miserable wife he had clogged himself with.

Curiously enough, as the miserable Major, most miserable in that moment,
pictured these things, there suddenly rose up before his mind's eye
another picture. A remembrance of Reed, who had stood in that very room
less than twelve months ago, in the dim light of late night, with his
hair cut close, and his warning: "_It will come home to you, Major
Parrifer._" _Had_ it come home to him? Home to him already? The drops of
agony broke out on his face as he asked the question. It seemed to him,
in that moment of excitement, so very like some of Heaven's own
lightning.

One grievous portion of the many ills had perhaps not fallen, but for
putting Reed in prison--the marriage; and that one was more humiliating
to Major Parrifer's spirit than all the rest. Had Reed been at liberty,
Cathy might not have made her escape untracked, and the bitter marriage
might, in that case, have been avoided.

A groan, and now another, broke from the Major. How it had come home
to him! not his selfishness and his barbarity and his pride, but this
sorrowful blow. Reed's month in prison, compared with this, was as a
drop of water to the ocean. As to the girl--when Reed had come asking
for tidings of her, it had seemed to the Major not of the least moment
whither she had gone or what ill she had entered on: was she not a
common labourer's daughter, and that labourer George Reed? Even then, at
that very time, she was his daughter-in-law, and his son the one to be
humiliated. Major Parrifer ground his teeth, and only stopped when he
remembered that something must be done about that disgraceful son.

He started that night for Ireland. Cathy, affronted at some remark made
by Mrs. Reed, took herself off from her father's cottage. She had a
little money still left from her journey, and could spend it.

Spencer Gervoise Daubeney Parrifer (the Major and his wife had bestowed
the fine names upon him in pride at his baptism) died in prison. He
lived only a day after Major Parrifer's arrival, and never recognized
him. Of course it saved the trial, when he would probably have been
convicted of manslaughter. It saved the payment of his hundreds of debts
too; post-obits and all; he died before his father. But it could not
save exposure; it could not keep the facts from the world. Major and
Mrs. Parrifer, so to say, would never lift up their heads again; the sun
of their life had set.

Neither would Cathy lift hers yet awhile. She contrived to quarrel with
her father; the Parrifers never took the remotest notice of her; she
was nearly starved and her baby too. What little she earned was by hard
work: but it would not keep her, and she applied to the parish. The
parish in turn applied to Major Parrifer, and forced from him as much as
the law allowed, a few shillings a week. Having to apply to the parish
was, for Cathy, a humiliation never to be forgotten. The neighbours made
their comments.

"Cathy Reed had brought her pigs to a fine market!"

So she had; and she felt it more than the loss of her baby, who died
soon after. Better that she had married an honest day-labourer: and
Cathy knew it now.




VI.

LEASE, THE POINTSMAN.


It happened when we were staying at our other house, Crabb Cot. In
saying "we" were staying at it, I mean the family, for Tod and I were at
school.

Crabb Cot lay beyond the village of Crabb. Just across the road, a few
yards higher up, was the large farm of Mr. Coney; and his house and ours
were the only two that stood there. Crabb Cot was a smaller and more
cosy house than Dyke Manor; and, when there, we were not so very far
from Worcester: less than half-way, comparing it with the Manor.

Crabb was a large and straggling parish. North Crabb, which was nearest
to us, had the church and schools in it, but very few houses. South
Crabb, further off, was more populous. Nearly a mile beyond South Crabb,
there was a regular junction of rails. Lines, crossing each other in a
most bewildering manner, led off in all directions: and it required no
little manoeuvring to send the trains away right at busy times. Which
of course was the pointsman's affair.

The busiest days had place in summer, when excursion trains were in full
swing: but they would come occasionally at other times, driving the
South Crabb station people off their heads with bother before night.

The pointsman was Harry Lease. I dare say you have noticed how certain
names seem to belong to certain places. At North Crabb and South Crabb,
and in the district round about, the name of Lease was as common as
blackberries in a hedge; and if the different Leases had been cousins
in the days gone by, the relationship was lost now. There might be
seven-and-twenty Leases, in and out, but Harry Lease was not, so far as
he knew, akin to any of them.

South Crabb was not much of a place at best. A part of it, Crabb Lane,
branching off towards Massock's brickfields, was crowded as a London
street. Poor dwellings were huddled together, and children jostled each
other on the door-steps. Squire Todhetley said he remembered it when it
really was a lane, hedges on either side and a pond that was never dry.
Harry Lease lived in the last house, a thatched hut with three rooms in
it. He was a steady, civil, hard-working man, superior to some of his
neighbours, who were given to reeling home at night and beating their
wives on arrival. His wife, a nice sort of woman to talk to, was a bad
manager; but the five children were better behaved and better kept than
the other grubbers in the gutter.

Lease was the pointsman at South Crabb Junction, and helped also in the
general business there. He walked to his work at six in the morning,
carrying his breakfast with him; went home to dinner at twelve, the
leisure part of the day at the station, and had his tea taken to him at
four; leaving in general at nine. Sometimes his wife arrived with the
tea; sometimes the eldest child, Polly, an intelligent girl of six.
But, one afternoon in September, a crew of mischievous boys from the
brickfields espied what Polly was carrying. They set upon her, turned
over the can of tea in fighting for it, ate the bread-and-butter, tore
her pinafore in the skirmish, and frightened her nearly to death. After
that, Lease said that the child should not be sent with the tea: so,
when his wife could not take it, he went without tea. Polly and her
father were uncommonly alike, too quiet to battle much with the world:
sensitive, in fact: though it sounds odd to say that.

During the month of November one of the busy days occurred at South
Crabb Junction. There was a winter meeting on Worcester race-course, a
cattle and pig show in a town larger than Worcester, and two or three
markets and other causes of increased traffic, all falling on the
same day. What with cattle-trains, ordinary and special trains, and
goods-trains, and the grunting of obstinate pigs, Lease had plenty to
do to keep his points in order.

How it fell out he never knew. Between eight and nine o'clock, when a
train was expected in on its way to Worcester, Lease forgot to shift the
points. A goods-train had come in ten minutes before, for which he had
had to turn the points, and he never turned them back again. On came the
train, almost as quickly as though it had not to pull up at South Crabb
Junction. Watson, the station-master, came out to be in readiness.

"The engine has her steam on to-night," he remarked to Lease as he
watched the red lights, like two great eyes, come tearing on. "She'll
have to back."

She did something worse than back. Instead of slackening on the near
lines, she went flying off at a tangent to some outer ones on which the
goods-train stood, waiting until the passenger train should pass. There
was a short, sharp sound from the whistle, a great collision, a noise of
steam hissing, a sense of dire confusion: and for one minute afterwards
a dead lull, as if every one and everything were paralyzed.

"You never turned the points!" shouted the station-master to Lease.

Lease made no rejoinder. He backed against the wall like a man helpless,
his arms stretched out, his face and eyes wild with horror. Watson
thought he was going to have a fit, and shook him roughly.

"_You've_ done it nicely, you have!" he added, as he flew off to the
scene of disaster, from which the steam was beginning to clear away. But
Lease reached it before him.

"God forgive me! God have mercy upon me!"

A porter, running side by side with Lease, heard him say it. In telling
it afterwards the man described the tone as one of intense, piteous
agony.

The Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, who had been a few miles off to spend the
day, were in the train with Lena. The child did nothing but cry and sob;
not with damage, but fright. Mr. Coney also happened to be in it; and
Massock, who owned the brickfields. They were not hurt at all, only a
little shaken, and (as the Squire put it afterwards,) mortally scared.
Massock, an under-bred man, who had grown rich by his brickfields, was
more pompous than a lord. The three seized upon the station-master.

"Now then, Watson," cried Mr. Coney, "what was the cause of all this?"

"If there have been any negligence here--and I know there have--you
shall be transported for it, Watson, as sure as I'm a living man,"
roared Massock.

"I'm afraid, gentlemen, that something was wrong with the points,"
acknowledged Watson, willing to shift the blame from himself, and too
confused to consider policy. "At least that's all I can think."

"With the points!" cried Massock. "Them's Harry Lease's work. Was he on
to-night?"

"Lease is here as usual, Mr. Massock. I don't say this lies at his
door," added Watson, hastily. "The points might

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