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Barbara Lynn: A Tale of the Dales and Fells.

by Emily J. Jenkinson · English · Gutenberg #41422 · 492,653 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Barbara Lynn: A Tale of the Dales and Fells.

Author: Emily J. Jenkinson


        
Release date: November 21, 2012 [eBook #41422]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARBARA LYNN: A TALE OF THE DALES AND FELLS. ***

                        BARBARA LYNN

                A TALE OF THE DALES AND FELLS

                     BY EMILY JENKINSON

        AUTHOR OF "SILVERWOOL," "THE SOUL OF UNREST."


    "An enduring soul have the Fates given unto men."--_ILIAD._


    LONDON
    EDWARD ARNOLD
    1914

    [_All Rights Reserved_]




CONTENTS



    PART I

        I. THE LONELY STEADING IN THE DALE                 3

       II. THE SISTERS                                    15

      III. PETER FLEMING                                  32

       IV. THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES                         48

        V. THE WAKING OF THE HOLY WELL                    62

       VI. JOEL'S DARKNESS                                77

      VII. MIDNIGHT                                       93

     VIII. JOEL GOES AWAY                                107

       IX. PETER AT OXFORD                               117

        X. KETEL'S PARLOUR                               127

       XI. THE BACK-END                                  139

      XII. SIX WHITE HORSES AND A COACH                  152

     XIII. JOEL TAKES THE LONG TRAIL                     165


    PART II

      XIV. BARBARA AND PETER                             175

       XV. MORNING AT THE SHEPHERDS' MEET                191

      XVI. JOEL'S RETURN TO THE DALE                     202

     XVII. THE WRESTLING MATCH                           214

    XVIII. BY THE CRESSET'S LIGHT                        225

      XIX. THE SHEPHERD'S REST                           237

       XX. THE SPELL OF THUNDERGAY                       248

      XXI. THE CALL                                      257

     XXII. THE TRYST AT GIRDLESTONE PASS                 266

    XXIII. A PATHWAY OF FIRE                             277

     XXIV. WINTER                                        287

      XXV. BARBARA COUNTS THE GOLD                       297

           EPILOGUE                                      309




BARBARA LYNN




PART I




CHAPTER I

THE LONELY STEADING IN THE DALE


Barbara Lynn looked up the dale.

Thundergay glimmered through the green twilight with his hoary head
under the Pole star, and his feet in the wan waters of a tarn. His
breath was the North wind.

Barbara put up the shutters and turned to an old woman, who was propped
against the pillows of a four-post bed. It stood in the full light of a
turf fire, and looked like a ship with its sails furled.

"I'll bid you good-night and good rest, great-granny," said the girl.

The old woman was watching her with keen eyes--eyes so bright that they
glittered under her shaggy brows.

"Do you ever waken o' nights?" she asked.

Barbara laughed and shook her head.

"Nay, I sleep from dark to dawn. But I'd hear you, great-granny, if you
called. I've ears like a mountain hare."

"Aye, aye, rest's for the young, restlessness for the old. I lie awake
thinking o' the days gone by. But you've no memories worth minding yet,
my lass. Wait till you're my age--ninety-six come Michaelmas."

Barbara placed a lighted candle on the bridewain close to the bed, and
stood for a moment looking down at the eagle-eyed old woman.

The Potter had made the new vessel after the pattern of the old, but the
spirit of life which each held was different. The girl and her
great-grandmother had the same wide brows, the same well-chiselled nose,
and their eyes were blue. Barbara was tall beyond the usual height of
her sex, and she carried her body with the grace of one accustomed to
stand on giddy heights and climb perilous places. Her head was finely
moulded, and in proportion to her form. Peter Fleming, the miller's son,
studying classics at Oxford, called her Athene, and said that a glance
into her blue eyes, gave strength to his shoulders and courage to his
heart. So had the old woman in the four-poster looked eighty years ago.

But though the eyes of both were blue, Barbara's were as mild and
meditative, as Mistress Annas Lynn's were hard. They scanned each other
narrowly. The marked difference as well as resemblance between them
seemed to strike the old woman, for she suddenly said:

"You take after me in looks, lass, though your father and his father
were the spitten picture of your great-grandfather, and Lucy favours
them. But you are no more like me in temper than the beck in spate is
like the same beck on a calm summer's morning. At your age I had kenned
the bride-bed, and the birth-bed, and o' but kenned the death-bed. But
you're still a bairn, puzzling over your letters."

There was pride and scorn in her voice.

"It's true, great-granny," replied Barbara, who was slow of tongue. "I's
mazed-like at the world."

"Hoots-toots," said the old woman testily. "There's nowt to maze thee.
Take what's sent and make the best on it. Life was made to be lived, not
questioned. And it's worth living. I tell thee so, Barbara, and thee can
take my word for it--I's that old. Whiles it turns your mouth awry, but
the sweet and the sour are fairly mixed. Lucy's learnt that much--I know
by the light in her eye. She'll get more of real life out of one night,
larking with the lads in Cringel Forest, than you out of a hundred
nights star-gazing on Thundergay."

"M'appen you're right," answered the girl, "but who would see to the
farm, the sheep, and the lambs, and the kye, if I spent my time larking
with the lads?"

Mistress Lynn's expression changed quickly. A crafty look displaced the
open scorn of her eyes.

"Aye, aye, keep to the sheep-paths, Barbara. Keep to the sheep-paths and
your star-gazing. See thou keep to the sheep-paths, great-granddaughter.
They're safer for a young lass than Cringel Forest. Get thee gone now.
It's time you were in bed. The dawn comes earlier every day."

"Earlier still I'll have to be up," replied Barbara, giving the old
woman good-night.

"God bless thee, Barbara, thee's a good lass, although I do get my knife
into thee whiles. Sleep well."

The girl drew the blue and white homespun curtains round the bed, put
out the candle and went away. The wooden soles of her clogs rang with a
measured sound upon the stone stairs and then across the rafters
overhead. After that there was silence save for the chatter of the beck,
running by the door. Its voice had an insistent, familiar tone, as
though it were talking to someone within. No movement came from old
Mistress Lynn. Either she was asleep, or she busied her mind with
thoughts of other days. For a long time the room was in darkness. Then
the turf on the fire slipped, the light leaped forth, and the
four-poster glided out of shadow like a ship in full sail. The curtains
were noiselessly drawn back, and a long, lean hand relit the candle.

Mistress Lynn looked slowly and searchingly about her. She left no dim
corner unscanned, and there were many dim corners in the great kitchen,
for it ran the length of the front part of the house.

It was a low room with a flagged and sanded floor. The walls were
white-washed, making a fine contrast to the beams overhead, and the
doors of the carved oak cupboards, all alike, black with age. Along one
side ran three windows. The hearth was a slab of blue slate, and, as the
chimney flue descended no further into the room than the ceiling, the
fire made a great show on occasions, with its flames and smoke; as
though one end of the house were burning from floor to rafters. A bar of
wood, called the rannel-balk, spanned the fireplace, and from it
depended the rattan-crook, a long hook on which the kettle hung. There
was a carved oak settle in the ingle, and near it a spinning wheel; and
under the windows a narrow but heavy table with all its corners sharp
but one, which was rounded off in a curious manner following the shape
of the solid tree trunk from which it had been made. Against the
opposite wall stood a dresser, holding a varied array of wooden and
pewter platters, piggins for drinking out of, and two or three china
cups. Next to it came the bridewain, and then the great bed. Between the
windows was the door, bound with iron, studded with large nails, and
bolted by two massive iron bolts. Another door at the far end led into a
little passage, which gave access to the wool-barn, cow-house and dairy,
all at the back of the building. In the chimney, curing in the smoke,
hung flitches of bacon and a sheep by the heels. Upon the shelves along
the walls were hammers and lanterns, pattens for horses to wear in snowy
weather, sticks and staves and an old gun. An oak cupboard, with
Mistress Lynn's initials carved upon it, held the oat-cake, and a kist,
near the fire, held meal.

But the principal feature of the place was the four-post bed, with its
curtains of blue and white homespun, so placed that it commanded a full
view of the room. Nothing could happen there unseen by the old woman.

Shadows shot up and sank with the flickering light. The clock peered
down like a white-faced watcher, the dresser and the high-backed chairs
were endowed with movement if not with life. Mistress Lynn laid her
fingers upon the bridewain, as though she would reassure herself that
it, too, was not a fantastic creation of firelight and shadow, but the
solid piece of oak which she had brought with her to this house of
Greystones, when she married David Lynn four generations ago.

She listened for any sound in the sleeping house. But all was quiet. No
stealthy steps crossed the rafters overhead, where Barbara and Lucy
slept. The windows were shuttered and the doors were closed. Jan Straw,
the shepherd, grown old and blind and deaf in her service, had a bed
along with the hind above the cow-house. There was none to spy upon her,
save the shadows and the firelight, and the bob-tailed sheep-dog, lying
with his nose between his paws, dreaming of the flocks upon Thundergay.

Mistress Lynn moved the candle nearer to her, and, taking from its
hiding-place in the bed a large iron key, she leaned over and unlocked
the middle cupboard of the bridewain.

The light was full upon her face, revealing the fine network of lines
about mouth and eyes, the parchment-like texture of the skin, and the
whiteness of the hair, that escaped from under her frilled nightcap.
Hers was a face bearing the imprint of age in every lineament, and of an
abiding craftiness, which all the greatness of her nature had not
managed to efface.

The bridewain was apparently stocked with carded wool. This she pushed
aside, however, and drawing out a bundle of silver spoons and a gold
locket, she laid them on the bed. She counted the spoons one by one, and
fingered the locket absently, as though the thoughts which it roused
carried her mind back to some experience long past. The expression of
her face changed from grim satisfaction to great weariness. Her lips
moved, but the words were lost in the chatter of the beck.

When Mistress Lynn was a girl, over three-quarters of a century ago,
she had loved Joel Hart, a young gentleman of quality, whose home was
not far off, and the locket had been a gift from him. But he married
Mary Priestly, the heiress of Forest Hall, in Cringel Forest, and she
married David Lynn, of Greystones. Neither marriage was very happy. Joel
took part in the rebellion of 1745, and was shot, losing all his lands
save the old house of Forest Hall, which his descendant owned and lived
in at this time. But between the rebel's outlawry and his capture, what
memories were crowded for the village girl he had once made love to! She
had hidden him from pursuit among the wool-sacks, unknown to her dour,
loyal husband. The tale had once been a favourite one for a winter
night's telling. But now it had ceased to rouse enthusiasm in the dale.
Only to this old woman was it a vital memory.

She turned the locket over, then she dropped it, putting such melancholy
thoughts as it drew forth resolutely away. She searched in the back of
the bridewain and brought out some bags of blue linen, each one tied
with a leather thong. They were full of money.

It was for the winking yellow coins which she poured into her lap, that
Annas Lynn, at ninety-five, still found life worth living. She, the
relic of a past age, with son and grandsons dead, and only two young
girls left of all her kindred, whose heart had shrivelled with the death
of Joel Hart long ago, still hoped that many years would pass before she
was laid to sleep by the mouldering bones of her husband in the
kirk-garth. She was proud of her age, proud of her right to be called
great-grandmother, proud of her keen wits. She ruled the steading and
the flocks, and the ploughed lands, and the pastures with regal
authority from her bed in the kitchen. No one disputed her sway. Lucy,
younger than Barbara by a year, had been known to defy her; but she rued
her rashness in tears for many days afterwards. Neither her son, nor her
grandsons, middle-aged men when they died, had ever opposed her will.
She broke if she could not bend.

Mistress Lynn stooped over her money-bags. She counted the coins,
letting them fall into her hand with a merry tinkle. She counted them
below her breath, as though she were afraid to utter the toll of her
wealth openly. She was a rich woman. The toil of years lay in her lap;
and Barbara's care of the lambs, Lucy's light hand with the butter, the
faithful service of old Jan Straw still added many a sovereign to the
pile. Gold! gold! it warmed the life blood that otherwise would have run
cold at the fountain. To get richer was the ambition of this old woman.
She set about compassing it with all the craft of a daughter of Jacob.

The sheep-dog heard the faint jingle, and, getting up, came sniffing to
the bedside. He buried his nose in the quilt, causing a coin to slip
unnoticed upon the floor. Like all his kind he owed a willing obedience
to a strong hand, and though he slunk in terror from his mistress's
anger, he returned trustfully to eat the crumbs which she sometimes gave
him.

She patted his head.

"There's no cream-cakes hid among the blankets, Toss, my lad," she said.
"Get awa back, and take thy sleep."

The dog returned to his bed by the fire, but the coin lay shining upon
the sheepskin beside the four-poster. She did not miss it.

Midnight; and the hour of twelve rang out, overcoming for a brief while
the ceaseless chattering of the beck. Mistress Lynn put away her
money-bags, and relocked the bridewain. She bent her head, listening
intently, but to a clock striking twelve far back in her memory. On such
a night as this, at the same hour, she had hidden Joel Hart among the
wool-sacks, while David Lynn, goodman, slept peacefully in his bed. That
night summed up for Annas all the sweetness and bitterness of life. She
had lived then to the utmost fibre of her being.

She drew the curtains and lay down. The four-poster once more took on
its likeness to a ship in full sail.

But there was no rest for the old woman. She spent the night-time, as
she had foretold to her great-granddaughter, thinking of the days gone
by. During those cold, early hours, that drag so wearily for the
wakeful, she lived again through many a wild scene. Yet she longed for
sleep, and vainly tried to put the memories from her, which she would
rather cast into oblivion for ever. Hers had been an eventful life.

She had been born and bred in this land of the dales and fells, under
the shadow of Thundergay. Her looks and actions showed the blood from
whence she came. She was a true descendant of those wild Northmen, who
had once swooped down upon that countryside, and built their homesteads
there. Tall, blue-eyed, and yellow-haired in her youth, she might have
been Unn, the Deep-minded, come to life again out of her saga. About her
breathed an air of mystery, for she was, in truth, no common woman,
either in body or in mind.

She had married early, and made this farm of Greystones the very centre
of her own personality. Husband and children had feared rather than
loved her, and no one knew what depths of affection her nature held,
save Joel Hart, dead seventy years ago. There was a Joel Hart now living
at Forest Hall, the old house about a mile away down the dale, and upon
him had fallen a pale reflection of her love. He and Barbara were the
only beings for whom she felt any real regard, and this not for their
own sakes, but because the one bore so striking a resemblance to his
ill-fated ancestor and the other to herself. They were a reincarnation,
in appearance, of the past.

As Mistress Lynn lay awake, she became acutely conscious of those other
days. They lived again. At one moment she was helping to bar the doors
against the last raid of the moss-troopers, while her husband shot at
them with a flint-lock from an upper window. Then, in the twinkling of
an eye, she was standing among the wool-sacks, her lantern making a
round moon of light upon the wall opposite. Even yet she could not see a
lantern's glow without the blood quickening through her veins.

Sleep would not come to her. She tried to draw her mind away from such
scenes, and think of the quiet hills. She listened to the beck, singing
under the windows. Its voice was so clear that it seemed to be running
across the kitchen floor by her bed. But it would only sing of the past,
like a bard telling tales of the strenuous days of old. It was a lullaby
for heroes, not for a weary old woman who could not sleep. She lay, shut
in by her curtains, with her eyes fixed wide, seeing faces and hearing
voices long since gone into the spirit-world.

Outside, the moon was shining like a new silver crown. The fells lay
white under its rays, for the snow had not yet melted from the uplands,
though primroses were beginning to peep along sheltered spots of the
beck-side. There was a touch of frost in the air, which gave a shimmer
to the sky. The roof of Greystones glistened, and the five great
sycamores, standing about the house, flung barred, black shadows across
the sheep-pens that lay at the back of the farm, surrounded with one
great wall ten feet high, built when robbers were frequent visitors. No
other steading stood in the dale. The little village of High Fold lay
two miles away, hidden by the trees of Cringel Forest. Behind Greystones
the fellside ran up at a steep angle to Mickle Crags. It was not a
cheerful place. The fell-folk said that a curse had been laid upon it,
but when, and by whom, and for what offence, no one had ever heard. Yet
many believed that the house would one day fall, or the beetling black
crags come down upon it, and then would end the family of the Lynns, who
had lived there for three hundred years. Lucy laid crossed straws on the
threshold, as her mother had done, and her mother's mother, and hung
horseshoes over the doors, but the house still kept its melancholy air.
The lonely situation of the place had much to do with this impression,
for Boar Dale was deep and wild and barren, surrounded by a mountain
rampart, up which the sun must climb before it could send its kindly
beams to dispel the mists that made it their home.

Barbara and Lucy, aided by the village folk, had tried to persuade
Mistress Lynn to leave the house and have another built in a more
cheerful spot, but she would not listen to them. Had she not lived
there for more than seventy years? Nothing had ever happened. There had
been landslips, to be sure, upon the fells behind, but they had never
fallen anywhere near the house. The beck was flooded every winter, but
never got higher than the bottom step of the garden. What was there to
fear? No; when she left Greystones, abandoned it to the bats and the
owls, it would be when she was carried out with her feet up. Then
Barbara and Lucy could do as they liked.

Mistress Lynn had been bedridden for several years. She had slipped in
the yard one muddy day and injured her ankle. It had recovered
sufficiently for her to have hobbled about with the help of a stick, but
the proud old woman could not brook such an idea. She would not be seen
hirpling like a sheep with the louping-ill, and so she preferred to
remain in bed and keep her dignity. She was quite happy and fully
occupied in holding her iron sceptre over her little family, and never
gave a thought to the curse. But Barbara and Lucy sometimes awoke at
night and shuddered, for they knew that the scarred and broken face of
Mickle Crags was peering down upon the roof with a malignant grin.

The moon set, and, in the grey dawn the old woman fell asleep. It was
then that the birds began to twitter in the copse hard by, through which
the beck babbled when it had run by the door. At the first low whistle
of a blackbird, Barbara awoke.




CHAPTER II

THE SISTERS


Lucy was still lying fast asleep in bed. Barbara called softly, "Lucy,
Lucy," but there was no reply. Then she laid her hand upon the sleeper's
breast. Some hands have a power to thrill the spirit of those they
touch. Such power had Barbara Lynn's.

Lucy stirred. She opened her eyes, and saw her sister bending over her,
with hair unbound and glistening like a misty golden cloud.

"If I were on my death-bed," she murmured, "I should be fancying thee an
angel out of heaven."

Barbara smiled slowly.

"It's time you were waking," she replied, and began to gather up her
long locks, pleating them round her head.

Lucy flung back the coverlet, and drew her knees up to her chin.

"You've a black, black heart, Barbara Lynn, though you've the face of a
holy saint," she replied. "I believe you get a lot of pleasure out of
waking me up in the morning. I was dreaming such heavenly dreams--all
about grapes!"

She shook back her hair, which was black and glossy as a raven's wing,
but her eyes, like Barbara's, were blue. All her movements were swift
and decisive, for her spirit was made of quicksilver.

"You've an earthly mind," she added.

Barbara knotted a kerchief round her head, and glanced at a tiny mirror
hanging on the wall. A flickering rushlight vied with the grey dawn to
show the face reflected there. She sighed audibly.

"You're about right," she said. "I think it's clod-bound."

Lucy drew a curl between her lips, meditating upon her sister's reply.

"Where are you going?" she asked; "to Ketel's Parlour?"

"Not just now. I promised to help the hind with a rough bit of
ploughing--that high field where we are going to plant potatoes. It's
too steep for old Jan Straw to lead the horses there. He fell down
yesterday! Poor Jan! he'll never work no more."

The sisters were silent as they thought of the old man, hardly so
intelligent as the wild creatures of the woods and fells, but faithful
to the last drop of his blood.

"I think he'll be glad to die," said Lucy.

A faint flush swept up Barbara's face.

"He's dust," she replied, "and he's going back to the dust he came from,
like a little cloud raised by the wind. What has he ever had in life to
make him want to live?"

Lucy sank back upon her pillows, and clasped her hands behind her head.
It was not often that Barbara spoke bitterly.

"And you!" she said. "You've never a chance, either. You might be a man
for the work you do."

"I was meant for a man when I was made so tall and strong," answered
the girl, with a note of pride in her voice and a straightening of her
figure.

"Nay, nay, there's not a man in the dale, nor in the country round, that
can hold a candle to thee."

"Then I's neither fish, flesh nor fowl, for there's not a woman as tall
or strong, unless it be yon great creature we saw at the show."

Lucy gazed at her sister with critical eyes.

"You'll look finely, like a queen, when you get the crown Old Camomile
promised thee, the day he told your stars," she said.

Barbara moved towards the door, carrying her clogs in her hand.

"Don't forget it's time you were up," she replied. Not even to her
sister would she acknowledge that the prophecy gave an interest to her
life.

But Lucy would not be repressed.

"Perhaps a lord will ride by some day, and marry you, Barbara. Who
knows?"

The girl paused with her fingers on the latch.

"His horse would stick in the mud of the bridle path like a fly in a
glue-pot. He'd never get so far as Greystones. You're a silly wench,
Lucy. Lords don't come looking for wives among peasant lasses."

Lucy gurgled with laughter, which she stifled under the quilt for fear
of waking her great-grandmother.

"What a sober old maid you are, Barbara," she said. "Do you never
dream?"

The door shut with a soft snick--her sister had gone.

For a while longer Lucy lay still, gazing at the rushlight as it burnt
dimmer and the daylight increased. She wondered what life held in store
for Barbara and herself. The present was not without its excitements,
but towards the future she turned longing eyes--the Future, hidden by a
golden cloud, which some day would fade away, disclosing undreamed-of
joys.

Then she got slowly out of bed. Her toilet was not a simple affair like
her sister's. Along a shelf stood a row of little green jars and
bottles, containing balms and salves and scented waters. The sun might
tan Barbara's face and bleach her hair to the colour of ripe corn; rain
and wind and frost might redden and cut her hands, but Lucy's cheeks
were always satin smooth, and her curls black and glistening. She
tempted her sister with ointment made from cowslips, with distilled
rose-water, and balm of elder-flowers--all the sweetest odours that ever
perfumed woodland air were concentrated into those green phials--but she
tempted in vain. Barbara laughed. There were the cows to milk, the sheep
to herd, hoeing and weeding and seed-sowing to do; what time had she for
such fanglements?

The eastern clouds were rosy with the rays of the rising sun when Lucy
stole downstairs and opened the kitchen door. The four-poster stood with
its curtains closed like an Arab's tent in lonely gloom. The girl
shivered as she looked at it. The thought of the old woman lying within
took all the brightness from her eyes and the lightness from her step.
She was afraid of her great-grandmother as of something unknown. What
right had anyone so old to be still among the living? Her place was with
the dead, with the men and women whose names had become a faint memory
in the dale, but who were to her personalities, that she had touched and
handled. Lucy's mother had died when she was a baby, and the grim old
figure, that sometimes rocked her cradle, had filled her infant mind
with fear. Now that she had grown to womanhood the fear remained, though
she hid it under a gay and careless demeanour. Still, the shadow of her
great-grandmother fell like a blight on Lucy's life.

She tiptoed to the fireplace and soon had the smouldering turf in a
glow. Then, opening the outer door and stepping out into the sunlight,
she filled the kettle at the spring. It was a fair morning. The chorus
of birds had ceased and busy feathered things were marketing among the
sprouting green of the beck-side. Far away up the dale she saw the red
cows move, and knew that Barbara was somewhere near, driving them to new
pastures. Thundergay was still swathed with smokelike mists, rolling
upwards in the breeze, and gradually disclosing grey precipices, and
slatey screes, with here and there patches of emerald, where the young
ferns were beginning to spring, and higher up, wide fields of snow. Lucy
paused to pluck a cluster of primroses, and place them in her hair. But
she was startled by a cough from a stunted tree near. Among its knarled
roots crouched a little figure, wrapped in a sack to keep itself warm.

"Oh, it's you, Jan!" said Lucy. "I thought you were a sheep coughing.
You should have stayed in bed to-day and taken a rest."

The creature raised a pair of watery eyes to her face, then dropped
them.

"I's always gotten up at dawn," was the reply.

"But it's so cold!"

Again the pale eyes were raised and dropped.

"Verra cold, lass."

"You must come to the kitchen."

"Nay."

Lucy laid her fingers upon his withered hand.

"Come and get warm," she entreated. "I've got such a grand fire
burning."

The old man made no reply, but kept his gaze upon her slender fingers.
At last his voice came slowly, as though he were drawing up something
from the dark well of his memory.

"Onced I seed a hand like yourn, onced, long ago. I's forgotten when,
but I minds the hand."

"Come," said Lucy.

He rose painfully and crawled by her side. But at the kitchen door he
held back.

"Nay," he repeated.

"Why?"

"I must work."

"Rubbish," said Lucy scornfully, and again she laid her hand upon his.
"You've been working all your life, you can have a rest now. Let the new
hind--Tom, do what's to be done."

The old man stared anew at her fingers.

"I minds where I saw that hand," he said, "it was outside a white
winding sheet ... long ago."

Lucy tried to draw him into the kitchen, but he was obstinate, and
afraid of Mistress Lynn.

"I'll go and feed the chickens," he mumbled, and shuffled away round the
end of the house.

Lucy looked after him sadly, then returned to her work. As she was
shaking the sheepskin rug a coin fell out of it and lay glittering upon
the ground. Picking it up with an exclamation of surprise, she turned it
over and over. It was a sovereign. For some minutes she stood with her
brows knit and her blue eyes darkening as thought took shape. The coin
was her great-grandmother's, there could be no doubt of it. Lucy had
always had suspicions about the locked cupboard of the bridewain, which
she had never seen opened. Now she knew something was hidden
there--money most likely, perhaps many more coins like the one she had
found, perhaps bags of them. If one could be lost without a hue and cry
being raised for it, they must be as plentiful as blackberries.

What should she do? Should she keep it? Was it not her due, considering
the way she worked and yet received no recompense? The temptation to put
the coin in her pocket was strong, and she thought longingly of the many
pretty things it would buy. Then she spurned the suggestion. She
remembered Jan Straw, whose life had been bought for a few pounds and a
sup of porridge; she saw Barbara wearing out her strong young life upon
the fells; she thought of herself, drudging from daylight to
day-darkening. The bitterness of it set her teeth on edge. She looked
again at the yellow coin, and it seemed to have taken upon it a tinge of
blood.

Then the curtain rings of the bed jingled, and turning round, she saw
that her great-grandmother was sitting up, looking at her.

Lucy might fear the old woman, but she was not lacking in courage when
the moment called for it. She balanced the coin upon her thumb-nail,
spun it into the air, and caught it as it fell.

"See what I've found," she said.

Mistress Lynn stared at the shining thing, lying on the girl's palm.

"Where didst get it?" she asked sharply.

"At the end of the rainbow."

"Rainbow! fiddlesticks! Give it to me."

Lucy dropped the coin into the outstretched hand without a word. But she
stood looking down, her eyes fierce and more like the old woman's than
Barbara's were, although in face and figure there was no other
resemblance.

"Where didst get it?" again asked Mistress Lynn.

"It fell out of the rug."

"Ah! I sold some sheep to a man from the South yesterday. I thought he
had paid me short money--they're such cheats in the South! Well, well,
it must have dropped out of his hand. Thee shall have a shilling come
Good Friday, Lucy."

"A shilling!" Lucy was scornful, "a shilling!"

Mistress Lynn looked narrowly at her great-granddaughter. Between the
girl and her little love was lost.

"What ails thee at a shilling? It's over much when I come to think of
it. Thee shall have sixpence. That's enough for a young lass to spend on
fallals."

"1 wonder at you, I wonder at you, great-grandmother," exclaimed Lucy.
"I wonder at you hoarding up the money, and you so old."

"Wouldst like to see me play ducks and drakes with it in the beck?"

Lucy tossed her head impatiently.

"Why do you keep Barbara and me penniless?" she asked.

"I feed you well and clothe you warm--what more dost need?"

"Barbara," began Lucy, but the old woman interrupted her.

"What's Barbara complaining about?"

"Barbara never complains. But I know she's heart-sick for something
better than a lone life on the fells."

"If she's sweethearting," said Mistress Lynn, "if she's taken up with a
lad, I's nought to say against it," for the old woman thought that the
services of a young strong man would be of great value now that Jan
Straw was past work.

"Sweethearting!" replied Lucy. "It's learning Barbara's after!"

"Learning! Hasn't she enough learning for any lass, and more than most?
Doesn't she ken the lift like the palm of her hand, and the dales and
fells better than her ten toes?"

"It's book-learning Barbara wants."

"Book-learning! I don't hold with book-learning. Hark to me,
great-granddaughter. You'll be a good lass, and when I's gone there'll
be a nice little sum put by for you and your sister. Now, see to your
work; the porridge is burning," and the old woman sniffed the air
disdainfully.

"Oh," said Lucy, with a shrug of her shoulders, "Mickle Crags will have
buried us all by then--you and me and Barbara and the money, all in one
grave."

"Hold thy tongue," replied the old woman calmly, but with such an edge
to her words that Lucy kept her peace.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later in the day Lucy went up the dale to find Barbara. She eagerly
drank in the sunlight. It comforted her like a cup of sweet wine.
From the mosses of the beck-side, where she followed the cattle
road, a whispering could be heard as of life--innumerable, and
infinitesimal--waking to activity after its long winter sleep. Bees were
buzzing; birds were mating; the village geese, in charge of a
goose-girl, were being driven to their feeding grounds; Tom, the new
hind, with a boy to drive the horses, was ploughing in a steep field;
and Jan Straw was gathering rushes. Everything was up and active.

The dale in which Greystones was situated wound into the heart of
Thundergay. On the right rose Nab Head--a grey bastion streaked with
little streams trickling from the melting snows, and now all aglitter in
the sun. On the left, gloomy as its name, hung Darkling Crag. The dale
lay between like a green lizard, basking in the warm light. It was green
with marsh-mosses, and soon would be yellow with king-cups. Lucy sang to
herself as she climbed upward:

    "Oh! have you found my golden ball?
      And have you come to set me free?
    Or have you come to see me hanging
      On the gallows tree?"

There was no smile upon her face, but her eyes were wistful. She was
hoping that Joel Hart would soon find a golden ball and come to set her
free, before Greystones, and the tyrannical old woman there, had robbed
her life of its youth and sweetness. She was just twenty, and panting to
spread her wings and fly away. She turned round to look at her home.

It was the most solitary of habitations. About it hung an atmosphere of
old forgotten things. It had a tragic air as though its past, by some
strange process, were still in being. Even on a golden afternoon such as
this, it could not exorcise the grey spirit that haunted it--the spirit
of the ancient grey stones of which it was built. The slates were green
with moss: the drip-stone was feathered with weeds which, before long,
would belt it with a flowery garland: soon the great sycamores would
burst into leaf; but even then the house would keep its gloom. It was a
fitting habitation for Mistress Annas Lynn, who was nearly a hundred
years old.

Lucy turned her eyes away from it, and looked at the mountain at the
head of the dale, down whose sides the streams slid in thin white lines
to fall with many a rainbow cascade into Swirtle Tarn, lying at its
feet, blue as a violet. Thundergay dominated the dale. Its jagged peaks
soared high above the fells around. It was the birth-place of eagles,
mists and storms; and it was also the nurse of her sister Barbara.

Her mind turned to Barbara.

If Lucy ever visualised such abstract ideas as goodness, integrity, and
justice, she saw them under the living form of her sister. Joel Hart she
loved; Barbara she worshipped. With Joel she stood on an equality--he
was as humanly imperfect as she--but Barbara stood on a mountain height,
a great, grand figure, with a great, grand heart, sublime in her
magnanimity, immovable as granite among the storms of her world.

She felt, too, that it was among the mountains that Barbara found her
secret inspiration and strength. Since childhood she had spent the
greater part of her life upon Thundergay, and, though it had been a
rough nurse, beating her with winds like scorpions, training her by
hunger and cold and weariness, yet she loved it still, but it had made
her silent.

Lucy did not put her thought into these words, but she felt them,
nevertheless.

She now left the cattle road, and followed a sheep-track round Swirtle
Tarn. A shoulder of Thundergay seemed to block her way, but the track
wound in and out of knowes and hollows, and led her at last through a
gap, where she looked down upon a scene of pastoral beauty. A lawn of
velvet grass lay by the margin of the tarn, dotted with sheep and a few
lambs--the firstlings of the flock. It sloped gently upwards, and surged
like a full green tide against the bases of the cliffs. Here was a cave,
called for generations Ketel's Parlour, in memory of some Northern
robber who had made it his eyrie. Now Barbara claimed it, and often
slept there when her work kept her abroad at night. The flocks were her
especial care, and she "shepherded and improved the same according to
the due course of good shepherding," as the old title-deeds of
Greystones recommended.

Lucy looked in. By the threshold her sister lay fast asleep, her long
limbs sunk in repose upon a bed of straw. Her head was near the
entrance, and the sun, as it got lower, flowed in golden ripples across
the threshold. When it touched her eyes she would awake, for the sun was
her clock by day, as the Great Bear was her clock by night.

Lucy did not speak, but took her knitting from her pocket, and sat down
on a rock to wait.

The cave had been partly built up long, long ago, and two narrow slits
of windows made in the artificial wall. The rusty remains of iron bolts
and hinges showed that a door had once closed the entrance. A huge slab
of slate lay across the threshold, and underneath it a little spring
that babbled out of the floor of the cave disappeared, appearing again
some few yards further down the slope.

It was not long before Barbara awoke. The sun was sinking; the tarn lay
in shadow, blue as steel and glassy as a mirror; now and then a heron
struck an evanescent star from the shallows where it splashed. But the
fellside still stood full in the vivid light, and was dyed to a rich
green, like the colour seen on old silken needlework. Upon Barbara,
standing at the mouth of the cave, the sunshine seemed to concentrate.
She looked larger and grander and more remote than a simple human being.
She might be an incarnation of some Nature-power, older than the
mountains around her, unassailed by time, and partaking of the perpetual
youth of immortals.

"One of the ewes has died," she said to Lucy, "and I've spent hours
trying to get its lamb fostered. Like enough thee'll have to take it
home, and bring it up by hand."

"Botherment!" exclaimed her sister; "haven't I plenty to do already?"

Barbara made no reply. She was wondering what it felt like to be dead,
wondering what that strange thing was which came but once, but came to
all living, to men and women and sheep, and, in the twinkling of an eye,
sent them out of the Known into the Unknown, where all mysteries might
abound.

"Hast ever thought, Lucy," she said at last, "how strange it is that we
should die like sheep and sheep like us?"

"Not I!" replied the younger girl. "My head's stuffed with lighter
rubbish," and she shuddered as her eyes fell upon a huddled white heap
under a thorn.

"It mazes me," continued Barbara, "when I think that yon poor creature
I've thought so silly mappen knows more than I do now. Death must be a
queer waking, Lucy. It's likely we'll find that we're very different to
what we fancied we were. It's likely we're not the only things with
souls. It's likely that the world wasn't just made for us, and all the
creatures for our use. Old Camomile says that every blade of grass has
its own little green soul, and loves the wind and the sunshine and the
rain, and has its ideas about the sky and the stars. Mappen it puts us
down as girt senseless creatures, too coarse-minded to understand its
thoughts."

"Old Camomile is getting old," said Lucy. "He havers a lot."

Barbara was silent. She rarely spoke because she rarely found anyone to
understand her, save the old man Timothy Hadwin, called by the villagers
Old Camomile, because he made potions, and electuaries, and essences,
curing their aches and pains as if by magic.

Lucy rolled up her wool, put the ball in her pocket, and looked slowly
round.

"It's a lonely-like place to spend the night," she said. "I wonder
you're not afraid."

"Sometimes I am," replied Barbara. She recalled nights when she had
trembled before the vastness of the hills, when the winds had deafened
her with stories of things she could not comprehend, when she had turned
from gazing at the cold light of the stars with a fear at her heart,
because they would answer nothing to all her questions.

Barbara was not educated as the world counts education. It is true that
she knew the fells and dales, the tarns and meres of her native country,
as well as the oldest shepherd, who had spent his long life among them.
She could tell the names of the constellations, and take her direction
upon the darkling moors from them. She knew when to plough and sow and
reap. No one was so weather-wise as she in the village. But this is not
education in the eyes of the world, and Barbara set little value upon
her knowledge. She could not speak the King's English, though she spoke
something much more picturesque and vigorous; she only read the simplest
books; and wrote an ungainly, but characteristic hand. She knew no
history, but her mind was furnished with a collection of tales and
legends, which held more of the inner truth of history than the bare
facts. Yet she longed with all her ardent nature for the learning
contained in books; for the power to grasp the thoughts that flashed
across her mind and left upon it an impression as of a great flying
light, which, if it had not eluded her, would have illumined her whole
being. She pined for the life of the intellect.

"I wish we could get out of our bodies," said she, breaking the long
silence. "I wish we could shake them off like an old shift, and leave
them here on the grass, while our souls sailed in the air naked-free."

"What a horrid idea!" said Lucy, shrugging her shoulders.

"But our bodies are so earthy--always wanting meat and drink, and crying
out for sleep. They throw a shadow on us, like a great rock blocking the
light o' the sun."

"I know nought about it," answered Lucy, carelessly.

Barbara laughed at the puzzle of her own thoughts.

"I know nought either," she said; "yet something in me would like to win
out if it could."

Lucy went up the sheep-path. On the brow of the knoll she paused,
looking back. Barbara was kindling a fire outside the cave, and the
smoke, as it coiled upwards, hung between them like a blue veil. Her
sister seemed to be moving among mysterious things, and there was
symbolical meaning in the blue veil. For two worlds lie side by side,
the material and the spiritual, and from either the view into the other
seems hazy and unreal. But the greatest intellects try to reconcile
them. Towards such a reconciliation Barbara, in her untutored mind, was
striving.

The sun had gone down, and, though the sky was still flushed with red
and yellow, a subdued light and solemn stillness filled the dale--a
stillness made the more impressive by the distant splashing of
waterfalls and the calling of birds by the tarn.

Lucy felt sad. She had dropped over the knoll with a sigh. Barbara had
listened to her story of the gold coin, and dismissed it without
comment. She had not been impressed by the idea of their
great-grandmother's hidden wealth. She had suggested no way of making
life easier or pleasanter. Instead, her mind was possessed by vague
ideas and strange questionings, which her sister could not understand,
and which had no bearing upon their everyday life. Lucy went home in the
waning light with reluctant feet.

But she was mistaken about Barbara's interest. For her sister had long
known of the secret hoard, and had once remonstrated with the old woman
about saving it in this way. But it had been in vain, as everything was
in vain which opposed the will of Mistress Annas Lynn. The failure of
the attempt had only served to strengthen the patience of her generous
nature--the patience which can school itself to wait for the fulfilment
of its desires, and, if need be, to receive without a murmur their
denial. No shadow of a quarrel ever dimmed Barbara's out-goings or
comings in; her intercourse with her ancient kinswoman was serene and
reverent, and she would not hazard it in an attempt that could only
result in an upheaval of the bitterest passion. Barbara then put the
matter from her. In this she was different to Lucy, who could not cease
to think and wonder and debate even after she had made up her mind.




CHAPTER III

PETER FLEMING


The swift night came down; fells and dales were folded in purple gloom.
Stars began to shine, and Barbara, eating her supper of coarse bread,
let her eyes wander from group to group with meditative enjoyment. To
her the sky was no vast abyss dotted with a formless multitude of
shining points, but a field of wonderful fiery things, each following
its own appointed course. Yonder glittered Leo, there swung the Great
Bear and the Dragon; and, there on a mountain peak, shimmered the
Northern Crown. It led her thoughts to Timothy Hadwin's prophecy, when
he cast her horoscope; for she should wear a crown, he said, and though
Barbara was too wise to put a strict construction upon his words,
nevertheless, she found pleasure and inspiration in them, wondering what
they might mean.

She flung an extra armful of wood upon the fire, for the night air
nipped frostily. Then, taking her lantern, she went among the sheep to
see that all was well with them and their lambs. The little orphan had
been adopted, and nestled with its foster-brother against a warm woolly
side. A sense of placid well-being lay over the fold, so the girl
returned to the fire. As she sat in silence, her fingers busy making a
withy basket, and her mind active, there came from over the tarn a
sudden burst of melody, ethereal as elfin music. It was echoed to and
fro from cliff to cliff, now it danced overhead, then it stole like a
whisper out of a dale far away. The shores of the tarn were ringed with
sounds, so haunting that they seemed to be unearthly. Barbara listened
in amazement.

Someone was playing a flute from the Rock of the Seven Echoes.

Again the music came rippling across the water and was tossed about from
hillside to hillside in airy phantasy. When at last it died into
silence, Barbara became conscious of the other sounds of the night--the
tinkling of distant waterfalls, the cropping of a sheep close by. She
listened expectantly, but the sounds were not repeated.

"It must be Peter," she thought, "only Peter plays the flute hereaway,
except Jake, the ratter, and only Peter would play it at such a place."

Her eyes brightened when she thought that he was back again in the dale.
Between him and the sisters lay a good fellowship. Often he spent hours
with Barbara among the sheep, reading to her stories of old combats and
great doings from the Iliad and Odyssey. But he was equally at ease when
he helped Lucy to top and tail gooseberries, or sought among the bracken
for the nest of the laying-away hen.

Barbara stirred her fire to a brighter glow. She knew that he would see
it on the other side of the tarn, and perhaps he might come round to the
cave and greet her after his long absence.

Peter was the only son of John Fleming, the miller--called Dusty John in
the village--who was a man of some substance, plain habits and little
education. But he gave his son every advantage. The boy was sent to
school, and afterwards, proving himself apt beyond expectation, went to
St. Bees, from which ancient seat of learning he won a scholarship to
Oxford. The miller's ambition was to see his son in the church, where he
did not doubt Peter would soon be promoted to the highest office. In
dreams he beheld him Archbishop of York or Canterbury. But the lad said
neither yea nor nay to his father's wishes. He enjoyed himself to the
full, coming home for vacations with a light heart, accepting the
truckle bed in the mill-house and the homely fare with as lively a
humour as he did the varied life of Oxford.

He reached the cave just as the moon was rising, and leaned his back
against the cliffs to watch the light sparkle on the water.

"When did you get home?" asked Barbara, putting her withies aside, and
bringing him a cup of milk.

He laughed.

"I've not got home yet," he said, "for I left the coach early in the
afternoon to come over the tops. But they were too deep in snow, so I
had to take the Girdlestone Pass instead. I stayed at the Shepherd's
Rest for an hour. Now here I am, late as usual."

Then he plied her with eager questions about his father and mother, the
village folk, and the welfare of all at Greystones.

"How goes the studying, Barbara?" he asked. "Have you read the book I
sent you?"

She shook her head.

"Nay; it's not that I haven't the will, but there's no time. Jan Straw
is grown so old, and the new hind hasn't got into the way of things yet,
so that the heavy end falls on me." Then she added with a smile,
"There's such a lot of me to get tired, Peter."

He looked at her. Though he could not see the calm eyes and the
corn-coloured hair, the outlines of her form were splendid in the
silvery light. He felt dwarfed beside her, not physically, but morally.
Hers was the finer spirit. He acknowledged it with a glow of generous
feeling, for he was given to hero-worshipping.

"We'll make a pact, Barbara," he said, "while I'm at home I'll shepherd
the sheep, and you shall read."

"You are good and kind, Peter," replied she, "but I remember how you
helped me once before. If it wasn't a rainbow, it was a flower, and if
it wasn't a flower, it was a bird, but never the sheep-salving or the
cattle-herding. The kye got into the barley-field--do you mind?"

They both laughed.

"What a careless brute I am to be sure," said he. "But if you won't let
me look after the farm, I'll come and read to you, when you have time to
listen. I've brought you a new book; you'll like it."

He unstrapped the pack he carried, and took out a stout volume. In the
light of the fire he showed it to her. It was Pope's Homer.

"Some warm day," he continued, "we'll sit on the fellside and wake again
echoes of great deeds, and old battles. Thundergay shall be Olympus, and
you shall be Athene, the azure-eyed maid. Listen to this----"

He bent down by the fire and held the book so that he could read by its
light.

    "'Now heaven's dread arms her mighty limbs invest,
    Jove's cuirass blazes on her ample breast....'

"I can see you in them, Barbara."

    'The massy golden helm she next assumes,
    That dreadful nods with four o'er shading plumes;
    So vast, the broad circumference contains
    A hundred battles on a hundred plains.
    The goddess thus the imperial car ascends;
    Shook by her arm the mighty javelin bends,
    Ponderous and huge; that when her fury burns,
    Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns.'"

He closed the book and put it into the girl's hands.

"I've never seen you roused up to do battle," he laughed, "but you'll
look like that when the spirit moves you. Good-night, Barbara."

Something stirred her like the call of a trumpet heard by her spiritual
ears alone. Was her placid life upon the mountains going to end? Would
she have to fight with her desires, because Duty still pointed a stern
finger towards the sheep-paths, while another road opened before her--a
broad and pleasant road. Peter always roused this restlessness in her
heart. She was glad, yet sorry, when he went singing home, leaving her
to the night-loneliness with her book of old battles.

The next morning Peter Fleming was walking up and down the cobbled path
of the mill-garden between flowering currant bushes, and sheaves of
lent-lilies, whose buds were still encased in their pale-green sheaths.
Everything sparkled in a sudden burst of sunshine. From the mill-wheel
the water fell like a glittering fringe, and the beck raced merrily by,
clutching at the weeds and grasses on its rim, and drawing them down to
make them gorgeously green under its clear surface. On the other side of
the stream stood Cringel Forest.

The mill-house was a tall building with the date, 1600, carved over the
door under a coat of arms of a wheat-sheaf and a sickle. The Flemings,
or De Flemings, as they were then called--had been millers in the dale
since the reign of Elizabeth, a fact which Dusty John prided himself
upon, although he was as simple an old man as ever spoke the vernacular.

The kitchen door was open at the end of the cobbled path, and in its hot
and sunny atmosphere, Peter's mother stood ironing. Her muslin
kerchief--as fine as ever came from the looms of the East India
Company--her gown of russet, and white apron were the essence of
cleanliness and order.

"Get away with thy blandishments," she said, for Peter had paused on the
threshold to tell her that she looked like a ripe hazel-nut, her face
was so brown and rosy and round. "Thee'd witch the wisdom out of my old
head with thy flattery. And as for thy dadda--he cannot walk for
swaggering, thee's lillied him up so handsome!"

She smiled proudly into the clear-eyed face looking so affectionately
into her own. Peter made her feel that she was still young and worthy of
admiration. When he came home she always wore white stockings--though
she thought them an extravagance at other times--and placed a flower or
a bow of ribbon under her chin.

She held up a kerchief that she was ironing, and said tenderly:

"It will be a great day for thy father and me when we see thee
consecrated, Peter."

He stepped across the floor where the sunshine lay in a broad band, and
kissed her.

"And a blessed day when I does up thy lawn sleeves, my son. Thee must
never let anyone do up thy sleeves but me, lad, not even thy wife when
thee gets one. There's nobody kens the art of clear starching and
ironing better than thy old mother."

The young man sat on the edge of the table and swung his legs.

"You'll be disappointed, mother," he said, "but I never can see
myself--in spite of your dear visions--in bishop's sleeves. I'm a lazy
beggar, and more likely to be lying under a tree, finding sermons in
stones and books in the running brooks than beating the pulpit cushions
of Durham or Carlisle."

She shook her head indulgently.

"Time enough, time enough," she said. "Thee's too young yet to know thy
own mind."

Peter looked round the kitchen and laughed.

"Would you like to live in a palace, mother?" he asked.

"A palace! And what would I do there?" she replied, seeing no further
than the lawn sleeves which she would wash and iron.

The kitchen of the mill-house was small, clean and simple. Brass
fire-irons, two or three candlesticks, a burnished copper warming-pan
reflected the strong sunshine, but otherwise the puritanical severity of
the white-washed walls was unrelieved. The floor was strewn with river
sand, and the chairs and dresser glistened with constant oiling and
rubbing. On the dresser was a pile of newly-made clap-cakes, and round
the fire stood an oak maiden hung with clean linen. The place had a
kindly, homely smell, and Peter sniffed it with enjoyment. He loved the
towers of Oxford, and the shadow of his college cloisters, but this
small and sunlit kitchen, where his mother baked and ironed, and his
father smoked his evening pipe, brought him back to those primitive
passions of man out of which the strength of his life springs.

Peter returned to the garden and continued his walk up and down the
cobbled path.

He was thinking of his future, and wondering what he would be able to
make of it. He had almost decided that he would not take orders when his
college days were done, which would be at the summer vacation. The
prospect of becoming a curate, or even a North Country vicar did not
attract him; on the other hand, he had no particular leanings in any
other direction. That which would have suited him down to the ground, he
sometimes told himself whimsically, was the position of a country
gentleman, with a good library, a well-stocked stable, plenty of dogs
and troops of friends. His was a genial, breezy nature; he had a firm
hand, a just mind, and a clear brain, added to a boyish love of the
unusual and adventurous. Peter was a favourite in the village. He liked
pretty faces, and flirted openly, but he left the lasses' hearts none
the worse. He fished and hunted with the lads; he talked politics with
the tailor, religion with the cobbler, and with Jake, the rat-catcher,
spent many a long afternoon. It was Jake who taught him to play upon the
flute, and though he never managed to charm the rats with his music--as
the strange little man did--he had the young men and maids capering on
the bit of green before the inn door on summer evenings, long after they
ought to have been abed.

His meditation was interrupted by a horseman calling from over the wall:

"Halloa! Peter, back again?"

It was Joel Hart.

"I'm glad to see you," said he.

"I thought you'd made up your mind to go abroad and seek your fortune,"
replied Peter, shaking hands heartily.

"So I had, but I broke it again. I couldn't be quite sure where to find
the fortune."

They both laughed, but Joel had a note of envy in his mirth.

"You're a lucky dog, Peter," he exclaimed, "to have money in your
pockets and a fond father ready to supply more. How long are you home
for?"

"Six weeks. It's the Easter vacation."

"Good! we'll have some fishing and wrestling--eh? We'll make a damned
fine holiday of it. I want something to take my mind off the worry of
wondering where my bread and butter is to come from. You don't want to
work, I bet; had enough of that sort of thing down yonder--eh? Come and
have a glass at the Wild Boar."

He alighted and leading his horse by the bridle walked down the village
street with Peter.

When they were boys they had gone nutting and fishing together, and the
memory of many a hairbreadth escape still bound them with the links of
affection, though in mind and character they had long since drifted
apart.

Joel Hart was a handsome man. Beside him, Peter with his homely face,
honest grey eyes, and loosely built figure looked rough-hewn--looked,
indeed, that which he was, the off-spring of clean-living, hard-working
peasant forefathers. The two men were of a height, but the one carried
himself proudly, looking neither to right nor left; the other with an
easy swing, that could stoop to give pennies to a crying child, or lift
a bundle for an old woman. There was an expression of arrogance and
dissatisfaction on Joel's features that marred their beauty. He had dark
curling hair, which he wore rather long, his eyes were large,
well-shaped, full of a smouldering fire or melting sadness as his mood
chanced to be.

The world had dealt hardly with him, and he could not forgive it. His
father, the son of that ill-fated Joel Hart whom Annas Lynn had hidden
in the wool-barn, had married late in life, and died shortly after,
leaving his infant to be brought up by the widow--a vain and foolish
woman. She had been indifferent to his discipline and education, and
when she died, left the estate--it was a very small one--burdened with
debts, a burden that increased rapidly, owing to extravagance and bad
management. Joel was not competent to deal with it. A habit of
indolence, fostered by his up-bringing, had become second nature to him;
his temper was uncertain; yet he cared deeply for two things--Forest
Hall and Lucy Lynn. To preserve the one, and gain the other was a wild
dream that he dreamed, but made only fitful attempts to realise. He felt
that he was bound by invisible bonds which he could not break.

"I'm getting to the end of my resources, Peter," he said as they stood
in the inn parlour, drinking. He often make a joke of his poverty; it
was too well-known to be hidden; and he did not care that folk should
see how much he felt it. "I've only one hope left."

"I trust it's a substantial one," remarked Peter.

Joel flung back his head and laughed.

"Ha, ha," he cried, "ha, ha. It's the old great-grandmother up at
Greystones."

"You're not thinking of marrying her--are you?" said Peter, his eyes
twinkling.

"'Pon my soul I never thought of it! What a pity. She'd have had me,
Peter, for the love she bore my grand-dad. I needn't have waited till
she was dead, then, to have got her money."

"She's rich--is she?"

"Must be! an old miser! She told me she was going to leave the little
she had--little, mind you, and Greystones is the most prosperous farm
for miles round--she said she was going to leave it to be divided
between Barbara, Lucy, and me. She's ninety-five now, and can't live
much longer, though she looks as hale and hearty an old sinner as ever
laid up treasure in this world. I hope she'll not forget her promise."

"Court her," replied Peter, briefly.

"Her or her great-granddaughters?" Joel shot a sharp glance at his
companion. He sometimes thought that Peter had a warm side for Lucy as
well as himself. "All the same," he continued, tossing off another
glass, "I'm breeding dogs, as a stand-by, in case she dies without
leaving me a shilling. You must come and see them. I've got a litter of
the prettiest pups you ever saw. I keep 'em in the parlour because the
kennels are all out of repair. It's a comedown, eh, for the master to
sup his porridge in the kitchen, but feed his dogs under the very noses
of his forefathers in their gilt frames?"

They talked a little longer, made plans to join the fox-hunt next
morning, then Joel mounted his horse and rode away, while Peter retraced
his steps up the village street.

He thought that Joel was changing. The man looked unhappy and restless
in spite of his gay demeanour. He talked too much, and he drank too
much. He might be as poor as he asserted, but he rode a fine
horse--Peter was a judge of horse-flesh--and his clothes were dandified
beyond the fashion of the times. Yet there was something in him that
appealed to Peter, who thought he looked like a gay bird in a trap. And
what trap could be worse than one made out of family pride, poverty, and
lack of education?

Pondering upon his friend's character and circumstances, he passed
through the village.

High Fold, in the midst of which the mill stood, was a cluster of houses
on the fringe of Cringel Forest. They were built of grey stone, roofed
with rough-hewn slates, where the yellow stonecrop ran riot, hung with
queer little balconies, giving them a foreign air. They stood at all
angles on either side of a steep road, at the foot of which was the inn,
at the top the church. Except for the house known as Forest Hall, the
farm of Greystones and a few solitary cots, High Fold marked the limit
of human habitation in that direction. Beyond it were many miles of
heathy moorland, a wild expanse of mountain, barren ravines, each with
its own gushing beck, and wild marshes. The people were a healthy,
thrifty race, lacking little--and those things not necessities--working
hard and simply, and living to a good old age. Many of them herded sheep
on the common lands; a few wrought in a silver mine some distance off;
others spun and carded wool; a tailor, a weaver, a rat-catcher and a
blacksmith were respected members of the community. They owned a large
flock of geese, each bird was smit with its owner's private mark, and a
goose-girl, in the common employ, led them daily to their
feeding-grounds. There were few idle hands in the village, even the old
men knitted stockings, sitting on the inn bench of a spring or summer
evening.

Peter followed the road beyond the village, where it turned into a
cart-track, and wound through Cringel Forest, leading to Forest Hall,
and then on up the dale to Greystones.

As he lay under a beech-tree, watching the birds fluttering among the
smooth branches, a little old man came wandering through and sat beside
him.

The hair of the little old man curled on his shoulders, like a
child's--though it was grey instead of golden--and his eyes were also
like a child's, bright and questioning. He was primly dressed in a
flowered waistcoat buff breeches and blue stockings, but the garments
were faded and threadbare. On his knee he held a basket of roots and
leaves.

"Meditation," he said, "is the mother of great thoughts, and repose
fosters them till they be well-grown."

"That's comforting to my lazy soul," drawled Peter.

The thin old voice continued, carefully choosing the words as though,
even in meditation, nothing slipshod or ill-fitting was allowed to pass.

"We should find time to be idle," he said. "When the soul is possessed
by tranquillity, there enters in an angel called thought--a mysterious
being, whose birth and origin is far beyond our knowledge or
understanding. But we can give her housing, care for her like kind folk,
and she will reward us abundantly. Her presence with us is her reward."

Peter chewed a blade of grass, basking in the warm light. For a little
while neither spoke. The last week had shaken off all the appearance of
winter from the forest. The trees were budding, a tall poplar rose
purple as a plum, yonder a group of larches were turning green, and a
sycamore had all its tips dipped in crimson. The blackthorn thicket was
white, and the lesser celandines were golden on the banks. In the forest
lay a deep blue silence--the silence of old wise trees, but on the
topmost branches, gay and giddy birds were pouring out their hearts to
the spring sunshine in a wild burst of melody.

"It's all very beautiful," said Peter; "that light on the
beech-stems--it might be a splash of pure gold. The trees seem to be
aware of it too--if only their leaves were out they would be clapping
their hands for joy." Then he turned to Timothy Hadwin. "I'm becoming a
convert to your Faith," he said. "I believe the earth has a soul and
every living thing."

"You feel it, then?" replied the old man, eagerly. "You feel a magic in
the woods which only comes from the communion of souls? You and I and
the trees are not alone here. You feel that other minds are reaching out
to touch you, as you are reaching out to touch them? You have in your
own mind this vision of the truth--the kinship of the living world?"

"Perhaps it's imagination after all," said Peter.

"Imagination does not lie."

"It may deceive."

"No, no. What we imagine is true for ourselves, though no one else may
see it to be so. We each of us have senses, feelings, thoughts of our
own. Were you to tell me that you saw a hamadryad coming out of yon
beech-tree, I should not contradict you because I could not see it. But
if you plucked a buttercup, and said it was only coloured matter, I
should say you were wrong, for I know it to be something more. The
greatest blessing of life is sight, and the commonest ill is blindness."
He laid his hand upon the ground and continued. "We are all akin,
because we are all the children of the Earth. Her great mind is made up
of our little minds. She knows us better than we know ourselves--do we
know ourselves at all? I love to think of the Earth, a personality, a
great angel rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, rushing along
through the dark night or the bright day, through clouds and through
sunshine, never halting or stumbling or going astray, carrying upon her
bosom a multitudinous life, caring for it, as a thoughtful mother."

After this conversation the two men were silent for a while, each
following the trend of his own thoughts. Then Timothy got up and went
away. But Peter remained under the beech-tree.

Peter had capacity for the full enjoyment of life, and a boundless
curiosity concerning it. As he lay on the ground he seemed to feel the
heart of the Earth-mother beating under his own, and he was filled with
a sense of her teeming vitality and his individual share of it. He
opened his mind to the sounds and sights around. It delighted him to
follow with his eyes the stems of the trees as they sprang straight from
the bosom of their universal mother into the blue air. He listened to
the whistling of the birds, the hum of the bees, and watched a rabbit
leap among the ferns--pleased with such simple demonstrations of life.
Perhaps a change was working in his own nature, for never had the common
things about him seemed to be so full of absorbing interest as now;
never had he been so conscious of the sap running up the branches of
the trees, and of his own vitality. At present he did but enjoy the
sense of power, which he could use if he desired. But soon, he told
himself, he would labour, singing in the light of the sun.

Then through the forest came Barbara Lynn, driving her primitive cart
home from market. She did not see the figure under the beech-tree, for
her eyes were dreaming, neither did Peter try to draw her attention. She
sat with her hands lying loosely on her lap, the reins hanging slack as
the old pony took its own pace home. Her fine, large features were
composed, and she kept her jolting seat with unconcern. There was
something patriarchal in the cart, and its rough-cut wooden wheels, and
the regal form of Barbara, deep-bosomed, yellow-haired and clear-eyed as
the off-spring of shepherd kings should be.

She passed on, while the over-arching trees dropped lights and shadows
across her face. Peter watched her till the blue distance of the forest
closed round the cart, and the creaking of its wheels died into silence.

He came back to a knowledge of himself with a rush. For the time being
his mind had been merged in the mind of another. The forest, too, was
waking as from a trance. Barbara had seemed to hold it in the spell of
her own dreaming. Now the wind blew down the track, trundling dead
leaves before it, and drawing a low chiming from the branches overhead.
The birds burst into renewed twittering, and the rabbits leaped among
the fern.




CHAPTER IV

THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES


Barbara was driving sheep on the fells above Cringel Forest. She looked
down and saw the trees bourgeoning into leaf, and rising out of them, on
the top of a jutting crag, the old house belonging to Joel Hart. It was
an unpretentious place, but battlemented and loop-holed, made for
defence when moss-troopers paid frequent visits, and not for beauty or
comfort. It was, in fact, little better than a fortified farm-house;
underneath it ran a long dark cellar, where the cattle of the villagers
could be driven for safety in times of alarm.

Barbara's keen eyes--keen as an eagle's to scan the broad
fellside--noted the air of decay which had settled upon it, the thicket
of brambles among the chimneys, and how a pine, growing out of the
rocks, encroached upon the doorway. Behind the house the ground swept
steeply up, strewn with shattered boulders and weeping with waterfalls.

"Poor Joel," she said to herself. "He's like Paris, in the book Peter
gave me--beautiful Paris that Helen loved, whose soul ill-matched his
fair form."

She thought of her sister's adoration of this man, and was sad. There
could be nothing but disappointment in store for Lucy, she felt sure of
it, unless the girl overcame her affection and set her heart upon a
more worthy object. But she was attracted by the glamour of fallen
greatness, by his handsome presence, and she admired his pride. Barbara,
with clearer vision, saw a man tossed about by circumstance, without a
guiding principle in his life, whose pride was as hollow a thing as a
soul ever cherished.

She turned away from Forest Hall, and the disquieting thoughts which
Joel roused, and looked up the dale. It wound in sun-swept greenness to
Thundergay, where Swirtle Tarn glittered like a silver sixpence. For
some days clouds had been gathering there, piled one on the other like
wool-sacks, white and soft as wool just now, but stained crimson at
sunrise, and black as smoke at night. The light was vivid, and had that
peculiar quality of deepening the colours of the landscape, often the
forerunner of storm; the purple of the distant hills was more intense,
the green of the grass richer, the red of ploughed earth more
passionate.

The sheep that Barbara was driving were uneasy, making many attempts to
break and turn back. Then the leader, recognising the summer heaf to
which the flocks return in spring, after having wintered in a more
sheltered place, set off at a run, followed by the rest. Shading her
eyes from the sun, she watched them leap gladly upwards, bleating their
welcome to the well-remembered spot--for the bond binding the sheep to
their hill-pasture, is as the bond between man and his own hearthstone.

She turned homewards. As she threaded her way among the rocks of the
rough path, she came upon Jan Straw gathering wool, which the sheep had
left behind them upon the heath and brambles.

"Her was buried in a linen shift," he said, answering her remark that
he was busy at a strange gleaning. "Her was buried in a linen shift,
fine and white and soft as snow."

"Who?" asked the girl, for she saw that his mind was wandering.

"Her o' the white fingers, white as Lucy Lynn's, white like the linen
she was buried in, white as snow."

"Your wife, Jan?" said Barbara, having in her mind's eye a vision of
golden curls and a little pale face, which had been buried long before
she was born.

Jan said no more, but, turning away, continued his gleaning.

"What are the wisps for?" she asked.

"I mun be buried in woollen," he muttered, "the law says so--it said so
then--but she had a linen shroud, the best linen as ever was wove,
shining like snow, like them little white flowers she loved."

He stood up, trying to straighten his crooked back, crooked with the
toil and poverty of years.

"I mun be buried in woollen," he repeated, "and I's picking my shroud
off the brambles. Yon little lass, Lucy, her o' the white hands, she
promised to spin it for me and get it wove. It wunna be white like snow,
like her own bonny hands, but it'll match my old grey face. I's'll not
be buried by the parish. I's'll lie aside her in the kirk-garth below
there."

He wiped a tear from his eye.

"Her should have been buried in woollen too," he added, bringing these
memories from the abyss of his mind, where they had long lain in
darkness, "but her was so white and soft, white as milk and soft as
silk, her couldna abide the touch o' a woollen shift. So her was buried
in linen, and I paid the fine."

"It will take a lot of gathering, Jan, before you get enough to make a
shroud," said Barbara. "But let it be, let it be; leave it for the birds
to build their nests of. You shall have a fleece, and a decent bed, too,
when you need it, beside her o' the little white hands."

He looked at the girl slowly, from her feet to the crown of her head.

"Thee's a girt lass," he said, "as big as the mistress, and they used to
call her daughter o' the giant that lived at Ketel's Parlour. But thee's
got a kind, soft voice, Barbara Lynn, like the cooin' o' wood-doves.
Wilta gie me a fleece?"

She nodded, and the pale watery eyes brightened.

"The birds is welcome to my gatherin'," he replied scattering his bundle
of wool. "I's'll go and pull rushes. We's gettin' short o' candles
down-by," and he shuffled away.

Barbara watched him go. She thought how hard it was to be old and lonely
and poor. Jan had bed and whittle-gate at the farm--decency could do no
other after a life of honest service--but, as the old man was past work,
what use had he for wages? Such was her great-grandmother's argument for
refusing to part with a penny of her hoard.

Barbara went slowly down-hill. She had an hour to spare before
milking-time, and it was too precious to be lost. She passed along a
ledge of the Mickle Crags, found a sheltered spot, and sat down. She
could not see Greystones, as it lay right below her, but she could smell
the turf-smoke from its fire.

There, with her hands clasped upon her knees, surrounded by a wilderness
of grey rocks, she gave wings to her mind. All through this Easter-tide
she had walked as in a dream; but it was the dream and not the actual
that had life. She came and went, rose before dawn, and passed the day
toiling upon the fells, but now and again she culled an hour to spend
with her book--Pope's "Homer"--at the cave. Sometimes Peter came there
and read to her, often the old herbalist Timothy Hadwin accompanied him,
and the two men would talk, while she listened, weaving withy baskets,
but weaving into her own mind many a wonderful thought. Thus she learned
to know the old stories of Achilles and Hector and Helen, of Ulysses and
Penelope; she was thrilled with the beauty, pathos and madness of them.
The natural objects about her began to take on a new meaning; she was
able to feel the freshness of the early world, when men's hearts were
fuller of the mystery of things, less sure of their own place in the
Universe, and stricken with fear before the veiled faces of the gods.

She likened her mind to the shield of Achilles, which Vulcan forged for
him; she thought of it as a great disc engraved with strange
pictures--emblems of all that she thought and knew and felt. But as the
ocean encompassed the shield--

    "In living silver seemed the waves to roll,
    And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole,"

so about her beat the waves of a mystery, which shut in a part of her
life, that her inward eye might concentrate upon it, and yet be
conscious of the depths surging round.

The human mind is stupendous, she thought, beyond the power of man to
understand. When she considered her own mind, and all that was written
upon it--its ideas of life, of men and women, of religion and destiny,
she was awed with wonder that a thing so mighty should have been forged
for her by the hand which gave her life.

Her own existence was too uneventful, too full of commonplaces, too
mean, to provide a satisfying food for her strong intellect. But in
"Homer" she found a feast spread. His men and women lived down to the
depths of their being, and she lived in them. Hecuba and Andromache! the
greatness and bitterness of their lives appalled and stirred her. When
she stood upon the heights and saw the mists rise like smoke from the
dale, or roll from ledge to ledge down the fellside, when she saw the
beck in spate, when she looked through the gloaming at the ruined
outlines of the crags, then she participated in the very thoughts of
these great women; then she felt the presence of gods in the mist; then
she saw Achilles flee before the angry River; then she saw Troy and the
long black ships, and the lines of glittering warriors, and in her own
heart she heard the cry of defeated hosts, of exultation, of death, of
resignation.

Barbara roused herself from these thoughts. She was lingering too long
in idleness. She must go and call the cattle, for milking-time was near.
So she came swiftly down the crags behind the house. They were rough and
steep, rotten in many places, and drilled with springs. But a little
sheep-path led in and out, bordered with blueberries and parsley ferns.
In one cleft a thorn had taken root, and baffled the wind and storms of
years; in another grew a holly; but for the most part the place was bare
of vegetation. Soon she saw the chimneys of Greystones below her.

Lucy stood in the dairy churning. The door was open, and she could see
into the cow-house, and through it, framed as in a picture, the fellside
aglow with the afternoon sunshine. She was tired, her hair was ruffled,
and her cheeks were flecked with cream. Her eyes, at times, were almost
blinded with tears, and she saw the distant glories through mist. The
good green earth called to her, but she was doomed to toil at the churn
in the semi-gloom of the dairy while the day fled, while life fled.

She longed to be out in the sunshine; she wanted to plait rush-baskets
as she had done as a child, to fish for minnows in the beck, to wander
down the dale and smell the aromatic scent of the springing bracken. She
looked at Jan Straw, who sat on the doorstep peeling rushes. He was like
a worn-out garment; she, too, would be like a worn-out garment before
long. Life was hurrying, hurrying by; not long ago she had been a child,
to-day she was a woman, soon she would be old with life behind her. Lucy
dreaded growing old. Each morning when she woke she thought that the day
must surely bring some change, but it passed as the day before had done,
passed in monotonous labour, leaving her a little older, a little
sadder, a little less hopeful. Now and then she cherished the thought
that she was a woman grown, and whispered to herself of love and home
and husband. But to-day she wanted to cast off all responsibility, to
have the mind and outlook of a child.

She paused for a moment to wipe the splashes of cream from her cheeks,
and rest her arms. Then her great-grandmother called:

"Lucy!"

It was no use pretending that she had not heard; the tones of the old
voice demanded a reply.

"Yes," she answered, reluctantly.

"Has the butter come yet, Lucy?"

"Nay."

"Nay? I doubt the butter will never come to idle hands."

The girl began again, and the thud, thud of the churn was like the angry
beating of her heart.

Lucy's unwonted despondency rose from the strange temper of Joel.
Usually he was as affectionate as she could desire, but sometimes,
without any reason that she knew, he would be taciturn and neglectful.
Yet he loved her--she did not doubt it. There was an inconsistency in
him, and it puzzled her. For to Lucy's understanding, character should
be simple, and not a thing of complex feelings and contradictory
impulses. Though Joel purposed the highest achievements, he rarely
attained; though he said that he adored her, he could not rouse his
energy to fulfil his responsibilities. She was unhappy, trying to piece
together these parts of him, and present a clear picture to her mind.

At last she heard the plop-plop of butter in the churn, and her eyes
brightened. When the brain is distracted with questions it is unable to
solve, that concern the inner life, it finds relief in turning to
outward shows, where something is being accomplished--be it only the
coming of butter.

The hind had cleaned out the byre, and shaken down fresh straw. It
glistened in the gloom like thick golden threads, soon to be trodden
under the hoofs of the cows. Lucy could hear her sister's voice as she
drove them from their pasture across the bridge to the milking. They
lumbered in single file up the path--red cows, white cows, piebald cows,
with straight horns and full swinging udders, their brown eyes looking
from under their lashes with an expression of innocent content.

Lucy was in a mood to draw analogies from everything about her, and she
thought of the yellow straw and Barbara's hair, and how soon life, with
its heavy foot, would beat out its gold.

"If you could have a wish just now, that would come true," she said,
"what would you wish for most in the world?"

Barbara leaned her cheek against the warm side of Cushy, her favourite
cow, and pondered this question, while the only sound was the swish of
milk into the pail.

"Eyes," she remarked at length.

"Eyes? You're not going blind, Barbara?"

"Nay, nay, I've got the best eyes in the dale. I can count twelve stars
in the Pleiades, and no one else can see more than six. It's not them
kind of eyes I want--it's spirit-eyes."

"Oh, Barbara, do you want to see spooks?"

The girl laughed, and then was silent. At last she said:

"I feel that if we could push a curtain aside, we'd find ourselves in a
wonderful world. It's here, about us, on every hand, but we can't get
in."

"Spooks!" again exclaimed Lucy. "I've seen a spook. It's the spirit of
this old house--a grinning, grey hag, grey as its name--and it's got you
and me in its grip; but I'll get away from it, see if I don't. It takes
the very life out of me--haunts me like a shadow."

"Shut your eyes to it," said Barbara; "don't think of it, then it won't
bother you."

"Shut my eyes! So I do; but it's my bed-fellow when you're not here. It
gets close to me--ugh!--and whispers and whispers----"

"Well, what does it whisper?"

"Horrid things--all about death and sorrow and pain----"

"They're the common lot of us creatures. You won't escape them even if
you run away from Greystones."

"I'm off now, at any rate," and Lucy took her milk cans and set out for
High Fold. It was her habit to meet Joel at this time, on her way
through Cringel Forest, and glean from their short meeting either joy or
unhappiness upon which to feed herself until the same hour of the next
evening.

The road to the village lay along the beck-side, and crossed the stream
by an old stone bridge just beyond the falls. The bridge was garlanded
in summer with honeysuckle; already the pale green leaves were out--the
first green leaves in the dale--and the sight gladdened the heart of the
girl. The further away she got from Greystones the happier she grew; she
threw off the brooding despondency that had clouded her spirit all day,
and hummed as she walked. The evening air was balmy, the snow had
vanished from the fells, spring had come at last.

She had not gone far when she met Peter Fleming on his way to see her
great-grandmother. He was swinging along at a good pace, with books
tucked under each arm, and whistling like a blackbird. But he turned and
walked with her to the edge of the forest. She could not help a
momentary wish that Peter, with his honest grey eyes, and open smile
were Joel. She could have rested her heart in peace upon him. She would
never have been troubled with doubts. She would have been like a bird,
buoyed up like a bird on the calm blue waters of the mere, as happy and
unconcerned a creature as any on the earth. He had never shown her
anything but a brotherly affection, but she knew by instinct that artful
fingers, and a pretty face could cause his heartstrings to vibrate. Yet
it was Joel, and not Peter, whom she loved.

He left her at the edge of the forest, and she followed one of the many
paths by which it was intersected, that led to a clearing where Timothy
Hadwin's cottage stood. But his door was shut, so she left his can of
milk on the doorstep, and ran down to a little dell to meet Joel. She
jingled her cans so that he might hear her coming.

He was waiting for her with his back against a tree-trunk.

A sweeter trysting-place these lovers could not have chosen. The mossy
banks were starred with celandines, now closing with the lengthening
shadows; hollies, dense and glossy-leaved, formed a complete screen
around, and down in the bottom, among grey pebbles, a spring bubbled up,
as clear as crystal and cold as ice, widening into a pool, in which the
lovely slim bodies of the sunbeams by day, and the moon-beams by night,
bathed and swam.

Joel was in a lively humour, but Lucy would be serious.

"Oh, lad, lad," she whispered, "take me away from Greystones. I'm so
unhappy there."

"Unhappy! What or who has been frightening you, Lucy? Is it the old
woman?"

She shuddered.

"I'm sure the place is haunted."

"So it is--by your great-grandmother. It's not canny to have a
great-grandmother, Lucy. She ought to be a ghost by now."

"Oh, I'd rather have her as she is," replied the girl. "She can't get
out of the four-poster--at any rate she wont till she's dead. Then"--she
shivered again, and moved closer to him--"she would soon be after us,
keeking through the bushes, and crying out in that sharp voice of hers:
'Lucy, Lucy, away to your bed!' But, Joel, I wish you would tell her
that you want to marry me."

"God forbid," he said fervently.

"Why not, Joel? Don't you want to marry me? She's fonder of you than she
is of me."

He plucked a bunch of the little yellow flowers and twined them in her
curls.

"You're very pretty to-night, Lucy," he answered, "and you know I want
to marry you more than anything else in the world. But it would not help
us for me to tell her so, though she does profess to like the looks of
me. She likes the looks of her money better."

"What's that to do with it?"

"She'd want to know if I expected her to keep us."

"You could say 'No.'"

"Then she'd want to know if I could keep you."

"You could say 'Yes.'"

"But I can't keep you, Lucy. I can't keep myself, not yet, though I have
hopes that my luck is changing," he spoke mysteriously.

"Shall we never be married?" she asked wearily, leaning her head upon
his shoulder.

"We must wait a little longer."

"It's always wait, wait, wait, Joel."

"Well, you see, you shouldn't have fallen in love with such a
poverty-stricken creature. But I thank God--whenever I thank Him at
all--that you did. You're the only soul that has ever cared for me,
Lucy. My mother blew the thought of me away as though I had been dust;
and old Mally Ray, honest heart, doesn't know the meaning of real love.
I don't think her religion approves of the word. Look up, Lucy, and let
me see you smile--it's a garden of roses to me, that smile of yours."

She did look up, but to ask in a cold voice:

"How much money have you, Joel?"

"Only a penny piece, but, like the widow's curse, it's going to
multiply."

"Really?"

"You shall see. Some fine morning I'll come riding up to Greystones and
carry you off to be lady of Forest Hall."

She gazed at him through the dusk, at his handsome face and lithe
figure. He was a glorious make of a man. How could she ever have
distrusted him? His eyes were looking into hers with an expression of
the tenderest regard, his arms were round her, his voice was whispering
endearing words.

So she gave herself up to the joy of loving and being loved, having cast
all her doubts and suspicions away as unworthy of her and disloyal to
him.

They sat on a fallen tree with arms entwined. It was growing rapidly
darker; owls began to hoot in the forest; a damp, sweet smell rose from
the undergrowth. They talked bravely, as young things do, of the
future.

Then Lucy ran home by the singing beck, up to the lonely house under the
crags, happy in Joel's promise that he would soon come for her openly,
and ask for her great-grandmother's blessing, which he was sure to get
if he came with full pockets.

How they were to be filled she did not know or ask. But Joel had assured
her that his luck was changing at last.




CHAPTER V

THE WAKING OF THE HOLY WELL


"Thee'll be home betimes," said Mistress Lynn.

Lucy was standing before the kitchen looking-glass, pinning a flower
into the bosom of her cotton gown. She glanced up with a curl of
rebellion on her lips, then tossed her head and replied:

"Aye."

"Thee'll mind that now, my lass," continued the old woman; "I'll have no
bairn o' mine wandering about Cringel Forest after dark."

"You did it yourself, great-granny," said Lucy, with resentment. "Many's
the time I've heard you tell of waking the Holy Well till midnight."

"M'appen I did, Lucy," and she smiled grimly; "but I don't choose that
you should follow me. You might gang astray."

"Well, I'll be back before dark," answered the girl.

"At nine o'clock?"

"Aye, at nine o'clock! It's a wonder you don't say seven or six maybe."

"So I would if I saw a reason for it; but I don't," replied Mistress
Lynn imperturbably. "Go thy wayses now, and come back with a more
respectful tongue in thy head. I'll be glad to be rid of thy saucement
for a while."

Lucy went out into the sunshine gaily. This was one of her few holidays
in the year, and for very shame her great-grandmother could not keep her
drudging at the farm when the whole village was bent on pleasure, waking
the Holy Well. The day was Tuesday in Easter Week. The sky was blue; the
birds were in the full rush of nest-making; the leaves were coming out
like magic; everything was light-hearted.

To be sure the new curate had cast a cold eye on the festivities, and
even spoken against them from the church at the top of the village
street; but his sour looks and words could not take the sweetness out of
the day, or stifle the merriment of his parishoners. They had waked the
well on the 23rd of April for generations--long before there was a
church in High Fold, long before good St. Kentergerne had preached the
Gospel to their forefathers. They had waked it in the days when
mistletoe grew in Cringel Forest, and when they worshipped strange gods
at the Stannin' Stanes on the fellside yonder. Christianity had merely
given the old pagan custom, which it could not stamp out, a Christian
significance. No young, upstart curate, with his austere views, could
prevent the people from clinging with affection to a festivity,
sanctioned by the ages, and providing so bright a break in the routine
of their sombre lives.

When Lucy reached the churchyard crowds were already gathered. The
well--a stream of water bubbling into a stone trough by the
lychgate--was hung with garlands of ferns and flowers; the village
street was choked with traffic and booths, where nuts and gingerbread,
and gaily-coloured confections were being sold by dames in their Sunday
best. Timothy Hadwin dispensed powders, balms and essences to the
shepherds and their wives--many of whom had come miles over the
mountains, and had not been to High Fold since this time last year.

"Sixpence worth o' the linctus, Timothy. It's main good for the cough:
my man would have died last winter if I hadn't given him it regular; the
snow and the wind was sommat awfu' back the fells."

"A pound o' camomile, Tim, old man. There's nowt like camomile-tea when
your innards are no' peacefu' like!"

"Have you any o' that elder-flower water, Master Timothy, what makes
your cheeks soft?" whispered a lass, with a hasty look round to see that
no young man could overhear her.

But the chief interest of Timothy's stall was a microscope, mounted on a
brass stand, through which the folk could examine a variety of
interesting objects; a kaleidoscope, and a burning glass.

On the green, in front of the inn, games were in full swing, and in a
corner of the churchyard half-hidden by the ancient gravestones, a
cock-fight drew the male population like needles to a magnet. A big
brown bear was dancing to amuse the children; there were jugglers and
jesters from the nearest town; fortune-tellers with swarthy skins and
coral necklaces, and that dearest of delights to both old and young, a
Punch-and-Judy show.

Lucy looked about her for a sight of Joel's tall figure, but he was not
to be seen. She wandered here and there, and though she was greeted by
merry voices, and answered them merrily enough, she was disappointed.
Where was he? and why did he not meet her as he had promised? He ought
to have been on the lookout for her coming, not she for his But Peter
Fleming saw her and ran across the short, bright turf.

"Come and dance with me," he said; "the old blind fiddler is striking up
a jig."

Lucy slipped her hand through his arm, but still looked round for Joel.
She caught sight of his head rising above a gravestone as he watched the
cock-fight. A slight flush mounted to her brow; her eyes sparkled still
more brightly, and she tripped down the street to the place where the
fiddler sat on a bench tuning his strings, never casting another glance
behind.

"Thee's the best dancer in High Fold, Peter," she said gaily; "it's like
swinging in the air to dance with you. Come on, lad, my feet can't bide
still when they hear the music."

She looked a bonny lass with her jetty curls and blue eyes. She floated
through the dance like a feather; she laughed like a bell. Peter was in
a mood to be attracted by her smiles. He had spent his holiday in
delightful idleness; he had been petted at home and made much of by the
villagers, and, though his head had not been turned, his heart was in a
condition to be easily stirred. He enjoyed a flirtation in much the same
way as he had enjoyed eating a stolen apple when he was a boy--the
excitement of getting it attracted him, and gave a flavour to the thing
attained.

Lucy was ready to aid and abet him. She received his attentions with a
coy humour, ate gingerbread rabbits with him, danced with him, and gave
him a flower from her hair to wear in his button-hole. But her thoughts
were elsewhere, and her eyes again and again strayed in Joel's
direction. It was a salve to her wounded feelings to see that he had
noticed her, and was standing sulky and aloof on the outskirts of the
crowd. She would punish him well, and then forgive him, as she always
forgave him, and would always forgive him for worse offences.

"Where's Barbara?" asked Peter, as Lucy rested on the grass and he
fanned her with a dock leaf. His eyes, too, had been straying, seeking
for a golden head and stately throat above the throng.

"She's nursing a sick sheep," replied her sister. "Poor Barbara! there
is never any fun for her!--not that she wants it as I do, but something
always comes in the way to spoil her outings."

"Barbara's an angel," said Peter.

"She is that!" answered Lucy fervently.

He clasped his hands behind his head, and looked up into the face of the
girl beside him. He never had any inclination to look at Barbara so; he
never lay at her feet and talked nonsense. There was something of a
man's attitude towards another man in his way of regarding her. She was
strong and self-reliant and high-minded; he only dimly understood her.
But that which he did understand drew his deepest reverence. He had two
sides to his nature, as most folk have; and though Lucy appealed to the
happy, homely, youthful part of him, with Barbara he was a
serious-hearted man, who knew that life was no game, and who purposed to
live strenuously in his appointed place.

The afternoon wore on towards evening. The sun was getting low, and the
church flung a dark shadow on the graveyard. The folk drew together in
groups, sat themselves down upon the benches, and streamed in and out of
the Wild Boar. Before it, on a plot of grass, the bear was dancing.

It looked mangy and starved. Yet even in its present condition it kept
some of the majesty of its early years, when it had been free to wander
among the forests of a distant land. Gentle and timid it was among the
human beings that stood around, laughing at its clumsy ways, and
sometimes prodding it with sticks; but it turned at bay when a snarling
dog ventured too near.

The gipsy--a long, lean fellow, whose eyes smouldered--leaned against
the horse-trough and piped. He looked, among the fair-haired country
folk, as much of an alien as the bear dancing on an English green. His
slack, nervy figure needed but a word to make it taut as steel. He had a
barbed stick by his side, and a chain, from the animal's collar,
fastened to a ring round his wrist. He was much bedizened with coloured
ribbons and brass buttons.

Peter stood on the steps of the inn and watched the scene with keen
pleasure. He liked the bear, although its eyes were dim with neglect,
and its fur clotted and evil-smelling. It suggested to him the infinite
variety and complexity of life. Its proper home was in distant forests;
it had feelings and instincts which he could not even imagine; its
destiny had no parallel with his; yet by its patience, gentleness and
power to suffer it was linked with his own nature. He liked the gipsy,
for he felt a chord of fellowship between them. Here was one who
disdained to sleep, eat and die among the crowd; who lived a roving life
in the green lanes, coming and going as he pleased, free as air. Such a
life attracted Fleming, who cared more for liberty than a dry bed. He
liked the village folk--nay, he loved them, though they stood
open-mouthed, like children, and were pleased as children at the
ungainly ambling of the bear. He knew that they were stolid,
narrow-minded; but round them his affections twined. They were the root
from which he sprang.

It was Peter's habit to find some likeness between himself and the world
about him. Many of his ideas he had imbibed from Timothy Hadwin, who
when he was a child had taught him Latin and Greek, and used every
opportunity to impress the boy with a sense of the mystery of the
universe.

Life touched life through the three kingdoms. The tiniest flower in the
hedgerow and the king on his throne were but links in one great chain.
It was this sense of his relationship to the whole living creation that
gave breadth to Peter's outlook, intensity to his mind, and power to his
bearing. He tried to understand, and he deeply loved all nature. His
college friends looked upon him as a crank, yet they respected him
greatly; for they once saw him bridle and ride a bucking horse that no
one else dared approach.

While the gipsy lazily piped upon his whistle, and the bear continued to
dance, Peter entered the inn and persuaded the scolding housewife--whose
head was fairly whirling with so much coming and going--to ransack her
store for some of last year's honey. She gave it to him reluctantly;
but, then, he would never be denied anything when he asked for it. He
fed the beast with the melliferous morsel and such was the creature's
appreciation that he insisted upon following Peter, wagging his head
from side to side with a most ludicrous motion, as though coaxing him
for more.

"You're a cupboard lover, my friend, I fear," said Peter.

The bear sat down, whoofed and whimpered, while his master twitched at
the chain.

"Hungry, eh?" Peter poked him in the ribs. "You look like it; never saw
a bigger bag of bones in my life! Here, you fellow, why don't you feed
him better?"

"What's that to you?"

"I don't like to see a hungry brother."

"Get up," said the man to the bear; but it would not move, and continued
to whimper and look at Peter. The gipsy grasped his stick in one hand,
while he shortened the chain with the other. His temper was rising.

"Leave the poor brute alone," interposed Peter; "it's only crying for
its supper, like little Tommy Tucker. Nay, now, leave it alone."

"Is it yours or mine, master?"

"Why, mine. See what a fancy it's taken to me!"

He laughed good-humouredly.

"I've a notion the beast would make a nice pet. What'll you sell him
for, you fellow?"

The gipsy took no notice; he thought that Fleming was fooling him. He
raised his stick threateningly, but before the sharp point, which the
bear had learnt to know and fear, could descend, it was twisted out of
his hands.

"Might is right," said Peter, with a broad grin.

The man was angry; his was a nature that could ill brook crossing. He
clenched his fists, and came nearer, but he looked twice at his
antagonist, and decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
Peter was not only broader than himself, but taller, and he had heard
that the gentleman was a great wrestler.

"Ho, my good fellow," said Fleming, "are you going to fight me for him?
Better come into the inn and settle the matter over a pot of beer."

"What do you want the bear for, master?"

"To play with--poodles aren't in my line. I need something big. Besides,
I've an idea you'll be sending him to the knacker's in a week or two,
and I'd like to save him from such a fate."

The gipsy looked him over, wondering if he were in jest or earnest.

"Honest! quite honest!" said Peter, reading the man's glance.

The gipsy's eyes began to sparkle, and he turned towards the inn.

"Come on, master," said he; "if you wants the bear you shall have him."

They went in, while Jake the rat-catcher called after them:

"Don't let the fellow cheat you, lad. He wouldn't get sixpence for the
carcase if he sold it for dog's meat. There isn't a crow-picking on its
bones."

Peter and the gipsy were not long within. They came out laughing, the
latter wiping his mouth, his dark, lean countenance showing signs of
satisfaction.

Fleming pulled his flute out of his pocket, played the tune that the
bear's master had been whistling, and the ungainly beast began to dance.

"Eh, lad, yon's a nice new pet you've gotten. Your mother will be main
pleased to have it sitting in the chimney-nook," said one of the crowd.

"Take it to bed with thee," remarked Dusty John, who had long ceased to
wonder at the vagaries of his son, but was rather pleased with them than
otherwise. "It will keep thee warm o' nights."

"Nay, nay, it's ower moth-eaten to have much warmth in it. Best hap it
up in camphor, Peter, and get some of Old Camomile's powder to put away
the fleas."

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Lucy had found Joel. The sun had set, and the rooks were
flying home above Cringel Forest.

"Come with me up the dale," she said softly.

He was not disposed to be friendly.

"Cheer up, lad," she continued. "Let's be kind again."

With a face still lowering, and his whole frame the very embodiment of
injured pride, he turned and walked beside her.

He was jealous of Peter, yet sensible that he was to blame, not she.

"You'd better marry Peter," he said at last, breaking the silence.

"Who talks of marrying?" replied Lucy, coolly.

"He's got money and brains. He'd make you a worthier husband than I."

He kicked the stones out of his path and switched the heads off the
primroses that were growing by the wayside. The truth was, which Lucy
did not know, that he had been betting and had lost. When they came to
the edge of the forest, and the open dale lay before them, all gloomy
with shadows, Lucy turned.

"Good-night, Joel," she said, and made as if to go. "I'm sorry you're so
cross. It's spoilt my day, my only holiday; good-night."

But he flung his arm round her, his anger vanishing like a cloud that
has discharged its ill humours.

"Stay," he said. "I know I'm a brute. But let us go back. There'll be
more dancing, and we'll trip the moon up into the sky and out of it
again. I'm a better dancer than Peter. He's too heavy on his toes--you
found that, eh?--rather a clumsy fellow, too loose in the make to be a
comfortable partner. Come back. Come and see the rockets and torches.
We'll have a good time, lots of fun. Who knows whether we'll see the
wakes together again?"

She relented at once, dissolved like snow in the sun, when she heard the
pleading tones of his voice.

"But I promised great-granny."

"Stay," he repeated, and began to draw her back to the forest.

"I daren't, Joel; she'd never forgive me."

"Only a little longer."

"Nay."

Yet why should she not stay? Her great-grandmother had enjoyed such
occasions to the full when she was young. Why should Lucy not do the
same? She might go home, bid the old woman good-night, and when the
doors were barred, and the candles out, and Mistress Lynn thought she
was safely in her bed, slip downstairs, and escape by the cow-house. She
asked Joel what he thought of her plan.

"I'll wait for you," he said, "don't be long. But there's Barbara! She'd
never consent. Stay now do, Lucy; don't go in. Let's go back to the
village, and you can face the din to-morrow morning. Lay all the blame
on me."

She shuddered.

"You don't know what great-grandmother's like when she's roused! But
Barbara's at Ketel's Parlour. It's not likely she'll come home to-night,
unless the sheep is dead. The sheep don't often die in her hands, for
she looks after them as though they were sick bairns. I'll not be long,
Joel."

She slipped from his arms like a child bent on mischief, laughing under
her breath, yet not altogether at ease--it was no light undertaking for
anyone to try and hoodwink old Mistress Lynn.

The great-grandmother looked at the clock as soon as she entered, and
seemed grimly surprised at Lucy's punctuality. A cotter's wife rose from
the settle and hurried away, so as to get her share of the festivities.
She had been keeping the old woman company during the girl's absence.

"Sit thee down now," said Mistress Lynn, "and tell me about the wake."

"I's so tired, great-granny," yawned Lucy.

"Tired! At your age I could dance till dawn and not be too tired to milk
the kye at sunrise."

Lucy sat down with an aggrieved expression.

"If you'd let me dance till dawn I'd maybe have had the better grace to
tell you about it," she replied with some spirit.

"Well, get away to bed. Thee's got a sharp tongue that it's no gert
pleasure for an old woman to hear."

Lucy went upstairs, and moved about for a while, then she sat on the
edge of the bed and waited. It was a tedious waiting, but she dared not
creep downstairs, and let herself out by the cow-house door till there
was some likelihood of her great-grandmother being asleep.

At last she thought that she might venture. She took off her shoes, and
slipped noiselessly down; the stairs were made of stone, so they could
not betray her by creaking. On the wall opposite the kitchen was a
little round beam of light. It shone through a hole in the door, where
a knot had come out. Lucy was surprised; she wondered what Mistress Lynn
could be doing with a light at this hour. She put her eye to the hole
and looked through. She could see the bed, and the old woman's hands,
but not her face.

The candle flung a misty light on a pile of glittering coins in one
withered hand. Her great-grandmother was counting them, dropping them
one by one into a bag.

Lucy was riveted to the spot. She could not tear herself away, even
though Joel was waiting, hidden in the copse just below the house. She
could hear a faint click as the coins fell against one another. That bag
was filled. The thin old hands picked up another, and poured its
contents upon the quilt. Lucy watched like one fascinated. She saw her
great-grandmother pick up several bags, and count many handfuls of
money--some of it silver, some of it gold. She waited until the candle
was put out, and she heard the curtains softly drawn. Mistress Lynn had
composed herself to sleep.

Lucy opened the cow-house door and stole out into the night. A clear
moon was shining; the foam of the beck looked like white horses tossing
in the wind, and the primroses glimmered like stars. Joel was still
waiting.

"You can't say that I haven't patience," he said.

Lucy began to speak excitedly.

"I've seen such a sight, lad, such a sight! I've seen great-granny
counting her money."

"I knew she'd got a store somewhere," he replied. "I wish I had! It
would come in very handy just now."

"But, Joel, she's old, and when she dies----"

"We'll all be rich folk, Lucy."

"And we can be married then, lad, and put Forest Hall in trim, and be
happy."

He laughed, but not very spontaneously.

"There goes a rocket over the trees," he said.

"It goes up like my hope," replied Lucy.

But the thing burst and was gone.

"Prophetic, I fear," said Joel.

When they came under the black shadow of the crag on the top of which
Forest Hall was built, they paused and glanced up.

The moonlight brought the battlements into relief against the sky, and
shone silvery upon the fir-tree, growing out of a niche, and sweeping
the front wall with its feathery boughs. The house was very high,
strange and frowning, grander than it ever looked by daylight.

Joel gripped Lucy's hand with a sudden excess of feeling.

"I'll never part with Forest Hall," he said, as though he saw in his
mind's eye someone who wanted to take it from him. "I'll never sell the
old place. If I go down into ruins, it shall go down into ruins with me.
We'll fall together."

"Don't talk so fiercely, Joel," replied Lucy, gently smoothing his
fingers to take the strain out of their grip. "Forest Hall will some day
be refurnished from cellar to garret, and you and I will live there like
a pair of cooing doves. Haven't you told me so many a time?"

"Of course, Lucy," he said, relaxing.

They walked on again, and near the outskirts of the forest met Peter and
his bear.

"Hulloa, what have you there?" said Joel, while the girl drew back, not
caring to be caught alone with him at this time of the night.

"A lap-dog for you, Joel."

"The deuce have you! And what do you expect me to do with it?"

"Give it housing room. You've got an empty shed, haven't you?"

"Two or three. You're a rum chap!" and Joel laughed, for he could never
keep his resentment in his friend's breezy presence.

"There's a good fellow. May I put Big Ben--such is his name, I'm
told--into one of them?"

"Great heavens! do you want me to take the bear?"

"It's as gentle as a lamb! Would you like to see me put my head in its
mouth?"

"No! lead it away, fix it where you like; but I say, Peter, you don't
expect me to look after it, do you?"

"Give it lodging only! Jake's going to see to its board. Many thanks,
Joel. I'm off to-morrow, but I'll be up to bid you good-bye in the
morning. Come along, you limping Ursus, it's time you were abed."




CHAPTER VI

JOEL'S DARKNESS


Easter was over; Peter Fleming had gone back to Oxford; Joel Hart spent
much of his time away from home; the lambing season was past; mid-summer
had come.

Joel had friends after his own heart scattered through the
countryside--young men with small estates and little education like
himself. They forgathered in each other's houses, and spent their time
cock-fighting and gambling, losing one day to gain the next, enjoying
and suffering all the excitements of prosperity and failure in quick
succession.

Joel began by winning, and saw an easy way of retrieving his fortunes
opening out before him. Then he lost, and, growing desperate, lost more
and more heavily, till he had little left to lose. He owed money to the
village tradesmen, but that did not trouble his conscience. When he
could not meet his debts of honour--as he was pleased to call them--he
felt disgraced; hurt in his pride. So he came riding home, gave himself
up to brooding, sent word to Lucy that he was ill, and kept the house
for days.

Ill he most certainly was, but in mind and conscience, not in body. One
afternoon he sat alone in the parlour of Forest Hall, his head sunk on
his breast, and his eyes burning. The fire had died out, and the hearth
was filled with ash, yet, though it was June, he shivered.

Mally Ray, his old nurse and now his housekeeper, had gone off for the
day, and left him to fend for himself. On the table lay the remains of a
meal, and the atmosphere of the room was heavy, in spite of the sunshine
outside, and the chiming of a light wind through the tree-tops of the
forest.

He had slept little of late, and his nights had been made hideous by
dreams, which belonged neither to the sphere of waking nor sleeping, but
beset him when he was only half-conscious; and when reality, instead of
being obliterated, was turned into a distortion of the truth.

A vision of old Mistress Lynn and her money-bags haunted him. But he
managed to banish it in his clearer moments. No sooner, however, had his
will become weakened by weariness, than the vision returned. He spent,
or seemed to spend, hours counting the coins, and dropping them into a
bag. Through the night, through the day, at unexpected moments, he was
possessed by this demon of counting. He felt the cold metal between his
fingers, yet his hands were in his empty pockets, or hanging by his
side.

He looked round the room, and realised suddenly that the fire was out.
Then he got up.

"Sleep," he muttered, "I must sleep or I shall lose my wits," and he
flung himself down on a settle.

He closed his eyes. For a while he felt dizzy, tossed up and down upon a
sea of darkness, then his brain became illuminated as with fire; he
began again to count. One by one he dropped the coins into a bag. He
roused himself with a smothered curse, turned over, and tried to fix
his mind upon something else.

He had gone fishing the week before with some of his friends, and they
had betted on their probable catch. But he had hooked only two or three
little trout, too small to be of any use, so he had flung them back into
the mere. Now he heard them fall with a splash, and jingle as they
reached the bottom. He seemed to be fishing again, and dropping them
over the side of the boat, but sometimes it was a coin he dropped,
sometimes a silver-bellied fish. Still he went on counting. The trout
and the money were confused in his mind. He knew that he had mixed them
up; he knew that he was neither asleep nor awake, and he tried to clear
his brain. The effort was painful, he struggled as though fighting with
evil powers, but in the end he overcame, yet rose up feeling sick,
dazed, and in despair.

The room was dusky. How long had he been lying on the settle? He looked
at the clock, and it began to strike the hour of nine. At six he had
counted the strokes, since then he had not heard them, yet he had not
slept. He must sleep, or he would go mad. He sat staring before him for
a minute, then went to the door.

He threaded his way through the deserted passages, where draughts blew
upon him from unexpected quarters; some of the rooms were shut up; but
others were open, disclosing their emptiness. A grey film of dust seemed
to lie on everything, and the evening light, glimmering through the
cobwebbed windows, gave a green colour to the air, as though it, even,
had gone mouldy with long disuse.

He found Mally Ray returned to the kitchen, and preparing their evening
meal. But he refused it.

Mally Ray was a dour-faced Scot, honest, clean, yet with a mind that
regarded human affection as a wile of the Evil One, who tried by such a
means to entrap the honest Christian to his hurt. In her heart of hearts
she loved Joel profoundly, she would have sacrificed her life for him,
but she would have thought shame to let him know it. As his nurse she
had not spared the rod, for she saw his weaknesses; now she used her
tongue in much the same way. She had a long, cadaverous face, a thin and
well-drawn-down upper lip, grey eyes and a high forehead.

"Tidy your hair, lad," she said, "it makes you look like a wandering
Willy."

He smoothed it down with both hands, accustomed to do what she told him,
but he pushed the hound aside that had come whimpering to his knees. It
was in bad condition, having had the distemper and lost its fine litter
of puppies with the same sickness.

"I'm going out," he said curtly, "don't expect me back till you see me."

She tightened her lip, looking at him with stern eyes.

"I hope you're going after no foolishness, Master Joel."

He laughed harshly, turned on his heel, and went away.

Standing by the wall, he gazed down at the trees below him, which were
singing in the wind. There was a cool, sweet air, and the scent of damp
earth rising from the forest. He thought that he would go and see
Timothy Hadwin, and get a sleeping draught. If he were possessed by a
devil, as he verily believed he was, Old Camomile would be able to cast
it out.

He followed the cart-road for some way, then took the winding path that
led to Timothy's cottage. The old man was sitting on the bench by the
door, enjoying the calm of the twilight.

"I can't sleep," said Joel.

Timothy looked quietly into his face, saw the lines round his mouth, and
the restlessness of his eyes.

"Tell me how you feel," he replied.

"I can't sleep," reiterated Joel; "give me something to make me sleep."

"Come in," said the old man. His living-room was small, but neat and
clean. There were rows upon rows of shelves along the walls, filled with
jars and bottles; the place smelled of lavender, rosemary, lad's love,
and other sweet herbs. He mixed a powder and gave it to the young man,
then he made him lie down.

"You must open your mind, my lad," he said, "and let the sweet
influences of the night in. Peace floweth about us like a river."

"Not round me! Nothing has ever flowed round me but black waters, and
I'm drowning in 'em."

Already he felt the cold waves of which he spoke pressing upon his
eyelids so that he could not see. He heard Timothy's voice; it came to
him as through a curtain. The old man was talking of peace. What was
peace? Was it but the exhaustion of passion, the sinking down of a
stormy sea, as waves sink, when the tempest is over? Or was it paralysis
of the living soul, which had felt so much that it could feel no more?
Or could it be the inflowing of some holy element, that would mingle
with his thoughts and purify them? He longed for it, whatever it was. He
longed to be quiet, and as he pondered over the thoughts which
Timothy's words had roused, the roaring in his ears subsided, the
darkness lightened like the coming of dawn. He imagined that he was
lying on golden sand, and gazing up at a river flowing over his head.
Peace! The waters of Peace! Timothy had said that they flowed through
the world, and now he was bathed in them. He heard the river's ripple as
it passed; he felt at rest.

For a few minutes longer the old man talked on, but Joel could not make
out what he said, for the words were subdued and mingled with the murmur
of the magical river.

"Settled weather has come at last," remarked Timothy, going to the door,
and looking at the sky, which was flying with rosy streamers, although
so late. But Joel made no reply. He had gone to sleep.

A circle of silence held the cot all through the night. Though the white
tails of innumerable rabbits flickered down in the forest, and birds
called to each other, and leaves chimed a sylvan chorus, about the
purlieus of Timothy Hadwin's abode lay a deep hush. Here nothing
stirred; it was as though an enchantment had fallen.

Joel slept profoundly. The evil spirit that haunted him in the meantime
had fled, and left his mind a blank. It was swept and garnished--a place
for the Holy Ghost to dwell in, or seven devils.

Daylight had hardly died out of the sky when dawn began. It came with a
primrose light in the east, and a fresh wind. All things woke at the
passing of the wind. The silence about Timothy's cot snapped, and from
each grass-blade rose a sibilant whisper, that, united, sounded like
women's skirts sweeping by. Mint and thyme, lavender, roses and
honeysuckle, filled the garden with perfume.

Joel, too, awoke. He was lying upon the settle covered with rugs, with a
cushion under his head. At first he could not remember where he was, but
gradually the trouble of last night returned. He lay still for a while,
thinking how soon another night would be upon him, and dreading the
thought of it. He remembered that to-day was his birthday.

He got up. Timothy was not to be seen, but the fire was burning, the
kettle singing as it swung by its iron chain over the flames. His own
life was very like the kettle, hung by the iron chain of fate over the
fires of the world. He sat down to await Timothy's return. He had not
the energy, and he did not know if he had the desire, to go away without
speaking to him. Besides, another night was coming on, and he dared not
see it approach without having by him the medicine that gave sleep.

Yet, although he was a good deal refreshed, the beauty of the summer
morning was not for him, for he refused to accept its bounty. He did not
smell the eglantine that climbed up the porch of the cot, and scented
the air with the most memory-waking of scents; he did not taste the
sweet wind that puffed in his face; he wet his dry lips and tasted
bitterness.

Timothy was some time returning, and Joel, for lack of better
occupation, began to puzzle over the mystery of the little man--he
remained a mystery in High Fold, though the villagers had long ceased to
speculate about it, and had probably forgotten, so many years had he
lived among them, that his origin was still unknown. He had arrived one
spring-tide, forty years ago, and settled down in this cot. Though a
young man then, his head was silver-white. He lived quietly, received no
letters, paid no visits, save to the sick in the neighbourhood--but
spent his time gathering herbs, and, when he found an understanding ear,
he talked garrulously about his thoughts, but never alluded to his
circumstances. He was an educated man, knew many foreign languages, had
read many strange books, studied the stars, and believed, to some
extent, in astrology. Further than that no one knew about him.

Presently the old man came, wet with dew, and carrying a basket of
roots, which he had been digging up in Cringel Forest.

"There's a virtue in them at dawn," he said, "that's gone by the time
the sun is high. Everybody who rises at dawn has felt the same virtue in
his own body."

Timothy talked cheerfully, and prepared their morning meal without ever
remarking upon the previous night.

"Take an old man's advice, and a fishing-rod," he said, "and spend the
day on Swirtle Tarn. I'll come too. It's a long time since I tempted
trout with a bracken clock."

Soon after breakfast they sallied forth, and went up the dale past
Greystones. Even on this June day the house seemed to stand aloof from
the sunshine. It looked lonely and out in the cold, like a soul that had
withdrawn itself from intercourse with its fellows. The heavy green of
the sycamores, now in full leaf, hid the barns.

They kept by the beck-side. The bracken all about them was glittering
with beetles--bronzy, golden things, that hung like beads to the fronds.
In the distance they saw Barbara; near at hand Jan Straw was weeding a
little patch of cultivated ground with slow, slow fingers.

Silence held the inside of the house as well as the outside.
Lucy was baking scones on the griddle, but the curtains of her
great-grandmother's bed had not yet been withdrawn.

The old woman kept Midsummer's Day like a fast. In the annals of her
life it was marked as a day of doom, a day when her spirit came into
touch with the supernatural, when her heart wept tears, though her eyes
were dry. Its return each year brought the past back to her, the wild
past when adventure came riding to the door, and no one need go out to
seek it. Sometimes she could reach back through the dusty years, and
feel her flesh grow young and warm, and know that she, and the Annas
Lynn of twenty, were one. But at other times, the eyes that she fixed
upon those ancient scenes were old and cold, and she failed to make the
dry bones live.

One Midsummer's Day in her youth she had stood on the fells and seen a
phantom army pass. This happened three years before the rebellion of
1745. Some of the village folk saw the apparition also, but none of them
recognised the leader of it, mounted on a black horse. A year later she
again saw the phantom army. It seemed to move along the top of the
fells--a train of marching men, gun-carriages and baggage. Then the
mists came down and hid it.

Next year, Joel Hart--the Jacobite Joel Hart--had led a little company
over the hills into Scotland to welcome Prince Charles Edward back to
his rightful inheritance. Though another man's wife, Annas Lynn had wept
for the handsome cavalier. Months of disaster followed; the haughty lady
of Forest Hall had given birth to a son; but Culloden had been fought,
and there was no hope for the rebels. It was then that the lady came a
suppliant to Annas Lynn, whom she had scorned in the past, guessing that
more than a kindly feeling lay between her husband and her. But the
house was full of soldiers, and Joel had ventured home to see his child
before fleeing to France. She prayed that Annas would hide him till the
search was over.

For a day and a night he lay hidden in the wool-barn, undetected by even
the keen eyes of David Lynn. Then on Midsummer's Eve the Northern Lights
had played for an hour above Thundergay as they had played before Lord
Derwentwatter was beheaded thirty years previously. "Derwentwatter's
Leets," the fell-folk had called the aurora since that night. Annas
watched the great bars shoot and fade with despair in her heart, for she
felt sure that Joel was doomed, and he was shot by soldiers on the
lookout for him the following evening.

Upon these scenes the old woman dwelt every Midsummer's Day.

She lay in the four-poster, shut in from distracting sounds and sights
by the curtains. Could Lucy have been so bold as to peer between them,
many a strange expression flitting across the old face would not only
have astonished, but startled her. For her great-grandmother could hate
and love with a mighty passion. Sometimes she bore a strange likeness to
herself as she had looked when she bade Joel good-bye, and he slipped
out of the wool-barn into the dark night. She had been tall and fair in
those days--like Barbara--but with a jewel glittering in each eye. Or,
again, her face might reflect that look of misery with which she had
watched his dead body being carried past the farm on a spruce-bough
early the next morning. Or her expression might change to one that
recalled her hatred of David Lynn, her husband, when he had stood by and
commended the soldiers for their deed of blood. From that day to this,
though he had long been laid in his grave, she thought of him with
aversion. She had spurned her children, and her children's children,
because they took after him in looks and character. Not till Barbara was
born, and another Joel Hart bore the form and features of his ill-fated
grandfather, did her heart warm again to human affection.

She remembered that to-day was Joel's birthday. It was one more
coincidence, which led her to regard Midsummer's Day with superstition.
She looked upon the young man as a message from the other world, and she
gave him her blessing. When she died, her wealth was to be divided
between him and her great-grandchildren. She knew that he was hard-up
now, but money had grown so dear to her, that she could not part with it
till she must, even for a lost love's sake. By tortuous paths the human
soul travels away from the generous impulses of youth, and reaches, in
old age, a place where it had never thought to be!

To-day her memory had been acute, and she had suffered. She felt that
she had been consorting with the living and not the dead--though they
had died long ago; three-score years and ten were wiped out.

Pulling back the curtains, she called to Lucy.

"Go down to Forest Hall and tell Joel I want him," she said.

"He's but now gone up the dale with Timothy Hadwin," replied Lucy.

"Keep a watch for him returning and bring him in. It's a long while
since he came to Greystones to see the old woman, though, doubtless,"
she peered into the girl's face, "doubtless he's often been at the
bridge philandering with a young one."

"Indeed, no, you're mistaken, great-granny."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was evening when Joel came, bringing with him half a dozen trout
strung on a withy. He found Mistress Lynn in a talkative mood; he caught
a glimpse of the white flesh of her youth peeping out from under the
hard old mail of age.

She talked to him of his grandfather and the wild times of the
Rebellion. She made the past live. She told him how the village was full
of soldiers and spies. She pointed to the wool-barn door, at the other
side of the passage, and bade him look in, and he would see it now as it
was then, with the fleeces piled up, waiting for market-day, but at that
time a hunted man was hiding among them.

Barbara, sitting by the window darning, listened intently. The old tale
was an Iliad to her. She found in it the same elements of greatness, of
romance and poetry, as in the stories of Homer. The passions roused were
deep passions, the sorrows suffered were real sorrows. Her
great-grandmother, the ill-fated man, the lady of Forest Hall, had not
lived in vain, for they had felt down to the depths of their natures.
This was the essence of true poetry. Barbara thought that, if she had
had the learning, and the genius, she would have made an Iliad out of
the old woman's story for the fell-folk.

The wool-barn door still stood open. The stone flags, the oaken rafters,
the brandereth on the hearth--the place had always been used for baking
and brewing, as well as the storing of fleeces--were the same as those
which Joel Hart, the Jacobite, had looked upon among the last things he
had seen on earth. Doubtless, during the day and night he had spent
there, they had become engraved upon his brain. A man could still hide
among the sheep's wool.

Then Mistress Lynn unlocked the bridewain and showed Joel an old
horse-pistol with rusty stains upon it--which were his grandfather's
blood. In a fit of generosity she gave him a sovereign as a birthday
gift.

Joel had listened to her tale with wandering attention. His own troubles
were too absorbing for him to give much heed to this story of long ago.
Although his mind had recovered its balance, and he was no longer
haunted by the fear of going mad, yet it had not gained serenity. He
felt that he was choking in a narrow way, and could discover no turning.

The unlocking of the bridewain roused him. He took the sovereign,
fingered it restlessly, thinking of the hoard from which it came.

"When I's dead, lad, thee shall have many like it," said the old woman.

The impulse was on him to tell her, there and then, about the snare into
which he had got his feet, to throw himself upon her compassion, and beg
for her aid. But he controlled this feeling, for Barbara and Lucy were
present, and he was too proud to unburden himself before them.

"It's ill waiting for dead folk's shoes," said Lucy. "I wish you'd give
us some of it to enjoy while you're here to teach us how to spend it
aright."

"Dead folk's shoes, when they're well-lined, are verra comfortable
things to step into, my lass," retorted the old woman, taking no notice
of the other part of her petition.

"I'm of Lucy's opinion," said Joel. "I'd have great pleasure in drinking
your health with it now, great-granny."

She looked up with a certain suspicious light in her eyes.

"You've got a sovereign," she said coldly; "how many more do you want?"

He laughed uneasily.

"As many as your kind heart could spare a poverty-stricken fellow like
me."

"In good time, my lad, all in good time."

Barbara also lifted her eyes and gave the young man a long and serious
look; then she dropped them without comment.

Joel smiled sourly. If Mistress Lynn's money was to do him any good, he
must have it now. Later would be too late.

Timothy Hadwin had cast out the evil spirit with which he had been
possessed. He had wakened in the morning free from its baleful
influence, but he had neglected to fill its vacant place with a better
one. He had let himself drift. All through the day the old man had
striven to rouse him, but he could make nothing of Joel. His mood varied
from flippant to sullen, but a serious interest in, or a manly attitude
towards life, he seemed to be incapable of attaining.

Now he sat gazing on the bridewain, thinking of what it contained, and
wondering if Mistress Lynn would lend him some money. But even as the
thought passed through his mind, he dismissed it. She would want to know
all about his ways and means, his follies and sins; she would search
the most secret places of his heart if he once gave her the opportunity,
and there was much he would be ashamed for any eye to see.

The old woman sent him to the spring to bring her a mug of fresh water,
for she was thirsty. As he stood in the gloaming with the dark farm
buildings all about him, and the sycamores shuffling overhead, and the
water gurgling at his feet, his eyes burnt, and he wetted his dry lips
with his tongue. He filled the mug and drank, filled it a second time
and drained it again. He was assailed by temptation. Could he not, by
some means, anticipate the old woman's decree concerning the disposal of
her money? A third of it was to be his--she had said so. Could he not
have it now? It profited her nothing laid up in blue linen bags. It
would bring salvation to him. The matter was not difficult to
accomplish. Fate seemed to have thrown the chance at him, nay, had
prepared it and laid it before him ready to be carried out. He had a
sleeping-draught in his pocket which Timothy Hadwin had given him. The
old man had been reluctant, but he had insisted. If he dropped it into
the cup of water, Mistress Lynn would drink it without thinking. And if
she did discover a faint, curious taste, she would imagine it due to the
state of the spring, grown round as it was with water-weeds. He could
hide, as his grandfather had done, among the fleeces, and then, when
night came, and Barbara and Lucy were safe asleep upstairs, what could
be easier than to slip out and open the bridewain unnoticed and unheard?
He had seen Mistress Lynn hide the key under her pillow.

He put the idea from him with distaste: even though he promised himself
that he would take no more than his share, that he would repay it some
day, he could not help feeling it a cowardly act for a man to
contemplate and that man the master of Forest Hall.

He filled the cup and returned towards the house. But on the way he
paused. The darkness of his future appalled him; he was undone if he
could not meet those debts of honour. Where could he hope to get the
money if not here? And such a chance was not likely to come his way
again. He had no time to argue the whole question over once more: he had
been away too long already.

Mistress Lynn drank the water unsuspiciously. Old Camomile was too wise
to put the powerful drug he had given Joel the night before into such
weak hands. The young man was strong, and would sleep soundly enough,
when he learnt to regulate his life like a Christian gentleman.




CHAPTER VII

MIDNIGHT


"Great-granny has been very generous--for her," said Lucy, as she bade
Joel good-night in the copse below the house. "Fancy her giving you a
whole sovereign! Doesn't it make you feel rich? I wish she'd give me
one!"

"All in good time, Lucy, all in good time," he replied, mimicking the
old woman's voice.

"She was sharp, wasn't she, when we hinted we'd like to have some of her
money to spend now? But you're not as badly off as you say, eh, Joel?"

"I told you my luck was changing," he answered somewhat irritably, but
he would not meet her eyes, for although it was too dark for them to see
each other clearly, he fancied that she might be able to read his mind.

"I'm so glad, Joel, and--and great-granny's very old!" She was half
afraid to utter words which implied a wish that she dared not express.

"She'll be older still before she dies," said he, then added as a second
thought, "I shouldn't wonder if she buried us first. Death seems to
forget the old folk sometimes, and to take the young instead."

Lucy turned away; tears rushed to her eyes; she forced them back.

What was wrong with Joel to-night? She had not seen him for a week, and
had been longing to hear him say that he had missed her desperately. But
he seemed to be preoccupied and answered her enquiries after his health
in on off-hand manner; his bearing was no longer gay, but distant.
Saying good-night she went back to Greystones.

Joel let her go with the customary embrace, but she felt no warmth in
it. She was hurt at his indifference, and paused, when she reached the
garden, to compose her features before meeting the eyes of her
great-grandmother, who believed that she was in the dairy turning
cheeses. She thought of his handsome face and form, and then her
resentment sank. She dared not lose him; she could not contemplate a
quarrel; if she entered the house now and shut the door upon her present
feelings, she would be also shutting up sorrow in her heart. She
wondered whether she were to blame: whether she had failed in sympathy
and understanding. Perhaps she had been cold, and he was hurt as well as
she.

Lucy plucked a half-opened rose and returned, meaning to run after him
if he had gone home. But he was still standing in their meeting place,
hidden by the trees.

"I couldn't leave you so, Joel," she murmured, twining her fingers in
his. "I shouldn't sleep to-night if I thought you had any cause to be
angry with me. Have I done aught amiss?"

He put his arms round her, roused to a show of affection by her voice.
He cared for her deeply, but there were times when he found her love
exacting, when he could not reach the heights whereon she stood. The
fault lay in himself. It lay in his heart, which was so weighted by
anxiety, that he often had not the energy to climb up beside her.

"Yes," he said with a return to his usual manner, "you've done one thing
amiss--you've grown so deucedly pretty that you've left me neither a
calm heart nor a clear head to manage my worldly affairs."

Lucy laughed, and pinned the rose-bud into his coat, reassured at his
words. She was happy again, happy as a flower drinking in the dew. The
beck sang of tranquillity; the trees were kindly souls, making a bower
for him and her; the darkness was a soft green curtain shutting out the
world and prying eyes.

They lingered a while without speaking--she thinking only of him, he
distracted by his own thoughts. Then she went away.

He saw her go with a feeling of relief. Now he would have quietness in
which to measure his intentions and understand himself. When the glimmer
of her cotton frock had vanished up the path, he sat down to
contemplation. He had not yet made up his mind what to do: he had
deferred his decision--so he thought--until this moment, because he
wished to face it squarely. He would not have his mind entrapped by some
subtle move of the hand of chance. But he was only deceiving himself. In
the silence of the copse, with the singing water to take the intensity
off a silence which would have distracted him, he found that he had no
decision to make. The contest had been fought in his innermost being by
manoeuvres which he was barely aware of. It had gone on, as it were,
under cover of a veil that he had drawn between his consciousness and
his nature.

Later on he walked back to Greystones. He still half-heartedly hoped
that the door of the wool-barn would be barred, or that the dogs would
announce his coming, and so make his projected plan impossible. But no
one saw him, the latch lifted lightly--Barbara had not yet locked up for
the night.

Waiting was tedious. His head swam with the heat, for he was obliged to
hide himself under the fleeces: the blood sang in his ears, and throbbed
at his wrists. Barbara passed with a candle, and shot to the bolts;
darkness closed down. He flung off the coverings, and sank upon the
wool-bales, nursing his chin. His heart began to beat like a hammer; he
thought that someone would surely hear it.

The darkness danced. It was alive with threads of light wriggling past
him into the corners of the barn. He began to wish that he had not come.
To be sure he could unbolt the door, and slip away unseen and unheard.
But then he would lose his chance. That which he really desired was some
outside power to decide for him, either a voice audibly commanding, or a
superhuman hand forcibly withholding him. But nothing of this kind
happened. The way was smoothed. It seemed as though the powers above man
had planned the enterprise, and were egging him on to fulfil it.

He wished that he had a light. The darkness was disconcerting with those
wriggling streaks of fire. He heard the kitchen clock chiming the
quarters and the half-hours, and when it struck twelve, he crept into
the passage. He listened, but there was no sound within. Then he gently
lifted the sneck and entered.

Mistress Lynn was just turning away from lighting a candle. She was
sitting up in bed, and looked round at the sound. Their eyes met.

For a moment they stared at each other--the man confused, the old woman
astonished, a look which swiftly turned to that expression of
suspicion, with which she had regarded him earlier in the evening. Then
she clasped her hands on her lap, and leaned back against the pillows.

"I's pleased to see thee, Joel Hart," she said. "Surely it's sommat
pressing that's brought thee up to Greystones at this hour!"

He did not reply; endeavoured to meet her glance with one as lofty;
failed miserably, and moved to the door, putting into his action a
boldness which he did not feel.

"Sit down, lad," she said. "Come in, Joel. Thee needn't fear the old
woman; she wunna bite."

Mistress Lynn smiled, but bitterly.

"I'm going," he replied, "good-night."

"Nay, nay, let's have a crack, Joel. Shut the door."

Her voice held him. He glanced at her, but could make nothing of that
grim, inscrutable face. He did not know what to do. If he went away he
would still have to give an explanation of this untimely visit; it
seemed better to stay and face the difficulty now; invent a likely
motive--if he could.

"It's late," he said, "hadn't we better wait for a more seasonable
opportunity to have a crack?"

"What didst say?" she asked, putting her hand behind her ear. "I's
getting deaf, lad, breaking up, losing my sight, and my hearing, and my
wits, too, it seems. I's an old woman, Joel. How old art thou?
Twenty-five! It's good to be twenty-five! It's a wise, pleasant age to
be!"

Her voice was growing scornful.

"An age for sowing wild oats, and gathering apples off other folks
trees, eh? Haven't you a word to say?" she continued. "Haven't you a
reason to give for coming to see me? Lost thy tongue, hasta? Well,
well, I's pleased and proud it's me you've come to see; me, the
great-grandmother, and not one of the lasses upstairs. Step hither to
the bedside, lad, till I see thee better."

Unable to understand the old woman's words, but hoping that his purpose
might escape undetected, Joel did as she bade him, swaggering somewhat,
and curtaining his real feelings with a smile.

She gripped him with her skinny hands.

"Oh, thee's a fine make of a man," she said, her voice changing; "thee's
a man indeed, a handsome, pleasant-spoken young man and a virtuous one."

She shook him with her rising passion.

"Didst think to find me asleep?" she asked. "Didst think to pluck the
bonny golden apples out o' my hand? I never sleep, lad, leastways, not
at night. And this night--wouldst like to know where I've been--eh?"

She paused to give point to her words.

"I've been with your grandfather. And you're blood of his blood and bone
of his bone! Ah! he should have married me, though I was but a
statesman's lass, and not heiress to a fine house. I'd have given him
children worthy of him--lads that would have held their heads high, and
walked with honest folk, and just folk, and proud folk--too proud to
soil their souls with their hands. It's your lady grandmother that's
polluted you, Joel, so you can't help it. Poor lad, poor lad--the spring
was poisoned before you were born!"

Her voice softened, and she looked at him more kindly.

"You might have trusted me, Joel," she said. "You should have been
straight with me, asked in the name of your grandfather, I'd have
listened for his sake."

He muttered something about her hard nature.

"Hard!" she replied. "Aye, I's hard, but iron melts. I'd have melted
like a bit of beeswax, if you'd been strong and true and wise enough to
come to me with a straight story. It's them crooked ways of folk I can't
abide. Why didn't you--eh?"

She pushed him suddenly away.

"You've a bad heart, Joel, though you've the face of your grandfather,
and he was the handsomest man in the dales. You've got his name
too--Joel Hart! Joel Hart! A young lass once thought it was the sweetest
music in the world! Shame on you, shame on you for bringing a stain on
it!"

"It was stained before I got it," he replied; he was not one to take his
deserts meekly. "His own country shot him for a rebel!"

"That's an ill jibe," she cried, shaking her clenched fist at him, then
fell back upon her pillows unable to continue, but glaring like a
wounded wild thing.

He felt that some apology, some explanation must be made.

"I'm sorry, Mistress Lynn," he began, "I never meant, I didn't mean----"

"Well," she gasped, "is that all; you didn't mean--what?"

He straightened himself, looked the old woman full in the face. He was
not a thief; he had wandered from the straight path; but the crooked way
was not to his liking; it abounded in pitfalls, so he forsook it.

"I own I've done wrong," he said with manly sincerity. "I was mad. Life
has made me mad. It has frustrated all my hopes; it has put all its bad
eggs into my basket. I lost my head in a weak moment. But that's over
now. I shall not stumble again. If you've any heart to understand a man,
you'll let me go now and ask no more."

His appeal touched Mistress Lynn to the quick. She wiped her brow, and
hid her trembling old mouth with the edge of the sheet.

That ancient love which could not go out, though it might suffer an
eclipse, began to shine again, and slowly illuminated her features, like
an inner light. A cry that came from the soul had power to stir her.
Deep called unto deep.

The door opened and Barbara entered. She had heard the voices, and come
down to learn the meaning of them. A shepherd's plaid of black and white
check was thrown over her shoulders, and her hair hung in a glistening
mass. The clearness of her face was like the coming of moonlight out of
clouds. She stood on the threshold, looking from Joel to the old woman,
then closing the door, moved to the four-poster.

"Dost need me, great-granny?" she asked.

Barbara's sudden entrance into that intense atmosphere caused a change
to work among the elements, just as a wind rising on a sultry day, may
mean the coming of storm, or the freshening of the weather.

Joel was not sure whether to be glad or sorry. He looked at her in awe
as a benighted traveller might look at a snow peak, which the rising
moon all at once revealed towering overhead. He felt himself to be
little better than a clod of earth in her presence.

To her great-grandmother Barbara's coming was a relief. The old woman
had received a blow, and however bravely she might hide the wound, she
could not stanch its inward bleeding. For once she was glad to shift
responsibility from her own to younger shoulders.

"Sit thee down, Barbara," she said, "Joel's in sore trouble, and he has
come to me. Very right and proper of him! For who else should he come to
but his grandfather's old friend? Yet I don't ken what to do. Tell thy
tale, my lad, but tell no more than a young lass's ears may hear."

She shot a warning look at him under her shaggy brows, and he understood
that she meant to keep to herself the knowledge of his unworthy
intentions. He thanked her by a grip of the hand, overwhelmed by the
forbearance she showed, which was as unexpected as it was gracious in so
masterful a soul. The meaning lay much deeper than he could probe. It
lay in the foundations of her nature--foundations of goodness and love,
although nearly a hundred years of building had raised over them a
superstructure, grim and narrow.

He told his story. It was a story of adverse circumstances acting upon a
mind too indolent to do battle with them. Barbara listened with interest
and sympathy. Her life upon the mountains, her isolation,--for her
character was little understood by those nearest and dearest to her--had
made her a student of other people. She read their reasons and acts with
a clearness of vision unusual in one of little worldly experience. But
experience is not always knowledge. It was her own heart, with its
possibilities for good and evil, her own nature, curbed on every side,
that gave her insight into and understanding of life. Meditation had
taught her to know herself, and so given her a key with which to open
the secret doors of other souls.

She read Joel's mind. It lay before her like an open book. Written upon
it was a tale of right desires and intentions, that had come to nought
for lack of a will to guide them. He did not speak of his love for her
sister, but she found it interwoven with the tale. She thought of Lucy
as she had seen her but a little while ago, lying asleep, with her hair
unbound, and her white arms thrown over the quilt, as pure a soul as
breathed. Then she glanced at Joel, and recollected that the door of the
wool-barn stood open, which she had shut before going to bed. Though she
could not follow that clue through all its phases, she read enough to
waken suspicions. This man, with the fine face and form, the dark,
well-shapen eyes, but the irresolute mouth had won her sister's
affection. And what did he propose to do with it? The protecting
instinct was strong in Barbara; it rose up like that of a lioness to
stand between its young one and danger. Though she was only a year older
than Lucy, in power to endure she was as a beech tree to the wind-flower
at its foot.

She pitied Joel, she had a warm place in her heart for him; she had seen
him do many a kind action; his generosity and improvidence had largely
added to his present desperate condition; but her sympathy was tempered
with severity. There is no severity colder and more relentless than that
of the young.

"You must go away, Joel," she said, for she knew that there was not any
hope for him unless he could cut himself adrift from his
companions--those young men who wasted their substance with riotous
living.

"Go away?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, away, abroad, out into the world, where chances and plenty wait
for men, great chances. Life will lie before you there, Joel, and you
can make it something better than you've made it here."

"Away!" he repeated in astonishment. Was this girl proposing to settle
his plans for him? He glanced at her haughtily. He had never thought of
going away, and he would not think of it now, unless something good
appeared to be in store. Hitherto his world had been bounded by Forest
Hall and Lucy Lynn, and that which lay beyond was uncoloured by his
imagination. He did not desire a wider sphere of action.

"You've got your feet in a bog, Joel," continued Barbara, "and you'll go
down till your soo'red in it, unless you walk another way. Great-granny,
give him money and send him abroad--to America--where the bulls and rams
go, and men make their fortunes...." She paused for a moment, then fixed
her large blue eyes full upon his face--"and get strength to feed
themselves on."

The old woman nodded her head. The idea pleased her. For his
grandfather's sake she would do this thing, would part with some of her
money, and give Joel a chance of making an honourable future for
himself. Then he could come back, pay his debts, and live in a manner
fitting the master of Forest Hall.

Joel looked at the faces of the two women confronting him. Their
likeness to each other just now was marked. But upon the face of the
great-grandmother he saw the ghost of a smile--a sad one it is true--but
Barbara, young and glorious in her strength, was as inexorable as a
judge. His heart sank. These two women held his future in their hands.
He was forced to recognise as much. From no one else could he get help
save from them, and they would bestow it as they thought fit. If he
refused to accept it, then he must go and--drown.

They were like priestesses, demanding a sacrifice if he would be saved.
On the fells above High Fold rose a circle of upright stones surrounding
a huge slab, which popular tradition said was a Druid's altar. Barbara
and her aged kinswoman might be a reincarnation of that dark faith which
demanded blood, human blood to appease its gods. He had sinned, they
asked for his life as a recompense: and they meant to have it. If he
went away, cut himself off from Forest Hall, Lucy and his friends, it
would be like tearing out his heart.

"You must go, Joel," said Barbara.

Must he? He thought of the great roads of the world leading into the
Unknown. He thought of them with distaste. He did not want adventure: he
wanted money. He felt no thrill at the idea of fighting his way up to
success; he was a gentleman, and all that he desired was the means to
live as such. If he went it would be because he had no other hope.

That which he had before wished was now coming to pass. By the irony of
fate he was being forced in a direction which he had no inclination to
travel. He thought of Lucy sleeping in the room over the rafters--of her
dusky hair, red lips, closed eyes--eyes so bright that he had often
called them his guiding stars; must he leave them, leave all those
charms that belonged to him, which she gave him freely and without
stint?

"I'll go," he said suddenly, "I'll go, but I'll take Lucy with me."

"Lucy'll stay where she is," replied the old woman sharply.

Barbara strode forward, with a steady fire burning in her eyes, and an
august lift of her head. She laid a firm hand on the young man's
shoulder and made him look at her.

"Joel Hart," she said, "is your love a true love?"

"Before God, it is," he said solemnly.

"And you seek her happiness?"

"Above everything."

"Above your own, Joel?"

He did not answer for a moment. Barbara's glance, which never turned
away from a sight until it had revealed all that she wanted to see, held
him in a kind of mesmerism. Then he dropped his eyes; he could not lie
in her face.

"I meant her no harm, I meant no wrong," he said bitterly. "But she's
all I've got in the world to love me."

He would like to have spoken openly about his feelings, of his sense of
Lucy's goodness and purity, of his readiness to die for her, of the glow
she had shed upon his cold life. But he was tongue-tied, for Barbara had
stripped his heart naked, and his own eyes condemned it.

He longed to get away from this stern judge. There seemed to be nothing
more left for him to do but go away.

"You're both very kind," he said hoarsely. "You mustn't be hurt that I
can't thank you as I ought to-night. Perhaps I shall some day. I see
it's better that I should leave the dale; for Lucy's sake, if not for
mine. She's safe for me, Barbara. I'll leave her free, and never ask for
word or token unless I can marry her."

Barbara unbarred the door, and he passed out. It was a clear night, the
summer stars were shining but faintly, as the dawn was not far off.

The girl was deeply moved. She could not know, it is true, that by
forcing Joel to act in this way she was setting the seal to the tragedy
of her own life. But she realised that the man was suffering, and that
his sacrifice was a sacrifice indeed. Tears filled her eyes.

"Joel," she whispered, "this is your chance; hold fast to it, set your
feet firm."

The night air cooled the heated brow of the man, and the dusk was a
welcome curtain to his feelings. As he looked at Barbara, before going
down the path to the gate, it seemed to him that her face was no longer
that of the inexorable judge, but the face of a saint. He had been on
the point of hating her--he would have hated her had his passion not
been spent, and left him too exhausted to feel any more. Now he again
realised the greatness of her heart. He knew that come what might come
to Barbara Lynn--the thorny crown and the roughest road--she would walk
with just such an expression in her eyes as she had now. Her look met
his and poured into him the fresh spirit of the mountains. He felt
lifted up and renewed at the centre of his being.

"Heaven help me, Barbara," he said, standing bare-headed, "some day I'll
come back for Lucy."




CHAPTER VIII

JOEL GOES AWAY


Lucy lay upon the fellside, face down in the grass, hidden by the
bracken fronds. The sun was setting, and the mountains were suffused
with a rosy haze. Over the roof of Forest Hall, on the other side of the
dale, rooks were flying home.

About the recumbent figure pee-weeps wheeled, making a piteous calling,
and the hill-pastures were tremulous with the bleating of sheep, for the
flocks had just been shorn. But Lucy heeded neither sound nor sunset;
the world about her seemed to be as silent and dark as her own soul.

Joel had bidden her good-bye. To-morrow he was going away--and so far
away: to America. Once she had not been able to think of parting without
despair, but now she knew how willingly she would bear it, if they might
only part as lovers. Joel stood firm. Her entreaties and tears had no
effect; he was kind; he was also self-righteous. He had never meant to
tie her to him, he said; he had no right to ask for her love, when he
could not marry her; he had done her a great wrong; further wrong he
would not do.

"When you've made your fortune, you'll come back, Joel?" she had
whispered.

Then had descended upon him a sullen cloud. The exaltation, which he
had felt in Barbara's presence, vanished; he no longer breathed the
clear, invigorating air that had roused him to the strong
resolve--"Heaven help me! I'll return for Lucy." He felt angry, because
his hand had been forced, because his plans had miscarried, because he
had put himself in the power of two women; and, looking at the drooping
form of the girl whom he loved, though she was innocent, he felt glad
that he had the power to hurt her.

"Back!" he had said, "back! Few that go away come back."

The words were no sooner uttered than he had repented of them. The girl
had shrunk back as though struck, and he had been tempted to clasp her
in his arms, to vow that he would return, and marry her, if she would
only wait for him. But, remembering his promise, he had refrained. He
would not be so dastardly a soul as to ask for something he might never
be able to have. Lucy was very fair, gentle, and kind; his love had
brought her little happiness; he would not blight her future. She should
not wear his fetters, she should be free. If luck took sides with him;
if she remained true to her heart, then the last word had not been
spoken between them. But if he found only his old bad fortune dogging
his steps in a foreign land--which he fully expected--and she grew weary
of waiting; then this good-bye was good-bye for ever.

He was going off at dawn. Lucy had seen the last of him, and the future
lay before her like a desolate plain, upon which no hopeful star rose to
lighten the monotony. Just now, however, her mind ignored it, and,
gripping the present, hugged it close to extract its utmost bitterness.

She did not understand Joel, but she was conscious that he had steeled
his heart against her, that his handsome, haughty face was determined
not to relax into its old, loving, intimate look, with which he used to
regard her. He was going away, where he would meet many pretty women,
prettier than she, who would feel the charm of his fine manners and
handsome presence, and who would be only too eager to take his heart
captive.

Lucy knew nothing about Joel's untimely visit to her great-grandmother
in the middle of the night. Neither did she know that the old woman had
given him money. The events, which led up to his sudden determination to
go away, were hidden in obscurity, and his attitude towards her made it
impossible to enquire further. She thought that he was acting wisely, in
all but his newly assumed consideration for her. She wanted to have the
right to think of him, encourage him, dream of him; she wanted, in fact,
to be sure that he would remain hers when he got beyond the reach of her
influence. He had said that she must be free. Free! the word was a
mockery! She had given herself to him. But now he returned the gift,
which he had once pleaded for! Was it, then, he who desired to be free?
Her breast was torn with the hard sobbing of outraged affection.

Unable to bear her loneliness any longer, though shrinking from the
chance of meeting someone, she got up and looked round her. Dusk had
fallen; the pee-weeps were still flying overhead; the undersides of
their bodies glimmered in the gloom; all the glitter had died out of the
sky; and Forest Hall looked grey and frowning above its sea of green.

Lucy pushed her hands through her hair, ordered her dress, which had
become disarranged with lying on the ground, and then she went slowly
down hill. She had no clear idea what she wanted to do, but her feet
took her to Forest Hall. She would, at least, feast her eyes upon the
lamp-light from his window, if she might not look upon his face. It was
the last time she would see him for many years, perhaps for ever. A
shudder swept over her as she thought how his form would slowly vanish
from her memory. Could she keep the intensity of this hour with her till
she died, it would be some comfort through the desolate life which lay
before her. But she knew, she had often been told, that the heart sooner
or later forgot, that wounds always closed, that the mind grew
indifferent, and would some day be able to look back wonderingly upon
itself as it had once suffered. The fear of these things befalling her
became like a nightmare. She cried out against them. She felt that she
could live, so long as she might continue to feel; but life, grown
insensible to that which it had once cherished, was as dreadful a
thought as no life at all beyond the grave.

She came to the rock upon which Forest Hall was built and looked up. Its
remoteness chilled her. She paused, then walked some steps away. She
wanted to see Joel again, to reassure herself that the fears which beset
her were untrue. But if she went to the door and knocked, what could she
say? Had she not said all that was possible for a woman? Must she not
keep silent now unless he spoke? Ah! the bitterness of her sex! Had she
been the man, she would have surrounded the soul that she loved with a
wall of fire. It should never have stood in doubt, wondering if it
might warm its hands. Love would have compassed it.

She drew back into the undergrowth and sat down. The place was damp, and
smelled earthy, but she gave no heed. Here she would stay and watch for
Joel's passing by. She would stay till dawn, if he did not come sooner,
in the hope of seeing some look upon his face that would give her
comfort. She did but crave a crumb to assuage the hunger of her heart.

Lucy's despair had a deeper cause than Joel's departure. At the back of
her mind lay a thought, from which she would not draw the face-cloth to
see what kind of features it bore. It had lain there for months--a
corpse-like thing--having the power to throw a gloom over her brightest
moments. Had it not been for this baleful influence she could have dried
her tears with hopes for the future. She would have acquiesced in his
decision that she must be free, believing him only the more worthy of
her love for having made it; would have smiled bravely at the lonely
years that must pass before he could come back. But her mind was turned
into a charnel-house by that ghastly thing, which she would not bring to
the light.

It was fear.

Had she been wise and strong enough to look at it, she would have known
that below her love for this man was the apprehension that his beauty of
face and form held a shallow soul; that his sincerity was a thin sheet
of gilt over a hollow heart; that he was but a slender reed, which would
break if too heavy a weight were put upon it. But she loved, she
worshipped, she refused to see her idol's feet of clay. And the result
became that which she was trying to escape--a tormented mind.

The forest lay silent. She could still hear the bleating of sheep on the
fells, and the crying of the pee-weeps. But under the dark blue shadow
of the trees nothing moved save a sheaf of flag leaves growing in a
ditch beside the road. After a little while Jake, the rat-catcher, came
along, leading Peter's big brown bear, which he had taken out for
exercise. The thin little man and the ungainly beast passed up the path
to the house on the crag, then the curtain of silence fell again, only
lifted for a moment by the return of Jake alone. He did not see Lucy,
and went home through the forest playing upon his flute.

She wondered what time it was! She began to feel cold and thought that
she would not have the courage to stay there all night. Besides Barbara,
or the hind, or Jan Straw would soon come to look for her, and they
would come first to Forest Hall. She got to her feet meaning to go home.

Then a window was thrown open far over her head, and the loud laughing
of men went jarring above the tree-tops. Some of Joel's friends, from
the country around, had ridden over to see him off and wish him
god-speed. He was making merry, while she was eating her own heart with
hunger. She wavered, took a step forward, then a step back, hesitated,
but, in the end, impelled by a stronger power than her own, she crept up
to the house, and looked in at a window.

The room was lit with many candles, burning with long red tongues, and
much smoke. They shone upon pewter mugs, rough heads, and jocular faces.
Not a man among the lot could match Joel in bearing or grace of
countenance. He stood in the middle of them, with a tankard held high,
for he had just called a toast. She had not been in time to hear what
he had said, but she saw the smile run from lip to lip, and heard again
the loud laughing.

She sank down on the grass under the window. So this was all that Joel
cared! She felt that he had torn out her heart, and flung it still
fluttering in her face. He could amuse himself with his companions,
finding a time for mirth upon his last night in Forest Hall; he could
blot her out of his thoughts with jests and singing.

As a matter of fact Joel was thinking of her, and the toast which he had
called was to 'the lass of his heart.' It was not his nature to be
stiff, when others were genial, or pull a long face in the faces of his
friends.

But to-night he was in a reckless mood. He had torn himself away from
the hands that would have held him; he had been forced to wound the
woman he loved; he was afraid to meditate upon his present frame of mind
or the future upon which he was entering. He craved for distraction, and
was grateful to his friends for providing it. He was ready to enter into
any wild scheme that would make the night spin and the morning come
before he had time to realize what it meant.

Lucy lay stricken upon the ground; she could not tear herself away.
Chilling vapours rose and numbed her limbs. But behind her eyes she felt
flames. At times she was seized with fits of shivering. She knew that it
was dangerous for her to lie there for a heavy dew was falling--the
points of her hair hung with drops, which, now and then, rolled down her
neck into her bosom. But she wished that she might die, she wished that
the morning could find her stiff and stark under the window, with her
sightless eyes gazing up at the room, where Joel had spent the night in
merriment. And above all she wished that he might come there in the
dawn, and find her. She wanted him to carry away the eternal reproach of
a dead girl's face.

This is that which she desired, and the scene which she saw with the
vividness of delirium. His horse stood ready saddled and bridled, his
gay companions were lounging in the doorway, he was about to mount when
his eyes fell upon her body half hidden by the grass. She felt the hush
that would follow his cry of horror. She saw the remorse upon his face,
the clenching of his hands, the sweat on his brow. With grim
satisfaction she lingered over the scene. Then her mind wandered on. She
thought that she followed him into distant lands. She saw him alone in
great forests, alone on wide prairies, alone in solitary huts, but never
alone, because her dead face would be peering into his. She saw him in
crowded cities, in drinking bars, in dancing halls, and even there her
dead eyes would blot out the light of other faces. He should never
escape her, she would follow him and haunt him until in death they met
again. Then she would show him the love and forgiveness of her heart.

Yes, all that she had dreamed would come to pass. Soon she would die,
even now her limbs were dead, only her heart lived and her eyes burned.
But before she died she would look at him once more.

She raised herself with difficulty, and stared into the room. It was
empty, most of the candles had gutted out, the remains of food were
scattered here and there, the mugs lay about, as though they had been
emptied in a hurry and dropped. For a moment she leaned against the
stone, trying to recollect herself, for she was dazed with hunger and
cold and sorrow; then she groped her way round the house to the back,
where she heard voices.

Joel stood in the yard among his friends with half-a-dozen snarling
dogs. The moon was rising and she could see him clearly. But she kept
behind an outhouse so that no one should spy her. The knot of figures
broke up into groups, and in the vacant spot Peter Fleming's bear stood,
chained to the pump. It growled, dogs snapped, men laughed and whips
were cracked.

Lucy looked on aghast. Was she dreaming? Was the scene a painting of her
own imagination or was it real life? Did Joel stand near her, gazing at
the bear-baiting, sometimes with reluctance--as though his heart was not
in it--and then with gradually growing excitement? Lucy's mind was
unstrung. All that she saw and heard came to her as through a mist. She
tried to rally herself, to get a grip of something that would bring her
senses back. Her hand passed up and down the stone wall of the outhouse
beside which she crouched, and finding a big rusty nail, she clung to it
as a drowning man might cling to a spar. It gave her support.

The yard into which she gazed was a chaos. Men with whips and snarling
dogs circled about the pump. Limbs and bodies seemed to be tied together
in a knot that heaved and heaved in an attempt to undo itself and could
not. Lucy thought it was a nightmare. She dared not move, dared hardly
breathe, like one, who, in sleep, is subjugated by dreadful visions.

But a change came over the barbaric revelry. The men surged aside, the
dogs were lashed off and flew howling to the rear. Lucy wondered what
had happened, feeling a vague relief, as though a weight had been
lifted from her brain. She swept her eyes round the yard. Surely her
sister stood yonder! Barbara it must be, for the form was that of a
woman though as tall as the tallest man. She stood in the clearing by
the bear, whose growling still continued to make a thunderous undertone
to the shriller sounds of men and dogs.

The sight of her sister brought a breath of life to the stricken girl.
She had felt as though she were dying, but not peacefully as those who
are willing to lay down existence should die. Her path had been haunted
by evil shapes and visions. The Valley of the Shadow was as Pilgrim
found it--"full of hobgoblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit, overhung
with the discouraging clouds of confusion." Barbara's coming dispelled
the horror. It was the visitation of an angel. From Lucy's distracted
mind the vapours cleared. She could think and see clearly again.

She looked round for Joel; he had gone in with his friends. Only Barbara
remained to see to the bear and Mally Ray, sour and stern, came out to
help her.

Then Lucy got to her numbed feet, and crept forward.

"Barbara," she whispered, "Barbara."

Her sister turned.

"Why, lass," she said calmly, "I's been looking for thee high and low.
Come home, Lucy, come away home."

The girl clung to her with both hands, sobbing:

"I's been baited like yon beast, Barbara. Oh! I's wounded and sick and
weary. I's been hurt by the hands I kissed, and life's dark as a cloudy
night."




CHAPTER IX

PETER AT OXFORD


Peter Fleming sat by his study window, looking down into the quadrangle.
It was early morning, so early that stars still glimmered round Saint
Mary the Virgin's spire and over the Radcliffe Camera. Candles burnt
dimly in the room at his back, and on the table, spotted with wine
stains, lay the remains of supper. All the guests, but one, had gone,
and he was only a voice, for the window curtains swallowed him up. To
him Peter unburdened his soul; upon such an occasion, at such an hour as
this, men are not afraid to speak of themselves.

Peter's college career was ended. Last night he had set the seal to it;
this morning he was entering upon a new phase.

"You are not ambitious," said the voice--a mature voice, lacking the
boyish note that rang so triumphantly off Peter's tongue, as though he
were confident of conquering the world--"It's a pity; I always thought
you were! With your honours it's monstrous, that you should turn
school-master to your native vale, content with--how much?"

"'Passing rich on fourty pounds a year'--and a goosegate!"

"My dear fellow! it won't buy your books."

"I shall read the book of mother Earth."

"Sentimental rubbish! Is your mind quite made up?"

"Screwed to the sticking point."

The voice was silent for a moment, then continued:

"So you'll spend your days teaching the young to make pot-hooks! Are you
going to succeed?"

"The truth is, I think a little reflection will be good for me."

"Reflection! What upon?"

"Life."

"Can't you reflect upon life without burying yourself first?"

"My friend, you have never been among the mountains."

"Conclusive! I haven't. I've only seen them from afar, and been chilled
by them. But seriously, why didn't you accept that post in India? You
were just the man for it--strong, honest, clever...."

"Don't catalogue my virtues, my good fellow."

"But why didn't you go?"

"I'm the only son of my mother."

"Hum ... a man's foes.... And if you return home now, what will you do
eventually? I don't suppose village school-mastering will satisfy you
long."

"Eventually! heaven knows. Perhaps I shall turn flute player up and down
the countryside, go to all the fairs and markets and wakes and enjoy
myself. Or I might become a potter, or a tinker, or make a modest income
leading about a dancing bear. I've a predilection for the last."

"You're too versatile, Fleming. But I'm really troubled about you! That
country of your's is a savage place--I make due apologies--nevertheless
it's the truth. You'll get into a back-water of life; you'll be cut off
from culture and learning--things you like, and long for, more than
most,--I'm afraid that the lump will leaven you, not you the lump."

Peter put away his half-bantering tone, and became serious.

"I've had a good time here," he said. "If I weren't convinced that
regret is a weed, which flourishes with the smallest encouragement, and
chokes many and better things, I'd regret that it's over. Like Father
Thames I've been mightily pleased to lap the stones of Oxford, and give
no thought to the changes lower down, or the ultimate submergence in the
salt sea."

"You're heir to a considerable patrimony, aren't you, Fleming?"

"I do not care about money," he replied without affectation.

"Lucky dog! that's a pinnacle of virtue to which I have never attained.
Still money is an asset worth considering."

"My father has saved, I believe; how much, I don't know--he's given me
all I ever asked for without stint. I can surely give him a year of my
life in return and not grumble. Still, of course, India attracted me.
But it would have broken his heart, his and my mother's, if I'd gone."

"Your folk wanted you to enter the Church, didn't they?--dedicated you,
like Samuel, to the Lord, before you were born!"

"Yes."

Peter did not enlighten his friend further. He was not able to think
without pain of his parents' grief, when he had told them that he could
not fulfil their wishes. At first the miller had been very angry, had
grudged the money he had spent on his son's education, had called it
wasted, and said Peter was ungrateful, unfilial, and a fool. Then he had
ended by imploring him, with tears, to think seriously before blighting
his hopes. Peter's mother had kept silence, that was more distressing
than his father's passion. When they found him obdurate, though greatly
troubled because of their disappointment, they begged him to come home
for a year, think it over, and see, if by reflection, he could not come
to a happier decision. He had consented to their wishes, on condition
that he should not be idle, but have the post of school-master, which
the old pedagogue, who had held it for a lifetime, was now too old to
fulfil any longer. This was easily arranged.

"You need not fear," he said breaking the silence, "I shall not drift
and drift and at last get silted up in a stagnant pool of decaying
promises. My time will come, and when it comes I shall be ready for it,
and none the worse, I hope, for this interregnum."

"Heaven send it soon. I have no faith in your reflections. They may lead
you anywhere. You're such a queer chap. Think of a man like you, looking
forward, actually looking forward, to burying himself at the ends of the
earth in the hey-day of his youth."

Peter laughed, a hopeful, manly laugh. He had no fears.

"You'll come and stay with me next summer, old fellow?" he said.

"Lord! do you expect to see me in that Hyperborean inaccessible,
out-of-the-world vale of yours? Aren't the people savages, heathen,
Goths? Didn't you once speak of a giantess, a sort of Polyphemus's
mamma, that lived in a cave and herded sheep?"

"Oh, Barbara Lynn! Yes, I'll introduce you to Barbara Lynn. But let me
tell you, you'll take off your hat to her as you would to a duchess."

"Look here, Fleming, don't make a fool of yourself."

"I assure you I have no intention of doing so."

"Well, you know what I mean. When you get up there among your mountains,
and are locked in by ice and snow, you'll turn lonely. Nothing sucks the
marrow out of a man's bones like loneliness. So take care. Don't marry a
peasant lass."

"Most of my friends at home claim to be the sons and daughters of
statesmen."

"Statesmen!"

"Yes, statesmen. It's the finest aristocracy in the world that lives in
the little grey houses among the Westmorland fells. Most families can
trace their pedigree back for more grandfathers than the greatest folk
in the land. And they have coats of arms too, have them carved on their
bread cupboards and meal kists--though you'll not find them at the
College of Heralds."

The two men were quiet for a while; the dawn grew and the irregular
buildings came out in blurred masses against the sky. There was not a
spire or pinnacle, whose shape Peter could not clearly trace. They were
drawn, as it were, upon his flesh, nay, engraved upon his bones so that
the wasting tissues of age should not be able to fret their outlines. He
had been marked indelibly by the finger-print of Oxford. To him had been
given the gift of an historical imagination. He lived in hourly touch
with the learning, the tragedies, the visions of the past. Hall and
cloister, chapel and narrow stair, echoed with its voices.

On a summer's day his favourite haunt was the high gallery round Saint
Mary the Virgin's spire, where he could look over the city from its
centre, and delight his eyes and his mind with vision and picture. Town
and gown would seem to swirl below him in the narrow streets;
processions of monks and prelates would pass and repass; Cranmer,
Ridley, and Latimer would come and go, and face the flames yonder by
Balliol College. Archbishop Laud might pause opposite to his great
porch, which he had crowned with a statue of the Virgin and Child; the
deformed figure of Alexander Pope might wander by from the tower of
Stanton Harcourt, his mind stirring with the martial lines of Homer. Or
Peter might see Matilda, when the snow lay thick on the ground, escaping
from the castle, clad in white, while the armies of Stephen besieged it.
Then he would look at the shady gardens, the great trees, the silver
sheen of Cherwell or Isis, and remember that these had all been living
in those far-off days, and were still living, and would continue to
live, after he, and his generation had returned to dust.

From the wider view he would turn to the winged monkeys, the griffins,
the pelicans of the roof below him, and he would hear again the chip,
chip, of chisel and hammer in the thirteenth century, when the very
stones he could lay his hands upon were first placed there.

Northward he would gaze with Saint Cuthbert, who stands in his niche,
holding the head of King Oswald in his hand--and he would link his own
wild Northern hills, where Barbara Lynn herded sheep, with this ancient
city of civilization. Mayhap, as he thought of Barbara Lynn, his eyes
would light upon Christ Church, and he would remember the saint whose
shrine it guards, to whom Oxford owes her birth--Saint Frideswide,
blue-eyed and yellow-haired, who might have worn a crown.

Thought is linked to thought, North to South, man to man, in endless
succession. Since Adam there has not been one break in the chain; the
whole of life is knitted up without a rent. Saint Frideswide and Barbara
Lynn stretched their hands to each other through the dim years.
Something of the same spirit lived in both, a spirit of self-mastery and
aspiration though one refused a crown to keep herself unspotted from the
world, the other, pure as any lily, should be crowned--so Timothy Hadwin
had prophesied.

Peter did not despise the present because he lived so much in the past.
He was no step-bairn of his glorious mother, but received a full
inheritance from her hands. In the life about him he found inspiration
and fellowship, without which he would have been shorn of his Samson
locks. And he was a power among his fellow students. They might laugh at
his childlike enthusiasms; but they found him a tower of strength when
strength was needed; and under his outward sentimentality, they tapped a
clear spring of common sense. He had a masculine love of independence;
he could work with mind and muscle strained to their utmost; he could
idle like an Oriental; but he rose at dawn, slept on a truckle bed, ate
plain fare like an ascetic. Of his lowly birth he made no secret.
Patronage ran off him like water off a duck's back. He was curiously
insensible to differences of rank or breeding. In mental ability he
stood second to few. That which was said of William Pitt might be said
equally well of him--"He never seemed to learn, but simply to
recollect."

Thus his academic years had passed; now he stood without the closed
door. His friends were going forth to careers of interest or influence;
he was drifting back to his Northern home to teach the village children
how to make pot-hooks.

He had wrestled with himself for one bitter day, when the offer of a
post, under the East India Company, had come from one, who had seen and
understood his worth. A glorious prospect had opened out before
him--golden hands had beckoned, the fair face of Fame had smiled. But he
had turned away resolutely after one keen, longing glance, and forbade
his eyes to stray after the vision again. Then his parents had begged
him to come home, and though he could have found other spheres of work
and influence congenial to him, he felt that the wishes of those who had
given him birth, had struggled, denied themselves all, denied him
nothing, had lived only for him, must be respected. Now he was not
sorry, though at first he had been bitterly disappointed. He was
fatalist enough to believe that no other course would bring him success,
that the way would open out sooner or later; and wise enough to know
that a period spent alone in reflection might be made of infinite
benefit.

The sun was rising. Over the slender minarettes came a broad yellow beam
that lighted up Saint Mary's spire, which soared into the blue air--a
being of character and destiny, a maker and moulder of men, as well as a
symbol of their deepest need.

Great buildings, like great minds, deepen and fix their personality with
the passing years. The varied winds of life round their corners, refine
their angles, and blend them into a harmonious whole. Great buildings,
like great minds, endure a loneliness that is awful in its magnitude.
It is the price which must be paid by those who would rise above the
fretting trivialities of existence. And this is their compensation--they
uplift, they inspire others: they are an eternal assurance of the wonder
and sacredness of human life.

There is nothing great in the world that has not this spirit of
loneliness. Mountains, piercing the clouds, stars glittering overhead,
purple seas, pyramids, palaces, cathedrals--no man knows them with the
familiarity that can breed contempt. They may rouse hatred and fear,
fire and sword have been turned against them; but fingers have rarely
been snapped in their faces, or shoulders shrugged under their shadow.

The church of Saint Mary the Virgin, at Oxford, with the sun on its
spire moved Peter profoundly. It had influenced him all his college
days, it was influencing him still. It was sending him back to his home
with two strong guardians for his soul--Faith and Duty--to help him in
the monotonous way. It was giving him over--as it were--to the mountains
to be taught by them.

That which the mountains have to give, they give freely to those who
seek it. David and Mahommed, simple herders of sheep, were not ashamed
to learn at their knees. Buddha and John the Baptist sought them in
manhood and returned to be teachers of men, and to change the current of
thought through all the world.

Peter did not know what his future would be. He believed that he would
learn about it among his native hills.

As the light grew, the man who was only a voice withdrew from the shadow
of the window curtains, and went away. With an uncompromising sunbeam
in the room to light up the supper dishes and soiled cloth, who could
speak of those things, which for the most part, remain hidden in the
heart?

But he thought of Peter as he climbed up the narrow winding stair to his
own room. He believed that his friend would succeed, yet he regretted,
nearly as deeply as Peter, that it had not been possible for him to
accept the post in India. He would have been a great man, he thought;
now he was likely to be simply a good man--a good man lacking
distinction. Then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. The powers
that be, no doubt, set the latter above the former in their book of
human achievements.

Later in the day Peter left Oxford. As he turned his horse on the London
road to look back upon the city, he looked with regret, it is true,
regret because he was leaving the place where the happiest years of his
life had been passed; but he was full of hope for the future. If
fritillaries hung in the Christ Church meadows, blue geraniums grew in
Boar Dale; if there were no spires and pinnacles at High Fold, there was
the grey gable of the old mill-house, and the revolving wooden wheel.
Though a great dome like the Radcliffe Camera did not rise out of
Cringel Forest, Thundergay was more noble. He would not be lonely for
there was Timothy Hadwin to sustain and inspire him.

He flicked his horse's reins and rode away. It was vain to stand and
gaze. Deep in his heart was a thought to which he would not allow
expression, but for some time he could not see distinctly or breathe
with the ease of a man who is reviewing his past and looking forward to
his future with an undivided mind.




CHAPTER X

KETEL'S PARLOUR


Barbara sat on a stool in the mouth of the cave, reading aloud Pope's
translation of the Iliad to Timothy Hadwin. The old man watched the girl
narrowly, and felt his mind swing back through the ages to the days of
Greek and Trojan.

Had Barbara lived then she would have been called the daughter of a god.
Thetis of the Silver-foot ought to have been her mother, and some strong
warrior king her father. She would have made a worthy sister to
Achilles, a fit wife for Hector, tamer of horses. A wife! a wife!
Timothy wondered. Would Barbara Lynn ever become the wife of some good,
honest, plain man, and chain her mind to making and mending, the bearing
of children, the ordinary toils of a married woman's life. He could not
imagine her as such. She was in her fitting place as a herder of sheep
upon the mountains, where sun and tempest were her familiar friends.
Would she be happier if her lot brought her down from the clouds to the
earth? Would not the four grey walls of a cottage choke her? He felt
that in her nature was an intensity of feeling so great, that it was
more likely to bring her sorrow than happiness.

The hour was noon of a summer's day. All around the heat shimmered upon
rock and grass; the tarn lay white and motionless; Thundergay was
wrapped in a haze; not a breath of air stirred the fern fronds.

Barbara's voice when she read had an exaltation, which it lacked in
ordinary conversation. Her eyes, also, had lost their prevailing
meditativeness, and shone with an inner light. She thrilled to the
depths of her soul with the lives of the people about whom she read. Her
ears were alert to catch the voices still echoing down the centuries.

Timothy Hadwin had told her that nothing which happened had an end. No
thought ever thought, no action ever committed could cease. Just as a
pebble, dropped into the sea, caused waves to spread all about it, which
rolled on and on in ever widening circles till they communicated their
movements to the edges of the world, so the accumulated energy of the
past was still surging around, beating upon human brains, and
influencing the latest born of man, though its origin had been swallowed
up and forgotten in the darkness of antiquity.

Barbara believed this. Through books she reached direct contact with the
past. She was a vessel into which the magic old wine could be poured,
and it warmed her, filled her serene mind with passions and sympathies,
unknown to it at other times.

Often through the week Barbara went to Timothy Hadwin's cottage, or he
came to Ketel's Parlour to hear her read, and to impart some of his
knowledge to her hungry soul. The brief hour was a treasure snatched
from the crowded commonplaces of the day, and was valued accordingly.

Just now, Barbara was reading about the ransoming of Hector's body. Her
voice thrilled, and her eyes grew luminous as she pictured the old king
stealing across the plain by night with a wain filled with rich
vestments, tripods, shining cauldrons, and a priceless bowl of gold to
offer them in return for the dead body of his son. She could see the
whole scene--the city of Troy with its battlements and towers vaguely
outlined against the darkness, the dreadful plain of war, the long black
boats of the Greeks, behind which sounded the ever-rolling sea. She saw
Achilles' hut with its palisades, and pine bolt, that three strong men
were wont to drive home at night, though Achilles could drive it home
himself. And near by lay the body of Hector, face-downwards in the dust,
as Achilles had left him after dragging him round the barrow of his dead
friend at the dawn of day. Her eyes filled with tears for Hector, tamer
of horses, Hector of the glancing helm, who strove against fate; but
strove in vain, who was still beloved of Jove, and cared for in death by
the god of the winged sandals, who closed his wounds, and kept his flesh
from corruption.

But that which touched her most was Achilles' speech to the old king,
when he came a suppliant to his hut in the night. The two urns standing
by the throne of Jupiter, one full of curses, one full of blessings
arrested her attention. Was it not true? Did the god not deal a mingled
lot to most of his creatures, but gave them an enduring soul to bear it?
The best and most beautiful things in the world were fraught with
sorrow. The sunset often made her sad; equally sad sounded the singing
of birds in spring; and love, the love of father, mother, husband,
child, was saddest of all. This she had learnt among her friends of the
dale.

She read on to the end of the book, where the mourners sat down to the
sepulchral feast:

    "And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."

Then she closed the volume and looked at Timothy.

"Why do we sup it so eagerly?" she asked. "It's a poisoned cup to some,
a bitter one to most, and sweet only to a few, a very few."

The old man knew that she referred to life.

"There was a preacher once," he said, "who thought it a burden too heavy
to be borne. He believed in re-birth, countless re-births through
generations, and the idea filled him with despair. His name was Gautama,
but people called him Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Enlightener. He
found a way of salvation and opened it to men."

"Was it a good way?"

"Judge for thyself, Barbara. _The mind_" he said, "_approaching the
eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires?_"

She mused for a moment upon the words.

"I don't like them," she replied, "If I had no desires I shouldn't be
Barbara Lynn but a lump of clay."

"Then drink the cup. Buddha turned it upside down so that it could hold
nothing. He emptied it of the sweetness as well as the bitterness. But
thou, hold it up to be filled and drink."

"I shall have sorrow, Timothy?"

"Yes, child."

"Pain and disappointment."

"It is the lot of those who would dig to find the riches of their own
nature."

"The soil might be poor, and suffering turn up nought but dead ashes."

"Tears fertilize it, Barbara."

"Do you think that's the reason we have so much to bear? Should we be
like weakly flowers, things that would wither up with the heat of the
sun, or the cold winds o' winter, if suffering did not set us to deep
trenching?"

All the vehemence had died out of her voice now. Speech had sunk to the
meditative tones of every day life.

"Contentment leads to shallowness," said the old man. "If you had been
born in a great house instead of an upland farm, I doubt if you would
have striven so hard to know and understand things that lie far out of
your beaten track."

"I've got a bitter envy towards those who have chances denied to me."

"To some learning may be the goal; to you it may be the means to a
higher goal."

"What dost mean, Timothy?"

"You're a better scholar at self-discipline than at your books, my
lass."

Her face fell and she looked disappointed.

"Don't I do well? Will Peter think I have not improved?"

He patted her shoulder.

"You do very well indeed. I'm proud of you."

Her brow flushed with pleasure and she rose, dwarfing and bedimming the
little man with her large frame and golden head.

"To-morrow you'll come to me at the cottage," he said.

She nodded, and they parted, he going down the dale, and she, leaping
like a deer up the fellside, to the sheep pastures high upon
Thundergay.

She paused on a rocky point and looked back. Below her lay Swirtle Tarn,
and far, far off the shining waters of the great mere. She could see
Greystones, no bigger than a pebble, lying under the cliffs, and

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