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Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

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Title: Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

Author: Mrs. Henry Wood


        
Release date: October 4, 2012 [eBook #40936]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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JOHNNY LUDLOW.

THIRD SERIES

[Illustration]


JOHNNY LUDLOW

by

MRS. HENRY WOOD

Author of
"East Lynne," "The Channings," etc.

THIRD SERIES.







+Twenty-Third Thousand+

+London:+
Macmillan and Co., Limited.
New York: the Macmillan Company.
1899.

London:
Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
Stamford Street and Charing Cross.




CONTENTS

                                             PAGE

  THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE                     1

  CRABB RAVINE                                 43

  OUR VISIT                                    87

  JANET CAREY                                 112

  DR. KNOX                                    135

  HELEN WHITNEY'S WEDDING                     158

  HELEN'S CURATE                              180

  JELLICO'S PACK                              203

  CAROMEL'S FARM                              223

  CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE                     244

  THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS                    267

  A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD                         290

  THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE: DISAPPEARANCE   313

  THE STORY OF DOROTHY GRAPE: IN AFTER YEARS  335

  LADY JENKINS: MINA                          359

  LADY JENKINS: DOUBT                         382

  LADY JENKINS: MADAME                        406

  LADY JENKINS: LIGHT                         429

  THE ANGELS' MUSIC                           452




    "God sent his Singers upon earth
    With songs of sadness and of mirth,
    That they might touch the hearts of men,
    And bring them back to heaven again."
                                   LONGFELLOW.




JOHNNY LUDLOW




THE MYSTERY OF JESSY PAGE.


I.

Our old grey church at Church Dykely stood in a solitary spot. Servant
maids (two of ours once, Hannah and Molly), and silly village girls went
there sometimes to watch for the "shadows" on St. Mark's Eve, and owls
had a habit of darting out of the belfry at night. Within view of the
church, though at some distance from it, stood the lonely, red-brick,
angular dwelling-house belonging to Copse Farm. It was inhabited by Mr.
Page, a plain worthy widower, getting in years; his three daughters
and little son. Abigail and Susan Page, two experienced, sensible,
industrious young women, with sallow faces and bunches of short dark
curls, were at this period, about midway between twenty and thirty:
Jessy, very much younger, was gone out to get two years' "finishing" at
a plain boarding-school; Charles, the lad, had bad health and went to
school by day at Church Dykely.

Mr. Page fell ill. He would never again be able to get about much. His
two daughters, so far as indoor work and management went, were hosts in
themselves, Miss Abigail especially; but they could not mount a horse to
superintend out-of-doors. Other arrangements were made. The second son
of Mr. Drench, a neighbouring farmer and friend, came to the Copse
Farm by day as overlooker. He was paid for his services, and he gained
experience.

No sooner had John Drench, a silent, bashful young farmer, good-looking
and fairly-well educated, been installed in his new post, than he began
to show a decided admiration for Miss Susan Page--who was a few months
younger than himself. The slight advances he made were favourably
received; and it was tacitly looked upon that they were "as good as
engaged." Things went on pleasantly through the spring, and might have
continued to go on so, but for the coming home at Midsummer of the
youngest daughter, Jessy. That led to no end of complications and
contrariety.

She was the sweetest flower you ever saw; a fair, delicate lily, with a
mild countenance, blue eyes, and golden hair. Jessy had never been very
strong; she had always been very pretty; and the consequence was that
whilst her sisters had grown up to be useful, not to be idle a minute
throughout the long day, Jessy had been petted and indulged, and
was little except being ornamental. The two years' schooling had not
improved her taste for domestic occupation. To tell the truth, Jessy was
given to being uncommonly idle.

To John Drench, who had not seen her since her early girlhood, she
appeared as a vision of beauty. "It was like an angel coming in at the
door," he said of the day she first came home, when telling the tale to
a stranger in after years. "My eyes were fairly dazzled."

Like an angel! And unfortunately for John Drench, his heart was dazzled
as well as his eyes. He fell desperately in love with her. It taught
him that what he had felt for Miss Susan was not love at all; only
esteem, and the liking that so often arises from companionship. He was
well-meaning, but inexperienced. As he had never spoken to Susan, the
utmost sign he had given being a look or a warmer handshake than usual,
he thought there would be no difficulty in transferring his homage to
the younger sister. Susan Page, who really loved him, and perhaps looked
on with the keen eyes of jealousy, grew at last to see how matters were.
She would have liked to put him in a corn-sack and give him a good
shaking by way of cure. Thus the summer months went over in some silent
discomfort, and September came in warm and fine.

Jessy Page stood at the open parlour window in her airy summer muslin,
twirling a rose in her hand, blue ribbons falling from her hair: for
Jessy liked to set herself off in little adornments. She was laughing at
John Drench outside, who had appeared covered with mud from the pond,
into which he had contrived partially to slip when they were dragging
for eels.

"I think your picture ought to be taken, just as you look now, Mr.
John."

He thought _hers_ ought to be: the bright fair face, the laughing blue
eyes, the parted lips and the pretty white teeth presented a picture
that, to him, had never had its equal.

"Do you, Miss Jessy? That's a fine rose," he shyly added. He was always
shy with her.

She held it out. She had not the least objection to be admired, even by
John Drench in an unpresentable state. In their hearts, women have all
desired men's flattery, from Eve downwards.

"These large roses are the sweetest of any," she went on. "I plucked it
from the tree beyond the grass-plat."

"You are fond of flowers, I've noticed, Miss Jessy."

"Yes, I am. Both for themselves and for the language they symbolise."

"What language is it?"

"Don't you know? I learnt it at school. Each flower possesses its own
meaning, Mr. John Drench. This, the rose, is true love."

"True love, is it, Miss Jessy!"

She was lightly flirting it before his face. It was too much for him,
and he took it gently from her. "Will you give it me?" he asked below
his breath.

"Oh, with great pleasure." And then she lightly added, as if to damp the
eager look on his face: "There are plenty more on the same tree."

"An emblem of true love," he softly repeated. "It's a pretty thought. I
wonder who invented----"

"Now then, John Drench, do you know that tea's waiting. Are you going to
sit down in those muddy boots and leggings?"

The sharp words came from Susan Page. Jessy turned and saw her sister's
pale, angry face. John Drench disappeared, and Miss Susan went out
again, and banged the door.

"It is high time Jessy was put to some regular employment," cried
Susan, bursting into the room where Miss Page sat making the tea. "She
idles away her time in the most frivolous and wasteful manner, never
doing an earthly thing. It is quite sinful."

"So it is," acquiesced Miss Page. "Have you a headache, Susan? You look
pale."

"Never mind my looks," wrathfully retorted Susan. "We will portion out
some share of work for her from to-day. She might make up the butter,
and undertake the pies and puddings, and do the plain sewing."

William Page, a grey-haired man, sitting with a stick by his side,
looked up. "Pretty creature!" he said, for he passionately loved his
youngest daughter. "I'll not have her hard-worked, Susan."

"But you'd not have her sit with her hands before her from Monday
morning till Saturday night, I suppose, father!" sharply returned Miss
Susan. "She'll soon be nineteen."

"No, no; idleness brings nothing but evil in its train. I didn't mean
that, Susan. Let the child do what is suitable for her. Where's John
Drench?"

"In a fine mess--up to his middle in mud," was Miss Susan's tart answer.
"One would think he had been trying to see how great an object he could
make of himself."

John Drench came in, somewhat improved, his coat changed and the rose in
his button-hole. He took his seat at the tea-table, and was more shy and
silent than ever. Jessy sat by her father, chattering gaily, her blue
ribbons flickering before his loving eyes.

But the butter-making and the other light work was fated not to be
inaugurated yet for Jessy. Charles Page, a tiresome, indulged lad of
twelve, became ill again: he was subject to attacks of low fever and
ague. Mr. Duffham, peering at the boy over his gold-headed cane, said
there was nothing for it but a dose of good seaside air. Mr. Page,
anxious for his boy, began to consult with his daughters as to how it
might be obtained. They had some very distant connections named Allen,
living at Aberystwith. To them Miss Page wrote, asking if they could
take in Charles and one of his sisters to live with them for a month or
so. Mrs. Allen replied that she would be glad to have them; since her
husband's death she had eked out a scanty income by letting lodgings.

It was Jessy who went with him. The house and farm could not have spared
Abigail; Susan said neither should it spare her. Jessy, the idle and
useless one had to go. Miss Susan thought she and John Drench were well
rid of the young lady.

September was in its second week when they went; November was at its
close when they returned. The improvement in Charles had been so marked
and wonderful--as Mrs. Allen and Jessy both wrote to say--that Mr.
Duffham had strongly urged his staying as long as the weather remained
fine. It was a remarkably fine late autumn that year, and they stayed
until the end of November.

Charles came home well and strong. Jessy was more beautiful than ever.
But there was some change in her. The light-hearted, talking, laughing
girl had grown rather silent: she was often heard singing snatches of
love songs to herself in a low voice, and there was a light in her eyes
as of some intense, secret happiness that might not be told. John
Drench, who had begun to show signs of returning to his old allegiance
(at least, Miss Susan so flattered herself), fell a willing captive
again forthwith, and had certainly neither eyes nor ears for any one but
Jessy. Susan Page came to the conclusion that a shaking in a sack would
be far too good for him.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The way of dressing the churches for Christmas in those past days was
quite different from the new style of "decoration" obtaining now. Sprays
of holly with their red berries, of ivy with its brown clusters, were
stuck, each alternately into the holes on the top of the pews. It was a
better way than the present one, far more effective--though I, Johnny
Ludlow, shall be no doubt laughed at for saying so. Your woven wreaths
tied round the pulpit and reading-desk; your lettered scrolls; your
artificial flowers, may be talked of as "artistic," but for effect they
all stand absolutely as nothing, in comparison with the more simple and
natural way, and they are, perhaps, the least bit tawdry. If you don't
believe me, pay a visit to some rural church next Christmas morning--for
the old fashion is observed in many a country district still--and judge
for yourselves. With many another custom that has been changed by the
folly and fashion of these later days of pretension, and not changed for
the better, lies this one. That is my opinion, and I hold to it.

The dressing in our church was always done by the clerk, old Bumford.
The sexton (called familiarly with us the grave-digger) helped him when
his health permitted, but he was nearly always ill, and then Bumford
himself had to be grave-digger. It was not much trouble, this manner of
decoration, and it took very little time. They had only to cut off the
sprays almost of the same size, trim the ends, and lodge them in the
holes. In the last century when a new country church was rebuilt (though
that did not happen often), the drilling of these holes in the woodwork
of the pews, for the reception of the "Christmas," was as much a matter
of course as were the pews themselves. Our Christmas was supplied by Mr.
Page with a liberal hand; the Copse Farm abounded with trees of holly
and ivy; one of his men, Leek, would help Bumford to cut it, and to cart
it in a hand-truck to the church. It took a good deal to do all the
pews.

On this Christmas that I am telling you of, it fell out that Clerk
Bumford and the sexton were both disabled. Bumford had rheumatic gout so
badly that getting him into church for the morning service the past
three Sundays had been a marvel of dexterity--while the sexton was in
bed with what he called catarrh. At first it seemed that we should
not get the church dressed at all: but the Miss Pages, ever ready and
active in a good work, came to the rescue, and said they would do it
themselves, with John Drench's help. The Squire was not going to be
behind-hand, and said we boys, for Tod and I were just home for the
holidays, should help too.

And when Christmas Eve came, and Leek had wheeled up the holly, and we
were all in the cold church (not I think that any of us cared whether it
was cold or warm), we enjoyed the work amazingly, and decided that old
Bumford should never be let do it again, gout or no gout.

Jessy Page was a picture to look at. The two elder ladies had on tight
dark cloth dresses, like a riding-habit cut short, at the ankles: Jessy
was in a bright blue mantle edged with swans-down, and a blue bonnet on
her pretty head. She came in a little late, and Miss Susan blew her up
sharply, for putting on that "best Sunday cape" to dress a church in:
but Jessy only laughed good-naturedly, and answered that she would take
care not to harm it. Susan Page, trimming the branches, had seen John
Drench's eyes fixed on the girl: and her knife worked away like mad in
her vexation.

"Look here," said Jessy: "we have never had any Christmas over the
pulpit; I think old Bumford was afraid to get up to do it; let us put
some. It would hide that ugly nail in the wall."

"There are no holes up in the wall," snapped Miss Susan.

"I meant a large bunch; a bunch of holly and ivy mixed, Susan. John
Drench could tie it to the nail: it would look well."

"I'll do it, too," said John. "I've some string in my pocket. The parson
won't know himself. It will be as good as a canopy over him."

Miss Page turned round: she and Charley had their arms full of the
branches we had been cutting.

"Put a bunch there, if you like, but let us finish the pews first," she
said. "If we go from one thing to another we shall not finish while it's
daylight."

It was good sense: she rarely spoke anything else. Once let darkness
overtake us, and the dressing would be done for. The church knew nothing
about evening service, and had never felt the want of means to light
itself up.

"I shall pick out the best sprays in readiness," whispered Jessy to me,
as we sat together on the bench by the big christening bowl, she
choosing branches, I trimming them. "Look at this one! you could not
count the berries on it."

"Did you enjoy your visit to Aberystwith, Jessy?"

I wondered what there was in my simple question to move her. The branch
of holly went anywhere; her hands met in a silent clasp; the expression
of her face changed to one of curious happiness. In answering, her voice
fell to a whisper.

"Yes, I enjoyed it."

"What a long time you stayed away! An age, Mrs. Todhetley says."

"It was nearly eleven weeks."

"Eleven weeks! How tedious!"

Her face was glowing, her eyes had a soft light in them. She caught up
some holly, and began scattering its berries.

"What did you do with yourself, Jessy?"

"I used to sit by the sea--and to walk about. It was very fine. They
don't often have it like that in November, Mrs. Allen said."

"Did Mrs. Allen sit and walk with you?"

"No. She had enough to do with the house and her lodgers. We only saw
her at meal times."

"The Miss Allens, perhaps?"

"There are no Miss Allens. Only one little boy."

"Why, then, you had no one but Charley!"

"Charley? Oh, he used to be always about with little Tom Allen--in a
boat, or something of that sort. Mrs. Allen thought the sea breezes must
be so good for him."

"Well, you must have been very dull!"

Jessy looked rather foolish. She was a simple-minded girl at the best.
The two elder sisters had all the strong sense of the family, she the
simplicity. Some people called Jessy Page "soft": perhaps, contrasted
with her sisters, she was so: and she was very inexperienced.

The dusk was gathering, and Charley had gone out tired, when John Drench
got into the pulpit to tie the bunch of holly to the wall above it. Tod
was with him. Drench had his hands stretched out, and we stood watching
them in a group in the aisle below, when the porch-door was burst open,
and in leaped Charles.

"Jessy! I say! Where's Jessy?"

"I am here," said Jessy, looking round. "What do you want?"

"Here's Mr. Marcus Allen."

Who Mr. Marcus Allen might be, Charles did not say. Jessy knew: there
was no doubt of that. Her face, just then close to mine, had flushed as
red as a June rose.

A tall, dark, imposing man came looming out of the dusk. His handsome,
furred great-coat was open, his waistcoat was of crimson velvet; he wore
two chains, three rings, and an eye-glass. And I'll leave you to judge
of the effect this vision of grandeur made, dropping down on us plain
church-dressers in our every-day clothes. John Drench leaned over the
pulpit cushion, string in hand; the two Miss Pages stood staring; Jessy
turned white and red with the unexpected amazement. It was to her he
approached, and spoke.

"How do you do, Miss Jessy?"

She put her hand out in answer to his; but seemed to have been struck as
dumb as the old stone image on the monument against the wall.

"These are your sisters, I presume, Miss Jessy? Will you do me the
honour of introducing me to them?"

"Mr. Marcus Allen," murmured Jessy. "My sister Abigail; my sister
Susan."

Mr. Marcus Allen, bowing over his hat, said something about the pleasure
it gave him to make their acquaintance personally, after hearing so much
of them from Miss Jessy at Aberystwith, and begged to be allowed to
shake their hands. Miss Page, when the hand-shaking was over, said in
her straightforward way that she did not know who he was, her young
sister never having mentioned him. Jessy, standing like a little
simpleton, her eyes bent down on the aisle bricks, murmured in confusion
that she "forgot it." John Drench had his face over the cushion all that
time, and Tod's arms began to ache, holding up the bunch of green.

Mr. Marcus Allen, it turned out, was related in some way to the Allens
of Aberystwith: he happened to go to the town soon after Jessy Page and
her brother went there, and he stayed until they left it. Not at the
Allens' house: he had lodgings elsewhere. Mrs. Allen spoke of him to
Jessy as a "grand gentleman, quite above them." An idea came over me, as
we all now stood together, that he had been Jessy's companion in the
walking and the sitting by the sea.

"I told Miss Jessy that I should be running down some day to renew my
acquaintanceship with her and make that of her family," said Mr. Marcus
Allen to Miss Page. "Having no particular engagement on my hands this
Christmas time, I came."

He spoke in the most easy manner conceivable: his accent and manner were
certainly those of a gentleman. As to the fashionable attire and the
rings and chains, rather startling though they looked to us in the
dark church on that dark and busy evening, they were all the rage for
dandies in the great world then.

Noticing the intimation that he had come purposely to see them, Miss
Page supposed that she ought, in hospitably good manners, to invite him
to stay a day or two at the farm, but doubted whether so imposing a
gentleman would condescend to do so. She said nothing about it then, and
we all went out of the church together; except John Drench, who stayed
behind with Leek to help clear up the litter for the man to carry away.
It was light outside, and I took a good look at the stranger: a handsome
man of seven-or-eight-and-twenty, with hard eyes, and black whiskers
curled to perfection.

"In what way is he related to the Allens of Aberystwith, Jessy?"
questioned Miss Page, drawing her sister away, as we went through the
coppice.

"I don't quite know, Abigail. He is some distant cousin."

"How came you never to speak of him?"

"I--I did not remember to do so."

"Very careless of you, child. Especially if he gave you cause to suppose
he might come here. I don't like to be taken by surprise by strangers;
it is not always convenient."

Jessy walked along in silence, meek as a lamb.

"What is he?--in any profession, or trade?"

"Trade? Oh, I don't think he does anything of that kind, Abigail. That
branch of the family would be above it, Mrs. Allen said. He has a large
income, she says; plenty of money."

"I take it, then, that he is above _us_," reasoned Miss Page.

"Oh dear, yes: in station. Ever so much."

"Then I'm sure I don't care to entertain him."

Miss Page went straight into the best kitchen on arriving at home. Her
father sat in the large hearth corner, smoking his pipe. She told him
about the stranger, and said she supposed they must ask him to stay over
the morrow--Christmas-Day.

"Why shouldn't we?" asked Mr. Page.

"Well, father, he seems very grand and great."

"Does he? Give him the best bedroom."

"And our ways are plain and simple, you know," she added.

"He must take us as he finds us, Abigail. Any friend of Mrs. Allen's is
welcome: she was downright kind to the children."

We had a jolly tea. Tod and I had been asked to it beforehand.
Pork-pies, Miss Susan's making, hot buttered batch-cakes, and lemon
cake and jams. Mr. Marcus Allen was charmed with everything: he was a
pleasant man to talk to. When we left, he and Mr. Page had gone to the
best kitchen again, to smoke together in the wide chimney corner.

                 *       *       *       *       *

You Londoners, who go in for your artistic scrolls and crosses, should
have seen the church on Christmas morning. It greeted our sight, as we
entered from the porch, like a capacious grove of green, on which the
sun streamed through the south windows. Old Bumford's dressing had never
been as full and handsome as this of ours, for we had rejected all
niggardly sprays. The Squire even allowed that much. Shaking hands with
Miss Page in the porch after service, he told her that it cut Clerk
Bumford out and out. Mr. Marcus Allen, in fashionable coat, with the
furred over-coat flung back, light gloves, and big white wristbands, was
in the Pages' pew, sitting between old Page and Jessy. He found all the
places for her in her Prayer-book (a shabby red one, some of the leaves
loose); bowing slightly every time he handed her the book, as if she had
been a princess of the blood royal. Such gallantry was new in our parts:
and the congregation were rather taken off their devotions watching it.
As to Jessy, she kept flushing like a rose.

Mr. Marcus Allen remained more than a week, staying over New-Year's Day.
He made himself popular with them all, and enjoyed what Miss Abigail
called their plain ways, just as though he had been reared to them. He
smoked his pipe in the kitchen with the farmer; he drove Miss Susan to
Alcester in the tax-cart; he presented Miss Abigail with a handsome
work-box; and gave Charley a bright half-sovereign for bullseyes. As to
Jessy, he paid her no more attention than he did her sisters; hardly as
much: so that if Miss Susan had been entertaining any faint hope that
his object in coming to the Copse was Jessy, and that in consequence
John Drench might escape from bewitching wiles, she found the hope
fallacious. Mr. Marcus Allen had apparently no more thought of Jessy
than he had of Sally, the red-armed serving-girl. "But what in the world
brought the man here at all?" questioned Miss Susan of her sister. "He
wanted a bit of country holiday," answered Miss Page with her common
sense.

One day during the week the Squire met them abroad, and gave an
impromptu invitation to the Manor for the evening. Only the three Miss
Pages came. Mr. Marcus Allen sent his compliments, and begged to be
excused on the score of headache.

One evening at dusk we met him and Jessy. She had been out on some
errand, and he overtook her in the little coppice path between the
church and the farm. Tod, dashing through it to get home for dinner, I
after him, nearly dashed right upon them. Mr. Marcus Allen had his face
inside her bonnet, as if he were speaking in the ear of a deaf old lady
of seventy. Tod burst out laughing when we got on.

"That fellow was stealing a sly kiss in the dark, Johnny."

"Like his impudence."

"Rubbish," retorted Tod. "It's Christmas-tide, and all fair. Didn't you
see the bit of mistletoe he was holding up?" And Tod ran on, whistling a
line of a song that the Squire used to sing in his young days:

    "We all love a pretty girl, under the rose."

Mr. Marcus Allen left the Copse Farm with hearty thanks for its
hospitality. He promised to come again in the summer, when the fields
should be sweet with hay and the golden corn was ripening.

No sooner had he gone than John Drench asked Jessy to promise to be his
wife. Whether he had felt any secret jealousy of Mr. Marcus Allen and
his attractions, and deemed it well to secure Jessy as soon as the coast
was clear, he spoke out. Jessy did not receive the honour kindly. She
tossed her pretty head in a violent rage: the idea, she said, of her
marrying _him_. Jessy had never flirted with John Drench since the
Aberystwith journey, or encouraged him in any way--that was certain.
Unpleasantness ensued at the farm. Mr. Page decidedly approved of the
suitor: he alone had perceived nothing of Susan's hopes: and, perhaps
for the first time in his life, he spoke sharply to Jessy. John Drench
was not to be despised, he told her; his father was a wealthy man, and
John would have a substantial portion; more than double enough to put
him into the largest and best farm in the county: Mr. Drench was only
waiting for a good one to fall in, to take it for him. No: Jessy would
not listen. And as the days went on and John Drench, _as she said_,
strove to further his suit on every opportunity, she conceived, or
professed, a downright aversion to him. Sadly miserable indeed she
seemed, crying often; and saying she would rather go out as lady's-maid
to some well-born lady than stay at home to be persecuted. Miss Susan
was in as high a state of rapture as the iniquity of false John Drench
permitted; and said it served the man right for making an oaf of
himself.

"Let be," cried old Page of Jessy. "She'll come to her senses in time."
But Miss Abigail, regarding Jessy in silence with her critical eyes,
took up the notion that the girl had some secret source of discomfort,
with which John Drench had nothing to do.

It was close upon this, scarcely beyond the middle of January, when one
Monday evening Duffham trudged over from Church Dykely for a game at
chess with the Squire. Hard weather had set in; ice and snow lay on
the ground. Mrs. Todhetley nursed her face by the fire, for she had
toothache as usual; Tod watched the chess; I was reading. In the midst
of a silence, the door opened, and old Thomas ushered in John Drench, a
huge red comforter round his neck, his hat in his hand.

"Good-evening, Squire; good-evening, ma'am," said he in his shy way,
nodding separately to the rest of us, as he unwound the comforter. "I've
come for Miss Jessy, please."

"Come for Miss Jessy!" was the Squire's surprised echo. "Miss Jessy's
not here. Take a seat, Mr. John."

"Not here?" cried Drench, opening his eyes in something like fear, and
disregarding the invitation to sit down. "Not here! Why where can she
have got to? Surely she has not fallen down in the snow and ice, and
disabled herself?"

"Why did you think she was here?"

"I don't know," he replied, after a pause, during which he seemed to be
lost. "Miss Jessy was not at home at tea: later, when I was leaving for
the night, Miss Abigail asked me if I would come over here first and
fetch Jessy. I asked no questions, but came off at once."

"She has not been here," said Mrs. Todhetley. "I have not seen Jessy
Page since yesterday afternoon, when I spoke to her coming out of
church."

John Drench looked mystified. That there must have been some
misapprehension on Miss Page's part; or else on his, and he had come to
the wrong house; or that poor Jessy had come to grief in the snow on her
way to us, seemed certain. He drank a glass of ale, and went away.

They were over again at breakfast time in the morning, John Drench and
Miss Abigail herself, bringing strange news. The latter's face turned
white as she told it. Jessy Page had not been found. John Drench and two
of the men had been out all night in the fields and lanes, searching for
her. Miss Abigail gave us her reasons for thinking Jessy had come to
Dyke Manor.

On the Sunday afternoon, when the Miss Pages went home from church,
Jessy, instead of turning indoors with them, continued her way onwards
to the cottage of a poor old woman named Matt, saying Mrs. Todhetley had
told her the old granny was very ill. At six o'clock, when they had
tea--tea was always late on Sunday evenings, as Sally had leave to stay
out gossiping for a good hour after service--it was discovered that
Jessy had not come in. Charley was sent out after her, and met her at
the gate. She had a scolding from her sister for staying out after dark
had fallen; but all she said in excuse was, that the old granny was
so very ill. That passed. On the Monday, soon after dinner, she came
downstairs with her things on, saying she was going over to Dyke Manor,
having promised Mrs. Todhetley to let her know the real state of Granny
Matt. "Don't thee get slipping in the snow, Jessy," said Mr. Page to
her, half jokingly. "No danger, father," she replied: and went up and
kissed him. As she did not return by tea-time, Miss Page took it for
granted she was spending the evening with us. Since that, she had not
been seen.

It seemed very odd. Mrs. Todhetley said that in talking with Jessy in
the porch, she had incidentally mentioned the sickness of Granny Matt.
Jessy immediately said she would go there and see her; and if she found
her very ill would send word to Dyke Manor. Talk as they would, there
was no more to be made of it than that: Jessy had left home to come to
us, and was lost by the way.

Lost to her friends, at any rate, if not to herself. John Drench and
Miss Page departed; and all day long the search after Jessy and the
speculation as to what had become of her continued. At first, no one had
glanced at anything except some untoward accident as the sole cause, but
gradually opinions veered round to a different fear. They began to think
she might have run away!

Run away to escape Mr. John Drench's persevering attentions; and to seek
the post of lady's-maid--which she had been expressing a wish for. John
stated, however, that he had _not_ persecuted her; that he had resolved
to let a little time go by in silence, and then try his luck again.
Granny Matt was questioned, and declared most positively that the young
lady had not stayed ten minutes with her; that it was only "duskish"
when she went away. "Duskish" at that season, in the broad open country,
with the white snow on the ground, would mean about five o'clock. What
had Jessy done with herself during the other hour--for it was past six
when she reached home,--and why should she have excused her tardiness by
implying that Granny Matt's illness had kept her?

No one could fathom it. No one ever knew. Before that first day of
trouble was over, John Drench suggested worse. Deeply mortified at its
being said that she might have run away from him, he breathed a hasty
retort--that it was more likely she had been run away with by Mr. Marcus
Allen. Had William Page been strong enough he had certainly knocked him
down for the aspersion. Susan heard it with a scared face: practical
Miss Abigail sternly demanded upon what grounds he spoke. Upon no
grounds in particular, Drench honestly answered: it was a thought that
came into his mind and he spoke it on the spur of the moment. Any way,
it was most unjust to say he had sent her.

The post-mistress at the general shop, Mrs. Smail, came forward with
some testimony. Miss Jessy had been no less than twice to the shop
during the past fortnight, nay, three times, she thought, to inquire
after letters addressed J. P. The last time she received one. Had she
been negotiating privately for the lady's-maid's situation, wondered
Abigail: had she been corresponding with Mr. Marcus Allen, retorted
Susan, in her ill-nature; for she did not just now hold Jessy in any
favour. Mrs. Smail was asked whether she had observed, amongst the
letters dropped into the box, any directed to Mr. Marcus Allen. But
this had to be left an open question: there might have been plenty
directed to him, or there might not have been a single one, was the
unsatisfactory answer: she had "no 'call' to examine the directions,
and as often did up the bag without her spectacles as with 'em."

All this, put together, certainly did not tend to show that Mr. Marcus
Allen had anything to do with the disappearance. Jessy had now and
then received letters from her former schoolfellows addressed to the
post-office--for her sisters, who considered her but a child, had an
inconvenient habit of looking over her shoulder while she read them. The
whole family, John Drench included, were up to their ears in agony: they
did not know in what direction to look for her; were just in that state
of mind when straws are caught at. Tod, knowing it could do no harm,
told Miss Abigail about the kiss in the coppice. Miss Abigail quite
laughed at it: kisses under the mistletoe were as common as blackberries
with us, and just as innocent. She wrote to Aberystwith, asking
questions about Marcus Allen, especially as to where he might be found.
In answer, Mrs. Allen said she had not heard from him since he left
Aberystwith, early in December, but had no doubt he was in London at his
own home: she did not know exactly where that was, except that it was
"somewhere at the West End."

This letter was not more satisfactory than anything else. Everything
seemed vague and doubtful. Miss Page read it to her father when he was
in bed: Susan had just brought up his breakfast, and he sat up with the
tray before him, his face nearly as white as the pillow behind him. They
could not help seeing how ill and how shrunken he looked: Jessy's loss
had told upon him.

"I think, father, I had better go to London, and see if anything's to be
learnt there," said Miss Page. "We cannot live on, in this suspense."

"Ay; best go," answered he, "_I_ can't live in it, either. I've had
another sleepless night: and I wish that I was strong to travel. I
should have been away long ago searching for the child----."

"You see, father, we don't know where to seek her; we've no clue,"
interrupted Abigail.

"I'd have gone from place to place till I found her. But now, I'll tell
ye, Abigail, where you must go first--the thought has been in my mind
all night. And that is to Madame Caron's."

"To Madame Caron's!" echoed both the sisters at once. "Madame Caron's!"

"Don't either of you remember how your mother used to talk of her? She
was Ann Dicker. She knows a sight of great folks now--and it may be that
Jessy's gone to her. Bond Street, or somewhere near to it, is where she
lives."

In truth they had almost forgotten the person mentioned. Madame Caron
had once been plain Ann Dicker, of Church Dykely, intimate with William
Page and his wife. She went to London when a young woman to learn the
millinery and dress-making; married a Frenchman, and rose by degrees to
be a fashionable court-milliner. It struck Mr. Page, during the past
night-watch, that Jessy might have applied to Madame Caron to help her
in getting a place as lady's-maid.

"It's the likeliest thing she'd do," he urged, "if her mind was bent
that way. How was she to find such a place of herself?--and I wish we
had all been smothered before we'd made her home here unhappy, and put
her on to think of such a thing."

"Father, I don't think her home was made unhappy," said Miss Page.

To resolve and to do were one with prompt Abigail Page. Not a moment
lost she, now that some sort of clue was given to act upon. That same
morning she was on her way to London, attended by John Drench.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A large handsome double show-room. Brass hooks on the walls and slender
bonnet-stands on the tables, garnished with gowns and mantles and
head-gear and fal-lals; wide pier-glasses; sofas and chairs covered
with chintz. Except for these articles, the room was empty. In a small
apartment opening from it, called "the trying-on room," sat Madame Caron
herself, taking a comfortable cup of tea and a toasted muffin, after the
labours of the day were over. Not that the labours were great at that
season: people who require court millinery being for the most part out
of town.

"You are wanted, if you please, madame, in the show-room," said a page
in buttons, coming in to disturb the tea.

"Wanted!--at this hour!" cried Madame Caron, as she glanced at the
clock, and saw it was on the stroke of six. "Who is it?"

"It's a lady and gentleman, madame. They look like travellers."

"Go in and light the gas," said madame.

"Passing through London and requiring things in a hurry," thought she,
mentally running through a list of some of her most fashionable
customers.

She went in with a swimming curtsy--quite that of a Frenchwoman--and the
parties, visitors and visited, gazed at each other in the gaslight.
_They_ saw a very stylish lady in rich black satin that stood on end,
and lappets of point lace: _she_ saw two homely country people, the one
in a red comforter, muffled about his ears, the other in an antiquated
fur tippet that must originally have come out of Noah's ark.

"Is it--Madame Caron?" questioned Miss Abigail, in hesitation. For,
you see, she doubted whether it might not be one of Madame Caron's
duchesses.

"I have the honour to be Madame Caron," replied the lady with her
grandest air.

Thus put at ease in regard to identity, Miss Page introduced
herself--and John Drench, son of Mr. Drench of the Upland Farm. Madame
Caron--who had a good heart, and retained amidst her grandeur a vivid
remembrance of home and early friends--came down from her stilts on the
instant, took off with her own hands the objectionable tippet, on the
plea of heat, conducted them into the little room, and rang for a fresh
supply of tea and muffins.

"I remember you so well when you were a little thing, Abigail," she
said, her heart warming to the old days. "We always said you would grow
up like your mother, and so you have. Ah, dear! that's something like a
quarter-of-a-century ago. As to you, Mr. John, your father and I were
boy and girl sweethearts."

Over the refreshing tea and the muffins, Abigail Page told her tale. The
whole of it. Her father had warned her not to hint a word against Jessy;
but there was something in the face before her that spoke of truth
and trust; and, besides, she did not see her way clear _not_ to speak
of Marcus Allen. To leave him out altogether would have been like
bargaining for a spring calf in the dark, as she said later to John
Drench.

"I have never had a line from Jessy in all my life: I have neither seen
her nor heard of her," said madame. "As to Mr. Marcus Allen, I don't
know him personally myself, but Miss Connaway, my head dressmaker, does:
for I have heard her speak of him. I can soon find out for you where he
lives."

Miss Page thought she should like to see the head dressmaker, and a
message was sent up for her. A neat little middle-aged woman came down,
and was invited to the tea-table. Madame turned the conversation on Mr.
Marcus Allen; telling Miss Connaway that these country friends of hers
knew him slightly, and would be glad to get his address to call upon
him; but she did not say a syllable about Jessy.

Mr. Marcus Allen had about two hundred a year of his own, and was an
artist in water-colours. The certain income made him idle; and he played
just as much as he worked. The few pictures he completed were good, and
sold well. He shared a large painting-room somewhere with a brother
artist, but lived in chambers. All this Miss Connaway told readily; she
had known him since he was a child.

Late though it was, Miss Abigail and her cavalier proceeded to Marcus
Allen's lodgings; or "chambers," as they were ostentatiously called, and
found him seated at dinner. He rose in the utmost astonishment at seeing
them; an astonishment that looked thoroughly genuine.

Jessy missing! Jessy left her home! He could but reiterate the words in
wondering disbelief. Abigail Page felt reassured from that moment; even
jealous John Drench in his heart acquitted him. He had not written to
Jessy, he said; he had nothing to write to her about, therefore it could
not have been his letter she went to receive at the post-office; and
most certainly she had not written to him. Miss Abigail--willing perhaps
to offer some excuse for coming to him--said they had thought it
possible Jessy might have consulted him about getting a lady's-maid's
place. She never had consulted him, he answered, but had once told him
that she intended to go out as one. He should imagine, he added, it was
what she had done.

Mr. Marcus Allen pressed them to sit down and partake of his dinner,
such as it was; he poured out glasses of wine; he was altogether
hospitable. But they declined all. He then asked how he could assist
them; he was most anxious they should find her, and would help in any
way that lay in his power.

"He knows no more about her than we know," said John Drench as they
turned out into the lighted streets, on their way back to the inn they
had put up at, which had been recommended to them by Mr. Page. "I'm
sorry I misjudged him."

"I am sorry too, John Drench," was Miss Abigail's sorrowful answer. "But
for listening to the words you said, we should never have had such a
wicked thought about her, poor child, and been spared many a bitter
moment. Where in the wide world are we to look for her now?"

The wide world did not give any answer. London, with its teeming
millions, was an enormous arena--and there was no especial cause for
supposing Jessy Page had come to it.

"I am afraid it will be of no use to stay here any longer," said Miss
Abigail to John Drench, after another unsatisfactory day had gone by,
during which Marcus Allen called upon them at the inn and said he had
spoken to the police. It was John Drench's own opinion.

"Why, you see, Miss Abigail, that to look for her here, not knowing
where or how, is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay," said
John.

They reached home none too soon. Two unexpected events were there to
greet them. The one was Mr. Page who was lying low in an attack of
paralysis; the other was a letter from Jessy.

It gave no clue to where she was. All she said in it was that she had
found a situation, and hoped to suit and be happy in it; and she sent
her love to all.

And the weeks and the months went on.


II.

Snow was falling. At one of the windows of the parlour at Copse Farm,
stood Susan Page, her bunch of short dark curls fastened back with a
comb on both sides of her thin face, her trim figure neat in a fine
crimson merino gown. Her own portion of household-work was already done,
though it was not yet mid-day, and she was about to sit down, dressed
for the day, to some sewing that lay on the work-table.

"I was hoping the snow was over: the morning looked so clear and
bright," she said to herself, watching the large flakes. "Leek will have
a job to get the truck to the church."

It was a long, narrow room. At the other end, by the fire, sat Mr. Page
in his arm-chair. He had dropped asleep, his cheek leaning on his hand.
As Miss Susan sat down and took up her work, a large pair of scissors
fell to the ground with a crash. She glanced round at her father, but he
did not wake. That stroke of a year ago had dulled his faculties.

"I should uncommonly like to know who did this--whether Sally or the
woman," she exclaimed, examining the work she had to do. One of Mr.
Page's new shirts had been torn in the washing, and she was about to
mend the rent. "That woman has a heavy hand: and Sally a careless one.
It ought not to have been ironed."

The door opened, and John Drench came in. When he saw that Mr. Page
was asleep, he walked up the room towards Miss Susan. In the past
twelvemonth--for that amount of time had rolled on since the trouble
about Jessy and her mysterious disappearance--John Drench had had time
to return to his first allegiance (or, as Miss Susan mentally put it,
get over his folly); and he had decidedly done it.

"Did you want anything?" asked Susan in a cold tone. For she made a
point of being short with him--for his own benefit.

"I wanted to ask the master whether he'd have that ditch made, that he
was talking about," was the answer. "There's no hurry about it: not much
to be done anywhere while this weather lasts."

She made no reply. John Drench stood, waiting for Mr. Page to wake,
looking alternately at the snow and at Miss Susan's steel thimble and
nimble fingers. Very deftly was she doing the work, holding the linen
gingerly, that the well-ironed bosom and wristbands might not get
creased and unfit the shirt for wear. He was thinking what a good wife
she would make: for there was nothing, in the shape of usefulness, that
Susan Page could not put her hand to, and put it well.

"Miss Susan, I was going to ask you a question," he began, standing
uncomfortably on one leg. "I've been wanting to do it for a good bit
now, but----"

"Pick up my cotton," said Miss Susan tartly, dropping a reel purposely.

"But I believe I have wanted courage," resumed he after doing as he was
bid. "It _is_ a puzzling task to know how to do it for the best, and
what to say. If you----"

Open flew the door, and in came Miss Page, in her white kitchen apron.
Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, her floured hands were lightly
wiped. John Drench, interrupted, thought he should never have pluck to
speak again.

"Susan, do you know where that old red receipt-book is?" she asked, in a
low tone, glancing at her sleeping father. "I am not certain about the
proportions for the lemon cake."

"The red receipt-book?" repeated Susan. "I have not seen it for ever so
long."

"Nor I. I don't think I have had occasion to use it since last
Christmas-Eve. I know I had to look at it then for the lemon-cake. Sally
says she's sure it is somewhere in this room."

"Then you had better send Sally to find it, Abigail."

Instead of that, Miss Page began searching herself. On the book-shelves;
on the side-board; in all the nooks and corners. It was found in the
drawer of an unused table that stood against the wall.

"Well, I declare!" she exclaimed, as she drew it out. "I wonder who put
it in here?"

In turning over the leaves to look for what she wanted, a piece of
paper, loosely folded, fell to the ground. John Drench picked it up.

"Why!" he said, "it is a note from Jessy."

It was the letter written to them by Jessy, saying she had found a
situation and hoped to suit and be happy in it. The _one_ letter: for no
other had ever come. Abigail, missing the letter months ago, supposed it
had got burnt.

"Yes," she said with a sigh, as she glanced over the few lines now,
standing by Susan's work-table, "it is Jessy's letter. She might have
written again. Every morning of my life for weeks and weeks, I kept
looking for the letter-man to bring another. But the hope died out at
last, for it never came."

"She is a heartless baggage!" cried Miss Susan. "In her grand
lady's-maid's place, amongst her high people, she is content to forget
and abandon us. I'd never have believed it of her."

A pause ensued. The subject was a painful one. Mortifying too: for no
one likes to be set at nought and forgotten by one that they have loved
and cherished and brought up from a little child. Abigail Page had tears
in her eyes.

"It's just a year ago to-day that she came into the church to help us to
dress it," said John Drench, his tender tone of regret grating on Miss
Susan's ear. "In her blue mantle she looked sweeter and brighter than a
fairy."

"Did you ever see a fairy, pray?" asked Miss Susan, sharply taking him
up. "She acted like a fairy, didn't she?"

"Best to forget her," interposed Abigail, suppressing a sigh. "As
Susan says, she is heartless. Almost wicked: for what is worse than
ingratitude? Never to write: never to let us know where her situation is
and with what people: never to ask or care whether her poor father, who
had nothing but love for her, is living or dead? It's best to forget
her."

She went out of the room with the note and receipt-book as she spoke,
softly closing the door behind her, as one does who is feeling trouble.
Miss Susan worked on with rapid and angry stitches; John Drench looked
out on the low-lying snow. The storm had passed: the sky was blue again.

Yes. Christmas-Eve had come round, making it just a year since Jessy in
her pretty blue mantle had chosen the sprays of holly in the church.
They had never had from her but that one first unsatisfactory letter:
they knew no more how she went, or why she went, or where she was, than
they had known then. Within a week or two of the unsatisfactory journey
to London of Miss Abigail and John Drench, a letter came to the farm
from Mr. Marcus Allen, inquiring after Jessy, expressing hopes that she
had been found and was at home again. It was not answered: Miss Page,
busy with her father's illness, neglected it at first, and then thought
it did not matter.

Mr. Page had recovered from his stroke: but he would never be good for
anything again. He was very much changed; would sit for hours and never
speak: at times his daughters thought him a little silly, as if his
intellect were failing. Miss Page, with John Drench's help, managed the
farm: though she always made it a point of duty to consult her father
and ask for his orders. In the month of June they heard again from Mr.
Marcus Allen. He wrote to say that he was sorry not to fulfil his
promise (made in the winter's visit) of coming to stay with them during
the time of hay-making, but he was busy finishing a painting and could
not leave it: he hoped to come at some other time. And this was now
December.

Susan Page worked on: John Drench looked out of the window. The young
lady was determined not to break the silence.

"The Dunn Farm is to let," said he suddenly.

"Is it?" slightingly returned Miss Susan.

"My father has some thoughts of taking it for me. It's good land."

"No better than other land about here."

"It's very good, Susan. And just the place I should like. There's an
excellent house too, on it."

Susan Page began rummaging in the deep drawer of the work-table for her
box of buttons. She had a great mind to hum a tune.

"But I couldn't take it, or let father take it for me, unless you'd
promise to go to it with me, Susan."

"Promise to go to it with you, John Drench!"

"I'd make you as good a husband as I know how. Perhaps you'll think of
it."

No answer. She was doubling her thread to sew on the button.

"_Will_ you think of it, Miss Susan?"

"Well--yes, I will," she said in a softer tone, "And if I decide to
bring my mind to have you, John Drench, I'll hope to make you a good and
faithful wife."

He held out his hand to shake hers upon the bargain. Their eyes met in
kindliness: and John Drench knew that the Dunn Farm would have its
mistress.

                 *       *       *       *       *

We were going to dress the church this year as we did the last. Clerk
Bumford's cough was bad, and the old sexton was laid by as usual. Tod
and I got to the church early in the afternoon, and saw the Miss Pages
wading their way through the coppice, over their ankles in snow: the one
lady having finished her cake-making and the other her shirt-mending.

"Is Leek not here yet?" cried they in surprise. "We need not have made
so much haste."

Leek with his large truck of holly was somewhere on the road. He had
started, as Miss Page said, while they were at dinner. And he was not to
be seen!

"It is all through his obstinacy," cried Susan. "I told him he had
better take the highway, though it was a little further round; but he
said he knew he could well get through the little valley. That's where
he has stuck, truck and all."

John Drench came up as she was speaking. He had been on some errand to
Church Dykely; and gave a bad account of the snow on the roads. This was
the third day of it. The skies just now were blue as in spring; the sun,
drawing towards the west, was without a cloud. After waiting a few
minutes, John Drench started to meet Leek and help him on; and we cooled
our heels in the church-porch, unable to get inside. As it was supposed
Leek would be there sooner than any one else, the key of the church had
been given to him that he might get the holly in. There we waited in the
cold. At last, out of patience, Tod went off in John Drench's wake, and
I after him.

It was as Miss Susan surmised. Leek and his truck had stuck fast in the
valley: a low, narrow neck of land connecting a byeway to the farm with
the lane. The snow was above the wheels: Leek could neither get on nor
turn back. He and John Drench were hard at work, pulling and pushing;
and the obstinate truck refusing to move an inch. With the help of our
strength--if mine was not worth much, Tod's _was_--we got it on. But
all this caused ever so much delay: and the dressing was begun when it
ought to have been nearly finished. I could not help thinking of the
other Christmas-Eve; and of pretty Jessy who had helped--and of Miss
Susan scolding her for coming in her best blue mantle--and of the sudden
looming upon us of the stranger, Marcus Allen. Perhaps the rest were
thinking about it as I was. One thing was certain--that there was no
liveliness in this year's dressing; we were all as silent as mutes and
as dull as ditch-water. Charley Page, who had made enough noise last
year, was away this. He went to school at Worcester now, and had gone to
spend the Christmas with some people in Gloucestershire, instead of
coming home.

The work was in progress, when who should look in upon us but Duffham.
He was passing by to visit some one ill in the cottages. "Rather late,
shan't you be?" cried he, seeing that there was hardly any green up yet.
And we told him about the truck sticking in the snow.

"What possessed Leek to take it through the valley?" returned Duffham.

"Because he is fonder of having his own way than a mule," called out
Miss Susan from the aisle.

Duffham laughed. "Don't forget the gala bunch over the parson's head; it
looked well last year," said he, turning to go out. And we told him
there was no danger of forgetting it: it was one of our improvements on
old Bumford's dressing.

Darkness overtook us before half the work was done. There was nothing
for it but to get candles from the Copse Farm to finish by. No one
volunteered to fetch them: a walk through the snow did not look lively
in prospective to any one of us, and Leek had gone off somewhere. "I
suppose it must be me," said John Drench, coming out from the holly to
start: when Miss Page suddenly bethought herself of what the rest of
us were forgetting--that there might be candles in the church. On a
winter's afternoon, when it grew dark early and the parson could not see
through his spectacles to finish his sermon, Clerk Bumford would go
stumping into the place under the belfry, and re-appear with a lighted
candle and hand it up to the pulpit. He ought to have a stock of candles
in store.

John Drench struck some matches, and we went to explore Bumford's
den--a place dimly lighted by the open slits in the belfry above. The
first thing seen was his black gown hanging up, next a horn lantern on
the floor and the grave-digging tools, then an iron candlestick with a
candle end in it, then a stick half-a-mile long that he menaced the boys
with if they laughed in church; and next a round tin candlebox on a nail
in the wall. It was a prize.

There were ten candles in it. Leaving one, in case it should be wanted
on the morrow afternoon, the nine others were lighted. One was put
into the iron candlestick, the rest we stuck upright in melted tallow,
wherever one was wanted: how else could they be set up? It was a grand
illumination: and we laughed over Clerk Bumford's dismay when he should
find his store of candles gone.

_That_ took time: finding the candles, and dropping the tallow, and
talking and laughing. In the midst of it the clock struck five. Upon
that, Miss Abigail told us to hinder no more time, or the work would not
be done by midnight. So we set to with a will. In a couple of hours all
the dressing was finished, and the branches were ready to be hung over
the pulpit. John Drench felt for the string. He seemed to take his time
over it.

"Where on earth is it?" cried he, searching his pockets. "I'm sure I
brought some."

He might have brought it; but it was certain he had not got it then.
Miss Abigail, who had no patience with carelessness, told him rather
sharply that if he had put it in his pockets at all, there it would be
now.

"Well, I did," he answered, in his quiet way. "I put it in on purpose.
I'm sure I don't know where it can have got to."

And there we were: at a standstill for a bit of string. Looking at one
another like so many helpless noodles, and the flaring candles coming to
an end! Tod said, tear a strip off the tail of Bumford's gown; he'd
never miss it: for which Miss Abigail gave it him as sharply as if he
had proposed to tear it off the parson's.

"I might get a bit of string at old Bumford's," I said. "In a few
minutes I'll be back with it."

It was one of the lightest nights ever seen: the air clear, the moon
bright, the ground white with snow. Rushing round the north and
unfrequented side of the church, where the grass on the graves was long
and no one ever walked, excepting old Bumford when he wanted to cut
across the near way to his cottage, I saw something stirring against the
church wall. Something dark: that seemed to have been looking in at
the window, and now crouched down with a sudden movement behind the
buttress, as if afraid of being seen.

"Is that you, Leek?" I called out.

There was no answer: no movement: nothing but a dark heap lying low. I
thought it might be a fox; and crossed over to look.

Well--I had had surprises in my life, but never one that so struck upon
me as this. Foxes don't wear women's clothes: this thing did. I pulled
aside the dark cloak, and a face stood out white and cold in the
moonlight--the face of Jessy Page.

You may fancy it is a slice of romance this; made up for effect out of
my imagination: but it is the real truth, as every one about the place
can testify to, and its strangeness is talked of still. Yet there are
stranger coincidences in life than this. On Christmas-Eve, a year
before, Jessy Page had been helping to dress the church, in her fine
blue mantle, in her beauty, in her light-hearted happiness: on this
Christmas-Eve when we were dressing it again, she re-appeared. But how
changed! Wan, white, faint, wasted! I am not sure that I should have
known her but for her voice. Shrinking, as it struck me, with shame and
fear, she put up her trembling hands in supplication.

"Don't betray me!--don't call!" she implored in weak, feverish, anxious
tones. "Go away and leave me. Let me lie here unsuspected until they
have all gone away."

What ought I to do? I was just as bewildered as it's possible for a
fellow to be. It's no exaggeration to say that I thought her dying: and
it would never do to leave her there to die.

The stillness was broken by a commotion. While she lay with her thin
hands raised, and I was gazing down on her poor face, wondering what to
say, and how to act, Miss Susan came flying round the corner after me.

"Johnny Ludlow! Master Johnny! Don't go. We have found the string under
the unused holly. Why!--what's that?"

No chance of concealment for Jessy now. Susan Page made for the
buttress, and saw the white face in the moonlight.

"It's Jessy," I whispered.

With a shriek that might have scared away all the ghosts in the
churchyard, Susan Page called for Abigail. They heard it through the
window, and came rushing out, thinking Susan must have fallen at least
into the clutches of a winter wolf. Miss Susan's voice trembled as she
spoke in a whisper.

"Here's Jessy--come back at last!"

Unbelieving Abigail Page went down on her knees in the snow to trace the
features, and convince herself. Yes, it was Jessy. She had fainted now,
and lay motionless. Leek came up then, and stood staring.

Where had she come from?--how had she got there? It was just as though
she had dropped from the skies with the snow. And what was to be done
with her?

"She must--come home," said Abigail.

But she spoke hesitatingly, as though some impediment might lie in the
way: and she looked round in a dreamy manner on the open country, all so
white and dreary in the moonlight.

"Yes, there's no other place--of course it must be the farm," she added.
"Perhaps you can bring her between you. But I'll go on and speak to my
father first."

It was easy for one to carry her, she was so thin and light. John Drench
lifted her and they all went off: leaving me and Leek to finish up in
the church, and put out the candles.

William Page was sitting in his favourite place, the wide chimney-corner
of the kitchen, quietly smoking his pipe, when his daughter broke in
upon him with the strange news. Just in the same way that, a year
before, she had broken in upon him with that other news--that a
gentleman had arrived, uninvited, on a visit to the farm. This news
was more startling than that.

"Are they bringing her home?--how long will they be?" cried the old man
with feverish eagerness, as he let fall his long churchwarden pipe, and
broke it. "Abigail, will they be long?"

"Father, I want to say something: I came on to say it," returned Miss
Page, and she was trembling too. "I don't like her face: it is wan, and
thin, and full of suffering: but there's a look in it that--that seems
to tell of shame."

"To tell of what?" he asked, not catching the word.

"May Heaven forgive me if I misjudge her! The fear crossed me, as I saw
her lying there, that her life may not have been innocent since she left
us: why else should she come back in this most strange way? Must we take
her in all the same, father?"

"Take her in!" he repeated in amazement. "YES. What are you thinking of,
child, to ask it?"

"It's the home of myself and Susan, father: it has been always an honest
one in the sight of the neighbours. Maybe, they'll be hard upon us for
receiving her into it."

He stared as one who does not understand, and then made a movement with
his hands, as if warding off her words and the neighbours' hardness
together.

"Let her come, Abigail! Let her come, poor stray lamb. Christ wouldn't
turn away a little one that had strayed from the fold: should her own
father do it?"

And when they brought her in, and put her in an easy-chair by the
sitting-room fire, stirring it into a blaze, and gave her hot tea and
brandy in it, William Page sat down by her side, and shed fast tears
over her, as he fondly stroked her hand.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Gay and green looked the church on Christmas morning, the sun shining
in upon us as brightly as it shone a year before. The news of Jessy
Page's return and the curious manner of it, had spread; causing the
congregation to turn their eyes instinctively on the Pages' pew. Perhaps
not one but recalled the last Christmas--and the gallant stranger who
had sat in it, and found the places in the Prayer-book for Jessy. Only
Mr. Page was there to-day. He came slowly in with his thick stick--for
he walked badly since his illness, and dragged one leg behind the other.
Before the thanksgiving prayer the parson opened a paper and read out a
notice. Such things were uncommon in our church, and it caused a stir.

"William Page desires to return thanks to Almighty God for a great mercy
vouchsafed to him."

We walked to the Copse Farm with him after service. Considering that he
had been returning thanks, he seemed dreadfully subdued. He didn't know
how it was yet; where she had been, or why she had come home in the
manner she did, he told the Squire; but, anyway, she had come. Come to
die, it might be; but _come home_, and that was enough.

Mrs. Todhetley went upstairs to see her. They had given her the best
bed, the one they had given to Marcus Allen. She lay in it like a lily.
It was what Mrs. Todhetley said when she came down: "like a lily, so
white and delicate." There was no talking. Jessy for the most part kept
her eyes shut and her face turned away. Miss Page whispered that they
had not questioned her yet; she seemed too weak to bear it. "But what do
you _think_?" asked Mrs. Todhetley in return. "I am afraid to think,"
was all the answer. In coming away, Mrs. Todhetley stooped over the bed
to kiss her.

"Oh don't, don't!" said Jessy faintly: "you might not if you knew all. I
am not worth it."

"Perhaps I should kiss you all the more, my poor child," answered Mrs.
Todhetley. And she came downstairs with red eyes.

But Miss Susan Page was burning with impatience to know the ins and outs
of the strange affair. Naturally so. It had brought more scandal and
gossip on the Copse Farm than even the running away of the year before.
That was bad enough: this was worse. Altogether Jessy was the home's
heartsore. Mr. Page spoke of her as a lamb, a wanderer returned to the
fold, and Susan heard it with compressed lips: in her private opinion,
she had more justly been called an ungrateful girl.

"Now, then, Jessy; you must let us know a little about yourself," began
Susan on this same afternoon when she was with her alone, and Jessy lay
apparently stronger, refreshed with the dinner and the long rest.
Abigail had gone to church with Mr. Page. Susan could not remember that
any of them had gone to church before on Christmas-Day after the morning
service: but there was no festive gathering to keep them at home to-day.
Unconsciously, perhaps, Susan resented the fact. Even John Drench was
dining at his father's. "Where have you been all this while in London?"

Jessy suddenly lifted her arm to shade her eyes; and remained silent.

"It _is_ in London, I conclude, that you have been? Come: answer me."

"Yes," said Jessy faintly.

"And _where_ have you been? In what part of it?--who with?"

"Don't ask me," was the low reply, given with a suppressed sob.

"Not ask you! But we must ask you. And you must answer. Where have you
been, and what have you been doing?"

"I--can't tell," sobbed Jessy. "The story is too long."

"Story too long!" echoed Susan quickly, "you might say in half-a-dozen
words--and leave explanations until to-morrow. Did you find a place in
town?"

"Yes, I found a place."

"A lady's-maid's place?--as you said."

Jessy turned her face to the wall, and never spoke.

"Now, this won't do," cried Miss Susan, not choosing to be thwarted: and
no doubt Jessy, hearing the determined tone, felt something like a reed
in her hands. "Just you tell me a little."

"I am very ill, Susan; I can't talk much," was the pleading excuse. "If
you'd only let me be quiet."

"It will no more hurt you to say in a few words where you have been than
to make excuses," persisted Miss Susan, giving a flick to the skirt
of her new puce silk gown. "Your conduct altogether has been most
extraordinary, quite baffling to us at home, and I must hear some
explanation of it."

"The place I went to was too hard for me," said Jessy after a pause,
speaking out of the pillow.

"Too hard!"

"Yes; too hard. My heart was breaking with its hardness, and I couldn't
stop in it. Oh, be merciful to me, Susan! don't ask any more."

Susan Page thought that when mysterious answers like these were creeping
out, there was all the greater need that she should ask for more.

"Who found you the place at first, Jessy?"

Not a word. Susan asked again.

"I--got it through an advertisement," said Jessy at length.

Advertisements in those days, down in our rural district, were looked
upon as wonderful things, and Miss Susan opened her eyes in surprise. A
faint idea was upon her that Jessy could not be telling the truth.

"In that letter that you wrote to us; the only one you did write; you
asserted that you liked the place."

"Yes. That was at first. But afterwards--oh, afterwards it got cruelly
hard."

"Why did you not change it for another?"

Jessy made no answer. Susan heard the sobs in her throat.

"Now, Jessy, don't be silly. I ask why you did not get another place, if
you were unable to stay in that one?"

"I couldn't have got another, Susan. I would never have got another."

"Why not?" persisted Susan.

"I--I--don't you see how weak I am?" she asked with some energy, lifting
her face for a moment to Susan.

And its wan pain, its depth of anguish, disarmed Susan. Jessy looked
like a once fair blossom on which a blight had passed.

"Well, Jessy, we will leave these matters until later. But there's one
thing you must answer. What induced you to take this disreputable mode
of coming back?"

A dead silence.

"Could you not have written to say you were coming, as any sensible girl
would, that you might have been properly met and received? Instead of
appearing like a vagabond, to be picked up by anybody."

"I never meant to come home--to the house."

"But _why_?" asked Susan.

"Oh, because--because of my ingratitude in running away--and never
writing--and--and all that."

"That is, you were ashamed to come and face us."

"Yes, I was ashamed," said Jessy, shivering.

"And no wonder. Why did you go?"

Jessy gave a despairing sigh. Leaving that question in abeyance, Susan
returned to the former one.

"If you did not mean to come home, what brought you down here at all?"

"It didn't matter where I went. And my heart was yearning for a look at
the old place--and so I came."

"And if we had not found you under the church wall--and we never should
but for Johnny Ludlow's running out to get some string--where should you
have gone, pray?"

"Crawled under some haystack, and let the cold and hunger kill me."

"Don't be a simpleton," reproved Susan.

"I wish it had been so," returned Jessy. "I'd rather be dying there in
quiet. Oh, Susan, I am ill; I am indeed! Let me be at peace!"

The appeal shut up Susan Page. She did not want to be too hard upon her.

Mr. Duffham came in after church. Abigail had told him that she did not
like Jessy's looks; nor yet her cough. He went up alone, and was at the
bedside before Jessy was aware. She put up her hand to hide her face,
but not in time: Duffham had seen it. Doctors don't get shocks in a
general way: they are too familiar with appearances that frighten other
people: but he started a little. If ever he saw coming death in a face,
he thought he saw it in that of Jessy Page.

He drew away the shading hand, and looked at her. Duffham was pompous on
the whole and thought a good deal of his gold-headed cane, but he was a
tender man with the sad and sick. After that, he sat down and began
asking her a few things--where she had been, and what she had done. Not
out of curiosity, or quite with the same motive that Miss Susan had just
asked; but because he wished to find out whether her illness was more on
the body or the mind. She would not answer. Only cried softly.

"My dear," said Duffham, "I must have you tell me a little of the past.
Don't be afraid: it shall go no further. If you only knew the strange
confidences that are sometimes placed in me, Jessy, you would not
hesitate."

No, she would not speak of her own accord, so he began to pump her.
Doing it very kindly and soothingly: had Jessy spent her year in London
robbing all the banks, one might have thought she could only have
yielded to his wish to come to the bottom of it. Duffham listened to her
answers, and sat with a puzzled face. She told him what she had told
Susan: that her post of lady's-maid had been too hard for her and worn
her to what she was; that she had shrunk from returning home on account
of her ingratitude, and should not have returned ever of her own will.
But she had yearned for a sight of the old place, and so came down by
rail, and walked over after dark. In passing the church she saw it
lighted up; and lingered, peeping in. She never meant to be seen; she
should have gone away somewhere before morning. Nothing more.

Nothing more! Duffham sat listening to her. He pushed back the pretty
golden hair (no more blue ribbons in it now), lost in thought.

"_Nothing_ more, Jessy? There must have been something more, I think, to
have brought you into this state. What was it?"

"No," she faintly said: "only the hard work I had to do; and the thought
of how I left my home; and--and my unhappiness. I was unhappy always,
nearly from my first entering. The work was hard."

"What was the work?"

"It was----"

A long pause. Mr. Duffham, always looking at her, waited.

"It was sewing; dress-making. And--there was sitting up at nights."

"Who was the lady you served? What was her name?"

"I can't tell it," answered Jessy, her cheeks flushing to a wild hectic.

The surgeon suddenly turned the left hand towards him, and looked at the
forefinger. It was smooth as ivory.

"Not much sign of sewing there, Jessy."

She drew it under the clothes. "It is some little time since I did any;
I was too ill," she answered. "Mr. Duffham, I have told you all there is
to tell. The place was too hard for me, and it made me ill."

It was all she told. Duffham wondered whether it was, in substance, all
she had to tell. He went down and entered the parlour with a grave face:
Mr. Page, his daughters, and John Drench were there. The doctor said
Jessy must have perfect rest, tranquillity, and the best of nourishment;
and he would send some medicine. Abigail put a shawl over her head, and
walked with him across the garden.

"You will tell _me_ what your opinion is, Mr. Duffham."

"Ay. It is no good one, Miss Abigail."

"Is she very ill?"

"Very. I do not think she will materially rally. Her chest and lungs are
both weak."

"Her mother's were before her. As I told you, Jessy looks to me just as
my mother used to look in her last illness."

Mr. Duffham went through the gate without saying more. The snow was
sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight.

"I think I gather what you mean," resumed Abigail. "That she is, in
point of fact, dying."

"That's it. As I truly believe."

They looked at each other in the clear light air. "But not--surely, Mr.
Duffham, not immediately?"

"Not immediately. It may be weeks off yet. Mind--I don't assert that she
is absolutely past hope; I only think it. It is possible that she may
rally, and recover."

"It might not be the happier for her," said Abigail, under her breath.
"She is in a curiously miserable state of mind--as you no doubt saw. Mr.
Duffham, did she tell you anything?"

"She says she took a place as lady's-maid; that the work proved too hard
for her; and that, with the remorse for her ingratitude towards her
home, made her ill."

"She said the same to Susan this afternoon. Well, we must wait for more.
Good-night, Mr. Duffham: I am sure you will do all you can."

Of course Duffham meant to do all he could; and from that time he began
to attend her regularly.

Jessy Page's coming home, with, as Miss Susan had put it, the vagabond
manner of it, was a nine days' wonder. The neighbours went making calls
at the Copse Farm, to talk about it and to see her. In the latter hope
they failed. Jessy showed a great fear of seeing any one of them; would
put her head under the bed-clothes and lie there shaking till the house
was clear; and Duffham said she was not to be crossed.

Her sisters got to know no more of the past. Not a syllable. They
questioned and cross-questioned her; but she only stuck to her text. It
was the work that had been too much for her; the people she served were
cruelly hard.

"I really think it must be so; that she has nothing else to tell,"
remarked Abigail to Susan one morning, as they sat alone at breakfast,
"But she must have been a downright simpleton to stay."

"I can't make her out," returned Susan, hard of belief. "Why should
she not say where it was, and who the people are? Here comes the
letter-man."

The letter-man--as he was called--was bringing a letter for Miss Page.
Letters at the Copse Farm were rare, and she opened it with curiosity.
It proved to be from Mrs. Allen of Aberystwith; and out of it dropped
two cards, tied together with silver cord.

Mrs. Allen wrote to say that her distant relative, Marcus, was married.
He had been married on Christmas-Eve to a Miss Mary Goldbeater, a great
heiress, and they had sent her cards. Thinking the Miss Pages might like
to see the cards (as they knew something of him) she had forwarded them.

Abigail took the cards up. "Mr. Marcus Allen. Mrs. Marcus Allen." And on
hers was the address: "Gipsy Villas, Montgomery Road, Brompton." "I
think he might have been polite enough to send us cards also," observed
Abigail.

Susan put the cards on the waiter when she went upstairs with her
sister's tea. Jessy, looking rather more feverish than usual in a
morning, turned the cards about in her slender hands.

"I have heard of her, this Mary Goldbeater," said Jessy, biting her
parched lips. "They say she's pretty, and--and very rich."

"Where did you hear of her?" asked Susan.

"Oh, in--let me think. In the work-room."

"Now what do you mean by that?" cried Miss Susan. "A work-room implies a
dressmaker's establishment, and you tell us you were a lady's-maid."

Jessy seemed unable to answer.

"I don't believe you were at either the one place or the other. You are
deceiving us, Jessy."

"No," gasped Jessy.

"Did you ever see Mr. Marcus Allen when you were in town?"

"Mr. Marcus Allen?" repeated Jessy after a pause, just as if she were
unable to recall who Mr. Marcus Allen was.

"The Mr. Marcus Allen you knew at Aberystwith; he who came here
afterwards," went on Susan impatiently. "Are you losing your memory,
Jessy?"

"No, I never saw the Marcus Allen I knew here--and there," was Jessy's
answer, her face white and still as death.

"Why!--Did you know any other Marcus Allen, then?" questioned Susan, in
surprise. For the words had seemed to imply it.

"No," replied Jessy. "No."

"She seems queerer than usual--I hope her mind's not going," thought
Susan. "Did you ever go to see Madame Caron, Jessy, while you were in
London?"

"Never. Why should I? I didn't know Madame Caron."

"When Marcus Allen wrote to excuse himself from visiting us in the
summer, he said he would be sure to come later," resumed Susan. "I
wonder if he will keep his promise."

"No--never," answered Jessy.

"How do you know?"

"Oh--I don't think it. He wouldn't care to come. Especially now he's
married."

"And you never saw him in town, Jessy? Never even met him by chance?"

"I've told you--No. Do you suppose I should be likely to call upon
Marcus Allen? As to meeting him by chance, it is not often I went out, I
can tell you."

"Well, sit up and take your breakfast," concluded Susan.

A thought had crossed Susan Page's mind--whether this marriage of Marcus
Allen's on Christmas-Eve could have had anything to do with Jessy's
return and her miserable unhappiness. It was only a thought; and she
drove it away again. As Abigail said, she had been inclined throughout
to judge hardly of Jessy.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The winter snow lay on the ground still, when it became a question not
of how many weeks Jessy would live, but of days. And then she confessed
to a secret that pretty nearly changed the sober Miss Pages' hair from
black to grey. Jessy had turned Roman Catholic.

It came out through her persistent refusal to see the parson, Mr.
Holland, a little man with shaky legs. He'd go trotting up to the Copse
Farm once or twice a-week; all in vain. Miss Abigail would console him
with a good hot jorum of sweet elder wine, and then he'd trot back
again. One day Jessy, brought to bay, confessed that she was a Roman
Catholic.

There was grand commotion. John Drench went about, his hands lifted in
the frosty air; Abigail and Susan Page sat in the bedroom with
(metaphorically speaking) ashes on their heads.

People have their prejudices. It was not so much that these ladies
wished to cast reflection on good Catholics born and bred, as that Jessy
should have abandoned her own religion, just as though it had been an
insufficient faith. It was the slight on it that they could not bear.

"Miserable girl!" exclaimed Miss Susan, looking upon Jessy as a
turncoat, and therefore next door to lost. And Jessy told, through her
sobs, how it had come to pass.

Wandering about one evening in London when she was very unhappy, she
entered a Catholic place of worship styled an "Oratory."--The Miss
Pages caught up the word as "oratorio," and never called it anything
else.--There a priest got into conversation with Jessy. He had a
pleasant, kindly manner that won upon her and drew from her the fact
that she was unhappy. Become a Catholic, he said to her; it would bring
her back to happiness: and he asked her to go and see him again. She
went again; again and again. And so, going and listening to him, she at
length _did_ turn, and was received by him into his church.

"Are you the happier for it?" sharply asked Miss Abigail.

"No," answered Jessy with distressed eyes. "Only--only----"

"Only what, pray?"

"Well, they can absolve me from all sin."

"Oh, you poor foolish misguided child!" cried Abigail in anguish; "you
must take your sins to the Saviour: He can absolve you, and He alone.
Do you want any third person to stand between you and Him?"

Jessy gave a sobbing sigh. "It's best as it is, Abigail. Anyway, it is
too late now."

"Stop a bit," cried sharp Miss Susan. "I should like to have one thing
answered, Jessy. You have told us how hard you were kept to work: if
that was so, pray how did you find leisure to be dancing abroad to
Oratorios? Come?"

Jessy could not, or would not, answer.

"Can you explain that!" said Miss Susan, some sarcasm in her tone.

"I went out sometimes in an evening," faltered Jessy. And more than that
could not be drawn from her.

They did not tell Mr. Page: it would have distressed him too much. In a
day or two Jessy asked to see a priest. Miss Abigail flatly refused, on
account of the scandal. As if their minister was not good enough!

One afternoon I was standing by Jessy's bed--for Miss Abigail had let me
go up to see her. Mrs. Todhetley, that first day, had said she looked
like a lily: she was more like one now. A faded lily that has had all
its beauty washed out of it.

"Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow," she said, opening her eyes, and putting out
her feeble hand. "I shall not see you again."

"I hope you will, Jessy. I'll come over to-morrow."

"Never again in this world." And I had to lean over to catch the words,
and my eyes were full.

"In the next world there'll be no parting, Jessy. We shall see each
other there."

"I don't know," she said. "You will be there, Johnny; I can't tell
whether I shall be. I turned Roman Catholic, you see; and Abigail won't
let a priest come. And so--I don't know how it will be."

The words struck upon me. The Miss Pages had kept the secret too closely
for news of it to have come abroad. It seemed worse to me to hear
it than to her to say it. But she had grown too weak to feel things
strongly.

"Good-bye, Johnny."

"Good-bye, Jessy dear," I whispered. "Don't fear: God will be sure to
take you to heaven if you ask Him."

Miss Abigail got it out of me--what she had said about the priest. In
fact, I told. She was very cross.

"There; let it drop, Johnny Ludlow. John Drench is gone off in the gig
to Coughton to bring one. All I hope and trust is, that they'll not be
back until the shades of night have fallen upon the earth! I shouldn't
like a priest to be seen coming into _this_ door. Such a reproach on
good Mr. Holland! I'm sure I trust it will never get about!"

We all have our prejudices, I repeat. And not a soul amongst us for
miles round had found it necessary to change religions since the
Reformation.

Evening was well on when John Drench brought him in. A mild-faced man,
wearing a skull-cap under his broad-brimmed hat. He saw Jessy alone.
Miss Page would not have made a third at the interview though they had
bribed her to it--and of course they wouldn't have had her. It was quite
late when he came down. Miss Page stopped him as he was going out, after
declining refreshment.

"I presume, sir, she has told you all about this past year--that has
been so mysterious to us?"

"Yes; I think all," replied the priest.

"Will you tell me the particulars?"

"I cannot do that," he said. "They have been given to me under the seal
of confession."

"Only to me and to her sister Susan," pleaded Abigail. "We will not even
disclose it to our father. Sir, it would be a true kindness to us, and
it can do her no harm. You do not know what our past doubts and distress
have been."

But the priest shook his head. He was very sorry to refuse, he said, but
the tenets of his Church forbade his speaking. And Miss Page thought he
_was_ sorry, for he had a benevolent face.

"Best let the past lie," he gently added. "Suffice it to know that she
is happy now, poor child, and will die in peace."

                 *       *       *       *       *

They buried her in the churchyard beside her mother. When the secret got
about, some said it was not right--that she ought to have been taken
elsewhere, to a graveyard devoted to the other faith. Which would just
have put the finishing stroke on old Page--broken all that was left of
his heart to break. The Squire said he didn't suppose it mattered in
the sight of God: or would make much difference at the Last Day.

And that ended the life of Jessy Page: and, in one sense, its episode of
mystery. Nothing more was ever heard or known of where she had been or
what she had done. Years have gone by since then; and William Page is
lying beside her. Miss Page and Charley live on at the Copse Farm; Susan
became Mrs. John Drench ages ago. Her husband, a man of substance now,
was driving her into Alcester last Tuesday (market-day) in his
four-wheeled chaise, two buxom daughters in the back seat. I nodded to
them from Mr. Brandon's window.

The mystery of Jessy Page (as we grew to call it) remained a mystery. It
remains one to this day. What the secret was--if there was a secret--why
she went in the way she did, and came back in what looked like shame and
fear and trembling, a dying girl--has not been solved. It never will be
in this world. Some old women put it all down to her having changed her
religion and been afraid to tell: while Miss Abigail and Miss Susan have
never got rid of a vague doubt, touching Marcus Allen. But it may be
only their fancy; they admit that, and say to one another when talking
of it privately, that it is not right to judge a man without cause. He
keeps a carriage-and-pair now; and gives dinners, and has handsome
daughters growing up; and is altogether quite up to the present style of
expensive life in London.

And I never go into church on a Christmas morning--whether it may be
decorated in our simple country fashion, or in accordance with your new
"artistic" achievements--but I think of Jessy Page. Of her sweet face,
her simplicity, and her want of guile: and of the poor wreck that came
back, broken-hearted, to die.




CRABB RAVINE.


I.

"Yes! Halloa! What is it?"

To be wakened up short by a knocking, or some other noise, in the night,
is enough to make you start up in bed, and stare round in confusion. The
room was dark, barring the light that always glimmers in at the window
on a summer's night, and I listened and waited for more. Nothing came:
it was all as silent as the grave.

We were staying at Crabb Cot. I had gone to bed at half-past nine, dead
tired after a day's fishing. The Squire and Tod were away: Mrs.
Todhetley went over to the Coneys' after tea, and did not seem in a
hurry to come back. They fried one of the fish I had caught for my
supper; and after that, there being no one to speak to, I went to bed.

It was a knocking that had wakened me out of my sleep: I was sure of
that. And it sounded exactly as though it were at the window--which was
very improbable. Calling out again to know who was there, and what
was wanted--though not very loudly, for the children slept within
earshot--and getting no answer, I lay down again, and was all but asleep
when the noise came a second time.

It was at the dining-room window, right underneath mine. There could be
no mistake about it. The ceilings of the old-fashioned house were low;
the windows were very near each other, and mine was down at the top. I
thought it time to jump out of bed, and take a look out.

Well, I was surprised! Instead of its being the middle of the night,
it must be quite early still; for the lamp was yet alight in the
dining-room. It was a cosy kind of room, with a bow window jutting on to
the garden, of which the middle compartment opened to the ground, as
French windows do. My window was a bow also, and close above the other.
Throwing it up, I looked out.

There was not a soul to be seen. Yet the knocking could not have been
from within, for the inside shutters were closed: they did not reach to
the top panes, and the lamplight shone through them on the mulberry
tree. As I leaned out, wondering, the crazy old clock at North Crabb
Church began to tell the hour. I counted the strokes, one by one--ten of
them. Only ten o'clock! And I thought I had been asleep half the night.

All in a moment I caught sight of some one moving slowly away. He was
keeping in the shade; close to the shrubs that encircled the lawn, as if
not caring to be seen. A short, thin man, in dark clothes and round
black felt hat. Who he was, and what he wanted, was more than I could
imagine. It could not be a robber. Robbers don't come knocking at houses
before people have gone to bed.

The small side-gate opened, and Mrs. Todhetley came in. Old Coney's farm
was only a stone's-throw off, and she had run home alone. We people
in the country think nothing of being abroad alone at night. The man
emerged from the shade, and placed himself right in her path, on the
gravel walk. They stood there together. I could see him better now:
there was no moon, but the night was light; and it flashed into my mind
that he was the same man I had seen Mrs. Todhetley with in the morning,
as I went across the fields, with my rod and line. She was at the stile,
about to descend into the Ravine, when he came up from it, and accosted
her. He was a stranger; wearing a seedy, shabby black coat; and I had
wondered what he wanted. They were still talking together when I got out
of sight, for I turned to look.

Not long did they stand now. The gentleman went away; she came hastening
on with her head down, a soft wool kerchief thrown over her cap. In all
North Crabb, no one was so fearful of catching face-ache as Mrs.
Todhetley.

"Who was it?" I called out, when she was under the window: which seemed
to startle her considerably, for she gave a spring back, right on to the
grass.

"Johnny! how you frightened me! What are you looking out at?"

"At that fellow who has just taken himself off. Who is he?"

"I do believe you have on nothing but your nightshirt! You'll be sure to
take cold. Shut the window down, and get into bed."

Four times over, in all, had I to ask about the man before I got an
answer. Now it was the nightshirt, now catching cold, now the open
window and the damp air. She always wanted to be as tender with us as
though we were chickens.

"The man that met me in the path?" she got to, at length. "He made some
excuse for being here: was not sure whose house it was, I think he said:
had turned in by mistake to the wrong one."

"That's all very fine; but, not being sure, he ought to mind his
manners. He came rapping at the dining-room window like anything, and it
woke me up. Had you been at home, sitting there, good mother, you might
have been startled out of your seven senses."

"So I should, Johnny. The Coneys would not let me come away: they had
friends with them. Good-night, dear. Shut down that window."

She went on to the side-door. I put down the window, opened it at the
top, and let the white curtain drop before it. It was an hour or two
before I got to sleep again, and I had the man and the knocking in my
thoughts all the time.

"Don't say anything about it in the house, Johnny," Mrs. Todhetley said
to me, in the morning. "It might alarm the children." So I promised her
I would not.

Tod came home at mid-day, not the Squire: and the first thing I did was
to tell him. I wouldn't have broken faith with the mother for the world;
not even for Tod; but it never entered my mind that she wished me to
keep it a close secret, excepting from those, servants or others, who
might be likely to repeat it before Hugh and Lena. I cautioned Tod.

"Confound his impudence!" cried Tod. "Could he not be satisfied with
disturbing the house at the door at night, but he must make for the
window? I wish I had been at home."

Crabb Ravine lay to the side of our house, beyond the wide field. It
was a regular wilderness. The sharp descent began in that three-cornered
grove, of which you've heard before, for it was where Daniel Ferrar
hanged himself; and the wild, deep, mossy dell, about as wide as an
ordinary road, went running along below, soft, green and damp. Towering
banks, sloping backwards, rose on either side; a mass of verdure in
summer; of briars, brown and tangled, in winter. Dwarf shrubs, tall
trees, blackberry and nut bushes, sweet-briar and broom clustered there
in wild profusion. Primroses and violets peeped up when spring came in;
blue bells and cowslips, dog-roses, woodbine, and other sweet flowers,
came later. Few people would descend except by the stile opposite our
house and the proper zigzag path leading down the side bank, for a fall
might have broken limbs, besides bringing one's clothes to grief.
No houses stood near it, except ours and old Coney's; and the field
bordering it just here on this side belonged to Squire Todhetley. If you
went down the zigzag path, turned to the right, walked along the Ravine
some way, and then up another zigzag on the opposite side, you soon came
to Timberdale, a small place in itself, but our nearest post-town. The
high-road to Timberdale, winding past our house from South Crabb, was
twice the distance, so that people might sometimes be seen in the Ravine
by day; but no one cared to go near it in the evening, as it had the
reputation of being haunted. A mysterious light might sometimes be
observed there at night, dodging about the banks, where it would be
rather difficult for ordinary human beings to walk: some said it was a
will-o'-the-wisp, and some said a ghost. It was difficult to get even a
farm-servant to go the near way to Timberdale after dark.

One morning, when I was running through the Ravine with Tod in search of
Tom Coney, we came slap against a man, who seemed to be sneaking there,
for he turned short off, into the underwood, to hide himself. I knew him
by his hat.

"Tod, that's the man," I whispered.

"What man, Johnny?"

"The one who came knocking at the window three nights ago."

"Oh!" said Tod, carelessly. "He looks like a fellow who comes out with
begging petitions."

It might have been an hour after that. We had come up from the Ravine,
on our side of it, not having seen or spoken to a soul, except Luke
Mackintosh. Tod told me to stay and waylay Coney if he made his
appearance, whilst he went again to the farm in search of him.
Accordingly, I was sitting on the fence (put there to hinder the cattle
and sheep from getting over the brink of the Ravine), throwing stones
and whistling, when I saw Mrs. Todhetley cross the stile to go down the
zigzag. She did not see me: the fence could hardly be gained for trees,
and I was hidden.

Just because I had nothing to do, I watched her as she went; tall, thin,
and light in figure, she could spin along nearly as quick as we. The
zigzag path went in and out, sloping along the bank until it brought
itself to the dell at a spot a good bit beyond me as I looked down,
finishing there with a high, rough step. Mrs. Todhetley took it with a
spring.

What next! In one moment the man with the black coat and hat had
appeared from somewhere, and placed himself in front of her parasol.
Before I could quit the place, and leap down after her, a conviction
came over me that the meeting was not accidental: and I rubbed my eyes
in wonder, and thought I must be dreaming.

The summer air was clear as crystal; not a bee's hum just then disturbed
its stillness. Detached words ascended from where they stood; and now
and again a whole sentence. She kept looking each way as if afraid to be
seen; and so did he, for that matter. The colloquy seemed to be about
money. I caught the word two or three times; and Mrs. Todhetley said it
was "impossible." "I must, and I will have it," came up distinctly from
him in answer.

"What's _that_, Johnny?"

The interruption came from Tod. All my attention absorbed in them, he
stood at my elbow before I knew he was near. When I would have answered,
he suddenly put his hand upon my mouth for silence. His face had a proud
anger on it as he looked down.

Mrs. Todhetley seemed to be using entreaty to the man, for she clasped
her hands in a piteous manner, and then turned to ascend the zigzag. He
followed her, talking very fast. As to me, I was in a regular sea of
marvel, understanding nothing. Our heads were hardly to be distinguished
from the bushes, even if she had looked up.

"No," she said, turning round upon him; and they were near us then, half
way up the path, so that every word was audible. "You must not venture
to come to the house, or near the house. I would not have Mr. Todhetley
know of this for the world: for your sake as well as for his."

"Todhetley's not at home," was the man's answer: and Tod gave a growl as
he heard it.

"If he is not, his son is," said Mrs. Todhetley. "It would be all the
same; or worse."

"His son's here," roared out passionate Tod. "What the deuce is the
meaning of this, sir?"

The man shot down the path like an arrow. Mrs. Todhetley--who had been
walking on, seeming not to have caught the words, or to know whose the
voice was, or where it came from--gazed round in all directions, her
countenance curiously helpless. She ran up the rest of the zigzag, and
went swiftly home across the field. Tod disentangled himself from the
brambles, and drew a long breath.

"I think it's time we went now, Johnny." It was not often he spoke in
that tone. He had always been at war tacitly with Mrs. Todhetley, and
was not likely to favour her now. Generous though he was by nature,
there could be no denying that he took up awful prejudices.

"It is something about money, Tod."

"I don't care what it is about--the fellow has no business to be
prowling here, on my father's grounds; and he _shan't_ be, without my
knowing what it's for. I'll watch madam's movements."

"What do you think it can mean?"

"Mean! Why, that the individual is some poor relation of hers, come to
drain as much of my father's money out of her as he can. _She_ is the
one to blame. I wonder how she dare encourage him!"

"Perhaps she can't help herself."

"Not help herself? Don't show yourself a fool, Johnny. An honest-minded,
straightforward woman would appeal to my father in any annoyance of
this sort, or to me, in his absence, and say 'Here's So-and-so come down
upon us, asking for help, can we give it him?'--and there's no doubt the
Squire _would_ give it him; he's soft enough for anything."

It was of no use contending. I did not see it quite in that light, but
Tod liked his own opinion. He threw up his head with a haughty jerk.

"You have tried to defend Mrs. Todhetley before, in trifling matters,
Johnny; don't attempt it now. Would any good woman, say any _lady_, if
you will, subject herself to this kind of thing?--hold private meetings
with a man--allow him to come tapping at her sitting-room window at
night? No; not though he were her own brother."

"Tod, it may be her brother. She would never do anything wrong
willingly."

"Shut up, Johnny. She never had a brother."

Of course I shut up forthwith, and went across the field by Tod's side
in silence, his strides wide and indignant, his head up in the air. Mrs.
Todhetley was hearing Lena read when we got in, and looked as if she had
never been out that morning.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Some days went on. The man remained near, for he was seen occasionally,
and the servants began to talk. One remarked upon him, wondering who he
was; another remarked upon him, speculating on what he did there. In a
quiet country place, a dodging stranger excites curiosity, and this one
dodged about as much as ever the ghostly light did. If you caught sight
of him in the three-cornered plantation, he vanished forthwith to appear
next in the Ravine; if he stood peering out from the trees on the bank,
and found himself observed, the next minute he'd be crouching amongst
the broom on the other side.

This came to be observed, and was thought strange, naturally; Hannah,
who was often out with Hugh and Lena, often saw him, and talked to the
other servants. One evening, when we were finishing dinner, the glass
doors of the bow-window being open, Hannah came back with the children.
They ran across the grass-plat after the fawn--one we had, just
then--and Hannah sat down in the porch of the side-door to wait. Old
Thomas had just drawn the slips from the table, and went through the
passage to the side-door to shake them.

"I say," cried Hannah's voice, "I saw that man again."

"Where?" asked Thomas, between his shakes of the linen.

"In the old place--the Ravine. He was sitting on the stile at the top of
the zigzag, as cool as might be."

"Did you speak to him? I should, if I came across the man; and ask what
his business might be in these parts."

"I didn't speak to him," returned Hannah. "I'd rather not. There's no
knowing the answer one might get, Thomas, or what he's looking after. He
spoke to the children."

"What did he say to them?"

"Asked if they'd go away with him to some beautiful coral islands over
the sea, and catch pretty birds, and parrots, and monkeys. He called
them by their names, too--'Hugh' and 'Lena.' I should like to know how
he got hold of _them_."

"I can't help thinking that he belongs to them engineering folk who come
spying for no good on people's land: the Squire won't like it if they
cut a railroad through here," said Thomas; and the supposition did not
appear to please Hannah.

"Why you must be as silly as a turkey, old Thomas! Engineers have no
need to hide themselves as if they were afraid of being took up for
murder. He has about as much the cut of an engineer as you have, and no
more: they don't go about looking like Methodist parsons run to seed.
_My_ opinion is that he's something of that sort."

"A Methodist parson!"

"No; not anything half so respectable. If I spoke out my thoughts,
though, I dare say you'd laugh at me."

"Not I," said Thomas. "Make haste. I forgot to put the claret jug on the
table."

"Then I've got it in my head that he is one of them seducing Mormons.
They appear in neighbourhoods without the smallest warning, lie partly
concealed by day, and go abroad at night, persuading all the likely
women and girls to join their sect. My sister told me about it in a
letter she wrote me only three days ago. There has been a Mormon down
there; he called himself a saint, she says; and when he went finally
away he took fifteen young women with him. Fifteen, Thomas! and after
only three weeks' persuasion! It's as true as that you've got that
damask cloth in your hand."

Nothing further was heard for a minute. Then Thomas spoke. "Has the man
here been seen talking with young women?"

"Who is to know? They take care _not_ to be seen; that's their craft.
And so you see, Thomas, I'd rather steer clear of the man, and not give
him the opportunity of trying his arts on me. I can tell him it's not
Hannah Baber that would be cajoled off to a barbarous desert by a man
who had fifteen other wives beside! Lord help the women for geese! Miss
Lena" (raising her voice), "don't you tear about after the fawn like
that; you'll put yourself into a pretty heat."

"I'd look him up when I came home, if I were the Squire," said Thomas,
who evidently took it all gravely in. "We don't want a Mormon on the
place."

"If he were not a Mormon, which I'm pretty sure he is, I should say he
was a kidnapper of children," went on Hannah. "After we had got past him
over so far, he managed to 'tice Hugh back to the stile, gave him a
sugar-stick, and said he'd take him away if he'd go. It struck me he'd
like to kidnap him."

Tod, sitting at the foot of the table in the Squire's place, had
listened to all this deliberately. Mrs. Todhetley, opposite to him, her
back to the light, had tried, in a feeble manner, once or twice, to
drown the sounds by saying something. But when urgently wanting to
speak, we often can't do so; and her efforts died away helplessly. She
looked miserably uncomfortable, and seemed conscious of Tod's feeling in
the matter; and when Hannah wound up with the bold assertion touching
the kidnapping of Hugh, she gave a start of alarm, which left her face
white.

"Who is this man that shows himself in the neighbourhood?" asked Tod,
putting the question to her in a slow, marked manner, his dark eyes,
stern then, fixed on hers.

"Johnny, those cherries don't look ripe. Try the summer apples."

It was of no use at any time trying to put aside Tod. Before I had
answered her that the cherries were ripe enough for me, Tod began at her
again.

"Can you tell me who he is?"

"Dear me, no," she faintly said. "I can't tell you anything about it."

"Nor what he wants?"

"No. Won't you take some wine, Joseph?"

"I shall make it my business to inquire, then," said Tod, disregarding
the wine and everything else. "The first time I come across the man,
unless he gives me a perfectly satisfactory answer as to what he may be
doing here on our land, I'll horse-whip him."

Mrs. Todhetley put the trembling fingers of her left hand into the
finger-glass, and dried them. I don't believe she knew what she was
about more than a baby.

"The man is nothing to you, Joseph. Why should you interfere with him?"

"I shall interfere because my father is not here to do it," he answered,
in his least compromising of tones. "An ill-looking stranger has no
right to be prowling mysteriously amongst us at all. But when it comes
to knocking at windows at night, to waylaying--people--in solitary
places, and to exciting comments from the servants, it is time some one
interfered to know the reason of it."

I am sure he had been going to say _you_; but with all his prejudice
he never was insolent to Mrs. Todhetley, when face to face; and he
substituted "people." Her pale blue eyes had the saddest light in them
you can well conceive, and yet she tried to look as though the matter
did not concern her. Old Thomas came in with the folded damask slips,
little thinking he and Hannah had been overheard, put them in the
drawer, and set things straight on the sideboard.

"What time tea, ma'am?" he asked.

"Any time," answered Mrs. Todhetley. "I am going over to Mr. Coney's,
but not to stay. Or perhaps you'll go for me presently, Johnny, and ask
whether Mrs. Coney has come home," she added, as Thomas left the room.

I said I'd go. And it struck me that she must want Mrs. Coney very
particularly, for this would make the fifth time I had gone on the same
errand within a week. On the morning following that rapping at the
window, Mrs. Coney had news that Mrs. West, her married daughter, was
ill, and she started at once by the rail to Worcester to visit her.

"I think I'll go and look for the fellow now," exclaimed Tod, rising
from his seat and making for the window. But Mrs. Todhetley rose too, as
one in mortal fright, and put herself in his way.

"Joseph," she said, "I have no authority over you; you know that I have
never attempted to exercise any since I came home to your father's
house; but I must ask you to respect my wishes now."

"What wishes?"

"That you will refrain from seeking this stranger: that you will not
speak to or accost him in any way, should you and he by chance meet. I
have good reasons for asking it." Tod stood stock-still, neither saying
Yes nor No; only biting his lips in the anger he strove to keep down.

"Oh, very well," said he, going back to his seat. "Of course, as you put
it in this light, I have no alternative. A night's delay cannot make
much difference, and my father will be home to-morrow to act for
himself."

"You must not mention it to your father, Joseph. You must keep it _from_
him."

"I shall tell him as soon as he comes home."

"Tell him what? What is it that you suspect? What would you tell him?"

Tod hesitated. He had spoken in random heat; and found, on
consideration, he was without a case. He could not complain to his
father of _her_: in spite of his hasty temper, he was honourable as the
day. Her apparent intimacy with the man would also tie his tongue as to
_him_, whomsoever he might be.

"You must be quite aware that it is not a pleasant thing, or a proper
thing, to have this mysterious individual encouraged here," he said,
looking at her.

"And you think I encourage him, Joseph?"

"Well, it seems that you--that you must know who he is. I saw you
talking with him one day in the Ravine," continued Tod, disdaining not
to be perfectly open, now it had come to an explanation. "Johnny was
with me. If he is a relative of yours, why, of course----"

"He is no relative of mine, Joseph." And Tod opened his eyes wide to
hear the denial. It was the view he had taken all along.

"Then why do you suffer him to annoy you?--and I am sure he does do it.
Let me deal with him. I'll soon ascertain what his business may be."

"But that is just what you must not do," she said, seeming to speak out
the truth in very helplessness, like a frightened child. "You must leave
him in my hands, Joseph: I shall be able, I dare say, to--to--get rid of
him shortly."

"_You_ know what he wants?"

"Yes, I am afraid I do. It is quite my affair; and you must take no more
notice of it: above all, you must not say anything to your father."

How much Tod was condemning her in his heart perhaps he would not have
cared to tell; but he could but be generous, even to his step-mother.

"I suppose I must understand that you are in some sort of trouble?"

"Indeed I am."

"If it is anything in which I can help you, you have only to ask me to
do it," he said. But his manner was lofty as he spoke, his voice had a
hard ring in it.

"Thank you very much, Joseph," was the meek, grateful answer. "If you
will only take no further notice, and say nothing to your father when he
comes home, it will be helping me sufficiently."

Tod strolled out; just as angry as he could be; and I ran over to the
farm. Jane Coney had received a letter from her mother by the afternoon
post, saying she might not be home for some days to come.

"Tell Mrs. Todhetley that I am sorry to have to send her bad news over
and over again," said Jane Coney, who was sitting in the best kitchen,
with her muslin sleeves turned up, and a big apron on, stripping fruit
for jam. The Coneys had brought up their girls sensibly, not to be
ashamed to make themselves thoroughly useful, in spite of their
education, and the fair fortune they would have. Mary was married; Jane
engaged to be. I sat on the table by her, eating away at the fruit.

"What is it Mrs. Todhetley wants with my mother, Johnny?"

"As if I knew!"

"I think it must be something urgent. When she came in, that morning,
only five minutes after mamma had driven off, she was so terribly
disappointed, saying she would give a great deal to have spoken to her
first. My sister is not quite so well again; that's why mamma is staying
longer."

"I'll tell her, Jane."

"By the way, Johnny, what's this they are saying--about some strange man
being seen here? A special constable, peeping after bad characters?"

"A special constable?"

Jane Coney laughed. "Or a police-officer in disguise. It is what one of
our maids told me."

"Oh," I answered, carelessly, for somehow I did not like the words; "you
must mean a man that is looking at the land; an engineer."

"Is that all?" cried Jane Coney. "How foolish people are!"

It was a sort of untruth, no doubt; but I should have told a worse in
the necessity. I did not like the aspect of things; and they puzzled my
brain unpleasantly all the way home.

Mrs. Todhetley was at work by the window when I got there. Tod had not
made his re-appearance; Hugh and Lena were in bed. She dropped her work
when I gave the message.

"Not for some days to come yet! Oh, Johnny!"

"But what do you want with her?"

"Well, I do want her. I want a friend just now, Johnny, that's the
truth; and I think Mrs. Coney would be one."

"Joe asked if he could help you; and you said 'No.' Can I?"

"Johnny, if you could, there's no one in the world I'd rather ask. But
you cannot."

"Why?"

"Because"--she smiled for a moment--"you are not old enough. If you
were--of age, say--why then I would."

I had hold of the window-frame, looking at her, and an idea struck me.
"Do you mean that I should be able then to command money?"

"Yes, that's it, Johnny."

"But, perhaps--if I were to write to Mr. Brandon----"

"Hush!" she exclaimed in a sort of fright. "You must not talk of this,
Johnny; you don't know the sad mischief you might do. Oh, if I can only
keep it from you all! Here comes Joseph," she added in a whisper; and
gathering up her work, went out of the room.

"Did I not make a sign to you to come after me?" began Tod, in one of
his tempers.

"But I had to go over to the Coneys'. I've only just got back again."

He looked into the room and saw that it was empty. "Where's madam gone?
To the Ravine after her friend?"

"She was here sewing not a minute ago."

"Johnny, she told a lie. Did you notice the sound of her voice when she
said the fellow was no relative of hers?"

"Not particularly."

"I did, then. At the moment the denial took me by surprise; but I
remembered the tone later. It had an untrue ring in it. Madam told a
lie, Johnny, as sure as that we are here. I'd lay my life he _is_ a
relative of hers, or a connection in some way. I don't think now it
is money he wants; if it were only that, she'd get it, and send him
packing. It's worse than that: disgrace, perhaps."

"What sort of disgrace can it be?"

"I don't know. But if something of the sort is not looming, never trust
me again. And here am I, with my hands tied, forbidden to unravel it.
Johnny, I feel just like a wild beast barred up in a cage."

Had he been a real wild beast he could not have given the window-frame a
much worse shake, as he passed through in his anger to the bench under
the mulberry-tree.

When you have to look far back to things, recollection sometimes gets
puzzled as to the order in which they happened. How it came about I am
by no means clear, but an uncomfortable feeling grew up in my mind about
Hugh. About both the children, in fact, but Hugh more than Lena. Mrs.
Todhetley seemed to dread Hugh's being abroad--and I'm sure I was not
mistaken in thinking it. I heard her order Hannah to keep the children
within view of the house, and not to allow Hugh to stray away from her.
Had it been winter weather I suppose she'd have kept them indoors
altogether; there could be no plea for it under the blue sky and the hot
summer sun.

The Squire came home; he had been staying some time with friends in
Gloucestershire; but Mrs. Coney did not come--although Mrs. Todhetley
kept sending me for news. Twice I saw her talking to the strange man;
who I believed made his abode in the Ravine. Tod watched, as he had
threatened to do; and would often appear with in-drawn lips. There was
active warfare between him and his step-mother: at least if you can say
that when both kept silence. As to the Squire, he observed nothing, and
knew nothing: and no one enlightened him. It seems a long time, I dare
say, when reading of this, as if it had extended over a month of
Sundays; but I don't think it lasted much more than a fortnight in all.

One evening, quite late, when the sun was setting, and the Squire was
smoking his pipe on the lawn, talking to me and Tod, Lena and her mother
came in at the gate. In spite of the red rays lighting up Mrs.
Todhetley's face, it struck me that I had never seen it look more
careworn. Lena put her arms on Tod's knee, and began telling about a
fright she had had: of a big toad that leaped out of the grass, and made
her scream and cry. She cried "because nobody was with her."

"Where was mamma?" asked Tod; but I am sure he spoke without any
ulterior thought.

"Mamma had gone to the zigzag stile to talk to the man. She told me to
wait for her."

"What man?" cried the Squire.

"Why, the man," said Lena logically. "He asks Hugh to go with him over
the sea to see the birds and the red coral."

If any one face ever turned whiter than another, Mrs. Todhetley's did
then. Tod looked at her, sternly, ungenerously; and her eyes fell. She
laid hold of Lena's hand, saying it was bed-time.

"What man is the child talking about?" the Squire asked her.

"She talks about so many people," rather faintly answered Mrs.
Todhetley. "Come, Lena dear; Hannah's waiting for you. Say good-night."

The Squire, quite unsuspicious, thought no more. He got up and walked
over to the beds to look at the flowers, holding his long churchwarden
pipe in his mouth. Tod put his back against the tree.

"It is getting complicated, Johnny."

"What is?"

"What is! Why, madam's drama. She is afraid of that hinted scheme of her
friend's--the carrying-off Master Hugh beyond the seas."

He spoke in satire. "Do you think so?" I returned.

"Upon my honour I do. She must be an idiot! I should like to give her a
good fright."

"Tod, I think she is frightened enough without our giving her one."

"I think she is. She must have caught up the idea from overhearing
Hannah's gossip with old Thomas. This afternoon Hugh was running through
the little gate with me; madam came flying over the lawn and begged me
not let him out of my hand, or else to leave him indoors. But for being
my father's wife, I should have asked her if her common-sense had gone
wool-gathering."

"I suppose it has, Tod. Fancy a kidnapper in these days! The curious
thing is, that she should fear anything of the sort."

"If she really does fear it. I tell you, Johnny, the performance is
growing complicated; somewhat puzzling. But I'll see it played out if I
live."

The week went on to Friday. But the afternoon was over, and evening set
in, before the shock fell upon us: _Hugh was missing_.

The Squire had been out in the gig, taking me; and it seems they had
supposed at home that Hugh was with us. The particulars of Hugh's
disappearance, and what had happened in the day, I will relate further
on.

The Squire thought nothing: he said Hugh must have got into Coney's
house or some other neighbour's house: and sat down to dinner, wondering
why so much to-do was made. Mrs. Todhetley looked scared to death; and
Tod tore about as if he were wild. The servants were sent here, the
outdoor men there: it was like a second edition of that day in
Warwickshire when we lost Lena: like it, only worse, more commotion.
Hannah boldly said to her mistress that the strange man must have
carried off the boy.

Hour after hour the search continued. With no result. Night came on,
with a bright moon to light it up. But it did not light up Hugh.

Mrs. Todhetley, a dark shawl over her head, and I dare say a darker fear
upon her heart, went out for the second or third time towards the
Ravine. I ran after her. We had nearly reached the stile at the zigzag,
when Tod came bounding over it.

"Has not the time for shielding this man gone by, think you?" he asked,
placing himself in Mrs. Todhetley's path, and speaking as coolly as he
was able for the agitation that shook him. And why Tod, with his known
carelessness, should be so moved, I could not fathom.

"Joseph, I do not suppose or think the man knows anything of Hugh; I
have my reasons for it," she answered, bearing on for the stile, and
leaning over it to look down into the dark Ravine.

"Will you give me permission to inquire that of himself?"

"You will not find the man. He is gone."

"Leave the finding him to me," persisted Tod. "Will you withdraw the
embargo you laid upon me?"

"No, no," she whispered, "I cannot do it."

The trees had an uncommonly damp feel in the night-air, and the
place altogether looked as weird as could be. I was away then in the
underwood; she looked down always into the Ravine and called Hugh's name
aloud. Nothing but an echo answered.

"It has appeared to me for several days that you have feared something
of this," Tod said, trying to get a full view of her face. "It might
have been better for--for all of us--if you had allowed me at first to
take the affair in hand."

"Perhaps I ought; perhaps I ought," she said, bursting into tears.
"Heaven knows, though, that I acted from a good motive. It was not to
screen myself that I've tried to keep the matter secret."

"Oh!" The sarcasm of Tod's short comment was like nothing I ever heard.
"To screen me, perhaps?" said he.

"Well, yes--in a measure, Joseph," she patiently answered. "I only
wished to spare you vexation. Oh, Joseph! if--if Hugh cannot be found,
and--and all has to come out--who he is and what he wants here--remember
that I wished nothing but to spare others pain."

Tod's eyes were blazing with angry, haughty light. Spare _him_! He
thought she was miserably equivocating; he had some such idea as that
she sought (in words) to make him a scape-goat for her relative's sins.
What he answered I hardly know; except that he civilly dared her to
speak.

"Do not spare _me_: I particularly request you will not," he scornfully
retorted. "Yourself as much as you will, but not me."

"I have done it for the best," she pleaded. "Joseph, I have done it all
for the best."

"Where is this man to be found? I have been looking for him these
several hours past, as I should think no man was ever looked for yet."

"I have said that I think he is not to be found. I think he is gone."

"Gone!" shouted Tod. "Gone!"

"I think he must be. I--I saw him just before dinner-time, here at this
very stile; I gave him something that I had to give, and I think he left
at once, to make the best of his way from the place."

"And Hugh?" asked Tod savagely.

"I did not know then that Hugh was missing. Oh, Joseph, I can't tell
what to think. When I said to him one day that he ought not to talk
nonsense to the children about corals and animals--in fact, should not
speak to them at all--he answered that if I did not get him the money he
wanted he'd take the boy off with him. I knew it was a jest; but I could
not help thinking of it when the days went on and on, and I had no money
to give him."

"_Of course_ he has taken the boy," said Tod, stamping his foot. And the
words sent Mrs. Todhetley into a tremor.

"Joseph! Do you think so?"

"Heaven help you, Mrs. Todhetley, for a--a simple woman! We may never
see Hugh again."

He caught up the word he had been going to say--fool. Mrs. Todhetley
clasped her hands together piteously, and the shawl slipped from her
shoulders.

"I think, madam, you must tell what you can," he resumed, scarcely
knowing which to bring uppermost, his anxiety for Hugh or his lofty,
scornful anger. "_Is_ the man a relative of yours?"

"No, not of mine. Oh, Joseph, please don't be angry with me! Not of
mine, but of yours."

"Of mine!" cried proud Tod. "Thank you, Mrs. Todhetley."

"His name is Arne," she whispered.

"What!" shouted Tod.

"Joseph, indeed it is. Alfred Arne."

Had Tod been shot by a cannon-ball, he could hardly have been more
completely struck into himself; doubled up, so to say. His mother had
been an Arne; and he well remembered to have heard of an ill-doing
mauvais sujet of a half-brother of hers, called Alfred, who brought
nothing but trouble and disgrace on all connected with him. There ensued
a silence, interrupted only by Mrs. Todhetley's tears. Tod was looking
white in the moonlight.

"So it seems it _is_ my affair!" he suddenly said; but though he drew up
his head, all his fierce spirit seemed to have gone out of him. "You can
have no objection to speak fully now."

And Mrs. Todhetley, partly because of her unresisting nature, partly in
her fear for Hugh, obeyed him.

"I had seen Mr. Arne once before," she began. "It was the year that I
first went home to Dyke Manor. He made his appearance there, not openly,
but just as he has made it here now. His object was to get money from
the Squire to go abroad with. And at length he did get it. But it put
your father very much out; made him ill, in fact; and I believe he took
a sort of vow, in his haste and vexation, to give Alfred Arne into
custody if he ever came within reach of him again. I think--I fear--he
always has something or other hanging over his head worse than debt; and
for that reason can never show himself by daylight without danger."

"Go on," said Tod, quite calmly.

"One morning recently I suddenly met him. He stepped right into my
path, here at this same spot, as I was about to descend the Ravine, and
asked if I knew him again. I was afraid I did. I was afraid he had come
on the same errand as before: and oh, Joseph, how thankful I felt that
you and your father were away! He told me a long and pitiful tale, and I
thought I ought to try and help him to the money he needed. He was
impatient for it, and the same evening, supposing no one was at home but
myself, he came to the dining-room window, wishing to ask if I had
already procured the money. Johnny heard him knock."

"It might have been better that we had been here," repeated Tod. "Better
that we should have dealt with him than you."

"Your father was so thankful that you were at school before, Joseph; so
thankful! He said he would not have you know anything about Alfred Arne
for the world. And so--I tried to keep it this time from both you and
him, and, but for this fear about Hugh, I should have done it."

Tod did not answer. He looked at her keenly in the twilight of the
summer's night, apparently waiting for more. She continued her
explanation; not enlarging upon things, suffering, rather, inferences
to be drawn. The following was its substance:--

Alfred Arne asked for fifty pounds. He had returned to England only a
few months before, had got into some fresh danger, and had to leave it
again, and to hide himself until he did so. The fifty pounds--to get him
off, he said, and start him afresh in the colonies--he demanded not as a
gift, but a matter of right: the Todhetleys, being his near relatives,
must help him. Mrs. Todhetley knew but of one person she could borrow
it from privately--Mrs. Coney--and _she_ had gone from home just as she
was about to be asked for it. Only this afternoon had Mrs. Todhetley
received the money from her and paid it to Alfred Arne.

"I would not have told you this, but for being obliged, Joseph," she
pleaded meekly, when the brief explanation was ended. "We can still keep
it from your father; better, perhaps, that you should know it than he:
you are young and he is not."

"A great deal better," assented Tod. "You have made yourself responsible
to Mrs. Coney for the fifty pounds?"

"Don't think of that, Joseph. She is in no hurry for repayment, and will
get it from me by degrees. I have a little trifle of my own, you know,
that I get half-yearly, and I can economize in my dress. I did so hope
to keep it from you as well as from your father."

I wondered if Tod saw all the patient, generous, self-sacrificing
spirit. I wondered if he was growing to think that he had been always on
the wrong tack in judging harshly of his stepmother. She turned away,
thinking perhaps that time was being lost. I said something about Hugh.

"Hugh is all right, Johnny; he'll be found now," Tod answered in a
dreamy tone, as he looked after her with a dreamy look. The next moment
he strode forward, and was up with Mrs. Todhetley.

"I beg your pardon for the past, mother; I beg it with shame and
contrition. Can you forgive me?"

"Oh, pray don't, dear Joseph! I have nothing to forgive," she answered,
bursting into fresh tears as she took his offered hand. And that was the
first time in all his life that Tod, prejudiced Tod, had allowed himself
to call her "mother."


II.

I never saw anything plainer in my life. It was not just opposite to
where I stood, but lower down towards the end of the Ravine. Amongst the
dark thick underwood of the rising bank it dodged about, just as if some
one who was walking carried it in his hand lifted up in front of him. A
round white light, exactly as the ghost's light was described to be. One
might have fancied it the light of a wax-candle, only that a candle
would flicker itself dim and bright by turns in the air, and this was
steady and did not.

If a ghost was carrying it, he must have been pacing backwards and
forwards; for the light confined itself to the range of a few yards.
Beginning at the environs of the black old yew-tree, it would come on
amidst the broom and shrubs to the group of alders, and then go back
again Timberdale way, sometimes lost to sight for a minute, as if hidden
behind a thicker mass of underwood, and then gleaming out afresh further
on in its path. Now up, now down; backwards and forwards; here, there,
everywhere; it was about as unaccountable a sight as any veritable ghost
ever displayed, or I, Johnny Ludlow, had chanced to come upon.

The early part of the night had been bright. It was the same night,
spoken of in the last chapter, when Hugh was being searched for. Up to
eleven o'clock the moon had shone radiantly. Since then a curious sort
of darkness had come creeping along the heavens, and now, close upon
twelve, it overshadowed the earth like a pall. A dark, black canopy,
which the slight wind, getting up, never stirred, though it sighed and
moaned with a weird unpleasant sound down the Ravine. I did not mind
the light myself; don't think I should much have minded the ghost: but
Luke Mackintosh, standing by me, did. Considering that he was a good
five-and-twenty years of age, and had led an out-of-door life, it may
sound queer to say it, but he seemed timid as a hare.

"I don't like it, Master Johnny," he whispered, as he grasped the fence
with an unsteady hand, and followed the light with his eyes. What with
the trees around us, and the pall overhead, it was dark enough, but I
could see his face, and knew it had turned white.

"I believe you are afraid, Luke!"

"Well, sir, so might you be if you knowed as much of that there light
as I do. It never comes but it bodes trouble."

"Who brings the light?"

"It's more than I can say, sir. They call it here the ghost's light.
And folks say, Master Johnny, that when it's seen, there's sure to be
some trouble in the air."

"I think we have trouble enough just now without the light, Luke; and
our trouble was with us before we saw that."

The Ravine lay beneath us, stretching out on either hand, weird,
lonesome, dreary, the bottom hidden in gloom. The towering banks,
whether we looked down the one we leaned over, or to the other opposite,
presented nothing to the eye but darkness: we knew the masses of trees,
bushes, underwood were there, but could not see them: and the spot
favoured by the restless light was too wild and steep to be safe for the
foot of man. Of course it was a curious speculation what it could be.

"Did you ever see the light before, Mackintosh?"

"Yes," he answered, "half-a-dozen times. Do you mind, Master Johnny, my
getting that there bad cut in the leg with my reaping-hook awhile agone?
Seven weeks I lay in Worcester Infirmary: they carried me there on a
mattress shoved down in the cart."

"I remember hearing of it. We were at Dyke Manor."

Before Luke went on, he turned his face to me and dropped his voice to
a deeper whisper.

"Master Ludlow, as true as us two be a-standing here, I saw the ghost's
light the very night afore I got the hurt. I was working for Mr. Coney
then, it was before I came into the Squire's service. Young Master
Tom, he came out of the kitchen with a letter when we was at our
seven-o'clock supper, and said I were to cut off to Timberdale with it
and to look sharp, or the letter-box 'ud be shut. So I had to do it,
sir, and I came through this here Ravine, a-whistling and a-holding my
head down, though I'd rather ha' went ten mile round. When I got out of
it on t'other side, on top of the zigzag, I chanced to look back over
the stile, and there I see the light. It were opposite then, on _this_
side, sir, and moving about in the same see-saw way it be now, for I
stood and watched it."

"I wonder you plucked up the courage to stand and watch it, Luke?"

"I were took aback, sir, all in a maze like: and then I started off full
pelt, as quick as my heels 'ud carry me. That was the very blessed night
afore I got the hurt. When the doctors was a-talking round me at the
infirmary, and I think they was arguing whether or not my leg must come
off, I telled 'em that I was afeared it wouldn't much matter neither
way, for I'd seen the ghost's light the past night and knowed my fate.
One of them, a young man he was, burst out laughing above my face as I
lay, and t'other next him, a grave gentleman with white hair, turned
round and hushed at him. Master Ludlow, it's all gospel true."

"But you got well, Luke."

"But I didn't think to," argued Luke. "And I see the light."

As he turned his face again, the old church clock at Timberdale struck
twelve. It seemed to come booming over the Ravine with quite a warning
sound, and Luke gave himself a shake. As for me, I could only wish one
thing--that Hugh was found.

Tod came up the zigzag path, a lantern in his hand; I whistled to let
him know I was near. He had been to look in the unused little shed-place
nearly at the other end of the Ravine; not for Hugh, but for the man,
Alfred Arne. Tod came up to us, and his face, as the lantern flashed
upon it, was whiter and graver than that of Luke Mackintosh.

"Did you see that, sir?" asked Luke.

"See what?" cried Tod, turning sharply. He thought it might be some
trace of Hugh.

"That there ghost light, sir. It's showing itself to-night."

Angry, perplexed, nearly out of his mind with remorse and fear, Tod gave
Luke a word of a sort, ordering him to be silent for an idiot, and put
the lantern down. He then saw the moving light, and let his eyes rest on
it in momentary curiosity.

"It's the ghost light, sir," repeated Luke, for the man seemed as if he
and all other interests were lost in that.

"The deuce take the ghost's light, and you with it," said Tod
passionately. "Is this a time to be staring at ghosts' lights? Get you
into Timberdale, Mackintosh, and see whether the police have news of the
child."

"Sir, I'd not go through the Ravine to-night," was Luke's answer. "No,
not though I knowed I was to be killed at to-morrow's dawn for
disobeying the order."

"Man, what are you afraid of?"

"Of that," said Luke, nodding at the light. "But I don't like the Ravine
in the night at no time."

"Why, that's nothing but a will-o'-the-wisp," returned Tod,
condescending to reason with him.

Luke shook his head. There was the light; and neither his faith in it
nor his fear could be shaken. Tod had his arms on the fence now, and was
staring at the light as fixedly as Luke had done.

"Johnny."

"What?"

"That light is carried by some one. It's being lifted about."

"How could any one carry it _there_?" I returned. "He'd pitch head over
heels down the Ravine. No fellow could get to the place, Tod, let alone
keep his footing. It's where the bushes are thickest."

Tod caught up the lantern. As its light flashed on his face, I could see
it working with new eagerness. He was taking up the notion that Hugh
might have fallen on that very spot, and that some one was waving a
light to attract attention. As to ghosts, Tod would have met an army of
them without the smallest fear.

He went back down the Ravine, and we heard him go crashing through the
underwood. Luke never spoke a word. Suddenly, long before Tod could get
to it, the light disappeared. We waited and watched, but it did not come
again.

"It have been like that always, Master Johnny," whispered Luke, taking
his arms off the fence. "Folks may look as long as they will at that
there light; but as soon as they go off, a-trying to get to see what it
is, it takes itself away. It will be seen no more to-night, sir."

He turned off across the meadow for the high-road, to go and do Tod's
bidding at Timberdale, walking at a sharp pace. Any amount of exertion
would have been welcome to Mackintosh, as an alternative to passing
through the Ravine.

It may be remembered that for some days we had been vaguely uneasy about
Hugh, and the uneasiness had penetrated to Mrs. Todhetley. Tod had made
private mockery of it to me, thinking she must be three parts a fool to
entertain any such fear. "I should like to give madam a fright," he said
to me one day--meaning that he would like to hide little Hugh for a
time. But I never supposed he would really do it. And it was only
to-night--hours and hours after Hugh disappeared, that Tod avowed to me
the part he had taken in the loss. To make it clear to the reader, we
must go back to the morning of this same day--Friday.

After breakfast I was shut up with my books, paying no attention to
anything that might be going on, inside the house or out of it. Old
Frost gave us a woeful lot to do in the holidays. The voices of the
children, playing at the swing, came wafting in through the open window;
but they died away to quietness as the morning went on. About twelve
o'clock Mrs. Todhetley looked in.

"Are the children here, Johnny?"

She saw they were not, and went away without waiting for an answer. Lena
ran up the passage, and I heard her say papa had taken Hugh out in the
pony-gig. The interruption served as an excuse for putting up the books
for the day, and I went out.

Of all young ragamuffins, the worst came running after me as I went
through the fold-yard gate. Master Hugh! Whether he had been in the
green pond again or over the house-roof, he was in a wonderful state;
his blue eyes not to be seen for mud, his straw-hat bent, his brown
holland blouse all tatters and slime, and the pretty fair curls that
Hannah was proud of and wasted her time over, a regular mass of tangle.

"Take me with you, Johnny!"

"I should think I would, like that! What have you been doing with
yourself?"

"Playing with the puppy. We fell down in the mud amongst the ducks.
Joe says I am to stop in the barn and hide myself. I am afraid to go
indoors."

"You'll catch it, and no mistake. Come, be off back again."

But he'd not go back, and kept running by my side under the high hedge.
When we came to the gate at the end of the field, I stood and ordered
him to go. He began to cry a little.

"Now, Hugh, you know you cannot go with me in that plight. Walk yourself
straight off to Hannah and get her to change the things before your
mamma sees you. There; you may have the biscuit: I don't much care for
it."

It was a big captain's biscuit that I had caught up in going through the
dining-room. He took that readily enough, the young cormorant, but he
wouldn't stir any the more for it: and I might have had the small object
with me till now, but for the appearance of the Squire's gig in the
lane. The moment Hugh caught sight of his papa, he turned tail and
scampered away like a young wild animal. Remembering Mrs. Todhetley's
foolish fear, I mounted the gate and watched him turn safely in at the
other.

"What are you looking at, Johnny?" asked the Squire, as he drove
leisurely up.

"At Hugh, sir. I've sent him indoors."

"I'm going over to Massock's, Johnny, about the bricks for that cottage.
You can get up, if you like to come with me."

I got into the gig at once, and we drove to South Crabb, to Massock's
place. He was not to be seen; his people thought he had gone out for the
day. Upon that, the Squire went on to see old Cartwright, and they made
us stop there and put up the pony. When we reached home it was past
dinner-time. Mrs. Todhetley came running out.

"Couldn't get here before: the Cartwrights kept us," called out the
Squire. "We are going to catch it, Johnny," he whispered to me, with a
laugh: "we've let the dinner spoil."

But it was not the dinner. "Where's Hugh?" asked Mrs. Todhetley.

"I've not seen Hugh," said the Squire, flinging the reins to Luke
Mackintosh, who had come up. Luke did all kinds of odd jobs about the
place, and sometimes helped the groom.

"But you took Hugh out with you," she said.

"Not I," answered the Squire.

Mrs. Todhetley's face turned white. She looked from one to the other of
us in a helpless kind of manner. "Lena said you did," she returned, and
her voice seemed to fear its own sound. The Squire talking with
Mackintosh about the pony, noticed nothing particular.

"Lena did? Oh, ay, I remember. I let Hugh get up at the door and drove
him round to the fold-yard gate. I dropped him there."

He went in as he spoke: Mrs. Todhetley seemed undecided whether to
follow him. Tod had his back against the door-post, listening.

"What are you alarmed at?" he asked her, not even attempting to suppress
his mocking tone.

"Oh, Johnny!" she said, "have _you_ not seen him?"

"Yes; and a fine pickle he was in," I answered, telling her about it.
"I dare say Hannah has put him to bed for punishment."

"But Hannah has not," said Mrs. Todhetley. "She came down at four
o'clock to inquire if he had come in."

However, thinking that it might possibly turn out to be so, she ran in
to ascertain. Tod put his hand on my shoulder, and walked me further
off.

"Johnny, did Hugh really not go with you?"

"Why, of course he did not. Should I deny it if he did?"

"Where the dickens can the young idiot have got to?" mused Tod.
"Jeffries vowed he saw him go off with you down the field, Johnny."

"But I sent him back. I watched him in at the fold-yard gate. You don't
suppose I could take him further in that pickle!"

Tod laughed a little at the remembrance. Mrs. Todhetley returned, saying
Hugh was not to be found anywhere. She looked ready to die. Tod was
inwardly enjoying her fright beyond everything: it was better than a
play to him. His particularly easy aspect struck her.

"Oh, Joseph!" she implored, "if you know where he is, pray tell me."

"How should I know?" returned Tod. "I protest on my honour I have not
set eyes on him since before luncheon to-day."

"_Do_ you know where he is, Tod?" I asked him, as she turned indoors.

"No; but I can guess. He's not far off. And I really did think he was
with you, Johnny. I suppose I must go and bring him in, now; but I'd
give every individual thing my pockets contain if madam had had a few
hours' fright of it, instead of a few minutes'."

The dinner-bell was ringing, but Tod went off in an opposite direction.
And I must explain here what he knew of it, though he did not tell me
then. Walking through the fold-yard that morning, he had come upon
Master Hugh, just emerging from the bed of green mud, crying his eyes
out, and a piteous object. Hannah had promised Hugh that the next time
he got into this state she would carry him to the Squire. Hugh knew
she'd be sure to keep her word, and that the upshot would probably be
a whipping. Tod, after gratifying his eyes with the choice spectacle,
and listening to the fears of the whipping, calmly assured the young
gentleman that he was "in for it," at which Hugh only howled the more.
All in a moment it occurred to Tod to make use of this opportunity to
frighten Mrs. Todhetley. He took Hugh off to the barn, and told him
that if he'd hide himself there until the evening, he'd not only get him
off his whipping, but give him all sorts of good things besides. Hugh
was willing to promise, but said he wanted his dinner, upon which Tod
went and brought him a plate of bread-and-butter, telling Molly, who
cut it, that it was for himself. Tod left him devouring it in the dark
corner behind the waggon, particularly impressing upon him the fact
that he was to keep close and make no sign if his mamma, or Hannah, or
anybody else, came to look for him. One of the men, Jeffries, was at
work in the barn, and Tod, so to say, took him into confidence, ordering
him to know nothing if Master Hugh were inquired for. As Hannah and
Jeffries were at daggers drawn, and the man supposed this hiding was to
spite her, he entered into it with interest.

There were two barns at Crabb Cot. One some way down the road in front
of the house was the store barn, and you've heard of it before in
connection with something seen by Maria Lease. It was called the yellow
barn from the colour of its outer walls. The other, of red brick, was
right at the back of the fold-yard, and it was in this last that Tod
left Hugh, all safe and secure, as he thought, until told he might come
out again.

But now, when Tod went into the dining-room to luncheon at half-past
twelve--we country people breakfast early--at which meal he expected the
hue and cry after Hugh to set in, for it was the children's dinner,
he found there was a hitch in the programme. Mrs. Todhetley appeared
perfectly easy on the score of Hugh's absence, and presently casually
mentioned that he had gone out with his papa in the pony-gig. Tod's
lips parted to say that Hugh was not in the pony-gig, but in a state
of pickle instead. Prudence caused him to close them again. Hannah,
standing behind Lena's chair, openly gave thanks that the child was got
rid of for a bit, and said he was "getting a'most beyond her." Tod bit
his lips with vexation: the gilt was taken off the gingerbread. He went
to the barn again presently, and then found that Hugh had left it.
Jeffries said he saw him going towards the lane with Master Ludlow, and
supposed that the little lad had taken the opportunity to slip out of
the barn when he (Jeffries) went to dinner, at twelve o'clock. And thus
the whole afternoon had gone peaceably and unsuspiciously on; Mrs.
Todhetley and Hannah supposing Hugh was with the Squire, Tod supposing
he must be somewhere with me.

And when we both appeared at home without him, Tod took it for granted
that Hugh had gone back to his hiding-place in the barn, and a qualm of
conscience shot through him for leaving the lad there so many hours
unlooked after. He rushed off to it at once, while the dinner-bell was
ringing. But when he got there, Jeffries declared Hugh had not been back
to it at all. Tod, in his hot way, retorted on Jeffries for saying so;
but the man persisted that he could not be mistaken, as he had never
been away from the barn since coming back from dinner.

And then arose the commotion. Tod came back with a stern face, almost as
anxious as Mrs. Todhetley's. Hugh had not been seen, so far as could be
ascertained, since I watched him in at the fold-yard gate soon after
twelve. That was nearly seven hours ago. Tod felt himself responsible
for the loss, and sent the men to look about. But the worst he thought
then was, that the boy, whose fears of showing himself in his state of
dilapidation Tod himself had mischievously augmented, had lain down
somewhere or other and dropped asleep.

It had gone on, and on, and on, until late at night, and then had
occurred that explanation between Tod and his step-mother told of in the
other paper. Tod was all impulse, and pride, and heat, and passion; but
his heart was made of sterling gold, just like the Squire's. Holding
himself aloof from her in haughty condemnation, in the matter of the
mysterious stranger, to find now that the stranger was a man called
Alfred Arne, _his_ relative, and that Mrs. Todhetley had been generously
taking the trouble upon herself for the sake of sparing him and his
father pain, completely turned Tod and his pride over.

He had grown desperately frightened as the hours went on. The moon-lit
night had become dark, as I've already said, and the men could not
pursue their search to much effect. Tod did not cease his. He got a
lantern, and went rushing about as if he were crazy. You saw him come up
with it from the Ravine, and now he had gone back on a wild-goose chase
after the ghost light. Where was Hugh? Where could he be? It was not
likely Alfred Arne had taken him, because he had that afternoon got from
Mrs. Todhetley the fifty pounds he worried for, and she thought he had
gone finally off with it. It stood to reason that the child would be
an encumbrance to him. On the other hand, Tod's theory, that Hugh had
dropped asleep somewhere, seemed, as the hours crept on, less and less
likely to hold water, for he would have wakened up and come home long
ago. As to the Ravine, in spite of Tod's suspicions that he might be
there, I was sure the little fellow would not have ventured into it.

I stood on, in the dark night, waiting for Tod to come back again. It
felt awfully desolate now Luke Mackintosh had gone. The ghost light
did not show again. I rather wished it would, for company. He came at
last--Tod, not the ghost. I had heard him shouting, and nothing answered
but the echoes. A piece of his coat was torn, and some brambles were
sticking to him, and the lantern was broken; what dangerous places he
had pushed himself into could never be told.

"I wonder you've come out with whole limbs, Tod."

"Hold your peace, Johnny," was all the retort I got; and his voice rose
nearly to a shout in its desperate sorrow.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Morning came, but no news with it, no Hugh. Tod had been about all
night. With daylight, the fields, and all other seemingly possible
places, were searched. Tom Coney went knocking at every house in North
and South Crabb, and burst into cottages, and turned over, so to say,
all the dwellings in that savoury locality, Crabb Lane, but with no
result. The Squire was getting anxious; but none of us had ventured to
tell him of our especial cause for anxiety, or to speak of Alfred Arne.

It appeared nearly certain now, to us, that he had gone with Alfred
Arne, and, after a private consultation with Mrs. Todhetley, Tod and I
set out in search of the man. She still wished to spare the knowledge of
his visit to the Squire, if possible.

We had not far to go. Mrs. Todhetley's fears went ranging abroad to
London, or Liverpool, or the Coral Islands beyond the sea, of which Arne
had talked to Hugh: but Arne was found at Timberdale. In an obscure
lodging in the further outskirts of the place, the landlord of which, a
man named Cookum, was a bad character, and very shy of the police, Arne
was found. We might have searched for him to the month's end, but for
Luke Mackintosh. When Luke arrived at Timberdale in the middle of the
night, ordered there by Tod to make inquiries at the police-station, he
saw a tipsy man slink into Cookum's house, and recognized him for the
one who had recently been exciting speculation at home. Luke happened to
mention this to Tod, not connecting Hugh with it at all, simply as a bit
of gossip: of course it was not known who Arne was, or his name, or what
he had been waiting for.

We had a fight to get in. Cookum came leaping down the crazy stairs, and
put himself in our way in the passage, swearing we should not go on. Tod
lifted his strong arm.

"I mean to go on, Cookum," he said, in a slow, quiet voice that had
determination in every tone of it. "I have come to see a man named Arne.
I don't want to do him any ill, or you either; but, see him, I will. If
you do not move out of my way I'll knock you down."

Cookum stood his ground. He was short, slight, and sickly, with a puffy
face and red hair; a very reed beside Tod.

"There ain't no man here of that name. There ain't no man here at all."

"Very well. Then you can't object to letting me see that there is not."

"I swear that you shan't see, master. There!"

Tod flung him aside. Cookum, something like an eel, slipped under Tod's
arm, and was in front of him again.

"I don't care to damage you, Cookum, as you must see I could do, and
force my way in over your disabled body; you look too weak for it. But
I'll either go in _so_, or the police shall clear an entrance for me."

The mention of the police scared the man; I saw it in his face. Tod kept
pushing on and the man backing, just a little.

"I won't have no police here. What is it you want?"

"I have told you once. A man named Arne."

"I swear then that I never knowed a man o' that name; let alone having
him in my place."

And he spoke with such passionate fervour that it struck me Arne did not
go by his own name: which was more than probable. They were past the
stairs now, and Cookum did not seem to care to guard them. The nasty
passage, long and narrow, had a door at the end. Tod thought that must
be the fortress.

"You are a great fool, Cookum. I've told you that I mean no harm to you
or to any one in the place; so to make this fuss is needless. You may
have a band of felons concealed here, or a cart-load of stolen goods;
they are all safe for me. But if you force me to bring in the police it
might be a different matter."

Perhaps the argument told on the man; perhaps the tone of reason it was
spoken in; but he certainly seemed to hesitate.

"You can't prove that to me, sir: not that there's any felons or things
in here. Show me that you don't mean harm, and you shall go on."

"Have you a stolen child here?"

Cookum's mouth opened with genuine surprise. "A stolen child!"

"We have lost a little boy. I have reason to think that a man who was
seen to enter this passage in the middle of the night knows something of
him, and I have come to ask and see. Now you know all. Let me go on."

The relief on the man's face was great. "Honour bright, sir."

"Don't stand quibbling, man," roared Tod passionately. "YES!"

"I've got but one man in all the place. He have no boy with him, he
haven't."

"But he may know something of one. What's his name?"

"All the name he've given me is Jack."

"I dare say it's the same. Come! you are wasting time."

But Cookum, doubtful still, never moved. They were close to the door
now, and he had his back against it. Tod turned his head.

"Go for the two policemen, Johnny. They are both in readiness, Cookum.
I looked in at the station as I came by, to say I might want them."

Before I could get out, Cookum howled out to me _not_ to go, as one in
mortal fear. He took a latch-key from his pocket, and put it into the
latch of the door, which had no other fastening outside, not even a
handle. "You can open it yourself," said he to Tod, and slipped away.

It might have been a sort of kitchen but that it looked more like a
den, with nothing to light it but a dirty sky-light above. The floor
was of red brick; a tea-kettle boiled on the fire; there was a smell
of coffee. Alfred Arne stood on the defensive against the opposite
wall, a life-preserver in his hand, and his thin hair on end with
fright.

"I am here on a peaceable errand, if you will allow it to be so," said
Tod, shutting us in. "Is your name Arne?"

Arne dropped the life-preserver into the breast-pocket of his coat, and
came forward with something of a gentleman's courtesy.

"Yes, my name is Arne, Joseph Todhetley. And your mother--as I make no
doubt you know--was a very near relative of mine. If you damage me, you
will bring her name unpleasantly before the public, as well as your own
and your father's."

That he thought our errand was to demand back the fifty pounds, there
could be no doubt: perhaps to hand him into custody if he refused to
give it up.

"I have not come to damage you in any way," said Tod in answer. "Where's
Hugh?"

Arne looked as surprised as the other man had. "Hugh!"

"Yes, Hugh: my little brother. Where is he?"

"How can I tell?"

Tod glanced round the place; there was not any nook or corner capable
of affording concealment. Arne gazed at him. He stood on that side the
dirty deal table, we on this.

"We have lost Hugh since mid-day yesterday. Do you know anything of
him?"

"Certainly _not_," was the emphatic answer, and I at least saw that it
was a true one. "Is it to ask that, that you have come here?"

"For that, and nothing else. We have been up all night searching for
him."

"But why do you come after him here? I am not likely to know where he
is."

"I think you are likely."

"Why?"

"You have been talking to the boy about carrying him off with you to see
coral islands. You hinted, I believe, to Mrs. Todhetley that you might
really take him, if your demands were not complied with."

Arne slightly laughed. "I talked to the boy about the Coral Islands
because it pleased him. As to Mrs. Todhetley, if she has the sense of a
goose, she must have known I meant nothing. Take off a child with me!
Why, if he were made a present to me, I should only drop him at his own
door at Crabb Cot, as they drop the foundlings at the gate of the Maison
Dieu in Paris. Joseph Todhetley, I _could not_ be encumbered with a
child: the life of shifts and concealment I have to lead would debar
it."

I think Tod saw he was in earnest. But he stood in indecision: this
dashed out his great hope.

"I should have been away from here last night, but that I got a drop too
much and must wait till dark again," resumed Arne. "The last time I saw
Hugh was on Thursday afternoon. He was in the meadow with _you_."

"I did not see you," remarked Tod.

"I saw you, though. And that is the last time I saw him. Don't you
believe me? You may. I like the little lad, and would find him for you
if I could, rather than help to lose him. I'd say take my honour upon
this, Joseph Todhetley, only you might retort that it has not been worth
anything this many a year."

"And with justice," said Tod, boldly.

"True. The world has been against me and I against the world. But it has
not come yet with me to stealing children. With the loan of the money
now safe in my pocket, I shall make a fresh start in life. A precious
long time your step-mother kept me waiting for it."

"She did her best. You ought not to have applied to her at all."

"I know that: it should have been to the other side of the house. She
prevented me: wanting, she said, to spare you and your father."

"The knowledge of the disgrace. Yes."

"There's no need to have recourse to hard names, Joseph Todhetley. What
I am, I am, but you have not much cause to grumble, for I don't trouble
you often. As many thousand miles away as the seas can put between me
and England, I'm going now: and it's nearly as many chances to one
against your ever seeing me again."

Tod turned to depart: the intensely haughty look his face wore at odd
moments had been upon it throughout the interview. Had he been a woman
he might have stood with his skirts picked up, as if to save them
contamination from some kind of reptile. He stayed for a final word.

"Then I may take your answer in good faith--that you know nothing of
Hugh?"

"Take it, or not, as you please. If I knew that I was going to stand
next minute in the presence of Heaven, I could not give it more
truthfully. For the child's own sake, I hope he will be found. Why
don't you ask the man who owns the rooms?--he can tell you I have had
no boy here. If you choose to watch me away to-night, do so; you'll
see I go alone. A child with me! I might about as well give myself up
to the law at once, for I shouldn't long remain out of its clutches,
Joseph Todhetley."

"Good-morning," said Tod shortly. I echoed the words, and we were
civilly answered. As we went out, Arne shut the door behind us. In the
middle of the passage stood Cookum.

"Have you found he was who you wanted, sir?"

"Yes," answered Tod, not vouchsafing to explain. "Another time when I
say I do not wish to harm you, perhaps you'll take my word."

Mrs. Todhetley, pale and anxious, was standing under the mulberry-tree
when we got back. She came across the grass.

"Any news?" cried Tod. As if the sight of her was not enough, that he
need have asked!

"No, no, Joseph. Did you see him?"

"Yes, he had not left. He knows nothing of Hugh."

"I had no hope that he did," moaned poor Mrs. Todhetley. "All he wanted
was the money."

We turned into the dining-room by the glass-doors, and it seemed to
strike out a gloomy chill. On the wall near the window, there was a
chalk drawing of Hugh in colours, hung up by a bit of common string. It
was only a rough sketch that Jane Coney had done half in sport; but it
was like him, especially in the blue eyes and the pretty light hair.

"Where's my father?" asked Tod.

"Gone riding over to the brick-fields again," she answered: "he cannot
get it out of his mind that Hugh must be there. Joseph, as Mr. Arne
has nothing to do with the loss, we can still spare your father the
knowledge that he has been here. Spare it, I mean, for good."

"Yes. Thank you."

Hugh was uncommonly fond of old Massock's brick-fields; he would go
there on any occasion that offered, had once or twice strayed there a
truant; sending Hannah, for the time being, into a state of mortal
fright. The Squire's opinion was that Hugh must have decamped there some
time in the course of the Friday afternoon, perhaps followed the gig;
and was staying there, afraid to come home.

"He might have hung on to the tail of the gig itself, and I and Johnny
never have seen him, the 'cute Turk," argued the Squire.

Which I knew was just as likely as that he had, unseen, hung on to the
moon. In the state he had brought his clothes to, he wouldn't have gone
to the brick-fields at all. The Squire did not seem so uneasy as he
might have been. Hugh would be sure to turn up, he said, and should get
the soundest whipping any young rascal ever had.

But he came riding back from the brick-fields as before--without him.
Tod, awfully impatient, met him in the road by the yellow barn. The
Squire got off his horse there, for Luke Mackintosh was at hand to take
it.

"Father, I cannot think of any other place he can have got to: we have
searched everywhere. Can you?"

"Not I, Joe. Don't be down-hearted. He'll turn up; he'll turn up.
Halloa!" broke off the Squire as an idea struck him, "has this barn been
searched?"

"He can't be in there, sir; it's just a moral impossibility that he
could be," spoke up Mackintosh. "The place was empty, which I can be
upon my oath, when I locked it up yesterday afternoon, after getting
some corn out; and the key have never been out o' my trousers' pocket
since. Mr. Joseph, he was inside with me at the time, and knows it."

Tod nodded assent, and the Squire walked away. As there was no other
accessible entrance to the front barn, and the windows were ever so
many yards from the ground, they felt that it must be, as the man said,
a "moral impossibility."

The day went on, it was Saturday, remember, and the miserable hours went
on, and there came no trace of the child. The Ravine was again searched
thoroughly: that is, as thoroughly as its overgrown state permitted. It
was like waste of time; for Hugh would not have hidden himself in it;
and if he had fallen over the fence he would have been found before from
the traces that must have been left in the bushes. The searchers would
come in, one after another, now a farm-servant, now one of the police,
bringing no news, except of defeat, but hoping some one else had brought
it. Every time that Tod looked at the poor mild face of Mrs. Todhetley,
always meek and patient, striving ever to hide the anguish that each
fresh disappointment brought, I know he felt ready to hang himself. It
was getting dusk when Maria Lease came up with a piece of straw hat that
she had found in the withy walk. But both Mrs. Todhetley and Hannah,
upon looking at it, decided that the straw was of finer grain than
Hugh's.

That afternoon they dragged the pond, but there was nothing found in it.
We could get no traces anywhere. No one had seen him, no one heard of
him. From the moment when I had watched him into the fold-yard gate, it
seemed that he had altogether vanished from above ground. Since then all
scent of him was missing. It was very strange: just as though the boy
had been spirited away.

Sunday morning rose. As lovely a Sunday as ever this world saw, but all
sad for us. Tod had flung himself back in the pater's easy-chair, pretty
near done over. Two nights, and he had not been to bed. In spite of his
faith in Alfred Arne's denial, he had chosen to watch him away in the
night from Timberdale; and he saw the man steal off in the darkness on
foot and alone. The incessant hunting about was bringing its reaction on
Tod, and the fatigue of body and mind began to show itself. But as to
giving in, he'd never do that, and would be as likely as not to walk and
worry himself into a fever.

The day was warm and beautiful; the glass-doors stood open to the sweet
summer air. Light fleecy clouds floated over the blue sky, the sun shone
on the green grass of the lawn and sparkled amidst the leaves of the
great mulberry-tree. Butterflies flitted past in pairs, chasing each
other; bees sent forth their hum as they sipped the honey-dew from the
flowers; the birds sang their love-songs on the boughs: all seemed
happiness outside, as if to mock our care within.

Tod lay back with his eyes closed: I sat on the arm of the old red sofa.
The bells of North Crabb Church rang out for morning service. It was
rather a cracked old peal, but on great occasions the ringers assembled
and did their best. The Bishop of Worcester was coming over to-day to
preach a charity sermon: and North Crabb never had anything greater than
that. Tod opened his eyes and listened in silence.

"Tod, do you know what it puts me in mind of?"

"Don't bother. It's because of the bishop, I suppose."

"I don't mean the bells. It's like the old fable, told of in 'The
Mistletoe Bough,' enacted in real life. If there were any deep chest
about the premises----"

"Hold your peace, Johnny!--unless you want to drive me mad. If we come
upon the child like _that_, I'll--I'll----"

I think he was going to say shoot himself, or something of that sort,
for he was given to random speech when put to it. But at that moment
Lena ran in dressed for church, in her white frock and straw hat with
blue ribbons. She threw her hands on Tod's knee and burst out crying.

"Joe, I don't want to go to church; I want Hugh."

Quite a spasm of pain shot across his face, but he was very tender with
her. In all my life I had never seen Tod so gentle as he had been at
moments during the last two days.

"Don't cry, pretty one," he said, pushing the fair curls from her face.
"Go to church like a good little girl; perhaps we shall have found him
by the time you come home."

"Hannah says he's lying dead somewhere."

"Hannah's nothing but a wicked woman," savagely answered Tod. "Don't you
mind her."

But Lena would not be pacified, and kept on sobbing and crying, "I want
Hugh; I want Hugh."

Mrs. Todhetley, who had come in then, drew her away and sat down with
the child on her knee, talking to her in low, soothing tones.

"Lena, dear, you know I wish you to go with Hannah to church this
morning. And you will put papa's money into the plate. See: it is a
golden sovereign. Hannah must carry it, and you shall put it in."

"Oh, mamma! will Hugh never come home again? Will he die?"

"Hush, Lena," she said, as Tod bit his lip and gave his hair a dash
backwards. "Shall I tell you something that sounds like a pretty story?"

Lena was always ready for a story, pretty or ugly, and her blue eyes
were lifted to her mother's brightly through the tears. At that moment
she looked wonderfully like the portrait on the wall.

"Just now, dear, I was in my room upstairs, feeling very, very unhappy;
I'm not sure but I was sobbing nearly as much as you were just now. 'He
will never come back,' I said to myself; 'he is lost to us for ever.'
At that moment those sweet bells broke out, calling people to Heaven's
service, and I don't know why, Lena, but they seemed to whisper a great
comfort to me. They seemed to say that God was over us all, and saw our
trouble, and would heal it in His good time."

Lena stared a little, digesting what she could of the words. The tears
were nowhere.

"Will He send Hugh back?"

"I can't tell, darling. He can take care of Hugh, and bless him, and
keep him, wherever he may be, and I know He _will_. If He should have
taken him to heaven above the blue sky--oh then, Hugh must be very
happy. He will be with the angels. He will see Jesus face to face; and
you know how _He_ loved little children. The bells seemed to say all
this to me as I listened to them, Lena."

Lena went off contented: we saw her skipping along by Hannah's side,
who had on a new purple gown and staring red and green trimmings to her
bonnet. Children are as changeable as a chameleon, sobbing one minute,
laughing the next. Tod was standing now with his back to the window, and
Mrs. Todhetley sat by the table, her long thin fingers supporting her
cheek; very meek, very, very patient. Tod was thinking so as he glanced
at her.

"How you must hate me for this!" he said.

"Oh, Joseph! Hate you?"

"The thing is all my fault. A great deal has been my fault for a long
while; all the unpleasantness and the misunderstanding."

She got up and took his hand timidly, as if she feared he might think
it too great a liberty. "If you can only understand me for the future,
Joseph; understand how I wish and try to make things pleasant to you, I
shall be fully repaid: to you most especially in all the house, after
your father. I have ever striven and prayed for it."

He answered nothing for the moment; his face was working a little, and
he gave her fingers a grip that must have caused pain.

"If the worst comes of this, and Hugh never is amongst us again, I will
go over the seas in the wake of the villain Arne," he said in a low,
firm tone, "and spare you the sight of me."

Tears began to trickle down her face. "Joseph, my dear--if you will let
me call you so--this shall draw us near to each other, as we never might
have been drawn without it. You shall not hear a word of reproach from
us, or any word but love; there shall never be a thought of reproach in
my heart. I have had a great deal of sorrow in my life, Joseph, and have
learnt patiently to bear, leaving all things to Heaven."

"And if Hugh is dead?"

"What I said to Lena, I meant," she softly whispered. "If God has taken
him he is with the angels, far happier than he could be in this world of
care, though his lot were of the brightest."

The tears were running down her cheeks as she went out of the room. Tod
stood still as a stone.

"She is made of gold," I whispered.

"No, Johnny. Of something better."

The sound of the bells died away. None of us went to church; in the
present excitement it would have been a farce. The Squire had gone
riding about the roads, sending his groom the opposite way. He
telegraphed to the police at Worcester; saying, in the message, that
these country officers were no better than dummies; and openly lamented
at home that it had not happened at Dyke Manor, within the range of old
Jones the constable.

Tod disappeared with the last sound of the bells. Just as the pater's
head was full of the brick-fields, his was of the Ravine; that he had
gone off to beat it again I was sure. In a trouble such as this you want
incessantly to be up and doing. Lena and Hannah came back from church,
the child calling for Hugh: she wanted to tell him about the gentleman
who had preached in big white sleeves and pretty frills on his wrists.

Two o'clock was the Sunday dinner-hour. Tod came in when it was
striking. He looked dead-beat as he sat down to carve in his father's
place. The sirloin of beef was as good as usual, but only Lena seemed to
think so. The little gobbler ate two servings, and a heap of raspberry
pie and cream.

How it happened, I don't know. I was just as anxious as any of them,
and yet, in sitting under the mulberry-tree, I fell fast asleep, never
waking till five. Mrs. Todhetley, always finding excuses for us, said it
was worry and want of proper rest. She was sitting close to the window,
her head leaning against it. The Squire had not come home. Tod was
somewhere about, she did not know where.

I found him in the yard. Luke Mackintosh was harnessing the pony to
the gig, Tod helping him in a state of excitement. Some man had come in
with a tale that a tribe of gipsies was discovered, encamped beyond the
brick-fields, who seemed to have been there for a week past. Tod jumped
to the conclusion that Hugh was concealed with them, and was about to go
off in search.

"Will you come with me, Johnny? Luke must remain in case the Squire
rides in."

"Of course I will. I'll run and tell Mrs. Todhetley."

"Stay where you are, you stupid muff. To excite her hopes, in the
uncertainty, would be cruel. Get up."

Tod need not have talked about excited hopes. He was just three parts
mad. Fancy his great strong hands shaking as he took the reins! The pony
dashed off in a fright with the cut he gave it, and brought us cleverly
against the post of the gate, breaking the near shaft. Over _that_, but
for the delay, Tod would have been cool as an orange.

"The phaeton now, single horse," he called out to Mackintosh.

"Yes, sir. Bob, or Blister?"

Tod stamped his foot in a passion. "As if it mattered! Blister; he is
the more fiery of the two."

"I must get the harness," said Mackintosh. "It is in the yellow barn."

Mackintosh went round on the run to gain the front barn; the harness,
least used, was kept there, hung on the walls. Tod unharnessed the pony,
left me to lead him to the stable, and went after the man. In his state
of impatience and his strength, he could have done the work of ten men.
He met Mackintosh coming out of the barn, without the harness, but with
a white face. Since he saw the ghost's light on Friday night the man had
been scared at shadows.

"There's sum'at in there, master," said he, his teeth chattering.

"What?" roared Tod, in desperate anger.

"There _is_, master. It's like a faint tapping."

Tod dashed in, controlling his hands, lest they might take French leave
and strike Luke for a coward. He was seeking the proper set of harness,
when a knocking, faint and irregular, smote his ear. Tod turned to look,
and thought it came from the staircase-door. He went forward and opened
it.

Lying at the foot of the stairs was Hugh. Hugh! Low, and weak, and
faint, there he lay, his blue eyes only half opened, and his pretty
curls mingling with the dust.

"Hugh! is it you, my darling?"

Tod's gasp was like a great cry. Hugh put up his little feeble hand, and
a smile parted his lips.

"Yes, it's me, Joe."

The riddle is easily solved. When sent back by me, Hugh saw Hannah in
the fold-yard; she was, in point of fact, looking after him. In his
fear, he stole round to hide in the shrubbery, and thence got to the
front of the house, and ran away down the road. Seeing the front
barn-door open, for it was when Luke Mackintosh was getting the corn,
Hugh slipped in and hid behind the door. Luke went out with the first
lot of corn, and the senseless child, hearing Tod's voice outside, got
into the place leading to the stairs, and shut the door. Luke, talking
to Tod, who had stepped inside the barn, saw the door was shut and
slipped the big outside bolt, _never remembering that it was not he who
had shut it_. Poor little Hugh, when their voices had died away, ran
upstairs to get to the upper granary, and found its door fastened.
And there the child was shut up beyond reach of call and hearing. The
skylight in the roof, miles, as it seemed, above him, had its ventilator
open. He had called and called; but his voice must have been lost amidst
the space of the barn. It was too weak to disturb a rat now.

Tod took him up in his arms, tenderly as if he had been a new-born baby
that he was hushing to the rest of death.

"Were you frightened, child?"

"I was till I heard the church-bells," whispered Hugh. "I don't know how
long it was--oh, a great while--and I had ate the biscuit Johnny gave me
and been asleep. I was not frightened then, Joe; I thought they'd come
to me when church was over."

I met the procession. What the dirty object might be in Tod's arms was
quite a mystery at first. Tod's eyes were dropping tears upon it, and
his breath seemed laboured. Luke brought up the rear a few yards behind,
looking as if he'd never find his senses again.

"Oh, Tod! will he get over it?"

"Yes. Please God."

"Is he injured?"

"No, no. Get out of my way, Johnny. Go to the mother now, if you like.
Tell her he has only been shut up in the barn and I'm coming in with
him. The dirt's nothing: it was on him before."

Just as meek and gentle she stood as ever, the tears rolling down her
face, and a quiet joy in it. Tod brought him in, laying him across her
knee as she sat on the sofa.

"There," he said. "He'll be all right when he has been washed and had
something to eat."

"God bless you, Joseph!" she whispered.

Tod could say no more. He bent to kiss Hugh; lifted his face, and kissed
the mother. And then he went rushing out with a burst of emotion.




OUR VISIT.


I.

We went down from Oxford together, I and Tod and William Whitney;
accompanying Miss Deveen and Helen and Anna Whitney, who had been there
for a few days. Miss Deveen's carriage was waiting at the Paddington
Station; they got into it with Tod, and William and I followed in a cab
with the luggage. Miss Deveen had invited us all to stay with her.

Miss Cattledon, the companion, with her tall, thin figure, her
pinched-in waist and her creaking stays, stood ready to receive us when
we reached the house. Miss Deveen held out her hand.

"How have you been, Jemima? Taking care of yourself, I hope?"

"Quite well, thank you, Miss Deveen; and very glad to see you at home
again," returned Cattledon. "This is my niece, Janet Carey."

A slight, small girl, with smooth brown hair and a quiet face that
looked as if it had just come out of some wasting illness, was hiding
herself behind Cattledon. Miss Deveen said a few pleasant words of
welcome, and took her hand. The girl looked as shy and frightened as
though we had all been a pack of gorillas.

"Thank you, ma'am; you are very kind," she said in a tremble; and her
voice, I noticed, was low and pleasant. I like nice voices, whether in
man or woman.

"It wants but half-an-hour to dinner-time," said Miss Deveen, untying
the strings of her bonnet. "Miss Cattledon, will you show these young
friends of ours the rooms you have appropriated to them."

My room and Tod's--two beds in it--was on the second floor; Helen and
Anna had the best company room below, near Miss Deveen's; Bill had a
little one lower still, half-way up the first flight of stairs. Miss
Cattledon's room, we found out, was next to ours, and her niece slept
with her.

Tod threw himself full length on his counterpane--tired out, he said.
Certain matters had not gone very smoothly for him at Oxford, and the
smart remained.

"You'll be late, Tod," I said when I was ready.

"Plenty of time, Johnny. I don't suppose I shall keep dinner waiting."

Miss Deveen stood at the door of the blue room when I went down: that
pretty sitting-room, exclusively hers, that I remembered so well. She
had on a purple silk gown, with studs of pale yellow topaz in its white
lace front, studs every whit as beautiful as the emeralds made free with
by Sophie Chalk.

"Come in here, Johnny."

She was beginning to talk to me as we stood by the fire, when some one
was heard to enter the inner room; Miss Deveen's bed-chamber, which
opened from this room as well as from the landing. She crossed over into
it, and I heard Cattledon's voice.

"It is so very kind of you, Miss Deveen, to have allowed me to bring my
niece here! Under the circumstances--with such a cloud upon her----"

"She is quite welcome," interrupted Miss Deveen's voice.

"Yes, I know that; I know it: and I could not go down without thanking
you. I have told Lettice to take some tea up to her while we dine. She
can come to the drawing-room afterwards if you have no objection."

"Why can't she dine with us?" asked Miss Deveen.

"Better not," said Cattledon. "She does not expect it; and with so many
at table----"

"Nonsense!" came Miss Deveen's quick, decisive interruption. "Many at
table! There are sufficient servants to wait on us, and I suppose you
have sufficient dinner. Go and bring her down."

Miss Deveen came back, holding out her hand to me as she crossed the
room. The gong sounded as we went down to the drawing-room. They all
came crowding in, Tod last; and we went in to dinner.

Miss Deveen, with her fresh, handsome face and her snow-white hair, took
the head of the table. Cattledon, at the foot, a green velvet ribbon
round her genteel throat, helped the soup. William Whitney sat on Miss
Deveen's right, I on her left. Janet Carey sat next to him--and this
brought her nearly opposite me.

She had an old black silk on, with a white frill at the throat--very
poor and plain as contrasted with the light gleaming silks of Helen
and Anna. But she had nice eyes; their colour a light hazel, their
expression honest and sweet. It was a pity she could not get some colour
into her wan face, and a little courage into her manner.

After coffee we sat down in the drawing-room to a round game at cards,
and then had some music; Helen playing first. Janet Carey was at the
table, looking at a view in an album. I went up to her.

Had I caught her staring at some native Indians tarred and feathered,
she could not have given a worse jump. It might have been fancy, but I
thought her face turned white.

"Did I startle you, Miss Carey? I am very sorry."

"Oh, thank you--no. Every one is very kind. The truth is"--pausing a
moment and looking at the view--"I knew the place in early life, and was
lost in old memories. Past times and events connected with it came back
to me. I recognized the place at once, though I was only ten years old
when I left it."

"Places do linger on the memory in a singularly vivid manner sometimes.
Especially those we have known when young."

"I can recognize every spot in this," she said, gazing still at the
album. "And I have not seen it for fifteen years."

"Fifteen. I--I understood you to say you were ten years old when you
left it."

"So I was. I am twenty-five now."

So much as that! So much older than any of us! I could hardly believe
it.

"I should not have taken you for more than seventeen, Miss Carey."

"At seventeen I went out to earn my own living," she said, in a sad
tone, but with a candour that I liked. "That is eight years ago."

Helen's music ceased with a crash. Miss Deveen came up to Janet Carey.

"My dear, I hear you can sing: your aunt tells me so. Will you sing a
song, to please me?"

She was like a startled fawn: looking here, looking there, and turning
white and red. But she rose at once.

"I will sing if you wish it, madam. But my singing is only plain
singing: just a few old songs. I have never learnt to sing."

"The old songs are the best," said Miss Deveen. "Can you sing that sweet
song of all songs--'Blow, blow, thou wintry wind'?"

She went to the piano, struck the chords quietly, without any flourish
or prelude, and began the first note.

Oh the soft, sweet, musical voice that broke upon us! Not a powerful
voice, that astounds the nerves like an electric machine; but one of
that intense, thrilling, plaintive harmony which brings a mist to the
eye and a throb to the heart. Tod backed against the wall to look at
her; Bill, who had taken up the cat, let it drop through his knees.

You might have heard a pin drop when the last words died away: "As
friends remembering not." Miss Deveen broke the silence: praising her
and telling her to go on again. The girl did not seem to have the least
notion of refusing: she appeared to have lived under submission. I think
Miss Deveen would have liked her to go on for ever.

"The wonder to me is that you can remember the accompaniment to so many
songs without your notes," cried Helen Whitney.

"I do not know my notes. I cannot play."

"Not know your notes!"

"I never learnt them. I never learnt music. I just play some few chords
by ear that will harmonize with the songs. That is why my singing is so
poor, so different from other people's. Where I have been living they
say it is not worth listening to."

She spoke in a meek, deprecating manner. I had heard of
self-depreciation: this was an instance of it. Janet Carey was one of
the humble ones.

The next day was Good Friday. We went to church under lowering clouds,
and came home again to luncheon. Cattledon's face was all vinegar when
we sat down to it.

"There's that woman downstairs again!--that Ness!" she exclaimed with
acrimony. "Making herself at home with the servants!"

"I'm glad to hear it," smiled Miss Deveen. "She'll get some dinner, poor
thing."

Cattledon sniffed. "It's not a month since she was here before."

"And I'm sure if she came every week she'd be welcome to a meal," spoke
Miss Deveen. "Ah now, young ladies," she went on in a joking tone, "if
you wanted your fortunes told, Mrs. Ness is the one to do it."

"Does she tell truth?" asked Helen eagerly.

"Oh, very true, of course," laughed Miss Deveen. "She'll promise you
a rich husband apiece. Dame Ness is a good woman, and has had many
misfortunes. I have known her through all of them."

"And helped her too," resentfully put in Cattledon.

"But does she _really_ tell fortunes?" pursued Helen.

"She thinks she does," laughed Miss Deveen. "She told mine once--many a
year ago."

"And did it come true?"

"Well, as far as I remember, she candidly confessed that there was not
much to tell--that my life would be prosperous but uneventful."

"I _don't_ think, begging your pardon, Miss Deveen, that it is quite a
proper subject for young people," struck in Cattledon, drawing up her
thin red neck.

"Dear me, no," replied Miss Deveen, still laughing a little. And the
subject dropped, and we finished luncheon.

The rain had come on, a regular downpour. We went into the
breakfast-room: though why it was called that, I don't know, since
breakfast was never taken there. It was a fair-sized, square room, built
out at the back, and gained by a few stairs down from the hall and a
passage. Somehow people prefer plain rooms to grand ones for everyday
use: perhaps that was why we all took a liking to this room, for it was
plain enough. An old carpet on the floor, chairs covered with tumbled
chintz, and always a good blazing fire in the grate. Miss Deveen would
go in there to write her business letters--when she had any to write; or
to cut out sewing with Cattledon for the housemaids. An old-fashioned
secretary stood against the wall, in which receipts and other papers
were kept. The French window opened to the garden.

"Pour, pour, pour! It's going to be wet for the rest of the day," said
Tod gloomily.

Cattledon came in, equipped for church in a long brown cloak, a pair
of clogs in her hand. Did none of us intend to go, she asked. Nobody
answered. The weather outside was not tempting.

"You must come, Janet Carey," she said very tartly, angry with us all,
I expect. "Go and put on your things."

"No," interposed Miss Deveen. "It would not be prudent for your niece
to venture out in this rain, Jemima."

"The church is only over the way."

"But consider the illness she has only just recovered from. Let her stay
indoors."

Cattledon went off without further opposition, Janet kneeling down
unasked, to put on her clogs, and then opening her umbrella for her in
the hall. Janet did not come in again. Miss Deveen went out to sit with
a sick neighbour: so we were alone.

"What a cranky old thing that Cattledon is!" cried Bill, throwing down
his newspaper. "She'd have walked that girl off in the wet, you see."

"How old is Cattledon?" asked Tod. "Sixty?"

"Oh, you stupid fellow!" exclaimed Helen, looking up from the stool on
the hearthrug, where she was sitting, nursing her knees. "Cattledon
sixty! Why, she can't be above forty-five."

It was disrespectful no doubt, but we all called her plain "Cattledon"
behind her back.

"That's rather a queer girl, that niece," said Tod. "She won't speak to
one: she's like a frightened hare."

"I like her," said Anna. "I feel very sorry for her. She gives one the
idea of having been always put upon: and she looks dreadfully ill."

"I should say she has been kept in some Blue Beard's cupboard, amongst a
lot of hanging wives that have permanently scared her," remarked Bill.

"It's Cattledon," said Tod; "it's not the wives. She puts upon the
girl and frightens her senses out of her. Cattledon's a cross-grained,
two-edged----"

He had to shut up: Janet Carey was coming in again. For about five
minutes no one spoke. There seemed to be nothing to say. Bill played
at ball with Miss Deveen's red penwiper: Anna began turning over the
periodicals: Helen gave the cat a box when it would have jumped on her
knee.

"Well, this is lively!" cried Tod. "Nothing on earth to do; I wonder why
the rain couldn't have kept off till to-morrow?"

"I say," whispered Helen, treason sparkling from her bright eyes, "let
us have up that old fortune-teller! I'll go and ask Lettice."

She whirled out of the room, shutting the tail of her black silk dress
in the door, and called Lettice. A few minutes, and Mrs. Ness came in,
curtsying. A stout old lady in a cotton shawl and broad-bordered cap
with a big red bow tied in front.

"I say, Mrs. Ness, can you tell our fortunes?" cried Bill.

"Bless you, young gentlefolks, I've told a many in my time. I'll tell
yours, if you like to bid me, sir."

"Do the cards tell true?"

"I believe they does, sir. I've knowed 'em to tell over true now and
again--more's the pity!"

"Why do you say more's the pity?" asked Anna.

"When they've fortelled bad things, my sweet, pretty young lady. Death,
and what not."

"But how it must frighten the people who are having them told!" cried
Anna.

"Well, to speak the truth, young gentlefolks, when it's very bad, I
generally softens it over to 'em--say the cards is cloudy, or some'at
o' that," was the old woman's candid answer. "It don't do to make
folks uneasy."

"Look here," said Helen, who had been to find the cards, "I should not
like to hear it if it's anything bad."

"Ah, my dear young lady, I don't think _you_ need fear any but a
good fortune, with that handsome face and them bright eyes of yours,"
returned the old dame--who really seemed to speak, not in flattery, but
from the bottom of her heart. "I don't know what the young lords 'ud be
about, to pass _you_ by."

Helen liked that; she was just as vain as a peacock, and thought no
little of herself. "Who'll begin?" asked she.

"Begin yourself, Helen," said Tod. "It's sure to be something good."

So she shuffled and cut the cards as directed: and the old woman,
sitting at the table, spread them out before her, talking a little bit
to herself, and pointing with her finger here and there.

"You've been upon a journey lately," she said, "and you'll soon be going
upon another." I give only the substance of what the old lady said,
but it was interspersed freely with her own remarks. "You'll have a
present before many days is gone; and you'll--stay, there's that black
card--you'll hear of somebody that's sick. And--dear me! there's an
offer for you--an offer of marriage,--but it won't come to anything.
Well, now, shuffle and cut again, please."

Helen did so. This was repeated three times in all. But, so far as we
could understand it, her future seemed to be very uneventful--to have
nothing in it--something like Miss Deveen's.

"It's a brave fortune, as I thought, young lady," cried Mrs. Ness. "No
trouble or care in store for you."

"But there's _nothing_," said Helen, too intently earnest to mind any of
us. "When am I to be married?"

"Well, my dear, the cards haven't told so much this time. There'll be an
offer, as I said--and I think a bit of trouble over it; but----"

"But you said it would not come to anything," interrupted Helen.

"Well, and no more it won't: leastways, it seemed so by the cards; and
it seemed to bring a bother with it--old folks pulling one way maybe,
and young 'uns the other. You'll have to wait a bit for the right
gentleman, my pretty miss."

"What stupid cards they are!" cried Helen, in dudgeon. "I dare say it's
all rubbish."

"Any ways, you've had nothing bad," said the old woman. "And that's a
priceless consolation."

"It's your turn now, Anna."

"I won't have mine told," said Anna. "I'm afraid."

"Oh, you senseless donkey!" cried Bill. "Afraid of a pack of cards!" So
Anna laughed, and began.

"Ah, there's more here," said the old woman as she laid them out. "You
are going through some great ceremony not long first. See here--crowds
of people--and show. Is it a great ball, I wonder?"

"It may be my presentation," said Anna.

"And here's the wedding-ring!--and there's the gentleman! See! he's
turning towards you; a dark man it is; and he'll be very fond of you,
too!--and----"

"Oh, don't go on," cried Anna, in terrible confusion as she heard all
this, and caught Tod's eye, and saw Bill on the broad laugh. "Don't,
pray don't; it must be all nonsense," she went on, blushing redder than
a rose.

"But it's true," steadily urged the old lady. "There the wedding is. I
don't say it'll be soon; perhaps not for some years; but come it will
in its proper time. And you'll live in a fine big house; and--stay a
bit--you'll----"

Anna, half laughing, half crying, pushed the cards together. "I won't be
told any more," she said; "it must be all a pack of nonsense."

"Of course it is," added Helen decisively. "And why couldn't you have
told me all that, Mrs. Ness?"

"Why, my dear, sweet young lady, it isn't me that tells; it's the
cards."

"I don't believe it. But it does to while away a wet and wretched
afternoon. Now, Miss Carey."

Miss Carey looked up from her book with a start. "Oh, not me! Please,
not me!"

"Not you!--the idea!" cried Helen. "Why, of course you must. I and my
sister have had our turn, and you must take yours."

As if further objection were out of the question, Miss Carey stood
timidly up by the table and shuffled the cards that Dame Ness handed to
her. When they were spread out, the old woman looked at the cards longer
than she had looked for either Helen or Anna, then at the girl, then at
the cards again.

"There has been sickness and trouble;--and distress," she said at
length, "And--and--'tain't over yet. I see a dark lady and a fair man:
they've been in it, somehow. Seems to ha' been a great trouble"--putting
the tips of her forefingers upon two cards. "Here you are, you see,
right among it,"--pointing to the Queen of Hearts. "I don't like the
look of it. And there's money mixed up in the sorrow----"

A low, shuddering cry. I happened to be looking from the window at the
moment, and turned to see Janet Carey with hands uplifted and a face of
imploring terror. The cry came from her.

"Oh don't, don't! don't tell any more!" she implored.
"I--was--not--guilty."

Down went her voice by little and little, down fell her hands; and down
dropped she on the chair behind her. The next moment she was crying and
sobbing. We stood round like so many helpless simpletons, quite put down
by this unexpected interlude. Old Dame Ness stared, slowly shuffling the
cards from hand to hand, and could not make it out.

"Here, I'll have my fortune told next, Mother Ness," said Bill Whitney,
really out of good nature to the girl, that she might be left unobserved
to recover herself. "Mind you promise me a good one."

"And so I will then, young gentleman, if the cards 'll let me," was the
hearty answer. "Please shuffle 'em well, sir, and then cut 'em into
three."

Bill was shuffling with all his might when we heard the front-door open,
and Cattledon's voice in the hall. "Oh, by George, I say, what's to be
done?" cried he. "She'll be fit to smother us. That old parson can't
have given them a sermon."

Fortunately she stayed on the door-mat to take off her clogs. Dame Ness
was smuggled down the kitchen stairs, and Bill hid the cards away in his
pocket.

And until then it had not occurred to us that it might not be quite the
right thing to go in for fortune-telling on Good Friday.


II.

On Easter Tuesday William Whitney and Tod went off to Whitney Hall for
a few days: Sir John wrote for them. In the afternoon Miss Deveen took
Helen in the carriage to make calls; and the rest of us went to the
Colosseum, in the Regent's Park. Cattledon rather fought against the
expedition, but Miss Deveen did not listen to her. None of us--except
herself--had seen it before: and I know that I, for one, was delighted
with it.

The last scene of the performance was over. If I remember rightly, at
this distance of time, it was the representation of the falling of an
avalanche on a Swiss village, to bury it for ever in the snow; an

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