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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lady Good-for-Nothing, by A. T. Quiller-Couch
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Lady Good-for-Nothing
+
+Author: A. T. Quiller-Couch
+
+Release Date: March 2, 2005  [eBook #15228]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
+
+
+
+LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
+
+A Man's Portrait of a Woman
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH ('Q')
+
+First Published in 1910.
+
+This story originally appeared in the weekly edition of the "Times,"
+and is now issued in book form by arrangement with the Proprietors of
+that Journal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO My Commodore and old Friend Edward Atkinson, Esq.
+of Rosebank, Mixtow-by-Fowey.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+Some years ago an unknown American friend proposed my writing a story on
+the loves and adventures of Sir Harry Frankland, Collector of the Port
+of Boston in the mid-eighteenth century, and Agnes Surriage, daughter of
+a poor Marble-head fisherman.  The theme attracted me as it has
+attracted other writers--and notably Oliver Wendell Holmes, who built a
+poem on it.  But while their efforts seemed to leave room for another, I
+was no match for them in knowledge of the facts or of local details;
+and, moreover, these facts and details cramped my story.  I repented,
+therefore and, taking the theme, altered the locality and the
+characters--who, by the way, in the writing have become real enough to
+me, albeit in a different sense.  Thus (I hope) no violence has been
+offered to historical truth, while I have been able to tell the tale in
+my own fashion.
+
+"Q."
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+BOOK I.--PORT NASSAU.
+
+
+I.       THE BEACH.
+
+II.      PORT NASSAU.
+
+III.     TWO GUINEAS.
+
+IV.      FATHER AND SON.
+
+V.       RUTH.
+
+VI.      PARENTHETICAL--OF THE FAMILY OF VYELL.
+
+VII.     A SABBATH-BREAKER.
+
+VIII.    ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.
+
+IX.      THE SCOURGE.
+
+X.       THE BENCH.
+
+XI.      THE STOCKS.
+
+XII.     THE HUT BY THE BEACH.
+
+XIII.    RUTH SETS OUT.
+
+
+BOOK II.--PROBATION.
+
+
+I.       AFTER TWO YEARS.
+
+II.      MR. SILK.
+
+III.     MR. HICHENS.
+
+IV.      VASHTI.
+
+V.       SIR OLIVER'S HEALTH.
+
+VI.      CAPTAIN HARRY AND MR. HANMER.
+
+VII.     FIRST OFFER.
+
+VIII.    CONCERNING MARGARET.
+
+IX.      THE PROSPECT.
+
+X.       THREE LADIES.
+
+XI.      THE ESPIAL.
+
+XII.     LADY CAROLINE.
+
+XIII.    DIANA VYELL.
+
+XIV.     MR. SILK PROPOSES.
+
+XV.      THE CHOOSING.
+
+
+BOOK III.--THE BRIDALS.
+
+
+I.       BETROTHED.
+
+II.      THE RETURN.
+
+III.     NESTING.
+
+IV.      THE BRIDEGROOM.
+
+V.       RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.
+
+VI.      "YET HE WILL COME--".
+
+VII.     HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+VIII.    HOME-COMING.
+
+
+BOOK IV.--LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING.
+
+
+I.       BATTY LANGTON, CHRONICLER.
+
+II.      SIR OLIVER SAILS.
+
+III.     MISCALCULATING WRATH.
+
+IV.      THE TERRACE.
+
+V.       A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.
+
+VI.      CHILDLESS MOTHER.
+
+
+BOOK V.--LISBON AND AFTER.
+
+
+I.       ACT OF FAITH.
+
+II.      DONNA MARIA.
+
+III.     EARTHQUAKE.
+
+IV.      THE SEARCH.
+
+V.       THE FINDING.
+
+VI.      DOCUMENTS.
+
+VII.     THE LAST OFFER.
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+"An innocent life, yet far astray."   Wordsworth's _Ruth_.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+PORT NASSAU.
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+THE BEACH.
+
+
+A coach-and-six, as a rule, may be called an impressive Object.
+But something depends on where you see it.
+
+Viewed from the tall cliffs--along the base of which, on a strip of
+beach two hundred feet below, it crawled between the American continent
+and the Atlantic Ocean--Captain Oliver Vyell's coach-and-six resembled
+nothing so nearly as a black-beetle.
+
+For that matter the cliffs themselves, swept by the spray and humming
+with the roar of the beach--even the bald headland towards which they
+curved as to the visible bourne of all things terrestrial--shrank in
+comparison with the waste void beyond, where sky and ocean weltered
+together after the wrestle of a two days' storm; and in comparison with
+the thought that this rolling sky and heaving water stretched all the
+way to Europe.  Not a sail showed, not a wing anywhere under the leaden
+clouds that still dropped their rain in patches, smurring out the
+horizon.  The wind had died down, but the ships kept their harbours and
+the sea-birds their inland shelters.  Alone of animate things, Captain
+Vyell's coach-and-six crept forth and along the beach, as though tempted
+by the promise of a wintry gleam to landward.
+
+A god--if we may suppose one of the old careless Olympians seated there
+on the cliff-top, nursing his knees--must have enjoyed the comedy of it,
+and laughed to think that this pert beetle, edging its way along the
+sand amid the eternal forces of nature, was here to take seizin of
+them--yes, actually to take seizin and exact tribute.  So indomitable a
+fellow is Man, _improbus Homo_; and among men in his generation Captain
+Oliver Vyell was Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston,
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+In fairness to Captain Vyell be it added that he--a young English blood,
+bearing kinship with two or three of the great Whig families at home,
+and sceptical as became a person of quality--was capable as any one of
+relishing the comedy, had it been pointed out to him.  With equal
+readiness he would have scoffed at Man's pretensions in this world and
+denied him any place at all in the next.  Nevertheless on a planet the
+folly of which might be taken for granted he claimed at least his share
+of the reverence paid by fools to rank and wealth.  He was travelling
+this lonely coast on a tour of inspection, to visit and report upon a
+site where His Majesty's advisers had some design to plant a fort; and a
+fine ostentation coloured his progress here as through life.  He had
+brought his coach because it conveyed his claret and his _batterie de
+cuisine_ (the seaside inns were detestable); but being young and
+extravagantly healthy and, with all his faults, very much of a man, he
+preferred to ride ahead on his saddle-horse and let his pomp follow him.
+
+Six horses drew the coach, and to each pair of leaders rode a
+postillion, while a black coachman guided the wheelers from the
+box-seat; all three men in the Collector's livery of white and scarlet.
+On a perch behind the vehicle--which, despite its weight, left but the
+shallowest of wheel-ruts on the hard sand--sat Manasseh, the Collector's
+cook and body-servant; a huge negro, in livery of the same white and
+scarlet but with heavy adornments of bullion, a cockade in his hat, and
+a loaded blunderbuss laid across his thighs.  Last and alone within the
+coach, with a wine-case for footstool, sat a five-year-old boy.
+
+Master Dicky Vyell--the Collector's only child, and motherless--sat and
+gazed out of the windows in a delicious terror.  For hours that morning
+the travellers had ploughed their way over a plain of blown sand, dotted
+with shrub-oaks, bay-berries, and clumps of Indian grass; then, at a
+point where the tall cliffs began, had wound down to the sea between
+low foothills and a sedge-covered marsh criss-crossed by watercourses
+that spread out here and there into lagoons.  At the head of this
+descent the Atlantic had come into sight, and all the way down its
+echoes had grown in the boy's ears, confusing themselves with a
+delicious odour which came in fact from the fields of sedge, though he
+attributed it to the ocean.
+
+But the sound had amounted to a loud humming at most; and it was with a
+leap and a shout, as they rounded the last foothill and saw the vast
+empty beach running northward before them, league upon league, that the
+thunder of the surf broke on them.  For a while the boom and crash of it
+fairly stunned the child.  He caught at an arm-strap hanging by the
+window and held on with all his small might, while the world he knew
+with its familiar protective boundaries fell away, melted, left him--a
+speck of life ringed about with intolerable roaring emptiness.
+To a companion, had there been one in the coach, he must have clung in
+sheer terror; yes, even to his father, to whom he had never clung and
+could scarcely imagine himself clinging.  But his father rode ahead,
+carelessly erect on his blood-horse--horse and rider seen in a blur
+through the salt-encrusted glass.  Therefore Master Dicky held on as
+best he might to the arm-strap.
+
+By degrees his terror drained away, though its ebb left him shivering.
+Child though he was, he could not remember when he had not been curious
+about the sea.  In a dazed fashion he stared out upon the breakers.
+The wind had died down after the tempest, but the Atlantic kept its
+agitation.  Meeting the shore (which hereabouts ran shallow for five or
+six hundred yards) it reared itself in ten-foot combers, rank stampeding
+on rank, until the sixth or seventh hurled itself far up the beach,
+spent itself in a long receding curve, and drained back to the foaming
+forces behind.  Their untiring onset fascinated Dicky; and now and
+again he tasted renewal of his terror, as a wave, taller than the rest
+or better timed, would come sweeping up to the coach itself, spreading
+and rippling about the wheels and the horses' fetlocks.  "Surely this
+one would engulf them," thought the child, recalling Pharaoh and his
+chariots; but always the furious charge spent itself in an edge of white
+froth that faded to delicate salt filigree and so vanished.  When this
+had happened a dozen times or more, and still without disaster, he took
+heart and began to turn it all into a game, choosing this or that
+breaker and making imaginary wagers upon it; but yet the spectacle
+fascinated him, and still at the back of his small brain lay wonder that
+all this terrifying fury and uproar should always be coming to nothing.
+God must be out yonder (he thought) and engaged in some mysterious form
+of play.  He had heard a good deal about God from Miss Quiney, his
+governess; but this playfulness, as an attribute of the Almighty, was
+new to him and hitherto unsuspected.
+
+The beach, with here and there a break, extended for close upon twenty
+miles, still curving towards the headland; and the travellers covered
+more than two-thirds of the distance without espying a single living
+creature.  As the afternoon wore on the weather improved.  The sun, soon
+to drop behind the cliff-summits on the left, asserted itself with a
+last effort and shot a red gleam through a chink low in the cloud-wrack.
+The shaft widened.  The breakers--indigo-backed till now and turbid with
+sand in solution--began to arch themselves in glass-green hollows, with
+rainbows playing on the spray of their crests.  And then--as though the
+savage coast had become, at a touch of sunshine, habitable--our
+travellers spied a man.
+
+He came forth from a break in the cliffs half a mile ahead and slowly
+crossed the sands to the edge of the surf, the line of which he began,
+after a pause, to follow as slowly northwards.  His back was turned thus
+upon the Collector's equipage, to which in crossing the beach he had
+given no attention, being old and purblind.
+
+The coach rolled so smoothly, and the jingle of harness was so entirely
+swallowed in the roar of the sea, that Captain Vyell, pushing ahead and
+overtaking the old fellow, had to ride close up to his shoulder and
+shout.  It appeared then, for further explanation, that his hearing as
+well as his eyesight was none of the best.  He faced about in a puzzled
+fashion, stared, and touched his hat--or rather lifted his hand a little
+way and dropped it again.
+
+"Your Honour will be the Collector," he said, and nodded many times, at
+first as if proud of his sagacity, but afterwards dully--as though his
+interest had died out and he would have ceased nodding but had forgotten
+the way.  "Yes; my gran'-darter told me.  She's in service at the
+Bowling Green, Port Nassau; but walks over on Lord's Days to cheer up
+her mother and tell the news.  They've been expectin' you at Port Nassau
+any time this week."
+
+The Collector asked where he lived, and the old man pointed to a gully
+in the cliff and to something which, wedged in the gully, might at a
+first glance be taken for a large and loosely-constructed bird's nest.
+The Collector's keen eyes made it out to be a shanty of timber roofed
+with shingles and barely overtopping a wood pile.
+
+"Wreckwood, eh?"
+
+"A good amount of it ought to be comin' in, after the gale."
+
+"Then where's your hook?"--for the wreckwood gatherers along this part
+of the coast carry long gaffs to hook the flotsam and drag it above
+reach of the waves.
+
+"Left it up the bank," said the old man shortly.  After a moment he
+pulled himself together for an explanation, hollowed his palms around
+his mouth, and bawled above the boom of the surf.  "I'm old.  I don't
+carry weight more'n I need to.  When a log comes in, my darter spies it
+an' tells me.  She's mons'rous quick-sighted for wood an' such like--
+though good for nothin' else."  (A pause.)  "No, I'm hard on her; she
+can cook clams."
+
+"You were looking for clams?"  Captain Vyell scrutinised the man's face.
+It was a patriarchal face, strikingly handsome and not much wrinkled;
+the skin delicately tanned and extraordinarily transparent.
+Somehow this transparency puzzled him.  "Hungry?" he asked quickly; and
+as quickly added, "Starving for food, that's what you are."
+
+"It's the Lord's will," answered the old man.
+
+
+The coach had come to a halt a dozen paces away.  The child within it
+could hear nothing of this conversation; but to the end of his life his
+memory kept vivid the scene and the two figures in it--his father, in
+close-fitting riding-coat of blue, with body braced, leaning sideways a
+little against the wind, and a characteristic hint of the cavalryman
+about the slope of the thigh; the old wreck-picker standing just forward
+of the bay's shoulder and looking up, with blown hair and patient eyes.
+Memory recalled even the long slant of the bay's shoulder--a perfectly
+true detail, for the horse was of pure English race and bred by the
+Collector himself.
+
+After this, as he remembered, some command must have been given, for
+Manasseh climbed down, opened the coach door and drew from under the
+seat a box, of which he raised the lid, disclosing things good to eat--
+among them a pasty with a crisp brown crust.
+
+The wreck-picker broke off a piece of the pasty and wrapped it in a
+handkerchief--and memory recalled, as with a small shock of surprise,
+that the handkerchief was clean.  The old man, though ragged enough to
+scare the crows, was clean from his bare head to his bare sea-bleached
+feet.  He munched the rest of the pasty, talking between mouthfuls.  To
+his discourse Dicky paid no heed, but slipped away for a scamper on the
+sands.
+
+As he came running back he saw the old man, in the act of wiping his
+mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly shoot out an arm and point.
+Just beyond the breakers a solitary bird--an osprey--rose with a fish
+shining in the grip of its claws.  It flew northward, away for the
+headland, for a hundred yards or so; and then by some mischance let slip
+his prey, which fell back into the sea.  The boy saw the splash.
+To his surprise the bird made no effort to recover the fish--neither
+stooped nor paused--but went winging sullenly on its way.
+
+"That's the way o' them," commented the old wreck-picker.  "Good food,
+an' to let it go.  I could teach him better."
+
+But the boy, years after, read it as another and different parable.
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+PORT NASSAU.
+
+
+They left the beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory,
+and rattled downhill into Port Nassau.  Dusk had fallen before they
+reached the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the postillions
+drew out a horn from his holster and began to blow loud blasts on it.
+This at once drew the townsfolk into the road and warned them to get out
+of the way.
+
+To the child, drowsed by the strong salt air and the rocking of the
+coach, the glimmering whitewashed houses on either hand went by like a
+procession in a dream.  The figures and groups of men and women on the
+side-walks, too, had a ghostly, furtive air.  They seemed to the boy to
+be whispering together and muttering.  Now this was absurd; for what
+with the blare of the postillion's horn, the clatter of hoofs, the
+jolting and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass, our travellers had
+all the noise to themselves--or all but the voice of the gale now rising
+again for an afterclap and snoring at the street corners.  Yet his
+instinct was right.  Many of the crowd _were_ muttering.  These New
+Englanders had no love to spare for a Collector of Customs, a fine
+gentlemen from Old England and (rumour said) an atheist to boot.  They
+resented this ostent of entry; the men more sullenly than the women,
+some of whom in their hearts could not help admiring its high-and-mighty
+insolence.
+
+The Collector, at any rate, had a crowd to receive him, for it was
+Saturday evening.  On Saturdays by custom the fishing-fleet of Port
+Nassau made harbour before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of
+decorous carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict
+observers.  In the lower part of the town, by the quays, much buying and
+selling went on, in booths of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares.
+For close upon a week no boat had been able to put to sea; but the
+Saturday market and the Saturday gossip and to-and-fro strolling were in
+full swing none the less, though the salesmen had to substitute
+hurricane-lamps for their ordinary flares, and the boy--now wide awake
+again--had a passing glimpse of a couple of booths that had been wrecked
+by the rising wind and were being rebuilt.  He craned out to stare at
+the helpers, while they, pausing in their work and dragged to and fro by
+the flapping canvas, stared back as the coach went by.
+
+It came to a halt on a level roadway some few rods beyond this bright
+traffic, in an open space which, he knew, must be near the waterside,
+for beyond the lights of the booths he had spied a cluster of masts
+quite close at hand.  Or perhaps he had fallen asleep and in his sleep
+had been transported far inland.  For the wind had suddenly died down,
+the coach appeared to be standing in a forest glade--at any rate, among
+trees--and through the trees fell a soft radiance that might well be the
+moon's were it only a tinge less yellow.  In the shine of it stood
+Manasseh, holding open the coach door; and as the child stepped out
+these queer impressions were succeeded by one still more curious and
+startling.  For a hand, as it seemed, reached out of the darkness,
+brushed him smartly across the face, and was gone.  He gave a little cry
+and stood staring aloft at a lantern that hung some feet above him from
+an arched bracket.  Across its glass face ran the legend BOWLING GREEN
+INN, in orange-coloured lettering, and the ray of its oil-lamp wavered
+on the boughs of two tall maples set like sentinels by the Inn gateway
+and reddening now to the fall of the leaf.  Yes, the ground about his
+feet was strewn with leaves: it must be one of these that had brushed by
+his face.
+
+If the folk in the streets had been sullen, those of the Inn were eager
+enough, even obsequious.  A trio of grooms fell to unharnessing the
+horses; a couple of porters ran to and fro, unloading the baggage and
+cooking-pots; while the landlady shouted orders right and left in the
+porchway.  She deemed, honest soul, that she was mistress of the
+establishment, until Manasseh undeceived her.
+
+Manasseh's huge stature and gold-encrusted livery commanded respect in
+spite of his colour.  He addressed her as "woman."  "Woman, if you will
+stop yo' cacklin' and yo' crowin'?  Go in now and fetch me fish, fetch
+me chickens, fetch me plenty eggs.  Fetch me a dam scullion.  Heh?
+Stir yo' legs and fetch me a dam scullion, and the chickens tender.
+His Exc'llence mos' partic'ler the chickens tender."
+
+Still adjuring her he shouldered his way through the house to the
+kitchen, whence presently his voice sounded loud, authoritative, above
+the clatter of cooking-pots.  From time to time he broke away from the
+business of unpacking to reiterate his demands for fish, eggs,
+chicken--the last to be tender at all costs and at pain of his
+tremendous displeasure.
+
+"And I assure you, ma'am," said Captain Vyell, standing in the passage
+at the door of his private room, "his standard is a high one.  I believe
+the blackguard never stole a tough fowl in his life. . . . Show me to my
+bedroom, please, if the trunks are unstrapped; and the child, here, to
+his. . . . Eh?  What's this?--a rush-light?  I don't use rush-lights.
+Go to Manasseh and ask him to unpack you a pair of candles."
+
+The landlady returned with a silver candlestick in either hand, and
+candles of real wax.  She had never seen the like, and led the way
+upstairs speculating on their cost.  The bedrooms proved to be clean,
+though bare and more than a little stuffy--their windows having been
+kept shut for some days against the gale.  The Collector commanded them
+to be opened.  The landlady faintly protested.  "The wind would gutter
+the candles--and such wax too!"  She was told to obey, and she obeyed.
+
+In the boy's room knelt a girl--a chambermaid--unstrapping his small
+valise.  She had a rush-light on the floor beside her, and did not look
+up as the landlady thrust open the lattice and left the room with the
+Collector, the boy remaining behind.  His candle stood upon a chest of
+drawers by the window; and, as the others went out, a draught of wind
+caught the dimity curtain, blew it against the flame, and in an instant
+ignited it.
+
+The girl looked up swiftly at the sudden light above her, and as
+swiftly--before the child could cry out--was on her feet.  She caught
+the fire between her two hands and beat it out, making no noise and
+scarcely flinching, though her flesh was certainly being scorched.
+
+"That was lucky," she said, looking across at him with a smile.
+
+"Ruth!--Ruth!" called the landlady's voice, up the corridor.
+"Here, a moment!"
+
+She dropped the charred curtain and hurried to answer the call.
+
+"Ruth!  Where's the bootjack?  His Honour will take off his
+riding-boots."
+
+"Bootjack, ma'am?" interrupted the Collector, leaning back in a chair
+and extending a shapely leg with instep and ankle whereon the
+riding-boot fitted like a glove.  "I don't maul my leather with
+bootjacks.  Send Manasseh upstairs to me; ask him with my compliments
+what the devil he means by clattering saucepans when he should be
+attending to his master. . . . Eh, what's this?"
+
+"She can do it, your Honour," said the landlady, catching Ruth by the
+shoulder and motioning her to kneel and draw off the boot.
+(It is likely she shirked carrying the message.)
+
+"Oh, very well--if only she won't twist my foot. . . . Take care of the
+spur, child."
+
+The girl knelt, and with her blistered hand took hold of the boot-heel
+below the spur.  It cost her exquisite pain, but she did not wince; and
+her head being bent, no one perceived the tears in her eyes.
+
+She had scarcely drawn off the second boot, when Manasseh appeared in
+the doorway carrying a silver tray with glasses and biscuits; a glass of
+red wine for his master, a more innocent cordial for the young
+gentleman, and both glasses filmed over with the chill of crushed ice.
+
+The girl was withdrawing when the Collector, carelessly feeling in his
+pocket, drew out a coin and put it into her hand.  Her fingers closed on
+it sharply, almost with a snatch.  In truth, the touch of metal was so
+intolerable to the burnt flesh that, but for clutching it so, she must
+have dropped the coin.  Still with bowed head she passed quietly from
+the room.
+
+Master Dicky munched his macaroon and sipped his cordial.  He had a
+whole guinea in his breeches pocket, and was thinking it would be great
+fun to step out and explore the town, if only for a little way.
+To-morrow was Sunday, and all the stores would be closed.  But Manasseh
+was too busy to come with him for bodyguard--and his father's boots were
+off; and besides, he stood in great awe and shyness of his admired
+parent.  Had the boots been on, it would have cost him a bold effort to
+make the request.  On the whole, the cordial warming him, Master Dicky
+had a mind to take French leave.
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+TWO GUINEAS.
+
+
+Though the wind hummed among the chimneys and on the back of the roof,
+on either side of the lamp over the gateway the maples stood in the lee
+and waved their boughs gently, shedding a leaf now and then in some
+deflected gust.  Beyond and to the left stretched a dim avenue, also of
+maples; and at the end of this, as he reached the gate, the boy could
+spy the lights of the fair.
+
+There was no risk at all of losing his way.
+
+He stepped briskly forth and down the avenue.  Where the trees ended,
+and with them the high wall enclosing the inn's stable-yard, the wind
+rushed upon him with a whoop, and swept him off the side-walk almost to
+the middle of the road-way.  But by this time the lights were close at
+hand.  He pressed his little hat down on his head and battled his way
+towards them.
+
+The first booth displayed sweetmeats; the next hung out lines of
+sailors' smocks, petticoats, sea-boots, oilskin coats and caps, that
+swayed according to their weight; the third was no booth but a wooden
+store, wherein a druggist dispensed his wares; the fourth, also of wood,
+belonged to a barber, and was capable of seating one customer at a time
+while the others waited their turn on the side-walk.  Here--his shanty
+having no front--the barber kept them in good humour by chatting to all
+and sundry while he shaved; but a part of the crowd had good-naturedly
+drifted on to help his neighbour, a tobacco-seller, whose stall had
+suffered disaster.  A painted wooden statue of a Cherokee Indian lay
+face downward across the walk, as the wind had blown it: bellying folds
+of canvas and tarpaulin hid the wreck of the poor man's stock-in-trade.
+Beyond this wreckage stood, in order, a vegetable stall, another
+sweetmeat stall, and a booth in which the boy (who cared little for
+sweetmeats, and, moreover, had just eaten his macaroon) took much more
+interest.  For it was hung about with cages; and in the cages were birds
+of all kinds (but the most of them canaries), perched in the dull light
+of two horn lanterns, and asleep with open, shining eyes; and in the
+midst stood the proprietor, blowing delightful liquid notes upon a
+bird-call.
+
+It fascinated Dicky; and he no sooner assured himself that the birds
+were really for sale--although no purchaser stepped forward--than there
+came upon him an overmastering desire to own a live canary in a cage and
+teach it with just such a whistle.  (He had often wondered at the things
+upon which grown-up folk spent their money to the neglect of this
+world's true delights.) Edging his way to the stall, he was summoning up
+courage to ask the price of a bird, when the salesman caught sight him
+and affably spared him the trouble.
+
+"Eh! here's my young lord wants a bird. . . . You may say what you
+like," said he, addressing the bystanders, "but there's none like the
+gentry for encouragin' trade. . . . And which shall it be sir?  Here's a
+green parrot, now, I can recommend; or if your Honour prefers a bird
+that'll talk, this grey one.  A beauty, see!  And not a bad word in his
+repertory. Your honoured father shall not blame me for sellin' you a
+swearer."
+
+The boy pointed to a cage on the man's right.
+
+"A canary? . . . Well, and you're right.  What is talk, after all, to
+compare with music?  And chosen the best bird of my stock, you have; the
+pick of the whole crop.  That's Quality, my friends; nothing but the
+best'll do for Quality, an' the instinct of it comes out young."
+The man, who was evidently an eccentric, ran his eye roguishly over the
+faces behind the boy and named his price; a high one--a very high one--
+but one nicely calculated to lie on the right side of public
+reprobation.
+
+Dicky laid his guinea on the sill.  "I want a whistle, too," he said,
+"and my change, please."
+
+The bird-fancier slapped his breeches pockets.
+
+"A guinea?  Bless me, but I must run around and ask one of my neighbours
+to oblige.  Any of you got the change for a golden guinea about you?" he
+asked of the crowd.
+
+"We ain't so lucky," said a voice somewhere at the back.  "We don't
+carry guineas about, nor give 'em to our bastards."
+
+A voice or two--a woman's among them--called "Shame!"  "Hold your
+tongue, there!"
+
+Dicky had his back to the speaker.  He heard the word for the first time
+in his life, and had no notion of its meaning; but in a dim way he felt
+it to be an evil word, and also that the people were protesting out of
+pity.  A rush of blood came to his face.  He gulped, lifted his chin,
+and said, with his eyes steady on the face of the blinking fancier,--
+
+"Give it back to me, please, and I will get it changed."
+
+He took the coin, and walked away resolutely with a set white face.
+He saw none of the people who made way for him.
+
+The bird-fancier stared after the small figure as it walked away into
+darkness.  "Bastard?" he said. "There's Blood in that youngster, though
+he don't face ye again an' I lose my deal.  Blood's blood, however ye
+come by it; you may take that on the word of a breeder.  An' you ought
+to be ashamed, Sam Wilson--slingin' yer mud at a child!"
+
+
+The word drummed in the boy's ears.  What did it mean?  What was the
+sneer in it?  "Brat!" "cry-baby," "tell-tale," "story-teller," these
+were opprobrious words, to be resented in their degree; and all but the
+first covered accusations which not only must never be deserved, but
+obliged a gentleman, however young, to show fight.  But "bastard"?
+
+He felt that, whatever it meant, somehow it was worse than any; that
+honour called for the annihilation of the man that dared speak it; that
+there was weakness, perhaps even poltroonery, in merely walking away.
+If only he knew what the word meant!
+
+He came to a halt opposite the drug store.  He had once heard Dr.
+Lamerton, the apothecary at home, described as a "well-to-do" man.
+The phrase stuck in his small brain, and he connected the sale of drugs
+with wealth.  (How, he reasoned, could any one be tempted to sell wares
+so nasty unless by prodigious profit?)  He felt sure the drug-seller
+would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly.
+His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to assert himself.
+
+There was a single customer in the store--a girl.  With some surprise he
+recognised her for the girl who had beaten the flame out of the curtain.
+
+She stood with her back to the doorway and a little sidewise by the
+counter, from behind which the drug-seller--a burly fellow in a suit of
+black--looked down on her doubtfully, rubbing his shaven chin while he
+glanced from her to something he held in his open palm.
+
+"I'm askin' you," he said, "how you came by it?"
+
+"It was given to me," the girl answered.
+
+"That's a likely tale!  Folks don't give money like this to a girl in
+your position; unless--"
+
+Here the man paused.
+
+"Is it a great deal of money?" she asked.  There was astonishment in her
+voice, and a kind of suppressed eagerness.
+
+"Oh, come now--that's too innocent by half!  A guinea-piece is a
+guinea-piece, and a guinea is twenty-one shillings; and twenty-one
+shillings, likely enough, is more'n you'll earn in a year outside o'
+your keep.  Who gave it ye?"
+
+"A gentleman--the Collector--at the Inn just now.
+
+"Ho!" said the drug-seller, with a world of meaning.
+
+"But if," she went on, "it is worth so much as you say, there must be
+some mistake.  Give it back to me, please.  I am sorry for troubling
+you."  She took a small, round parcel from her pocket, laid it on the
+counter, and held out her hand for the coin.
+
+The drug-seller eyed her.  "There must be some mistake, I guess," said
+he, as he gave back the gold piece.  "No, and you can take up your
+packet too; I don't grudge two-pennyworth of salve.  But wait a moment
+while I serve this small customer, for I want a word with you
+later. . . . Well, and what can I do for you, young gentleman?" he
+asked, turning to Dicky.
+
+Dicky advanced to the shop-board, and as he did so the girl turned and
+recognised him with a faint, very shy smile.
+
+"If you please," he said politely, "I want change for this--if you can
+spare it."
+
+"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the man, staring.  "What, _another?_"
+
+"The bird-seller up the road had no change about him.  And--and, if you
+please," went on Dick hardily, with a glance at the girl, "she hurt her
+hands putting out a fire just now.  I expect my father gave her the
+money for that.  But she must have burnt her hands _dreffully!_"--Dicky
+had not quite outgrown his infantile lisp--"and if she's come for stuff
+to put on them, please I want to pay for it."
+
+"But I don't want you to," put in the girl, still hesitating by the
+counter.
+
+"But I'd _rather_ insisted Dicky.
+
+"Tut!" said the drug-seller.  "A matter of twopence won't break either
+of us.  Captain Vyell's boy, are you?  Well, then, I'll take your
+coppers on principle."
+
+He counted out the change, and Dicky--who was not old enough yet to do
+sums--pretended to find it correct.  But he was old enough to have
+acquired charming manners, and after thanking the drug-seller, gave the
+girl quite a grown-up little bow as he passed out.
+
+She would have followed, but the man said, "Stay a moment.  What's your
+name?"
+
+"Ruth Josselin."
+
+"Age?"
+
+"I was sixteen last month."
+
+"Then listen to a word of advice, Ruth Josselin, and don't you take
+money like that from fine gentlemen like the Collector.  They don't give
+it to the ugly ones.  Understand?"
+
+"Thank you," she said.  "I am going to give it back;" and slipping the
+guinea into her pocket, she said "Good evening," and walked swiftly out
+in the wake of the child.
+
+The drug-seller looked after her shrewdly.  He was a moral man.
+
+
+Ruth, hurrying out upon the side-walk, descried the child a few paces up
+the road.  He had come to a halt; was, in fact, plucking up his courage
+to go and demand the bird-cage.  She overtook him.
+
+"I was sent out to look for you," she said.  "I oughtn't to have wasted
+time buying that ointment; but my hands were hurting me.  Please, you
+are to come home and change your clothes for dinner."
+
+"I'll come in a minute," said Dicky, "if you'll stand here and wait."
+
+He might be called by that word again; and without knowing why, he
+dreaded her hearing it.  She waited while he trotted forward, nerving
+himself to face the crowd again.  Lo! when he reached the booth, all the
+bystanders had melted away.  The bird-seller was covering up his cages
+with loose wrappers, making ready to pack up for the night.
+
+"Hello!" he said cheerfully.  "Thought I'd lost you for good."
+
+He took the child's money and handed the canary cage across the sill;
+also the bird-whistle, wrapped in a scrap of paper.  Many times in the
+course of a career which brought him much fighting and some little fame,
+Dicky Vyell remembered this his first lesson in courage--that if you
+walk straight up to an enemy, as likely as not you find him vanished.
+
+But he had not quite reached the end of his alarms.  As he took the
+cage, a parrot at the back of the booth uplifted his voice and
+squawked,--
+
+"No prerogative!  No prerogative!  No prerogative!"
+
+"You mustn't mind _him_," said the bird-seller genially.  "He's like the
+crowd--picks up a cry an' harps on it without understandin'."
+
+Master Dicky understood it no better; but thanked the man and ran off,
+prize in hand, to rejoin the girl.
+
+They hurried back to the Inn.  At the gateway she paused.
+
+"I let you say what was wrong just now," she explained.  "Your father
+didn't give me that money for putting out the fire."
+
+Here she hesitated.  Dicky could not think what it mattered, or why her
+voice was so timid.
+
+"Oh," said he carelessly, "I dare say it was just because he liked you.
+Father has plenty of money."
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+FATHER AND SON.
+
+
+The dinner set before Captain Vyell comprised a dish of oysters, a fish
+chowder, a curried crab, a fried fowl with white sauce, a saddle of
+tenderest mutton, and various sweets over which Manasseh had thrown the
+elegant flourishes of his art.  The wine came from the Rhone valley--a
+Hermitage of the Collector's own shipment.  The candles that lit the
+repast stood in the Collector's own silver candlesticks.  As an old
+Roman general carried with him on foreign service, packed in panniers on
+mule-back, a tessellated pavement to be laid down for him at each
+camping halt and repacked when the troops moved forward, so did Captain
+Vyell on his progresses of inspection travel with all the apparatus of a
+good table.
+
+Dicky, seated opposite his father in a suit of sapphire blue velvet with
+buttons of cut steel, partook only of the fried fowl and of a syllabub.
+He had his glass of wine too, and sipped at it, not liking it much, but
+encouraged by his father, who held that a fine palate could not be
+cultivated too early.
+
+By some process of dishing-up best known to himself (but with the aid,
+no doubt, of the "dam scullion") Manasseh, who had cooked the dinner,
+also served it; noiselessly, wearing white gloves because his master
+abominated the sight of a black hand at meals.  These gloves had a
+fascination for Dicky.  They attracted his eyes as might the
+intervolved play of two large white moths in the penumbra beyond the
+candle-light, between his father's back and the dark sideboard; but he
+fought against the attraction because he knew that to be aware of a
+servant was an offence against good manners at table.
+
+His father encouraged him to talk, and he told of his purchase--but not
+all the story.  Not for worlds--instinct told him--must he mention the
+word he had heard spoken.  Yet he got so far as to say,--
+
+"The people here don't like us--do they, father?"
+
+Captain Vyell laughed.  "No, that's very certain.  And, to tell you the
+truth, if I had known you were wandering the street by yourself I might
+have felt uneasy.  Manasseh shall take you for a walk to-morrow.
+One can never be sure of the _canaille_."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+Captain Vyell explained.  The _canaille_, he said, were the common folk,
+whose part in this world was to be ruled.  He explained further that to
+belong to the upper or ruling class it did not suffice to be well-born
+(though this was almost essential); one must also cultivate the manners
+proper to that station, and appear, as well as be, a superior.  Nor was
+this all; there were complications, which Dicky would learn in time;
+what was called "popular rights," for instance--rights which even a King
+must not be allowed to override; and these were so precious that (added
+the Collector) the upper classes must sometimes fight and lay down their
+lives for them.
+
+Dick perpended.  He found this exceedingly interesting--the more so
+because it came, though in a curiously different way, to much the same
+as Miss Quiney had taught him out of the catechism.  Miss Quiney had
+used pious words; in Miss Quiney's talk everything--even to sitting
+upright at table--was mixed up with God and an all-seeing Eye; and his
+father--with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of it--was
+careless about God.
+
+This, by the way, had often puzzled and even frightened him.  God, like
+a great Sun, loomed so largely through Miss Quiney's scheme of things
+(which it were more precise, perhaps, to term a fog) that for certain,
+and apart from the sin of it and the assurance of going to hell, every
+one removed from God must be sitting in pitch-darkness.  But lo! when
+his father talked everything became clear and distinct; there was no sun
+at all to be seen, but there was also no darkness.  On the contrary, a
+hundred things grew visible at once, and intelligible and
+common-sensible as Miss Quiney never contrived to present them.
+
+This was puzzling; and, moreover, the child could not tolerate the
+thought of his father's going to hell--to the flames and unbearable
+thirst of it.  To be sure Miss Quiney had never hinted this punishment
+for her employer, or even a remote chance of it, and Dicky's good
+breeding had kept him from confronting her major premise with the
+particular instance of his father, although the conclusion of that
+syllogism meant everything to him.  Or it may be that he was afraid.
+ . . . Once, indeed, like Sindbad in the cave, he had seen a glimmering
+chance of escape.  It came when, reading in his Scripture lesson that
+Christ consorted by choice with publicans and sinners, he had been
+stopped by Miss Quiney with the information that "publican" meant
+"a kind of tax-collector."  "Like papa?" asked the child, and held his
+breath for the answer.  "Oh, not in the least like your dear papa,"
+Miss Quiney made haste to assure him; "but a quite low class of person,
+and, I should say, connected rather with the Excise.  You must remember
+that all this happened in the East, a long time ago."  Poor soul! the
+conscientiousness of her conscience (so to speak) had come to rest upon
+turning such corners genteelly, and had grown so expert at it that she
+scarcely breathed a sigh of relief.  The child bent his head over the
+book.  His eyes were hidden from her, and she never guessed what hope
+she had dashed.
+
+
+It was a relief then--after being forced at one time or another to put
+aside or pigeon-hole a hundred questions on which Miss Quiney's
+teaching and his father's practice appeared at variance--to find a point
+upon which the certainty of both converged.  Heaven and hell might be
+this or that; but in this world the poor deserved their place, and must
+be kept to it.
+
+"That seems fine," said Dicky, after a long pause.
+
+"What seems fine?"  His father, tasting the mutton with approval, had
+let slip his clue to the child's thought.
+
+"Why, that poor people have rights too, and we ought to stand up for
+them--like you said," answered Dicky, not too grammatically.
+
+"They are our rights too, you see," said his father.
+
+Dicky did not see; but his eagerness jumped this gap in the argument.
+"Papa," he asked with a sudden flush, "did you ever stand up to a King
+on the poor people's side, and fight--and all that?"
+
+"Well, you see"--the Collector smiled--"I was never called upon.
+But it's in the blood.  Has Miss Quiney ever told you about Oliver
+Cromwell?"
+
+"Yes.  He cut off King Charles's head. . . . I don't think Miss Quiney
+liked him for that, though she didn't say so."
+
+The Collector was still smiling.  "He certainly helped to cut off King
+Charles's head, and--right or wrong--it's remembered against him.
+But he did any amount of great things too.  He was a masterful man; and
+perhaps the reason why Miss Quiney held her tongue is that he happens to
+be an ancestor of ours, and she knew it."
+
+"Oliver Cromwell?"  Dicky repeated the name slowly, with awe.
+
+"He was my great-great-grandfather, and you can add on another 'great'
+for yourself.  I am called Oliver after him.  They even say," added
+Captain Vyell, sipping his wine, "that I have some of his features; and
+so, perhaps, will you when you grow up.  But of your chance of that you
+shall judge before long.  I am having a copy of his portrait sent over
+from England."
+
+For a moment or two these last remarks scarcely penetrated to the boy's
+hearing.  Like all boys, he naturally desired greatness; unlike most,
+he was conscious of standing above the crowd, but without a guess that
+he derived the advantage from anything better than accident.  His
+father had the good fortune to be rich.  For himself--well, Dicky
+was born with one of those simple natures that incline rather to
+distrust than to overrate their own merits.  None the less he
+desired and loved greatness--thus early, and throughout his life--and
+it came as a tremendous, a magnificent shock to him that he
+enjoyed it as a birthright.  The repetition of "great"--"he was my
+great-great-grandfather;"  "you can add another 'great' for yourself"--
+hummed in his ears.  A full half a minute ticked by before he grasped at
+the remainder of his father's speech, and, like a breaking twig, it
+dropped him to bathos.
+
+"But--but--" Dicky passed a hand over his face--"Miss Quiney said that
+Oliver Cromwell was covered with warts!"
+
+Captain Vyell laughed outright.
+
+"Women have wonderful ways of conveying a prejudice.  Warts?  Well,
+there, at any rate, we have the advantage of old Noll."  The Collector,
+whose sense of hearing was acute and fastidious, broke off with a sharp
+arching of the eyebrows and a glance up at the ceiling, or rather (since
+ceiling there was none) at the oaken beams which supported the floor
+overhead.  "Manasseh," he said quickly, "be good enough to step upstairs
+and inform our landlady that the pitch of her voice annoys me.  She
+would seem to be rating a servant girl above."
+
+"Yes, sah."
+
+"Pray desire her to take the girl away and scold her elsewhere."
+
+Manasseh disappeared, and returned two minutes later to report that
+"the woman would give no furdah trouble."  He removed the white cloth,
+set out the decanters with an apology for the mahogany's indifferent
+polish, and withdrew again to prepare his master's coffee.
+
+At once a silence fell between father and son.  Dicky had expected to
+hear more of Oliver Cromwell.  He stared across the dull shine of the
+table at his parent's coat of peach-coloured velvet and shirt front of
+frilled linen; at the lace ruffle on the wrist, the signet ring on the
+little finger, the hand--firm, but fine--as it reached for a decanter or
+fell to playing with a gold toothpick.  He loved this father of his with
+the helpless, concentred love of a motherless child; admired him, as all
+must admire, only more loyally.  To feel constraint in so magnificent a
+presence was but natural.
+
+It would have astonished him to learn that his father, lolling there so
+easily and toying with a toothpick, shared that constraint.  Yet it was
+so.  Captain Vyell did not understand children.  Least of all did he
+understand this son of his begetting.  He could be kind to him, even
+extravagantly, by fits and starts; desired to be kind constantly; could
+rally and chat with him in hearing of a third person, though that third
+person were but a servant waiting at table.  But to sit alone facing the
+boy and converse with him was a harder business, and gave him an absurd
+feeling of _gene_; and this (though possibly he did not know it) was the
+real reason why, having brought Dicky in the coach for a treat, he
+himself had ridden all day in saddle.
+
+Dicky was the first to resume conversation.
+
+"Papa," he asked, still pondering the problem of rich and poor, "don't
+some of the old families die out?"
+
+"They do."
+
+"Then others must come up to take their place, or the people who do the
+ruling would come to an end."
+
+"That's the way of it, my boy."  The Collector nodded and cracked a
+walnut.  "New families spring up; and a devilish ugly show they usually
+make of it at first.  It takes three generations, they say, to breed a
+gentleman; and, in my opinion, that's under the mark."
+
+"And a lady?"
+
+"Women are handier at picking up appearances; 'adaptable' 's the word.
+But the trouble with them is to find out whether they have the real
+thing or not.  For my part, if you want the real thing, I believe there
+are more gentlemen than gentlewomen in the world; and Batty Langton says
+you may breed out the old Adam, but you'll never get rid of Eve. . . .
+But, bless my soul, Dicky, it's early days for you to be discussing the
+sex!"
+
+Dicky, however, was perfectly serious.
+
+"But I _do_ mean what you call the real thing, papa.  Couldn't a poor
+girl be born so that she had it from the start?  Oh, I can't tell what I
+mean exactly--"
+
+"On the contrary, child, you are putting it uncommonly well; at any
+rate, you are making me understand what you mean, and that's the A and Z
+of it, whether in talk or in writing.  'Is there--can there be--such a
+thing as a natural born lady?' that's your question, hey?"
+The Collector peeled his walnut and smiled to himself.  In other
+company--Batty Langton's, for example--he would have answered cynically
+that to him the phenomenon of a natural born lady would first of all
+suggest a doubt of her mother's virtue.  "Well, no," he answered after a
+while; "if you met such a person, and could trace back her family
+history, ten to one you'd discover good blood somewhere in it.
+Old stocks fail, die away underground, and, as time goes on, are
+forgotten; then one fine day up springs a shoot nobody can account for.
+It's the old sap taking a fresh start.  See?"
+
+Dicky nodded.  It would take him some time work out the theory, but he
+liked the look of it.
+
+His drowsed young brain--for the hour was past bedtime--applied it idly
+to a picture that stood out, sharp and vivid, from the endless train of
+the day's impressions: the picture of a girl with quiet, troubled eyes,
+composed lips, and hands that beat upon a blazing curtain, not flinching
+at the pain. . . . And just then, as it were in a dream, he beat of her
+hands echoed in a soft tapping, the door behind his father opened
+gently, and Dicky sat up with a start, wide awake again and staring, for
+the girl herself stood in the doorway.
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+RUTH.
+
+
+"Hey, what is it?" the Collector demanded, slewing himself to the
+half-about in his chair.
+
+The girl stepped forward into the candle-light.  Over her shoulders she
+wore a faded plaid, the ends of which her left hand clutched and held
+together at her bosom.
+
+"Your Honour's pardon for troubling," she said, and laying a gold coin
+on the table, drew back with a slight curtsy.  "But I think you gave
+me this by mistake; and now is my only chance to give it back.
+I am going home in a few minutes."
+
+The Collector glanced at the coin, and from that to the girl's face, on
+which his eyes lingered.
+
+"Gad, I recollect!" he said.  "You were the wench that pulled off my
+boots?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, upon my honour, I forget at this moment if I gave it by mistake
+or because of your face.  No, hang me!" he went on, while she flushed,
+not angrily, but as though the words hurt her, "it must have been by
+mistake.  I couldn't have forgot so much better a reason."
+
+To this she answered nothing, but put forward her hand as if to push the
+coin nearer.
+
+"Certainly not," said he, still with eyes on her face.  "I wish you to
+take it.  By the way, I heard the landlady's voice just now, letting
+loose upon somebody.  Was it on you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you are going home to-night, you say.  Has she turned you out?"
+
+"Yes."  The girl's hand moved as if gathering the plaid closer over her
+bosom.  Her voice held no resentment.  Her eyes were fixed upon the
+coin, which, however, she made no further motion to touch; and this
+downward glance showed at its best the lovely droop of her long
+eyelashes.
+
+The Collector continued to take stock of her, and with a growing wonder.
+
+The lower half of the face's oval was perhaps Unduly gaunt and a trifle
+overweighted by the broad brow.  The whole body stood a thought too high
+for its breadth, with a hint of coltishness in the thin arms and thick
+elbow-joints.  So judged the Collector, as he would have appraised a
+slave or any young female animal; while as a connoisseur he knew that
+these were faults pointing towards ultimate perfection, and at this
+stage even necessary to it.
+
+For assurance he asked her, "How old are you?"
+
+"Sixteen."
+
+"That's as I guessed," said he, and added to himself, "My God, this is
+going to be one of the loveliest things in creation!"  Still, as she
+bent her eyes to the coin on the table, he ran his appraising glance
+over her neck and shoulders, judging--so far as the ugly shawl
+permitted--the head's poise, the set of the coral ear, the delicate wave
+of hair on the neck's nape.
+
+"Why is she turning you out?"
+
+"A window curtain took fire.  She said it was my fault."
+
+"But it was not your fault at all!" cried Dicky.  "Papa, the curtain
+took fire in my room, and she beat it out.  The whole house might have
+been burnt down but for her.  She beat it out, and made nothing of it,
+though it hurt her horribly.  Look at her hands, papa!"
+
+"Hold out your hands," his father commanded.
+
+She stretched them out.  The ointment, as she turned them palms upward,
+shone under the candle rays.
+
+"Turn them the other way," he commanded, after a long look at them.
+The words might mean that the sight afflicted him, but his tone scarcely
+suggested this.  She turned her hands, and he scrutinised the backs of
+them very deliberately.  "It's a shame," said he at length.
+
+"Of course it's a shame!" the boy agreed hotly.  "Papa, won't you ring
+for the landlady and tell her so, and then she won't be sent away."
+
+"My dear Dicky," his father answered, "you mistake.  I was thinking that
+it was a shame to coarsen such hands with housework."  He eyed the girl
+again, and she met him with a straight face--flushed a little and
+plainly perturbed, but not shrinking, although her bosom heaved--for his
+admiration was entirely cool and critical.  "What is your name?" he
+asked.
+
+"Ruth Josselin."
+
+He appeared to consider this for a moment, and then, reaching out a hand
+for the decanter, to dismiss the subject.  "Well, pick up your guinea,"
+he said.  "No doubt the woman outside has treated you badly; but I can't
+intercede for you, to keep you a drudge here among the saucepans; no,
+upon my conscience, I can't.  The fact is, Ruth Josselin, you have the
+makings of a beauty, and I'll be no party to spoiling 'em.  What is
+more, it seems you have spirit, and no woman with beauty and spirit need
+fail to win her game in this world.  That's my creed."  He sipped his
+wine.
+
+"If your Honour pleases," said the girl quietly, picking up the coin,
+"the woman called me bad names, and I was not wanting you at all to
+speak for me."
+
+"Oho!"  The Collector set down his glass and laughed.  "So that's the
+way of it--'_Nobody asked you, sir, she said._' Dicky, we sit rebuked."
+
+"But--" she hesitated, and then went on rapidly in the lowest of low
+tones--"if your Honour wouldn't mind giving me silver instead of gold?
+They won't change gold for me in the town; they'll think I have stolen
+it.  Most Sundays I'm allowed to take home broken meats to mother and
+grandfather, and to-night I shan't be given any, now that I'm sent away.
+They'll be expecting me, and indeed, sir, I can't bear to face them--or
+I wouldn't ask you.  I beg your Honour's pardon for saying so much."
+
+"Hullo!" exclaimed the Collector.  "Why, yes, to be sure, you must be
+grandchild to the old man of the sea--him that I met on the beach this
+afternoon, t'other side of the headland.  Lives in a hovel with a wood
+pile beside it, and a daughter that looks out for wreckage?"
+
+"Your Honour spoke with them?"  Into Ruth's face there mounted a deeper
+tide of colour.  But whereas the first flush had been dark with
+distress, this second spread with a glow of affection.  Her eyes seemed
+to take light from it, and shone.
+
+"I spoke with the old man.  Since you have said so much, I may say more.
+I gave him food; he was starving."
+
+She bent her head.  Her hands moved a little, with a gesture most
+pitiful to see.  "I was afraid," she muttered, "with these gales, and no
+getting to the oyster beds."
+
+"He took some food, too, to his daughter, with a bottle of wine, as I
+remember."
+
+A bright tear dropped.  In the candle-light Dicky saw it splash on the
+back of her hand, by the wrist.
+
+"God bless your Honour!"  Dicky could just hear the words.
+
+The door opened and Manasseh entered, bearing the coffee on a silver
+tray.
+
+"Manasseh," said his master, "take that guinea and bring me change for
+it.  If you have no silver in the treasury get the landlady to change it
+for you."
+
+Manasseh was affronted.  His hand came near to shaking as he poured and
+handed the coffee.
+
+"Yo' Hon'ah doan off'n use de metal," he answered.  "Dat's sho'.
+But whiles an' again yo' Hon'ah condescends ter want it.  Dat bein' so,
+I keep it by me--_an'_ polished.  I doan fetch yo' Hon'ah w'at any low
+trash has handled."
+
+He withdrew, leaving this fine shaft to rankle, and by-and-by entered
+with a small velvet bag, from the neck of which he shook a small cascade
+of silver coins, all exquisitely polished.
+
+"Count me out change for a guinea," commanded his master.
+
+Manasseh obeyed.
+
+"Now empty the bag, put into it what you have counted, and sweep up the
+rest."
+
+Manasseh dropped in the coins one by one, and tied the neck of the bag
+with its silken ribbon.  The Collector took it from him and tossed it to
+the girl.
+
+"Here--catch!" said he carelessly.
+
+But her burnt hands shrank from closing on if, and it fell to the floor.
+She stooped, recovered it, and slipped it within her bodice.  As she
+rose erect again her eyes rested in wonder on the black servant who with
+a crumb-brush was sweeping the rest of the money off the table and
+catching it upon the coffee-salver.  The rain and clash of the coins
+appeared to confuse her for a moment.  Then with another curtsy and a
+"Thank your Honour," she moved to the door.
+
+"But wait," said the Collector sharply, on a sudden thought.  "You are
+not meaning to walk all the way home, surely?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"At this hour?"
+
+"The wind has gone down.  I do not mind the dark, and the distance is
+nothing. . . . Oh, I forgot: your Honour thinks that, with all this
+money, some one will try to rob me?"
+
+The Collector smiled.  "You would appear to be a very innocent young
+woman," he said.  "I was not, as a fact, thinking of the money."
+
+"Nobody will guess that I am carrying so much," she said simply; "so it
+will be quite safe."
+
+"Nevertheless this may help to give you confidence," said he.
+Feeling in the breast pocket of his laced satin waistcoat, he drew forth
+a diminutive pistol--a delicate toy, with a pattern of silver foliated
+over the butt.  "It is loaded," he explained, "and primed; though it
+cannot go off unless you pull back the trigger.  At close quarters it
+can be pretty deadly.  Do you understand firearms?"
+
+"Grandfather has a fowling-piece," she answered; "and, now that his
+sight has failed, on Sundays I try to shoot sea-birds for him.  He says
+that I have a good eye.  But last week the birds had all flown inland,
+because of the gale."
+
+"Then take this.  It is nothing to carry, and you may feel the safer for
+it."
+
+She put up a hand to decline.  "Why should I need it?"
+
+"We'll hope you will not.  But do as I bid you, girl.  I shall be
+passing back along the beach in two days' time, and will call for it."
+
+She resisted no longer.
+
+"I will take it," she said.  "By that time I may have thought of words
+to thank your Honour."
+
+She curtsied again.
+
+"Manasseh!" Captain Vyell pointed to the door.  The negro opened it and
+stood aside majestically as she passed out and was gone.
+
+
+Let moralists perpend.  Ruth Josselin had knocked at that door after a
+sharp struggle between conscience and crying want.  The poverty known to
+Ruth was of the extreme kind that gnaws the entrails with hunger.
+It had furthermore starved her childhood of religion, and her sole code
+of honour came to her by instinct.  Yet she had knocked at the door with
+no thought but that the Collector's guinea had come to her hand by
+mistake, and no expectancy but that the Collector would thank her and
+take it back.  She was shy, moreover.  It had cost courage.
+
+"Honesty is the best policy."  True enough, no doubt.  Yet, when all is
+said, but for some radical instinct of honesty, untaught, brave to
+conquer a more than selfish need, Ruth had never brought back her
+guinea.  And, yet again, from that action all the rest of this story
+flows.  When we have told it, let the moralists decide.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+PARENTHETICAL--OF THE FAMILY OF VYELL.
+
+
+Captain Oliver Vyell, as we have seen, set store upon pedigree: and
+here, as well in compliment to him as to make our story clearer, we will
+interrupt it with a brief account of his family and descent.
+
+The tomb of Sir Thomas Vyell, second Baronet, at whose house of
+Carwithiel in Cornwall our Collector spent some years of his boyhood,
+may yet be seen in the church of that parish, in the family transept.
+It bears the coat of the Vyells (gules, a fesse raguly argent) with no
+less than twenty-four quarterings: for an Odo of the name had fought on
+the winning side at Hastings, and his descendants, settling in the West,
+had held estates there and been people of importance ever since.
+
+The Wars of the Roses, to be sure, had left them under a cloud, shorn of
+the most of their wealth and a great part of their lands.  Yet they kept
+themselves afloat (if this riot of metaphor may be pardoned) and their
+heads moderately high, until Sir William, the first Baronet, by
+developing certain tin mines on his estate and working them by new
+processes, set up the family fortunes once more.
+
+His son, Sir Thomas, steadily bettered them.  A contemporary narrative
+describes him as "chief of a very good Cornish family, with a very good
+estate.  His marrying a grand-daughter of the Lord Protector (Oliver)
+first recommended him to King William, who at the Revolution made him
+Commissioner of the Excise and some years after Governor of the Post
+Office. . . . The Queen, by reason of his great capacity and honesty,
+hath continued him in the office of Postmaster.  He is a gentleman of a
+sweet, easy, affable disposition--a handsome man, of middle stature,
+towards forty years old."  This was written in 1713.  Sir Thomas died in
+1726, of the smallpox, having issue (by his one wife, who survived him
+but a few years) seven sons and three daughters.
+
+1.  Thomas, the third Baronet: of whom anon.
+
+2.  William, who became a Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford, a
+    page to Queen Mary, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.  A memoir
+    of the time preserves him for us as "a tall sanguineman, with a
+    merry eye and talkative in his cups."  He married a Walpole, but his
+    children died young.
+
+3.  John, who, going on a diplomatic mission to Hamburg, took a fever
+    and died there, unmarried.
+
+4.  Henry, the father of our Collector.  He married Jane, second
+    daughter of the Marquis of Lomond; increased his wealth in Bengal as
+    governor of the East India Company's Factory, and while yet
+    increasing it, died at Calcutta in 1728.  His children were two
+    sons, Oliver and Henry, with both of whom our story deals.
+
+5.  Algernon, who went to Jesus College, Cambridge, became a Fellow
+    there, practised severe parsimony, and dying unmarried in 1742, had
+    his eyes closed by his college gyp and weighted with two penny
+    pieces--the only coins found in his breeches pocket.  He left his
+    very considerable savings to young Oliver, whom he had never
+    seen.
+
+6.  Frederick Penwarne, barrister-at-law.  We shall have something to do
+    with him.
+
+7.  Roger, who traded at Calcutta and making an expedition to the
+    Persian Gulf, was killed there in a chance affray with some Arabs.
+
+8.  Anne, who married Sackville.
+
+9.  Frances Elizabeth, who married Pelham.
+
+10. Arabella, whose affections went astray upon a young Cornish yeoman.
+    Her family interfering, the match was broken off and she died
+    unmarried.
+
+
+Oliver and Henry, born at Calcutta, were for their health's sake sent
+home together--he one aged four, the other three--to be nurtured at
+Carwithiel.  Here under the care of their grandparents, Sir Thomas and
+Lady Vyell (the Protector's grand-daughter), they received instruction
+at the hands--often very literally at the hands--of the Rev. Isaac
+Toplady, Curate in Charge of Carwithiel, a dry scholar, a wet
+fly-fisher, and something of a toad-eater.  They had for sole playmate
+and companion their Cousin Diana, or Di, the seven-year-old daughter of
+their eldest uncle, Thomas, heir to the estates and the baronetcy.
+
+This Thomas--a dry, peevish man, averse from country pursuits, penurious
+and incurably suspicious of all his fellow-men--now occupied after a
+fashion and with fair diligence that place in public affairs from which
+his father had, on approach of age, withdrawn.  He sat in Parliament for
+the family borough of St. Michael, and by family influence had risen to
+be a Lord of the Admiralty.  He had married Lady Caroline Pett, a
+daughter of the first Earl of Portlemouth, and the pair kept house in
+Arlington Street, where during the session they entertained with a
+frugality against which Lady Caroline fought in vain.  They were known
+(and she was aware of it) as "Pett and Petty," and her life was
+embittered by the discovery, made too late, that her husband was in
+every sense a mean man, who would never rise and never understand why
+not, while he nursed an irrational grudge against her for having
+presented him with a daughter and then ceased from child-bearing.
+
+Unless she repented and procured him a male heir, the baronetcy would
+come to him only to pass at his death to young Oliver; and the couple,
+who spent all the Parliamentary recesses at Carwithiel because Mr.
+Thomas found it cheap, bore no goodwill to that young gentleman.
+He _en revanche_ supplied them with abundant food for censure, being
+wilful from the first, and given in those early years to consorting with
+stable-boys and picking up their manners and modes of speech.  The uncle
+and aunt alleged--and indeed it was obvious--that the unruly boys passed
+on the infection to Miss Diana.  Miss Diana never accompanied her
+parents to London, but had grown up from the first at Carwithiel--again
+because Mr. Thomas found it cheap.
+
+In this atmosphere of stable slang, surrounded by a sort of protective
+outer aura in their grandparents' godliness, the three children grew up:
+mischievous indeed and without rein, but by no means vicious.
+Their first separation came in 1726 when Master Oliver, now rising ten,
+left for London, to be entered at Westminster School.  Harry was to
+follow him; and did, in a twelve-month's time; but just before this
+happened, in Oliver's summer holidays.  Sir Thomas took the smallpox and
+died and went to his tomb in the Carwithiel transept.  Harry took it
+too; but pulled through, not much disfigured.  Oliver and Diana escaped.
+
+The boys, to whom their grandfather--so far as they regarded him at
+all--had mainly presented himself as a benevolent old proser, were
+surprised to find that they sincerely regretted him; and the events of
+the next few weeks threw up his merits (now that the time was past for
+rewarding them) into a sharp light which memory overarched with a halo.
+Tenderly into that halo dissolved his trivial faults--his trick, for
+example, of snoring between the courses at dinner, or of awaking and
+pulling his fingers till they cracked with a distressing sound.
+These and other small frailties were forgotten as the new Sir Thomas and
+his spouse took possession and proceeded in a few weeks to turn the
+place inside out, dismissing five of the stable-boys, cutting down the
+garden staff by one-third, and carrying havoc into the housekeeper's
+apartments, the dairy, the still-room.
+
+In these dismissals I have no doubt that Sir Thomas and Lady Caroline
+hit (as justice is done in this world) upon the chief blackguards.
+But the two boys, asking one another why So-and-so had been marked down
+while This-other had been spared, and observing that the So-and-so's
+included an overbalancing number of their own cronies, found malice in
+the discrimination, and a malice directed with intent upon themselves.
+
+Young Oliver, as soon as Harry was convalescent, discussed this
+vehemently with him.  Harry, weak with illness, took it passively.
+He was destined for the Navy.  To him already the sea meant everything:
+as a child of three, on his voyage home in the _Mogul_ East Indiaman, he
+had caught the infection of it; on it, as offering the only career fit
+for a grown man, his young thoughts brooded, and these annoyances were
+to him but as chimney-pots and pantiles falling about the heads of folks
+ashore.  But he agreed that Di's conduct needed explaining.  She had
+taken a demure turn, and was not remonstrating with her parents as she
+ought--not playing fair, in short.  "It must be pretty difficult for
+her," said Harry.  "I don't see," said Oliver.
+
+
+The two boys went back to Westminster together.  They spent the
+Christmas holidays with their Uncle Frederick, the barrister, who
+practised very little at the law either in court or in chambers, hut
+dwelt somewhat luxuriously in the Inner Temple and lived the life of a
+man-about-town.  Their summer vacation was to be spent at Carwithiel;
+but, as it happened, they were not to see Carwithiel again, for before
+summer came news of their father's death at Calcutta.  He had amassed a
+fortune which, translated out of rupees, amounted to 400,000 pounds.
+To his widow, in addition to her jointure, he left a life interest of a
+thousand pounds _per annum_; a sum of 20,000 pounds was set aside for
+Harry, to accumulate until his twenty-first birthday; while the
+magnificent residue in like manner accumulated for young Oliver, the
+heir.
+
+Lady Jane returned to England, to live in decent affluence at Bath; and
+at Bath, of course, Oliver and Harry spent their subsequent holidays,
+while their Uncle Frederick continued by occasional dinners and gifts of
+pocket money, by outings down the river to Greenwich, by seats at the
+theatre or at state shows and pageants, to mitigate the rigours of
+school.  Had it occurred to Oliver Vyell in later life to set down his
+"Reflections" in the style of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he might
+have begun them in some such words as these: "From my mother, Lady Jane
+Vyell, I learned to be proud of good birth, to esteem myself a
+gentleman, and to regulate my actions by a code proper to my station in
+life.  This code she reconciled with the Gospels, and indeed, she rested
+it on the rock of Holy Scripture.  From my Uncle Frederick I learned
+that self-interest was the key of life; that the teachings of the
+priest-hood were more or less conscious humbug; that all men could be
+bought; that their god was vanity, and the Great Revolution the noblest
+event in English history. . . ."
+
+The sane infusion of Father Neptune in Master Harry's blood preserved
+him from these doctrines, and before long indeed removed him out of the
+way of hearing them.  Soon after his fifteenth birthday he sailed to
+learn his profession shipping (by a fiction of the service), as
+"cabin boy" under his mother's brother.  Lord Robert Soules, then
+commanding the _Merope_ frigate.
+
+Oliver proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and thence (without waiting
+for a degree) to make the Grand Tour; in the course of which and in
+company with his cousin, Dick Pelham, and a Mr. Batty Langton, a Christ
+Church friend, he visited Florence, Rome, Naples, Athens, and
+Constantinople, returning through Rome again and by way of Venice,
+Switzerland, Paris.  He reached home to find that his mother, who
+believed in keeping young men employed, had procured him a cornetcy in
+Lord Lomond's Troop of Horse.  He was now in possession of an ample
+fortune.  He would certainly succeed to the baronetcy, and to the Vyell
+acres, which were mostly entailed.
+
+But the grave itself could not give lessons in greed to a true Whig
+family of that period.  Lady Jane had it in her blood, every tradition
+of it.  Her son (though within a few months he rose to command of a
+troop) detested all military routine save active service.  He despised
+the triumphs of the Senate.  To keep him out of mischief--or, rather, as
+you shall hear, to extricate him from it--the good dame made application
+to the Duke of Newcastle; and so in the year 1737, at the age of
+twenty-one, Captain Oliver Vyell was appointed to the lucrative post of
+Collector to the port of Boston.
+
+He had held it, now, for close upon seven years.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+A SABBATH-BREAKER.
+
+
+Now, in his twenty-eighth year, Oliver Vyell, handsome of face, standing
+six feet two inches in his stockings, well built and of iron
+constitution, might fairly be called a sensual man, but not fairly a
+sensualist.  The distinction lay in his manliness.  He was a man, every
+inch of him.
+
+He enjoyed hard riding even more than hard gaming, and far more than
+hard drinking; courted fatigue as a form of bodily indulgence; would
+tramp from twenty to thirty miles in any weather on a chance of sport;
+loved the bite of the wind, the shock of cold water; and was a bold
+swimmer in a generation that shunned the exercise.
+
+He awoke next morning to find the sun shining in on his window after a
+boisterous night.  He looked at his watch and rang a small bell that
+stood on the table by his bed.  Within ten seconds Manasseh appeared,
+and was commanded first to draw up the blind and then, though the hour
+was early, to bring shaving-water with all speed.
+
+While the negro went on his errand Captain Vyell arose, slipped on his
+dressing-gown, and strolled to the window.  It looked upon the ocean,
+over a clean stretch of beach that ran north-west, starting from the
+pier-head of the harbour and fringing the town's outskirt.  Half a dozen
+houses formed this outskirt or suburb--decent weather-boarded houses
+standing in their own gardens along a curved cliff overlooking the
+beach.  The beach was of hardest sand, and just beneath the Collector's
+window so level that it served for a second bowling-green, or
+ten-pin-alley.  Thus it ran out for some twenty rods and then shelved
+abruptly.  Captain Vyell, who had an eye for such phenomena, judged that
+this bank had formed itself quite recently, since the building of the
+pier.
+
+A heavy sea was running, and evidently with a strong undertow.  When
+Manasseh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he
+would bathe before taking his chocolate.
+
+"Yo' Hon'ah will bathe befor' shaving?"
+
+"You d----d fool, did you ever know me do _any_thing before shaving?"
+
+Manasseh chose a razor, stropped it, and worked the shaving soap into a
+lather.
+
+"Beggin' yo' Hon'ah's pardon," said he, "it bein' de Lawd's Day, an'
+these Port Nassau people dam' ig'orant--"
+
+"Hand me the _peignoir_," commanded his master sharply.
+
+He sat, and was shaved.  Then, having sponged his chin, he ordered
+Manasseh to lay out his bathing-dress, retire, find a back way to the
+beach and, having opened all doors, attend him below.  He indued himself
+in his bathing-dress very deliberately, standing up for a minute stark
+naked in the sunshine flooding through the open window--a splendid
+figure, foretasting battle with the surf.
+
+Then, having drawn on his bathing-dress and thrust his feet into
+sand-shoes, he cast his dressing-gown again over him and went down the
+stairs at a run.  The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro
+awaited him in the right attitude of "attention."  To him he tossed his
+wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles
+have run to be clasped by the Sea-Goddess his mother.
+
+Through the shallow wavelets he ran, stepping high and delicately
+splashing merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or
+two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish
+phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to
+the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more
+than head high, hissing along its ridge.  There, as it overarched him,
+he launched his body forward and shot through the transparent green,
+emerging beyond the white smother with a thrill and a laugh of sheer
+physical delight.  Thrice he repeated this,--
+
+    "Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
+     Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. . ."
+
+passed the fourth wave, gained deep water, and thrust out to sea with a
+steady breast-stroke, his eyes all the while on the great embracing
+flood which, stretch as it might from here to Europe, for the moment he
+commanded.
+
+Manasseh watched him from the beach.  From the cliff above two
+scandalised householders calling to one another across their gardens'
+boundary pointed seaward and summoned their families to the windows to
+note the reprobate swimmer and a Sabbath profaned.
+
+The eyes of a long-shore population are ever on the sea from which comes
+their livelihood, and nothing on the sea escapes them long.
+The Collector's head by this time was but a speck bobbing on the waves,
+but ere he turned back for shore maybe two hundred of Port Nassau's
+population were watching, from various points.  The Port Nassauers,
+whatever their individual frailties, were sternly religious--nine-tenths
+of them from conviction or habit, the rest in self-defence--and
+Sabbatarians to a man.  The sight of that heathen slave, Manasseh,
+waiting on the beach with a bath-gown over his arm, incensed them to
+fury.  Growls were uttered, here and there, that if the authorities knew
+their business this law-breaker--for Sabbath-breaking was an indictable
+offence--should be seized on landing, haled naked to justice, and
+clapped in the town stocks; but fortunately this indignation had no
+concert and found, for the moment, no leader.
+
+The Collector, having swum out more than half a mile, turned and sped
+back, using a sharp side-stroke now with a curving arm that cleft the
+ridges like the fin of a fish.  His feet touched earth, and he ran up
+through the pursuing breakers--a fleet-footed Achilles again, glittering
+from the bath.  Manasseh hurried down to throw his mantle over the
+godlike man.
+
+"Towel me here," was the panting command.  And, lo! slipping off his
+bathing-dress and standing naked to the sea.  Captain Vyell was towelled
+under the eyes of Port Nassau, and flesh-brushed until he glowed (it may
+be) as healthily as did the cheeks of those who spied on him.  On this
+question the Muse declines to take sides.  For certain his naked body,
+after these ministrations, glowed delicious within the bath-gown as he
+mounted again to his Olympian chamber.  There he allowed Manasseh to
+wash out his locks in fresh water (the Collector had a fine head of
+hair, of a waved brown, and detested a wig), to anoint them, and tie
+them behind with a fresh black ribbon.  This done, he took his clothes
+one by one as Manasseh handed them, and arrayed himself, humming the
+while an air from Opera, and thus unconsciously committing a second
+offence against the Sabbath.
+
+He descended to find Dicky already seated at table, awaiting him.
+Dicky had slept like a top in spite of the strange bed; and awaking soon
+after daybreak, had lain cosily listening to the boom of the sea.
+To him this holiday was a glorious interlude in the regime of Miss
+Quiney.  His handsome father did not kiss him, but merely patted him on
+the shoulder as he passed to his chair; and to Dick (though he would
+have liked a kiss) it seemed just the right manly thing to do.
+
+They talked merrily while Manasseh brought in the breakfast dishes--for
+Master Dicky bread-and-milk followed by a simple steak of cod; a
+bewildering succession of chowder, omelet, devilled kidneys, cold ham,
+game pie, and fruit for the Collector, who professed himself keen-set as
+a hunter, and washed down the viands with a tankard of cider.
+He described his bathe, and promised Dicky that he should have his first
+swimming lessons next summer.  "I must talk about you to your Uncle
+Harry.  Craze for the sea?  At your age if he saw a puddle of water he
+must stick his toes in it.  He's cruising just now, off South Carolina,
+keeping a look-out for guarda-costas.  He'll render an account of them,
+you may be sure.  He writes that he may be coming up Boston way any time
+now.  Oh, I can swim, but for diving you should see your Uncle Harry--
+off the yard-arm--body taut as a whip--nothing like it in any of the old
+Greeks' statues.  Plenty of talk about bathing; but diving?  No.  In the
+east, must go south to the Persian Gulf to see diving.  The god Hermes
+descending on Ogygia--if you could imagine that, you had Uncle Harry--
+the shoot outwards, the delicate curve to a straight slant, heels rising
+above rigid body while you counted, begad! holding your breath.
+Then the plumb drop, like a gannet's--"
+
+Dicky listened, glorious vistas opening before him.  With the fruit
+Manasseh brought coffee; and still the boy sat entranced while his
+father chatted, glowing with exercise and enjoying a breakfast at every
+point excellent.
+
+It was in merest thoughtlessness, no doubt, that having arranged for
+Dicky's morning walk, and after smoking a tobacco leaf rolled with an
+art of which Manasseh possessed the secret, the Collector so timed his
+message to the stables that his groom brought the horse Bayard around to
+the Inn door just as the Sabbath bells began tolling for divine worship.
+For as a sceptic he was careless rather than militant; ridiculing
+religion only in his own set, and when occasion arose, and then without
+fanaticism.  For such piety as his mother's he had even a tolerant
+respect; and in any event had too much breeding to affront of set
+purpose the godly townsfolk of Port Nassau.  At the first note of the
+bells he frowned and blamed himself for not having started earlier.
+But he had already made appointment by letter to meet the Surveyor and
+the Assistant Surveyor at noon on the headland, to measure out and
+discuss the site of the proposed fortification; and he was a punctilious
+man in observing engagements.
+
+It may be asked how, if civil to other men's scruples, he had come to
+make such an appointment for the Sabbath.  He had answered this and (as
+he hoped) with suitable apologies in his letter to the surveyor,
+Mr. Wapshott: explaining that as His Majesty's business was bringing him
+to Port Nassau, so it obliged him to be back at Boston by such-and-such
+a date.  He was personally unacquainted with this Mr. Wapshott, who had
+omitted the courtesy of calling upon him at the Bowling Green, and whom
+by consequence he was inclined to set down as a person of defective
+manners.  But Mr. Wapshott was, after all, in the King's service and
+would understand its exigencies.
+
+He mounted therefore and rode up the street.  The roadway was deserted;
+but along the side-walk, sober families, marching by twos and threes,
+turned their heads at the sound of Bayard's hoofs on the cobbles.
+The Collector set his face and passed them with a grave look, as of one
+absorbed in affairs of moment.  Nevertheless, coming to the whitewashed
+Church where the streams of worshippers converged and choking the
+porchway overflowed upon the street, he added the courtesy of doffing
+his hat as he rode by.  He did this still with a set face, looking
+straight between Bayard's ears; but with the tail of his eye caught one
+glimpse of a little comedy which puzzled and amused him.
+
+A small rotund, red-gilled man, in bearing and aspect not unlike a
+turkey-cock, was mounting the steps of the portico.  Behind this
+personage sailed an ample lady of middle age, with a bevy of younger
+damsels--his spouse and daughters doubtless.  Suddenly--and as if, at
+sight of the Collector, a whisper passed among them--the middle-aged
+lady shot out a hand, arrested her husband by the coat-tail and drew him
+down a step, while the daughters ranged themselves in semicircle around
+him, spreading their skirts and together effacing him from view, much as
+a hen covers her offspring.
+
+The Collector laughed inwardly as he replaced his hat, and rode on
+speculating what this bit of by-play might mean.  But it had passed out
+of his thoughts before he came to the outskirts of the town.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.
+
+
+The road--the same by which he had arrived last night--mounted all the
+way and led across the neck of the headland.  His business, however, lay
+out upon the headland itself and almost at its extremest verge; and a
+mile above the town he struck off to the left where a bridle-path
+climbed by a long slant to the ridge.  Half an hour's easy riding
+brought him to the top of the ascent, whence he looked down on the long
+beach he had travelled yesterday.  The sea lay spread on three sides of
+him.  Its salt breeze played on his face; and the bay horse, feeling the
+tickle of it in his nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny.
+"Good, old boy--is it not?" asked the Collector, patting his neck.
+"Suppose we try a breather of it?"
+
+The chine of the headland--of turf, short-cropped by the unceasing
+wind--stretched smooth as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with a
+gentle dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle.  The Collector ran
+his eye along it in search of the two men he had come to meet, but could
+spy neither of them.
+
+"Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe," he decided.  "_We_ don't
+mind it, hey?  Come along, lad--here's wine for heroes!"
+
+He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at a
+gallop--a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood;
+and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its
+burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition--a
+Centaur, enlarged upon the skyline.
+
+Man and horse at full stretch of the gallop were launching down the dip
+of the hollow--the wind singing past on the top note of exhilaration--
+when the bay, too well trained to shy, faltered a moment and broke his
+stride, as a figure started up from the lee-side of the ridge.
+
+The Collector sailing past and throwing a glance over his shoulder, saw
+the figure and lifted a hand.  In another ten strides he reined up
+Bayard, turned, and came back at a walk.
+
+He confronted a lean, narrow-chested young man, black-suited, pale of
+face, with watery eyes, straw-coloured eyelashes and an underbred smile
+that twitched between timidity and assurance.
+
+"Ah?" queried the Collector, eyeing him and disliking him at sight.
+"Are you "--doubtfully--"by any chance Mr. Wapshott, the Surveyor?"
+
+"No such luck," answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhand
+attempt at familiarity.  "I'm his Assistant--name of Banner--Wapshott's
+unwell."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"Mr.--Mr. Wapshott--sends word that he's unwell."  Under the Collector's
+eye the youth suddenly shifted his manner and became respectful.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" the Collector repeated slowly.  "He 'sends word,'
+do you say?  I had not the honour at my Inn--from which I have ridden
+straight--to be notified of Mr. Wapshott's indisposition."
+
+Mr. Banner attempted a weak grin and harked back again to familiarity.
+
+"No, I guess not.  The fact is--"
+
+"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"
+
+"Oh, come!  Why?"  But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.
+
+"Thank you.  You were saying?"
+
+"Well, I guess, between you and me"--Mr. Banner's hands were slipping to
+his pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palm
+nonchalantly on either hip--"the old man was a bit too God-fearing to
+sign to it."
+
+"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact,
+unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"
+
+"You've a downright way of putting it--er--sir" Mr. Banner confessed;
+"but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder.  You see, the old--the
+Surveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."
+
+The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane.
+Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him.
+"Stay," he said.  "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, but
+may I attempt to describe him to you?  He is, perhaps, a gentleman of
+somewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably red
+between the ear and the neck-stock?"
+
+"That hits him."
+
+"--with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, taller
+than their parents and not precisely in their first bloom.  I speak,"
+added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of the
+world."
+
+"You've seen him anyhow," Mr. Banner nodded.  "That's Wapshott."
+
+"I saw him entering his place of worship; and I note that he thinks what
+you call the Lord's Day well worth keeping at the cost of a falsehood.
+May I ask, Mr.--"  The Collector hesitated.
+
+"Banner."
+
+"Ah, yes--pardon me!  May I ask, Mr. Banner, how it comes that you have
+a nicer sense than your superior of what is due to His Majesty's
+Service?"
+
+Mr. Banner laughed uneasily.  "Well, you mightn't guess it from my
+looks," he answered with an attempt to ingratiate himself by way of
+self-deprecation, "but I am pretty good at working out levels.  I really
+am."
+
+"That was not my point, though I shall test you on it presently.
+You are, it appears, a somewhat less rigid Sabbatarian than Mr.
+Wapshott?"
+
+Hereupon Mr. Banner became cryptic.  "You needn't fear about that," he
+answered.  "I have what they call a dispensation; and until you startled
+me, I was up here keeping the Lord's Day as well as the best of 'em.
+Better, perhaps."
+
+"We will get to business," said the Collector.  "Follow me, please."
+
+He wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Banner walking at his stirrup, rode
+slowly out to the end of the headland and as slowly back.  The Collector
+asked a question now and then and to every question the young man
+responded pat.  He was no fool.  It soon appeared that he had studied
+the trajectory of guns, that he had views--and sound ones--on coast
+defences, and that by some study of the subject he had come, a while
+ago, to a conclusion the Collector took but a few minutes to endorse;
+that to build a fort on this headland would be waste of public money.
+
+Professionally, Mr. Banner was tolerable.  The Collector, consulting
+with him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing twang of
+his accent.  He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape,
+calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there was
+borne to the Collector's ears the distant crack of a shot-gun.
+
+At the sound of it he glanced up, in time to see Mr. Banner drop the
+other end of the tape and run.  Almost willy-nilly he followed, vaguely
+wondering if there had happened some accident that called for aid.
+
+Mr. Banner, when the Collector overtook him, had come to a halt
+overlooking the long beach, and pointed to a figure--a speck almost--for
+it was distant more than a mile.
+
+"That Josselin girl!" panted Mr. Banner.  "I call you to witness!"
+
+The Collector unstrapped his field-glass, which he carried in a
+bandolier, adjusted it, and through it scanned the beach.  Yes, in the
+distant figure he recognised Ruth Josselin.  She carried a gun--or
+rather, stood with the gun grounded and her hands folded, resting on its
+muzzle--and appeared to be watching the edge of the breakers, perhaps
+waiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.
+
+"See her, do you?  I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at his
+elbow.
+
+"Why, what is the matter?"
+
+"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.
+Bathin', f'r instance."
+
+"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively.  "You honoured
+me with your observation this morning?"
+
+Mr. Banner grinned.  "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin'
+you.  Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!--but I guess the magistrates
+were lookin' the other way.  They allowed, no doubt, that even a
+Sabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"
+
+The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.
+
+"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."
+
+Still the Collector smiled.  "I am trying to picture it," said he, after
+a pause.  "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in the
+stocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"
+
+"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckled.  "That, or the pillory."
+
+"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau."  The Collector frowned, upon a
+sudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr.
+Banner's unpleasant face.  "By the way, you told me just now that you
+were here upon some sort of a dispensation.  Forgive me if I do you
+wrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon this
+girl?"
+
+"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."
+
+"Who is Shadbolt?"
+
+"The Town Beadle.  He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."
+Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.
+"It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."
+
+"So that is why you called me to witness?  Well, Mr. Banner, I have a
+horsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your
+suggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?--and, if you please,
+in silence.  Your presence is distasteful to me."
+
+They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which--for
+they both enjoyed it--they were soon immersed.  It may have been, too,
+that the wind had shifted.  At any rate they missed to hear, ten minutes
+later, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainter
+than the first.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+THE SCOURGE.
+
+
+Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the
+Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey.  In the
+road-way beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard's bridle.
+
+The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip tucked under his
+arm, came up the pebbled pathway, drawing on his gauntleted gloves.
+Dicky trotted beside him.  Manasseh followed in attendance.  Behind them
+in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded, like a piece of
+clockwork gradually running down.
+
+"Hey!"  The Collector, as he reached the gate, lifted his chin sharply--
+threw up his head as a finely bred animal scents battle or danger.
+"What's this?  A riot, up the street?"
+
+The grooms could not tell him, for the sound had reached their ears but
+a second or two before the question; a dull confused murmur out of
+which, as it increased to a clamour and drew nearer, sharper outcries
+detached themselves, and the shrill voices of women.  A procession had
+turned the corner of the head of the avenue--a booing, howling rabble.
+
+The Collector stepped to his horse's rein, flung himself into saddle,
+and rode forward at a foot's pace to meet the tumult.
+
+Suddenly his hand tightened on the rein, and Bayard came to a halt; but
+his master did not perceive this.  The hand's movement had been nervous,
+involuntary.  He sat erect--stood, rather, from the stirrup--his nostril
+dilated, his brain scarcely believing what his eyes saw.
+
+"The swine!" he said slowly, to himself.  His teeth were shut and the
+words inaudible.  "The swine!" he repeated.
+
+Men have done, in the name of religion and not so long ago--indeed are
+perhaps doing now and daily--deeds so vile that mere decency cannot face
+describing them.  It is a question if mere decency (by which I mean the
+good instinct of civilised man) will not in the end purge faith clean of
+religion; if, while men dispute and hate and inflict cruelty for
+religion, they are not all the while outgrowing it.  Libraries, for
+example, are written to prove that unbaptized infants come out of
+darkness to draw a fleeting breath or two and pass to hell-fire; the
+dispute occupies men for generations--and lo! one day the world finds it
+has no use for any such question.  Time--no thanks to the theologians--
+has educated it, and this thing at any rate it would no longer believe
+if it could, as it certainly cannot.  Faith never yet has burnt man or
+woman at the stake.  Religion has burnt its tens of thousands.
+
+Behind the first two or three ranks of the mob--an exultant mob of grown
+men, grown women, and (worst of all) little children--plodded a grey
+horse, drawing a cart.  Behind the cart, bound to it, with a thong tight
+about her fire-scorched wrists--But no; it is not to be written.
+
+They had stripped her to the waist, and then for decency--_their_
+decency!--had thrown a jacket of coarse sacking over her, lacing it
+loosely in front with pack-thread.  But, because their work required it,
+this garment had been gathered up into a rope at the neck, whence it
+dangled in folds over her young breast.
+
+She walked with wide eyes, uttering no sound.  She alone of that crowd
+uttered no sound.  A brute with a bandaged jaw walked close behind her.
+Oliver Vyell saw his forearm swing up--saw the scourge whirl in his
+fist--met the girl's eyes. . . . She, meeting his, let escape the
+first and last cry she uttered that day.  He could have sworn that
+her face was scarlet; but no, he was wrong; while he looked he saw
+his mistake-she was white as death.  Then with that one pitiful cry
+she sank among the close-pressing crowd; but her hands, by the cord's
+constraint, still lifted themselves as might a drowning swimmer's;
+and the grey horse--the one other innocent creature in that
+procession--plodded forward, dragging her now senseless body at the
+cart's tail.
+
+"You swine!"
+
+It does a man good sometimes to get in his blow.  It did Oliver Vyell
+good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face;
+to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram
+fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in its
+fore-teeth.
+
+"Stop the horse, some one!" he commanded, as the Beadle reeled back.
+"She has fainted." He added, "The first man that interferes, I shoot."
+
+The crowd growled.  He turned on the nearest mutterer--"Your knife!"
+The fellow handed it; so promptly, he might have been holding it ready
+to proffer.  The Collector stooped and cut the thongs.  This done, he
+stood up and saw the Beadle advancing again, snarling through the
+bloody gap in his mouth.
+
+"You had best take that man away," said the Collector quietly, pulling
+out his small pistol.  "If you don't, I am going to kill him."
+They heard and saw that he meant it.  He added in the same tone,
+"I am going to take all responsibility for this.  Will you make way,
+please?"
+
+His first intention was to lift the body lying unconscious in the
+roadway, carry it to the coach and drive out of Port Nassau with it,
+defying the law to interfere.  For the moment he "saw red," as we say
+nowadays, and was quite capable of shooting down, or bidding his
+servants shoot down, any man who offered to hinder.  It is even possible
+that had he acted straightway upon the impulse, he might, with his
+momentary mastery of the mob, have won clean away; possible, but by no
+means likely, for already a couple of constables were pushing forward to
+support the Beadle, and half a dozen broad-shouldered fellows--haters of
+"prerogative"--had recovered themselves and were ranging up to support
+the law.  Had he noted this, it would not have daunted him.  What he
+noted, and what gave him pause, was the girl's white back at his feet,
+upturning its hideous weals.  He stooped to lift her, and drew back,
+shivering delicately at the thought of hurting the torn flesh in his
+arms--a vain scruple, since she had passed for the moment beyond pain.
+He picked up the scourge, and stood erect again, crushing it into his
+pocket.
+
+"Will you make way, please," he ordered, "while I fetch a cover to hide
+your blasted handiwork?"
+
+He strode through them, and they fell back to give him passage.
+He walked straight to the coach, pulled the door open, and, in the act
+of dragging forth a rug, caught sight of Dicky's small, scared face.
+
+"Oh papa, what has happened?"
+
+"An accident, child.  Jump inside; I will explain by-and-by."
+
+"Begging your Honour's pardon"--a heavy-featured fellow, who had
+followed the Collector to the coach, put out a hand and touched the
+child's shoulder--"I don't hold in whipping maidens, and if it's a fight
+I'm with you.  But you can't carry her out of it, the way you're
+meaning.  They've seen blood, same as yourself.  This child of yours--he
+stands as much chance to be hurt as any, if you push it.  Your Honour'll
+have to find some other way."
+
+The Collector glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the man spoke
+truth.
+
+"Dicky," he said easily, but in a voice the child durst not disobey,
+"there has been an accident.  Go you down and amuse yourself on the
+sands till Manasseh calls you."
+
+He walked back coolly, carrying the rug on his arm.
+
+"Where was she to be taken?" he asked.
+
+"To the stocks!" answered a voice or two.  "To the Court-house!" said
+others.
+
+"It's the same thing," said the heavy-browed man, at the Collector's
+elbow.  "The stocks are just across the square from the Court-house.
+You'll find the magistrates there; they're the ones to face.  They took
+her case first this morning, and this is the first part of her
+sentence."
+
+Oliver Vyell walked back to the crowd.  It was--a glance assured him--
+more hostile than before; had recovered from its surprise, and was
+menacing.  But it gave way again before him.
+
+He called on them to give more room.  He stooped and, spreading the rug
+over the girl's body, lifted and laid her in the straw of the cart.
+A constable would have interfered.  The Collector swung round on him.
+
+"You are taking her back to the Court-house?  Well, I have business
+there too.  Where is your Court-house?"
+
+The constable pointed.
+
+"Up the road?  I am obliged to you.  Drive on, if you please."
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+THE BENCH.
+
+
+The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one
+another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples.
+To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at hand--these maples flamed with
+hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by
+the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the
+ground about the benches disposed in the shade--pleasant seats to which,
+of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while
+their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of
+youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives--ancient
+solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor
+was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.
+
+These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the
+square, before the iron-studded door of the Jail.  The same hand, may
+be, that had blackened over the Jail's weather-boarded front with a coat
+of tar, had with equal propriety whitewashed the facade of the
+Court-house; an immaculate building, set in the cool shade, its
+straight-lined front broken only by a recessed balcony, whence, as
+occasion arose, Mr. George Bellingham, Chief Magistrate, delivered the
+text of a proclamation, royal or provincial, or declared the poll when
+the people of Port Nassau chose their Selectmen.
+
+This morning Mr. Bellingham held session within, in the long, airy
+Court-room, and dispensed justice with the help of three
+fellow-magistrates--Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend
+Mr. Wapshott.  They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the
+Justices' Clerk to advise them.  On the wall behind and above their
+heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion
+and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect
+that there is shame in evil-thinking, and another:--
+
+          CAR         II.
+
+
+          FID         DEF.
+
+distributed among the four corners of the panel, with the date 1660
+below.  This had been erected (actually in 1664, but the artist had
+received instructions to antedate it) when the good people of
+Massachusetts after some demur rejoiced in the Restoration and accepted
+King Charles II. as defender of their Faith.
+
+The four magistrates had dealt (as we know) with a case of
+Sabbath-breaking; had inflicted various terms of imprisonment on two
+drunkards and a beggar-woman; had discharged for lack of evidence (but
+with admonition) a youth accused of profane swearing; and were now
+working through a list of commoner and more venial offences, such as
+cheating by the use of false weights.
+
+These four grave gentlemen looked up in slightly shocked deprecation;
+for the Collector entered without taking account of the constable at the
+door, save to thrust him aside.  The Clerk called "Silence in the
+Court!" mechanically, and a deputy-beadle at his elbow as mechanically
+repeated it.
+
+"Your Worships"--the Collector, hat in hand advanced to the table and
+bowed--"will forgive an interruption which only its urgency can excuse."
+
+"Ah!  Captain Vyell, I believe?"  Mr. Bellingham arose from his
+high-backed throne of carved oak, bowed, and extended a hand across the
+table.  "I had heard that you were honouring Port Nassau with a visit;
+but understanding from our friend Mr. Wapshott that the visit was--er--
+not official--that, in fact, it was connected with government business
+not--er--to be divulged, I forbore to do myself the pleasure--"
+Mr. Bellingham had a courtly manner and a courtly presence.  He was a
+tallish man, somewhat thin in the face and forehead, of classical
+features, and a sanguine complexion.  He came of a family highly
+distinguished in the history of Massachusetts; but he was in fact a weak
+man, though he concealed this by some inherited aptitude for public
+business and a well-trained committee manner.
+
+"I thank you."  The Collector shook the preferred hand and bowed again.
+"You will pardon my abruptness?  A girl has fainted outside here, in the
+street--"
+
+Mr. Bellingham's well-shaped brows arched themselves a trifle higher.
+
+"Indeed?" he murmured, at a loss.
+
+"A young girl who--as I understand--was suffering public punishment
+under sentence of yours."
+
+"Yes?" Mr. Bellingham's smile grew vaguer, and his two hands touched
+finger-tips in front of his magisterial stomach--an adequate stomach but
+well on the right side of grossness.  He glanced at his
+fellow-magistrates right and left.  "It--er---sometimes happens," he
+suggested.
+
+"I dare say." Captain Vyell took him up.  "But she has fainted under the
+punishment.  She has passed the limit of her powers, poor child; and
+they tell me that what she has endured is to be followed, and at once,
+by five hours in the stocks.  Gentlemen, I repeat I am quite well aware
+that this is most irregular--you may call it indecent; but I saw the
+poor creature fall, and, as it happens, I know something that might have
+softened you before you passed sentence."
+
+Here the Clerk interposed, stiffening the Chief Magistrate, who wore a
+smile of embarrassed politeness.
+
+"As His Honour--as Captain Vyell--suggests, your Worships, this is quite
+irregular."
+
+"To be sure--to be sure--of course," hemm'd Mr. Bellingham.  "We can
+only overlook that, when appealed to by a person of your distinction;"
+here he inclined himself gently.  "Still, you will understand, a
+sentence is a sentence.  As for a temporary faintness, that is by no
+means outside our experience.  Our Beadle--Shadbolt--invariably manages
+to revive them sufficiently to endure--er--the rest."
+
+I'll be shot if he will this time, thought the Collector grimly, with a
+glance down at a smear across the knuckle of his right-hand glove.
+The sight of it cheered him and steadied his temper.  "Possibly," said
+he aloud.  "But your worships may not be aware--and as merciful men may
+be glad to hear--that this poor creature's offence against the Sabbath
+was committed under stress.  Her mother and grandfather have starved
+this week through, as I happen to know."
+
+"That may or may not be," put in Mr. Trask--a dry-complexioned,
+stubborn, malignant-looking man, seated next on the Chairman's right.
+"But the girl--if you mean Ruth Josselin--has not been scourged for
+Sabbath-breaking.  For that she will sit in the stocks--our invariable
+sentence for first offenders in this respect."  From under his
+down-drawn brows Mr. Trask eyed the Collector malevolently.
+"Ruth Josselin," he continued, "has suffered the scourge for having
+resisted Beadle Shadbolt in the discharge of his duty, and for unlawful
+wounding."
+
+"Excuse me," put in Mr. Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's
+left.  Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert
+himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue.
+He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear.
+"Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe?  I have it
+noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet."  He glanced at the
+Clerk, who nodded for confirmation.
+
+"It didn't matter," Mr. Trask snapped brutally.  "She got it, just the
+same."
+
+"Oh, quite so!"  Mr. Somershall took his hand from his ear and nodded,
+satisfied with having made his point.
+
+"Wounding?" echoed the Collector, addressing the Chairman.  "To be frank
+with you, sir, I had not heard of this--though it scarcely affects my
+plea."
+
+Mr. Bellingham smiled indulgently.  "Say no more, Captain Vyell--pray
+say no more!  This is not the first time an inclination to deem us
+severe has been corrected by a fuller acquaintance with the facts. . . .
+Yes, yes--chivalrous feeling--I quite understand; but you see--"
+He concluded his sentence with a gentle wave of the hand.  "You will be
+glad to hear, since you take an interest in the girl, that Providence
+overruled her aim and Shadbolt escaped with a mere graze of the jaw--so
+slight, indeed, that, taking a merciful view, we decided not to consider
+it an actual wound, and convicted her only of the attempt.  By the way,
+Mr. Leemy, where is the weapon?"
+
+The Clerk produced it from his bag and laid it on the table.
+Captain Vyell drew a sharp breath.
+
+"It is my pistol."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I have the fellow to it here."  He pulled out the other and handed it
+by the muzzle.
+
+"To be sure--to be sure; the pattern is identical," murmured Mr.
+Bellingham, examining it and for the moment completely puzzled.
+"You--er--suggest that she stole it?"
+
+"Certainly not.  I lent it to her."
+
+There followed a slow pause.  It was broken by the grating voice of Mr.
+Trask--
+
+"You remember, Mr. Chairman, that the prisoner stubbornly refused to
+tell how the pistol came in her possession?  Does Captain Vyell give us
+to understand that his interest in this young woman is of older date
+than this morning's encounter?"
+
+"My interest in her--such as it is--dates, sir, from the evening before
+last, when she was dismissed from the Bowling Green Inn.  The hour was
+late; her home, as you know, lies at some distance--though doubtless
+within the ambit of your authority.  I lent her this small weapon to
+protect herself should she be molested."
+
+"And she used it next day upon the Beadle!  Dismissed, you say?  Why was
+she dismissed?"
+
+"I regret that I was not more curious at the time," answered the
+Collector with the politest touch of weariness.  "I believe it was for
+saving the house from fire--something of that sort.  As told to me, it
+sounded rather heroical.  But, sir--" he turned again to the Chairman--"
+I suggest that all this does not affect my plea.  Whatever her offence,
+she has suffered cruelly.  She is physically unfit to bear this second
+punishment; and when I tell you on my word as a gentleman--or on oath,
+if you will--that on Saturday I found her grandparent starving and that
+her second offence was committed presumably to supply the household
+wants, surely I shall not entreat your mercy in vain?"
+
+The Chief Magistrate hesitated, and a frown showed his annoyance.
+"To tell you the truth, Captain Vyell, you put me in a quandary.
+I do not like to refuse you--"  Here he glanced right and left.
+
+"But it can't be done," snapped Mr. Trask.  Mr. Wapshott, sitting just
+beyond, shook his head gently and--as he hoped--unperceived by the
+Collector.
+
+"You see, sir," explained Mr. Bellingham with a sigh, "we sit here to
+administer justice without fear or favour.  You see also to what scandal
+it might give rise if a culprit--merely on the intercession of a
+gentleman like yourself--influential--er--and, in short--"
+
+"--In short, sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of
+justice committed one damnable atrocity upon this child, and plead your
+cowardice as an excuse for committing another.  Influential, am I?
+And you prate to me of not being affected by that?  Very well; I'll take
+you at your word.  This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of
+his duty?  So did I just now, and with such effect that he will resume
+it neither to-day nor to-morrow.  She inflicted, it appears, a slight
+graze on his chin.  I inflicted two cuts on his face and knocked in
+three of his teeth.  You can take cognisance of _my_ wounding, I promise
+you.  Now, sir, will you whip _me_ through your town?"
+
+"This is mere violence, sir."  Mr. Bellingham's face was flushed, but he
+answered with dignity.  "The law is as little to be exasperated as
+defied."
+
+"I will try you in another way, then," said the Collector, recovering
+grip of his temper and dropping his voice to a tone of politest
+insolence.  "It is understood that you have not the courage to do this
+because, seated here and administering what you call justice, you have,
+each one of you, an eye upon England and preferment, and you know well
+enough that to touch me would play the devil among the tailors with your
+little ambitions.  I except"--with a bow towards Mr. Trask--"this
+gentleman, who seems to have earned his influence on your counsels by
+rugged force of character, And--" for here Mr. Trask, who enjoyed a dig
+at his colleagues, cast his eyes down and compressed a grin--"is, I
+should judge, capable of striking a woman for the mere fun of it."
+Here Mr. Bellingham and Mr. Wapshott looked demure in turn; for that
+Mr. Trask led his wife a dog's life was notorious.
+
+"--In truth, gentlemen," the Collector continued easily, "I am at some
+loss in addressing you, seeing that through some defect of courtesy you
+have omitted to wait on me, albeit informed (I believe) that I came as
+His Majesty's Commissioner, and that therefore I have not even the
+pleasure of knowing your names.  I may except that of Mr. Wapshott, whom
+I am glad to see convalescent this morning."  Here he inclined to Mr.
+Wapshott, whose gills under the surprised gaze of his colleagues took a
+perceptibly redder tinge.  "Mr. Wapshott, gentlemen," explained the
+Collector, smiling, "had a slight attack of vertigo yesterday, on the
+steps of his Place of Worship.  Well, sirs, as I was saying, I will try
+you in another way.  You have not the courage to bring me to trial for
+assaulting your beadle.  You have not even the courage, here and now, to
+throw me out.  I believe, however, that upon a confessed breach of the
+law--supported by evidence, if necessary--I can force you to try me.
+The Clerk will correct me if I am wrong. . . . Apparently he assents.
+Then I desire to confess to you that yesterday, at such-and-such an
+hour, I broke your laws or bye-laws of Lord's Day Observance; by bathing
+in the sea for my pleasure.  I demand trial on this charge, and, if you
+convict me--here you can hardly help yourselves, since to my knowledge
+some of you witnessed the offence--I demand my due punishment of the
+stocks."
+
+"Really--really, Captain Vyell!" hemm'd the Chief Magistrate.
+"Passing over your derogatory language, I am at a loss to understand--"
+
+"Are you?  Yet it is very simple.  Since you reject my plea for this
+poor creature, I desire to share her punishment."
+
+"Let him," snapped the mouth of Mr. Trask again, opening and shutting
+like a trap.
+
+"_You_ at any rate, sir, have sense," the Collector felicitated him and
+turned to the Chief Magistrate.  "And you, sir, if you will oblige me,
+may rest assured that I shall bear the magistracy of Port Nassau no
+grudge whatever."
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+
+THE STOCKS.
+
+
+In the end they came to a compromise.  That Dame Justice should be
+hustled in this fashion--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to
+catch up her robe and skip--offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of
+propriety.  It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested.
+Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be
+tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for
+an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing
+His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "_to
+observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy
+Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further
+that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him_"--a
+command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely
+worded.  To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the
+hearing of the Weights and Measures cases--one of which was being
+scandalously interrupted at this moment--or it might adjourn for dinner
+and reassemble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth
+Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out.  But here Mr.
+Somershall had to be reckoned with.  Mr. Somershall not only made it a
+practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost
+his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as
+honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fashion to confound
+either of these disingenuous courses.  As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording
+of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.
+
+It was Mr. Trask who found the way out.  Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye
+fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the
+stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh.
+He suggested that, without insisting on a trial, the Captain might be
+obliged, and his legs given that lesson.  He cited precedents.
+More than once a friend or relative had, by mercy of the Court, been
+allowed to sit beside a culprit under punishment.  If, a like leave
+being granted him, Captain Vyell preferred to have his ankles
+confined--why, truly, Mr. Trask saw no reason for denying him the
+experience.  But the Captain, it was understood, must give his word of
+honour, first, to accept this as a free concession from the Bench, and,
+secondly, not to repent or demand release before the expiry of the five
+hours.
+
+"With all my heart," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate
+reluctantly gave way.
+
+
+Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks.  She had come so far out of her swoon
+that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on
+her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed
+into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones--of discomfort, rather,
+in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her
+shoulder-blades.  Some one--it may have been in unthinking mercy--had
+drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff,
+irritating the raw, was as a shirt of fire.
+
+She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete
+consciousness.  She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering.
+As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look
+of horror they awoke as the lids parted.  But they saw nothing; neither
+the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the
+crowd.  She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.
+
+But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul--
+like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire--pushed feebly towards the
+sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open.  Something it sought there . . .
+a face . . . yes, a face. . . .
+
+--Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were
+hateful, hostile, mocking her misery--God knew why; a strong face, not
+very pitiful--but so strong!--and yet it must be pitiful too, for it
+condescended to help.  It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .
+
+--What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she
+remembered!  She was hiding from him.  He was strong, he was kind, but
+above all he must not see her shame.  Let the earth cover her and hide
+it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful
+darkness had descended.  She remembered sinking into it--sinking--her
+hands held aloft, as by ropes.  Then the ropes had parted. . . .
+She had fallen, plumb. . . .
+
+She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed
+in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire.
+Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as
+they half opened upon the crowd.  The grinning faces--the mouths pulled
+awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand--these were meaningless
+to her.  She did not, in any real sense, behold them.  Her misery was a
+sea about her, and in the trough of it she looked up, seeking one face.
+
+--And why not?  It had shone far above her as a god's; but she had been
+sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may
+meet even a god's altitude on equal terms.  Stark mortal, stark god--its
+limit of suffering past, humanity joins the celestial, clasping its
+knees.
+
+Of a sudden, turning her eyes a little to the left, she saw him.
+
+He had come at a strolling pace across the square, with Manasseh and the
+deputy-beadle walking wide beside him, and the Court-house rabble at his
+heels, but keeping, in spite of themselves, a respectful distance.
+At the stocks he faced about, and they halted on the instant, as though
+he had spoken a word of command.  He smiled, seated himself leisurably
+at the end of the bench on Ruth Josselin's left, and extended a leg for
+Manasseh to draw off its riding-boot.  At the back of the crowd a few
+voices chattered, but within the semicircle a hush had fallen.
+
+It was then that she turned her eyes and saw him.
+
+How came he here?  What was he doing? . . . She could not comprehend at
+all.  Only she felt her heart leap within her and stand still, as like a
+warm flood the consciousness of his presence stole through her, poured
+over her, soothing away for the moment all physical anguish.  She sat
+very still, her hands in her lap; afraid to move, afraid even to look
+again.  This consciousness--it should have been shame, but it held no
+shame at all.  It was hope.  It came near, very near, to bliss.
+
+She was aware in a dull way of some one unlocking and lifting the upper
+beam of the stocks.  Were they releasing her?  Surely her sentence had
+been for five hours?--surely her faintness could not have lasted so
+long!  This could not be the end?  She did not wish to be released.
+She would not know what to do, where to go, when they set her free.
+She must walk home through the town, and that would be worst of all.
+
+Or perhaps _he_ was commanding them to release her? . . . No; the beam
+creaked and dropped into place again.  A moment ago his voice had been
+speaking; speaking very cheerfully, not to her.  Now it was silent.
+After some minutes she gathered courage to turn her eyes again.
+
+Captain Vyell sat with his legs in durance.  They were very shapely
+legs, cased in stockings of flesh-coloured silk with crimson knee-ties.
+He sat in perfect patience, and rolled a tobacco-leaf between his
+fingers.  At his shoulder stood Manasseh like a statue, with face
+immobile as Marble--black marble--and a tinder-box ready in his hand.
+
+"Why? . . ."
+
+He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her
+breast, so faintly it reached him.  She had murmured it as if to
+herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question.  His ear was alert.
+
+"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the
+eyes of the crowd were on them.  "The faintness is over?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do not talk at all.  By-and-by we will talk.  Now I am going to ask you
+a selfish question, and you are just to bend your head for 'yes' or
+'no.'  Will the smell of tobacco distress you, or bring the faintness
+back?  These autumn flies sting abominably here, under the trees."
+
+She moved her head slowly.  "I do not feel them," she said after a
+while.
+
+He glanced at her compassionately before nodding to Manasseh for a
+light.  "No, poor wretch, I'll be sworn you do not," he muttered between
+the puffs.  "Thank you, Manasseh; and now will you step down to the Inn,
+order the horses back to stable, and bring George and Harry back with
+you?  I may require them to break a head or two here, if there should be
+trouble.  Tell Alexander"--this was the coachman--"to have an eye on
+Master Dicky, and see that he gets his dinner.  The child is on no
+account to come here, or be told about this.  His papa is detained on
+business--you understand?  Yes, and by the way, you may extract a book
+from the valise--the Calderon, for choice, or if it come handier, that
+second volume of Corneille.  Don't waste time, though, in searching for
+this or that.  In the stocks I've no doubt a book is a book: the
+instrument has a reputation for levelling."
+
+Manasseh departed on his errand, and for a while the Collector paid no
+heed to his companion.  He and she were now unprotected, at the mercy of
+the mob if it intended mischief; and the next few minutes would be
+critical.
+
+He sat immersed apparently in his own thoughts, and by the look on his
+face these were serious thoughts.  He seemed to see and yet not to see
+the ring of faces; to be aware of them, yet not concerned with them, no
+whit afraid and quite as little defiant.  True, he was smoking, but
+without a trace of affected insouciance or bravado; gravely rather,
+resting an elbow on his groin and leaning forward with a preoccupied
+frown.  Two minutes passed in this silence, and he felt the danger
+ebbing.  Mob insolence ever wants a lead, and--perhaps because with the
+return of fine weather the fishing-crews had put to sea early--this Port
+Nassau crowd lacked a fugleman.
+
+
+"Are you here--because--of me?"
+
+"Hush, again," he answered quietly, not turning his head.  "I like you
+to talk if you feel strong enough; but for the moment it will be better
+if they do not perceive. . . . Yes, and no," he answered her question
+after a pause.  "I am here to see that you get through this.  You are in
+pain?"
+
+"Yes; but it is easier."
+
+"You are afraid of these people?"
+
+"Afraid?"  She took some time considering this.  "No," she said at
+length.  "I am not afraid of them.  I do not see them.  You are here."
+
+He took the tobacco-leaf from his lips, blew a thin cloud of smoke with
+grave deliberateness, and in doing so contrived to glance at her face.
+
+"You have blood in you.  That face, too, my beauty," he muttered,
+"never came to you but by gift of blood."  Aloud he said, "That's brave.
+But take care when your senses clear and the strain comes back on you.
+Speak to me when you feel it coming; I don't want it to tauten you up
+with a jerk.  You understand?"
+
+"Yes. . . ."
+
+"I wonder now--" he began musingly, and broke off.  The danger he had
+been keeping account with was over; Manasseh had returned with the two
+grooms, and they--perfectly trained servants on the English model--took
+their posts without exhibiting surprise by so much as a twitch of the
+face.  George in particular was a tight fellow with his fists, as the
+crowd, should it offer annoyance, would assuredly learn.  The Collector
+took the volume which Manasseh brought him, and opened it, but did not
+begin to read.  "You despise these people?" he asked.
+
+He was puzzled with himself.  He was here to protect her; and this, from
+him to her, implied a noble condescension.  His fine manners, to be
+sure, forbade his showing it; on no account would he have shown it.
+But the puzzle was, he could not feel it.
+
+She met his eyes.  "No . . . why should I despise them?"
+
+"They are _canaille_."
+
+"What does that mean? . . . They have been cruel to me.  Afterwards, I
+expect, they will be crueller still.  But just now it does not matter,
+because you are here."
+
+"Does that make so much difference?" he asked thoughtlessly.
+
+She caught her breath upon a sob.  "Ah, do not--"  The voice died,
+strangled, in her throat.  "Do not--"  Again she could get no further,
+but sat shivering, her fingers interlocked and writhing.
+
+"Brute!" muttered the Collector to himself.  He did not ask her pardon,
+but opened his Calderon, signed to Manasseh to roll a fresh
+tobacco-leaf, and fell to reading his favourite _Alcalde de Zalamea_.
+
+
+The sun crept slowly to the right over the tops of the maples.  It no
+longer scorched their faces, but slanted in rays through the upper
+boughs, dappling the open walks with splashes of light which, as they
+receded in distance, took by a trick of the eyesight a pattern regular
+as diaper.  By this time the Collector, when he glanced up from his
+book, had an ample view of the square, for the crowd had thinned.
+The punishment of the stocks was no such rare spectacle in Port Nassau;
+and five hours is a tedious while even for the onlooker--a very long
+while indeed to stand weighing the fun of throwing a handful of filth
+against the cost of a thrashing.  The men-folk, reasoning thus, had
+melted away to their longshore avocations.  The women, always more
+patient--as to their nature the show was more piquant than to the
+men's--had withdrawn with their knitting to benches well within
+eyeshot.  The children, playing around, grew more and more immersed in
+their games; which, nevertheless, one or another would interrupt from
+time to time to point and ask a question.  Above the Court-house the
+town clock chimed its quarters across the afternoon heat.
+
+The Collector, glancing up in the act of turning a page, spied Mr. Trask
+hobbling down an alley towards the Jail.  Mr. Trask, a martyr to gout,
+helped his progress with an oaken staff. He leaned on this as he halted
+before the stocks.
+
+"Tired?" he asked.
+
+"Damnably!" answered the Collector with great cheerfulness.  "It takes
+one in the back, you see.  If ever the Town Fathers think of moving this
+machine, you might put in a word for shifting it a foot or two back,
+against the prison wall."
+
+Mr. Trask grinned.
+
+"I suppose now," he said after a pause, "you think you are doing a fine
+thing, and doing it handsomely?"
+
+"I had some notion of the sort, but this confinement of the feet is
+wonderfully cooling to the brain.  No--if you dispute it.  Most human
+actions are mixed."
+
+Mr. Trask eyed him, chin between two fingers and thumb.  When he spoke
+again it was with lowered voice.  "Is it altogether kind to the girl?"
+he asked.
+
+"Eh?"  The Collector in turn eyed Mr. Trask.
+
+"Or even quite fair to her?"
+
+"Oh, come!" said the Collector.  "Tongues?  I hadn't thought of that."
+
+"I dare say not." Mr. Trask glanced up at the windows of a two-storeyed
+house on the left, scarcely a stone's throw away, a respectable mansion
+with a verandah and neat gateway of wrought iron.  "But at the end of
+this what becomes of her?"
+
+The Collector shrugged his shoulders.  "I have thought of _that_, at all
+events.  My coach will be here to take her home.  It lies on my road.
+As for me, I shall have to mount at once and ride through the night--a
+second test for the back-bone."
+
+"Ride and be hanged to you!" broke out Mr. Trask with a snarl of scorn.
+"But for the rest, if your foppery leave you any room to consider the
+girl, you couldn't put a worse finish on your injury.  Drive her off in
+your coach indeed!--and what then becomes of her reputation?"
+
+"--Of what you have left to her, you mean?  Damn it--_you_ to talk like
+this!"
+
+"Do not be profane, Captain Vyell. . . . We see things differently, and
+this punishment was meted to her--if cruelly, as you would say--still in
+honest concern for her soul's good.  But if you, a loose-living man--"
+Mr. Trask paused.
+
+"Go on."
+
+"I thank you.  For the moment I forgot that you are not at liberty.
+But I used not that plainness of speech to insult you; rather because it
+is part of the argument.  If you, then, drive away with this child in
+public, through this town, you do her an injury for which mere
+carelessness is your best excuse; and the world will assign it a worse."
+
+"The world!"
+
+"I mean the world this young woman will have to live in.  But we talk at
+cross-purposes.  When I asked, 'What becomes of her at the end of this?'
+I was thinking of the harm you have already done.  As a fact, I have
+ordered my cart to be ready to take her home."
+
+Captain Vyell considered for a few seconds.  "Sir," he said, "since
+plain speech is allowed between us, I consider you a narrow bigot; but,
+I hasten to add, you are the best man I have met in Port Nassau.  By the
+way--that house on our left--does it by chance belong to Mr. Wapshott?"
+
+"It does."
+
+"I thought so.  For a couple of hours past, in the intervals of my
+reading, I have discovered a family of tall young women peeking at us
+from behind the windows and a barrier of furniture; and once, it seemed
+to me, I detected the wattles of your worthy fellow-magistrate.
+He ought not to strain that neck; you should warn him of the danger."
+
+"It should have warned you, sir, of what mischief you are doing."
+
+"I seem to remember," the Collector mused, "reading the words '_Honi
+soit qui mal y pense_' to-day written on the wall behind you. . . .
+Why, damn me, sir, for aught you or any of them can tell, I intend to
+marry this girl!  Why not?  Go and tell them.  Could there (you'll say)
+be a fairer betrothal?  The reputable plight their troth with a single
+ring around the woman's finger; but here are four rings around the four
+ankles, and the bar locked.  With your leave, which is the more
+symbolical?"
+
+"You are a reprobate man, Captain Vyell," was the answer, "and I have no
+relish for your talk.  I will only say this, When her punishment is
+done, my cart shall be ready for her; and you, if you would vindicate an
+action which--for I'll give you that credit--sprang from a generous
+impulse, will go your ways and let this child live down her
+humiliation."
+
+
+Mr. Trask turned and went his way up the alley, across which the sun
+made level rays of flame.  The Collector sat in thought.
+
+He turned his head, surprised by the sound of a sob.  A small child had
+drawn near--a toddle of four, trailing her wooden doll with its head in
+the dust--and stood a few paces in front of Ruth Josselin, round-eyed,
+finger at mouth.
+
+"Steady, my girl. . . . Steady!"
+
+At the murmured warning she braced her body stiffly, and no second sob
+came.  But the tears ran--the first in all her long agony--and small
+shivers, as light winds play on aspen, chased one another down her
+throat.  Almost you could guess them passing down her flesh beneath the
+sackcloth, rippling over its torn and purple ridges.
+
+He did not check her weeping.  The child--small, innocent cause of it--
+stood round-eyed, wondering.  "She has been naughty.  What has she done,
+to be so naughty?"
+
+Over the maples the town clock slowly told the hour.
+
+They were free.  The Collector tossed away the half-smoked
+tobacco-leaf--his twelfth--drew a long breath, and emitted it with a gay
+laugh of relief.  At the same moment he saw Mr. Trask's bullock-cart
+approaching down the dappled avenue.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+
+THE HUT BY THE BEACH.
+
+
+"And you'll never hold up your head again!  No more will any of us.
+The disgrace of it! the disgrace of it!"
+
+Ruth stood in the middle of the wretched room, with her hands hanging
+slack and her eyes bent wearily upon her mother, who had collapsed upon
+a block of sawn timber, and sat there, with sack apron cast over her
+head, rocking her body.
+
+"Hush, ye fool!" said old Josselin, and spat out of window.
+Mechanically, by habit, his dim eyes swept along the beach by the
+breakers' edge.  "What's the use, any way?" he added.
+
+"We, that always carried ourselves so high, for all our being poor!
+It's God's mercy that took your father before he could see this day.
+'Twould have broken his sperrit.  Your father a Josselin, and me a
+Pocock, with lands of my own--if right was law in this world; and now to
+be stripped naked and marched through the streets!"
+
+Ruth's eyes met the Collector's.  He stood within the doorway, and was
+regarding her curiously.  She did not plead or protest; only, as their
+eyes met, a flush rose to her cheek, and he guessed rightly that the
+touch of shame was for her mother, not for herself.  The flush deepened
+as old Josselin turned and said apologetically,--
+
+"You mustn't mind M'ria.  She's weak-minded.  Always was; but sence her
+husband was drowned--he was my second son--she've lost whatever wits she
+had.  The gal here was born about that time."  Here the old man launched
+into some obstetrical guesswork, using the plainest words.
+It embarrassed the Collector; the girl did not so much as wince.
+
+"Poor might be stood," moaned the woman; "but poor and shamed!"
+Then of a sudden, as though recollecting herself, she arose with an air
+of mincing gentility.  "Ruth," she said, "it's little we can offer the
+gentleman, but you _might_ get out the bread and cheese, after his being
+so kind to you."
+
+"Sit down, you dormed fool," commanded her father-in-law.  "Here, fetch
+your seat over to the look-out, an' tell me if that's a log I see
+floatin'.  She's wonderful good at that," he explained, without lowering
+his voice, "and it'll keep her quiet.  It's true, though, what she said
+about the property.  Thousands of acres, if she had her rights--up this
+side of the Kennebee."  He jerked a thumb northwards.  "The Pococks
+bought it off one of the Gorges, gettin' on for a hundred years sence;
+and by rights, as I say, a seventh share oughter be hers.  But lawyers!
+The law's like a ship's pump: pour enough in for a start, and it'll
+reward ye with floods.  But where's the money to start it?"
+
+The Collector scarcely heard him.  His eyes were on Ruth's face.
+He had walked briskly down from the Town Square to the Bowling Green
+Inn, refreshed himself, let saddle his horse, and set forth, leaving
+orders for his coach to follow.  At the summit of the hill above Port
+Nassau he had overtaken the cart with the poor girl lying in it, had
+checked his pace to ride alongside, and so, disregarding Mr. Trask's
+counsel, had brought her home.  Nay, dismissing the men with a guinea
+apiece, he had desired them to return to Mr. Trask and report his
+conduct.
+
+"Listen to me," he said suddenly, checking Old Josselin in full flow.
+"You say, both of you, that Ruth here will live under disgrace; and I
+dare say you are right.  Why not send her away?  Get her out of this."
+
+The woman by the window turned her head with a vague simper.  The old
+man, building a small heap of chips on the hearthstone, distended his
+cheeks and let out his breath slowly, as though coaxing a fire already
+kindled.
+
+"All very well--but where?  And where's the money to come from?
+Besides, we can't spare the child; she vittles us.  Dorm it, Ruth," he
+exclaimed, on a sudden recollection, "you don't say you ha'n't brought
+back the gun!"
+
+"No, grandfather."
+
+"Why? The magistrates would have given it back.  It's ruination for us
+without the gun, and that you might have remembered.  Better step over
+and ask 'em for it to-morrow."
+
+"Must I?" asked the girl slowly.
+
+"'Course you'll have to," said her grandparent.  "_I_ can't walk the
+distance, and that you know.--My eyesight's poor," he explained to the
+Collector, "and I can't walk, because--" here he stated an organic
+complaint very frankly.  "As for M'ria, she's an eye like a fish-hawk;
+but you never saw such a born fool with firearms.  Well, must heat some
+water, I reckon, to bathe the poor maid's back."
+
+"First give her food," said the Collector.  He stepped forward and
+himself cut her a large manchet from the loaf the old man produced.
+She took it from him and ate ravenously, like a young wild animal,
+tearing at the crust with her white teeth.  "They haven't broken your
+body's health, then," he thought to himself.  Aloud he said, "You don't
+quite take my meaning, Mr. Josselin, and I'll put it to you in a
+straight offer.  Let her come with me to Boston.  She shall be put to
+school there, say for three years; she shall live among folk who will
+treat her kindly, and teach her at any rate to build up her spirit again
+and be happy, as she will never be within these miles of Port Nassau;
+and in return--"
+
+"Ah!" said the old man significantly.
+
+"In return you shall accept from me a decent pension--enough, at any
+rate, to fend off want.  We will not quarrel over the amount, up or
+down.  Or, if you prefer, I will get the lawyers to look into this claim
+of your daughter-in-law's, and maybe make you an offer for it."
+
+"Ah!" repeated Old Josselin, and nodded.  "Taken your eye, has she?
+Oh, I'm not blamin' your lordship!  Flesh will after flesh, and--you can
+believe it or not--I was all for the women in my time."  He chuckled,
+and had added some gross particulars before the younger man could check
+him.  Yet the old fellow was so naif and direct that his speech left no
+evil taste.  He talked as one might of farm stock.  "But we're decent
+folk, we Josselins.  It's hard to starve and be decent too, and times
+enough I've been sorry for it; but decent we are."
+
+The Collector frowned.  "Mr. Josselin," he answered, "I am offering you
+to take your granddaughter away and have her educated.  What that will
+make of her I neither can tell you nor have I means of guessing; but
+this I will undertake, and give you my word of honour for it: in three
+years' time she shall come back to you in all honesty, unharmed by me or
+by any one.  By that time she will be a woman grown, able to decide as a
+woman; but she shall come to you, nevertheless."
+
+The old man fumbled with a finger, scraping together the flakes of
+touchwood in a tinder-box.
+
+"D'ye hear, M'ria?  His Honour wants our Ruth to go along with him."
+
+The Collector glanced at the girl's face.  Years after, and a hundred
+times, he recalled the look with which she turned towards her mother.
+At the same instant her mother faced about with a vacuous silly smile.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"To larn to be a lady," Old Josselin explained, raising his voice as
+though she were deaf.
+
+"That would be a fine thing," she answered mincingly, and returned her
+gaze to the window and the line of shore.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+
+RUTH SETS OUT.
+
+
+Manasseh had wrapped Master Dicky up warm in a couple of rugs, and
+spread a third about his feet.  In the ample state seat of the coach the
+child reclined as easily as in a bed.  He began to doze while the
+vehicle yet jolted over the road crossing the headland; and when it
+gained the track, and the wheels rolled smoothly on the hard sand, the
+motion slid him deep into slumber.
+
+He came out of it with a start and a catch of the breath, and for a full
+half-minute lay with all his senses numbed, not so much scared as
+bewildered.  In his dreams he had been at home in Boston, and he
+searched his little brain, wondering why he was awake, and if he should
+call for Miss Quiney (who slept always within hail, in a small bedroom);
+and why, when the night-nursery window lay to the left of his bed,
+strange lights should be flashing on his right, where the picture of
+King William landing at Torbay hung over his washstand.
+
+The lights moved to and fro, then they were quenched, and all was dark
+about him.  But he heard Manasseh's voice, some way off, in the
+darkness, and the sound of it brought him to his bearings.  He was in
+the coach, he remembered; and realising this, he was instantly glad--for
+he was a plucky child--that he had not called out to summon Miss Quiney.
+
+Had there been an accident?  At any rate he was not hurt.  His father
+had ridden on ahead, and would reach home many hours in advance.
+The boy had learnt this from Manasseh.  He reasoned that, if an accident
+had happened, his father would not hear of it--would be riding
+forward, further and further into the night.  He wondered how Manasseh
+and the grooms would manage without his father, who always gave the
+orders and was never at a loss.
+
+He sat up, peering out into the night.  He was still peering thus,
+building hasty wild guesses, when again a light showed, waving as it
+drew nearer.  It came close; it was one of the coach-lamps, and blazed
+full into his eyes through the window.  The door opened, letting in the
+roar of the beach and smiting his small nostrils with sea-brine, that
+with one breath purged away the stuffy scent of leather.
+
+Manasseh was handing some one into the coach.
+
+"De child--Mas' Richard--if you'll tak' care, miss.  He's fas' asleep,
+prob'ly."
+
+"But I'm _not_," said Dicky, sitting bolt upright and gathering his rugs
+about him.  "Who is it?"
+
+Manasseh perhaps did not hear.  He made no reply, at any rate, but
+turned the lamp full on Ruth Josselin as she sank back against the
+cushions on Dicky's right.
+
+"You will find plenty rugs, miss."
+
+He shut the door.  Dicky, holding his breath, heard him replace the lamp
+in its socket, and felt the soft tilt of his great weight as he climbed
+to the perch behind.
+
+"R--right away!"
+
+There was a tug, and the great coach rolled forward.  In the darkness
+Dicky caught the sound of a smothered sob.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked.  There was no response, and after a moment he
+added, "I know.  You are the girl who put out the fire.  I like you."
+
+He was very sleepy.  He wondered why she did not answer; but, his
+childish instinct assuring him that she was a friend, in his somnolence
+he felt nothing other than trust in her.  He nestled close in his rugs
+and reached out an arm.
+
+It rubbed across the weals on Ruth's back, and was torture.
+She clenched her teeth, while tears--tears of physical anguish,
+irrepressible--over-brimmed her lashes and fell uncounted in the
+darkness.
+
+"You are crying.  Why?  I like you."  The child's voice trailed off into
+dream.
+
+"Closer!" whispered Ruth, and would have forced the embrace upon her
+pain; but it relaxed.  Dicky's head fell sideways, and rested, angled
+between the cushions and her shoulder.
+
+She sat wide-eyed, staring into folds of darkness, while the coach
+rolled forward smoothly towards the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+PROBATION.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+AFTER TWO YEARS.
+
+
+"Come down and play!"
+
+Ruth, looking down from the open lattice, smiled and shook her head.
+"I must not; I'm doing my lessons."
+
+"Must not!" mimicked Master Dick.  "You're getting stupider and
+stupider, living up here.  If you don't look out, one of these days
+you'll turn into an old maid--just like Miss Quiney."
+
+"Hs-s-sh!  She's downstairs somewhere."
+
+"I don't care if she hears." Dicky ran his eyes defiantly along the line
+of ground-floor windows under the verandah, then upturned his face
+again.  "After coming all this way on purpose to play with you," he
+protested.
+
+"You have made yourself dreadfully hot."
+
+"I _am_ hot," the boy confessed.  "I gave Piggy the slip at the foot of
+the hill, and I've run every step of the way."
+
+"Is _he_ here?" Ruth glanced nervously toward a clump of elms around
+which the path from the entrance-gate curved into view.  "But you
+oughtn't to call Mr. Silk 'Piggy,' you know.  It--it's ungentlemanly."
+
+"Why, I took the name from you!  You said yourself, one day, that he was
+a pig; and so he is.  He has piggy eyes, and he eats too much, and
+there's something about the back of his neck you must have noticed."
+
+"It's cruel of you, Dicky, to remember and cast up what I said when I
+knew no better.  You know how hard I am learning: in the beginning you
+helped me to learn."
+
+"Did I?" mused Dicky.  "Then I wish I hadn't, if you're going to grow up
+and treat me like this.  Oh, very well," he added stoutly after a pause,
+"then I'm learning too, learning to be a sailor; and it'll be first-rate
+practice to climb aloft to you, over the verandah.  You don't mind my
+spitting on my hands?  It's a way they have in the Navy."
+
+"Dicky, don't be foolish!  Think of Miss Quiney's roses."  Finding him
+inexorable, Ruth began to parley.  "I don't want to see Mr. Silk.
+But if I come down to you, it will not be to play.  We'll creep off to
+the Well, or somewhere out of hail, and there you must let me read--or
+perhaps I'll read aloud to you.  Promise?"
+
+"What're you reading?"
+
+"The Bible."
+
+Dicky pulled a face.  "Well, the Bible's English, anyway," he said
+resignedly.  The sound of a foreign tongue always made him feel
+pugnacious, and it was ever a question with him how, as a gentleman, to
+treat a dead language.  Death was respectable, but had its own
+obligations; obligations which Greek and Latin somehow ignored.
+
+
+The house, known as Sabines, stood high on the slope of the midmost of
+Boston's three hills, in five acres of ground well set with elms.
+Captain Vyell had purchased the site some five years before, and had
+built himself a retreat away from the traffic that surged about his
+official residence by the waterside.  Of its raucous noises very few--
+the rattle of a hawser maybe, or a boatswain's whistle, or the yells of
+some stentorian pilot--reached to penetrate the belt of elms surrounding
+the house and its green garth; but the Collector had pierced this
+woodland with bold vistas through which the eye overlooked Boston
+harbour with its moving panorama of vessels, the old fort then standing
+where now stands the Navy Yard, and the broad waters of the Charles
+sweeping out to the Bay.
+
+For eighteen months he, the master of this demesne, had not set foot
+within its front gate; not once since the day when on a sudden
+resolution he had installed Ruth Josselin here, under ward of Miss
+Quiney, to be visited and instructed in theology, the arts, and the
+sciences, by such teachers as that unparagoned spinster might, with his
+approval, select.  In practice he left it entirely to her, and Miss
+Quiney's taste in teachers was of the austerest.  What nutriment
+(one might well have asked) could a young mind extract from the husks of
+doctrine and of grammar purveyed to Ruth by the Reverend Malachi
+Hichens, her tutor in the Holy Scriptures and in the languages of Greece
+and Rome?
+
+The answer is that youth, when youth craves for it, will draw knowledge
+even from the empty air and drink it through the very pores of the skin.
+Mr. Hichens might be dry--inhumanly dry--and his methods repellent; but
+there were the books, after all, and the books held food for her hunger,
+wine for her thirst.  So too the harpsichord held music, though Miss
+Quiney's touch upon it was formal and lifeless. . . . In these eighteen
+months Ruth Josselin had been learning eagerly, teaching herself in a
+hundred ways and by devices of which she wist not.  Yet always she was
+conscious of the final purpose of this preparation; nay, it possessed
+her, mastered her.  For whatever fate her lord designed her, she would
+be worthy of it.
+
+He never came.  For eighteen months she had not seen him.  Was it
+carelessly or in delicacy that he withheld his face?  Or peradventure in
+displeasure?  Her heart would stand still at times, and her face pale
+with the fear of it.  She could not bethink her of having displeased
+him; but it might well be that he repented of his vast condescension.
+Almost without notice, and without any reason given, he had deported her
+to this house on the hill. . . . Yet, if he repented, why did he
+continue to wrap her around with kindness?  Why had she these good
+clothes, and food and drink, servants to wait on her, tutors to teach
+her--everything, in short, but liberty and young companions and his
+presence that most of all she desired and dreaded?
+
+
+On the slope to the south-west of the house, in a dingle well screened
+with willow and hickory, a stream of water gushed from the living rock
+and had been channelled downhill over a stairway of flat boulders, so
+that it dropped in a series of miniature cascades before shooting out of
+sight over the top of a ferny hollow.  The spot was a favourite one with
+Dicky, for between the pendent willow boughs, as through a frame, it
+overlooked the shipping and the broad bosom of the Charles.  Ruth and he
+stole away to it, unperceived of Miss Quiney; to a nook close beside the
+spray of the fall, where on a boulder the girl could sit and read while
+Dick wedged his back into a cushion of moss, somewhat higher up the
+slope, and recumbent settled himself so as to bring (luxurious young
+dog!) her face in profile between him and the shining distance.
+
+She had stipulated for silence while she read her lesson over; but he at
+once began to beg off.
+
+"If you won't let me talk," he grumbled, "the least you can do is to
+read aloud."
+
+"But it's the Bible," she objected.
+
+"Oh, well, I don't mind.  Only choose something interesting.  David and
+Goliath, or that shipwreck in the Acts."
+
+"You don't seem to understand that this is a lesson, and I must read
+what Mr. Hichens sets.  To-day it's about Hagar and Ishmael."
+
+"I seem to forget about them; but fire away, and we'll hope there's a
+story in it."
+
+Ruth began to read: "_And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which
+she had born unto Abraham, mocking her.  Wherefore she said unto
+Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman_. . ."
+
+She read on.  Before she ended Dicky had raised himself to a sitting
+posture.  "The whole business was a dirty shame," he declared.
+"This Ishmael was his own son, eh?  Then why should he cast out one son
+more than another?"
+
+"There's a long explanation in the New Testament," said Ruth.  "It's by
+St. Paul; and I dare say that Mr. Hichens too, if he sees anything
+difficult in it, will say that Ishmael stands for the bond and Isaac for
+the free, and Abraham had to do it, or the teaching wouldn't come
+right."
+
+"He can't make out it was fair; nor St. Paul can't neither, not if you
+read it to him like you did to me," asserted Dicky.
+
+"But I shall not," answered Ruth after a pause, "and it was rather
+clever of you to guess."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because it would shock him.  I used to find the Bible just as dull as
+he makes it out: but one day I heard Mr. Langton standing up for it.
+Mr. Langton said it was the finest book in the world and the most
+fascinating, if only you read it in the proper way; and the proper way,
+he said, is to forget all about its being divided into verses and just
+take it like any other book.  I tried that, and it makes all the
+difference."
+
+"You mean to say you like it?" asked Dicky, incredulous.
+
+"I love it.  I can't get away from the people in it.  They are so
+splendid, one moment; and, the next, they are just too mean and petty
+for words; and the queer part of it is, they never see.  They tell
+falsehoods, and they cheat, and the things they do to get into Palestine
+are simply disgusting--even if they had the shadow of a right there,
+which they haven't."
+
+"But the land was promised to them."
+
+She had a mind to criticise that promise, but checked her lips.
+He was a child, and she would do no violence to the child's mind.
+
+Getting no answer, he considered for a while, and harked back.
+"But I don't see," he began, and halted, casting about to express
+himself.  "I don't see why, if you read it like that to yourself, you
+should read it differently to old Hichens.  That's a sort of pretending,
+you know."
+
+She turned her eyes on him, and they were straight and honest, as
+always.  "Oh," said she, "you are a man, of course!"
+
+Master Dicky blushed with pleasure.
+
+"Men," she went on, "can go the straight way to get what they wish.
+The way is usually hard--it ought to be hard if the man is worth
+anything--but it is always quite straight and simple, else it is wrong.
+Now women have to win through men; which means that they must go round
+about."
+
+"But old Hichens?"
+
+To herself she might have answered, "He only is allowed to me here.
+On whom else can I practise to please?  But, alas!  I practise for a
+master who never comes!"  Aloud she said, "You are excited to-day,
+Dicky.  You have something to tell me."
+
+"I should think I had!"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's about Uncle Harry.  Dad showed me a letter from him to-day, and
+he's fought a splendid action down off Grand Bahama.  Oh, you must hear!
+It seems he'd been beating about in his frigate for close on three
+months--on and off the islands on the look-out for those Spanish fellows
+that snap up our fruit-ships.  Well, the water on board was beginning to
+smell; so he ran in through the nor'-west entrance of Providence
+Channel, anchored just inside, and sent his casks ashore to be refilled.
+They'd taken in the fresh stock, and the _Venus_ was weighing for sea
+again almost before the last boatload came alongside.--Can't you see
+her, the beauty!  One anchor lifted, t'other chain shortened in, tops'ls
+and t'gallants'ls cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment--"
+
+"Is that how they do it?"
+
+"Of course it is.  Well just then Uncle Harry spied a boat beating in
+through the entrance.  He had passed her outside two days before--one of
+those small open craft that dodge about groping for sponges--splendid
+naked fellows, the crews are.  She had put about and run back in search
+of him, and her news was of a Spanish guarda-costa making down towards
+Havana with three prizes.  Think of it!  Uncle Harry was off and after
+them like a greyhound, and at sunrise next morning he sighted them in a
+bunch.  He had the wind of them and the legs of them; there isn't a
+speedier frigate afloat than the _Venus_--although, he says, she was
+getting foul with weed: and after being chased for a couple of hours the
+Spaniard and two of the prizes hauled up and showed fight.  Now for it!
+. . . He ran past the guarda-costa, drawing her fire, but no great harm
+done; shot up under the sterns of the two prizes, that were lying not
+two hundred yards apart; and raked 'em with half-a-broadside apiece--no
+time, you see, to reload between.  It pretty well cleaned every Spaniard
+off their decks--Why are you putting your hands to your ears!"
+
+"Go on," said Ruth withdrawing them.
+
+"By this, of course, he had lost way and given the guarda-costa the wind
+of him.  But she couldn't reach the _Venus_ for twenty minutes and more,
+because of the prizes lying helpless right in her way, and in half that
+time Uncle Harry had filled sail again and was manoeuvring out of
+danger.  Bit by bit he worked around her for the wind'ard berth, got it,
+bore down again and hammered her for close upon three hours.  She
+fought, he says, like a rat in a sink, and when at last she pulled down
+her colours the two prizes had patched up somehow and were well off for
+Havana after the third, that had showed no fight from the beginning.
+Quick as lightning he gets his prisoners on board, heads off on the new
+chase, and by sundown has taken the prizes all three--the third one a
+timber-ship, full of mahogany . . . That wasn't the end of his luck,
+either; for the captain of the guarda-costa turned out to be a
+blackguard that two years ago took a British captain prisoner and cut
+off his ears, which accounts for his fighting so hard.  'Didn't want to
+meet me if he could help it,' writes Uncle Harry, and says the man
+wouldn't haul down the flag till his crew had tied him up with ropes."
+
+"What happened to him?"
+
+"Uncle Harry shipped him off to England.  This was from Carolina, where
+he sailed in with all the four vessels in convoy.  And now, guess!
+He has refitted there, and is sailing around for Boston, and papa has
+promised to ask him to take me for a cruise, to see if he can make a
+sailor of me!"
+
+"But that won't be for years."
+
+"Oh yes, it will.  You can join the Navy at any age.  They ship you on
+as a cabin-boy, or sometimes as the Captain's servant; and papa says
+that for the first cruise Uncle Harry's wife will look after me."
+
+"But"--Ruth opened beautiful eyes of astonishment.  "Your Uncle Harry is
+not married?  Why, more than once you have told me that you would never
+take a wife when you grew up, but be like your uncle and live only for
+sailing a ship and fighting."
+
+"He is, though.  It happened at Carolina, whilst the _Venus_ was
+refitting; and I believe her father is Governor there, or something of
+the sort, but I didn't read that part of the letter very carefully.
+There was a lot of silly talk in it, quite different from the fighting.
+I remember, though, he said he was coming around here for his honeymoon;
+and I'm glad, on the whole."
+
+"On the whole?  When you've dreamed, all this while, of seeing your
+uncle and growing up to be like him!"
+
+"I mean that on the whole I'm glad he is married.  It--it shows the two
+things can go together after all; and, Ruth--"
+
+She turned in some wonderment as his voice faltered, and wondered more
+at sight of his young face.  It was crimson.
+
+"No, please! I want you not to look," he entreated.  "I want you to turn
+your face away and listen . . . Ruth," he blurted, "I love you better
+than anybody in the whole world!"
+
+"Dear Dicky!"
+
+"--and I think you're the loveliest person that ever was--besides being
+the best."
+
+"It's lovely of you, at any rate, to think so." Ruth, forgetting his
+command, turned her eyes again on Dicky, and they were dewy.  For indeed
+she loved him and his boyish chivalrous ways.  Had he not been her
+friend from the first, taking her in perfect trust, and in the hour that
+had branded her and in her dreams seared her yet?  Often, yet, in the
+mid-watches of the night she started out of sleep and lay quivering
+along her exquisite body from head to heel, while the awful writing
+awoke and crawled and ate again, etching itself upon her flesh.
+
+"But--but it made me miserable!" choked Dicky.
+
+"Miserable!  Why?"
+
+"Because I wanted to grow up and marry you," he managed to say
+defiantly.  "And the two things didn't seem to fit at all.  I couldn't
+make them fit.  But of course," he went on in a cheerfuller voice, the
+worst of his confession over, "if Uncle Harry can be married, why
+shouldn't we?"
+
+She bent her head low over the book.  Calf-love is absurd, but so
+honest, so serious; and like all other sweet natural foolishness should
+be sacred to the pure of heart.
+
+"I ought to tell you something though," he went on gravely and
+hesitated.
+
+"Yes, Dicky! What is it?"
+
+"Well, I don't quite know what it means, and I don't like to ask any one
+else.  Perhaps you can tell me. . . . I wouldn't ask it if it weren't
+that I'd hate to take you in; or if I could find out any other way."
+
+"But what is it, dear?"
+
+"Something against me.  I can't tell what, though I've looked at myself
+again and again in the glass, trying."  He met her eyes bravely, with an
+effort.  "Ruth, dear--what is a bastard?"
+
+Ruth sat still.  Her palms were folded, one upon another, over the book
+on her knees.
+
+"But what is it?" he pleaded.
+
+"It means," she said quietly, "a child whose father and mother are not
+married--not properly married."
+
+A pause followed--a long pause--and the tumbling cascade sounded louder
+and louder in Ruth's ears, while Dicky considered.
+
+"Do you think," he asked at length "that papa was not properly married
+to my mother?"
+
+"No, dear--no.  And even if that were so, what difference could it make
+to my loving you?"
+
+"It wouldn't make any!  Sure?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"But it might make a difference to papa," he persisted, "if ever papa
+had another child--like Abraham, you know--"  Here he jumped to his
+feet, for she had risen of a sudden.  "Why, what is the matter?"
+
+She held out a hand.  There were many dragon-flies by the fall, and for
+the moment he guessed that one of them had stung her.
+
+"Dicky," she said.  "Whatever happens, you and I will be friends
+always."
+
+"Always," he echoed, taking her hand and ready to search for the mark of
+the sting.  But her eyes were fastened on the water bubbling from the
+well head.
+
+
+A branch creaked aloft, and to the right of the well head the hickory
+bushes rustled and parted.
+
+"So here are the truants!" exclaimed a voice.  "Good-morning, Miss
+Josselin!"
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+MR. SILK.
+
+
+The Reverend Nahum Silk, B.A., sometime of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, had
+first arrived in America as a missioner seeking a sphere of labour in
+General Oglethorpe's new colony of Georgia.  He was then (1733-4) a
+young man, newly admitted to priest's orders, and undergoing what he
+took to be a crisis of the soul.  Sensual natures, such as his, not
+uncommonly suffer in youth a combustion of religious sentiment.
+The fervour is short-lived, the flame is expelled by its own blast, and
+leaves a house swept and garnished, inviting devils.
+
+For the hard fare of Georgia he soon began to seek consolations, and
+early in the second year of his ministry a sufficiently gross scandal
+tumbled him out of the little colony.  Lacking the grit to return to
+England and face out his relatives' displeasure, he had drifted
+northwards to Massachusetts, and there had picked up with a slant of
+luck.  A number of godly and well-to-do citizens of Boston had recently
+banded themselves into an association for supplying religious
+opportunities to the seamen frequenting the port, and to the Committee
+Mr. Silk commended himself by a hail-fellow manner and a shrewdness of
+speech which, since it showed through a coat of unction, might be
+supposed to mean shrewdness in grain.  Cunning indeed the man could be,
+for his short ends; but his shrewdness began and ended in a trick of
+talking, and in the conduct of life he trimmed sail to his appetites.
+
+His business of missioner (or, as he jocosely put it, Chaplain of the
+Fleet) soon brought him to the notice of Captain Vyell, Collector of
+Customs, with whom by the same trick of speech (slightly adapted) he
+managed to ingratiate himself, scenting the flesh-pots.  For he belonged
+to the tribe to whom a patron never comes amiss.  Captain Vyell was
+amused by the man; knew him for a sycophant; but tolerated him at table
+and promoted him (in Batty Langton's phrase) to be his trencher
+chaplain.  He and Langton took an easy malicious delight, over their
+wine, in shocking Mr. Silk with their free thought and seeing how
+"the dog swallowed it."
+
+The dog swallowed his dirty puddings very cleverly, and with just so
+much show of protest as he felt to be due to his Orders.  He had the
+accent of an English gentleman and enough of the manner to pass muster.
+But the Collector erred when he said that "Silk was only a beast in his
+cups," and he erred with a carelessness well-nigh wicked when he made
+the man Dicky's tutor.
+
+This step had coincided with the relegation of Ruth and Miss Quiney to
+Sabines; but whether by chance or of purpose no one but the Collector
+could tell.  Of his intentions toward the girl he said nothing, even to
+Batty Langton.  Very likely they were not clear to himself.  He knew
+well enough how fast and far gossip travelled in New England; and
+doubted not at all that his adventure at Port Nassau had within a few
+days been whispered and canvassed throughout Boston.  His own grooms, no
+doubt, had talked.  But he could take a scornful amusement in baffling
+speculation while he made up his own mind.  In one particular only he
+had been prompt--in propitiating Miss Quiney.  On reaching home, some
+hours ahead of the girl, he had summoned Miss Quiney to his library and
+told her the whole story.  The interview on her part had been
+exclamatory and tearful; but the good lady, with all her absurdities,
+was a Christian.  She was a woman too, and delighted to serve an
+overmastering will.  She had left him with a promise to lay her
+conscience in prayer before the Lord; and, next morning, Ruth's beauty
+had done the rest.
+
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Josselin!"  Ruth started and glanced up the slope
+with a shiver.  The voice of Mr. Silk always curdled her flesh.
+
+"La! la!" went on Mr. Silk, nodding down admiration.  "What a group to
+startle!--Cupid extracting a thorn from the hand of Venus--or (shall we
+say?) the Love god, having wounded his mother in sport, kisses the
+scratch to make it well.  Ha, ha!"
+
+"Shall I continue, sir?" said Ruth, recovering herself.  "The pair are
+surprised by a satyr who crept down to the spring to bathe his aching
+head--"
+
+"Hard on me, as usual!" Mr. Silk protested, climbing down the slope.
+"But 'tis the privilege of beauty to be cruel.  As it happens, I drank
+moderately last night, and I come with a message from the Diana of these
+groves.  Miss Quiney wishes to communicate to you some news I have had
+the honour to bring in a letter from Captain Vyell--or, as we must now
+call him, Sir Oliver."
+
+"Sir Oliver?" echoed Ruth, not understanding at all.
+
+"The _Fish-hawk_ arrived in harbour this morning with the English
+mail-bags; and the Collector has letters informing him that his uncle,
+Sir Thomas Vyell, is dead after a short illness--the cause, jail fever,
+contracted while serving at Launceston, in Cornwall, on the Grand Jury."
+
+"Captain Vyell succeeds?"
+
+"To the title and, I believe, to very considerable estates.  His uncle
+leaves no male child."
+
+"Dicky had not told me of this."
+
+"--Because," explained the boy, "I didn't know what it meant, and I
+don't know now.  Papa told me this morning that his uncle was dead, home
+in England; but I'd never heard of him, and it slipped out of my mind.
+Can titles, as you call them, be passed on like that?  And if papa died,
+should I get one?  Or would it go to Uncle Harry?"
+
+"It would go to your uncle," said Mr. Silk.  "Now run along to the house
+and tell Miss Quiney that I have found the pair of you.  She was getting
+anxious."
+
+Dicky hesitated.  He knew that Ruth had a horror of his tutor.
+
+"Yes, run," she commanded, reading his glance.  "We follow at once."
+
+The boy scrambled up the slope.  Mr. Silk looked after him and chuckled.
+
+"Dicky don't know yet that there are two sides to a blanket."
+
+Getting no answer--for she had turned and was stooping to pick up her
+book--he went on, "Vyell had a letter, among others, from the widow,
+Lady Caroline; and that, between ourselves, is the cause of my errand.
+She writes that she is taking a trip across here, to restore her nerves,
+and is bringing her daughter for company.  The daughter, so near as I
+gather, is of an age near-about Vyell's.  See?"
+
+"I am afraid I do not."  Ruth had recovered her book and her composure.
+A rose-flush showed yet on either cheek, but it lay not within Mr.
+Silk's competence to read so delicate a signal.  "Will you explain?"
+
+"Well"--he leered--"it did occur to me there might be some cleverness in
+the lady's search after consolation.  Her daughter and our Collector
+being cousins--eh?  At any rate, that's her first thought; to bring the
+girl--woman, if you prefer it--over and renew acquaintance with the
+heir.  Must be excused if I misjudge her.  Set it down to zeal for you,
+Miss Josselin."
+
+"Willingly, Mr. Silk--if your zeal for me did not outrun my
+understanding."
+
+"Yet you're clever.  But you won't persuade me you don't see the
+difficulty. . . . Er--how shall I put it?  The Collector--we'll have to
+get used to calling him Sir Oliver--is as cool under fire as any man
+this side of the Atlantic; fire of criticism, I mean.  There's a limit
+though.  He despises Colonial opinion--that's his pose; takes pride in
+despising it, encouraged by Langton.  But England? his family?--that's
+another matter.  An aunt--and that aunt an earl's daughter--If you'll
+believe me, Miss Josselin, I'm a man of family and know the sort.
+They're incredible.  And the younger lady, if I may remind you, called
+Diana; which--er--may warn us that she, too, is particular about these
+things."  Here Mr. Silk, having at length found his retort upon her
+similitude of the satyr, licked his lips.
+
+Ruth drew up and stood tapping her foot.  "May I beg to be told exactly
+what has happened, sir?"
+
+"What has happened?  What has happened is that Vyell is placing Sabines
+at the disposal of his aunt and cousin for so long as they may honour
+Boston with their presence.  He sends the Quiney word to pack and hold
+herself in readiness for a flitting.  Whither?  I cannot say; nor can he
+yet have found the temporary nest for you.  But doubtless you will hear
+in due course.  May I offer you my arm?"
+
+"I thank you, no.  Indeed we will part here, unless you have further
+business in the house--and I gather that your errand there is
+discharged. . . . One question--Captain Vyell sent his message by a
+letter, which Miss Quiney no doubt will show to me.  Did he further
+commission you with a verbal one?  You had better," she added quietly,
+"be particular about telling me the truth; for I may question him, and
+for a discovered falsehood he is capable of beating you."
+
+"What I have said," stammered the clergyman, "was--er--entirely on my
+own responsibility.  I--I conceived you would find it sympathetic--
+helpful perhaps.  Believe me, Miss Josselin, I have considerable
+feeling for you and your--er--position."
+
+"I thank you." She dismissed him with a gentle curtsy.  "I feel almost
+sure you have been doing your best."
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+MR. HICHENS.
+
+
+She turned and walked slowly back to the house.  Once within the front
+door and out of his sight, she was tempted to rush across the hall and
+up the stairs to her own room.  She was indeed gathering up her skirts
+for the run, when in the hall she almost collided with the Reverend
+Malachi Hichens, who stood there with his nose buried in a vase of
+roses, while behind his back his hands interwove themselves and pulled
+each at the other's bony knuckles.
+
+"Ah!"  He faced about with a stiff bow, and a glance up at the tall
+clock.  "You are late this morning, Miss Josselin.  But I dare say my
+good brother Silk has been detaining you in talk?"
+
+"On the contrary," answered Ruth, "his talk has rather hastened me than
+not."
+
+They entered the library.  "Miss Quiney tells me," he said, "that our
+studies are to suffer a brief interruption; that you are about to take a
+country holiday.  You anticipate it with delight, I doubt not?"
+
+"Have I been, then, so listless a scholar?" she asked, smiling.
+
+"No," he answered.  "I have never looked on you as eager for praise, or
+I should have told you that your progress--in Greek particularly--has
+been exceptional; for a young lady, I might almost say, abnormal."
+
+"I am grateful to you at any rate for saying it now.  It happens that
+just now I wanted something to give me back a little self-respect."
+
+"But I do not suppose you so abnormal as, at your age, to undervalue a
+holiday," he continued.  "It is only we elders who live haunted by the
+words 'Work while ye have the light.'  If youth extract any moral from
+the brevity of life it is rather the pagan warning, _Collige rosas_."
+
+Her eyes rested on him, still smiling, but behind her smile she was
+wondering.  Did he--this dry, sallow old man, with the knock-knees and
+ungainly frame, the soiled bands, the black suit, threadbare, hideous in
+cut, hideous in itself (Ruth had a child's horror of black)--did he
+speak thus out of knowledge, or was he but using phrases of convention?
+Ruth feared and distrusted all religious folk--clergymen above all; yet
+instinct had told her at the first that Mr. Hichens was honest, even
+good in an unlovely fashion; and by many small daily tests she had
+proved this.  Was it possible that Mr. Hichens had ever gathered roses
+in his youth?  Was it possible that, expecting Heaven and professing a
+spiritual joy in redemption, a man could symbolise his soul's state by
+wearing these dingy weeds?  Had he no sense of congruity, or was all
+religion so false in grain that it perverted not only the believer's
+judgment but his very senses, turning white into black for him, and
+making beauty and ugliness change places?
+
+"For my part," said Mr. Hichens wistfully, "I regret the interruption;
+for I had even played with the thought of teaching you some Hebrew."
+He paused and sighed.  "But doubtless the Almighty denies us these small
+pleasures for our good. . . . Shall we begin with our repetition?
+I forget the number of the Psalm?"
+
+"The forty-fifth," said Ruth, finding the place and handing him the
+book.  "_My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things
+which I have made unto the king_." . . . She recited the opening lines
+very quietly, but her voice lifted at the third verse.  Beautiful words
+always affected her poignantly, but the language of the Bible more
+poignantly than any other, because her own unforgettable injury had been
+derived from it and sanctioned by it, and because at the base of things
+our enemies in this world are dearer to us than friends.  They cling
+closer.
+
+Yet,--and paradox though it be--the Bible was the more alive to her
+because, on Mr. Langton's hint, she had taken it like any other book,
+ignoring the Genevan division of verses and the sophisticated chapter
+headings.  Thus studied, it had revenged itself by taking possession of
+her.  It held all the fascination of the East, and little by little
+unlocked it--Abraham at his tent door, Rebekah by the fountain, her own
+namesake Ruth in the dim threshing-floor of Boaz, King Saul wrestling
+with his dark hour, the last loathly years of David, Jezebel at the
+window, Job on his dung-heap, Athaliah murdering the seed royal, and
+again Athaliah dragged forth by the stable-way and calling _Treason!
+Treason!_ . . . Bedouins with strings of camels, scent of camels by the
+city gate, clashing of distant cymbals, hush of fear--plot and
+counterplot in the apartments of the women--outcries, lusts, hates--
+blood on the temple steps--blood oozing, welling across the gold--blood
+caking in spots upon illimitable desert sands--watchmen by the wall--in
+the dark streets a woman with bleeding back and feet seeking and
+calling, "_I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my
+beloved_--"
+
+"_Hearken, O daughter, and consider, incline thine ear_"--Ruth's voice
+swelled up on a full note: "_forget also thine own people and thy
+father's house._"
+
+"_So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty: for he is thy lord, and
+worship thou him_."
+
+"Excuse me--'for he is thy Lord God,'" corrected Mr. Hichens. . . .
+"We are taking the Prayer Book's version."
+
+"I changed to the Bible version on purpose," Ruth confessed;
+"and 'lord' ought to have a small 'l'.  The Prayer Book makes nonsense
+of it.  They are bringing in the bride, the princess, to her lord.
+_She is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.  She shall
+be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be
+her fellows shall bear her company_--"
+
+"The Hebrew," said Mr. Hichens, blinking over his own text which he had
+hastily consulted, "would seem to bear you out, or at least to leave the
+question open.  But, after all, it matters little, since, as the chapter
+heading explains in the Authorized Version, the supposed bride is the
+Church, and the bridegroom, therefore, necessarily Our Lord."
+
+"Do you think that, or anything like that, was in the mind of the man
+who wrote it?" asked Ruth, rebellious.  "The title says, 'To the Chief
+Musician upon Shoshannim'--whatever that may mean."
+
+"It means that it was to be sung to a tune called Shoshannim or Lilies--
+doubtless a well-known one."
+
+"It has a beautiful name, then; and he calls it too 'Maschil, A song of
+Loves.'"
+
+"Historically no doubt you are right," agreed Mr. Hichens.  "The song is
+undoubtedly later than David, and was written as a Prothalamion for a
+royal bride.  It is, as you say, exceedingly beautiful; but perhaps we
+had best confine our attention to its allegorical side.  You probably do
+not guess who the bride was?"
+
+"No," Ruth admitted.  "Who was she?"
+
+"It is generally admitted, I believe, to have been written as a bridal
+hymn for Queen Jezebel."
+
+"O--oh!" Ruth bit her lip, but had to laugh in spite of herself.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+VASHTI.
+
+
+The first bad suggestion almost certainly came from Mr. Silk.
+Two or three of the company afterwards put their heads together and,
+comparing recollections, agreed that either Silk or Manley had started
+it.  Beyond the alternative they could not trace it.
+
+But the whole table, they admitted, had been to blame, and pretty
+damnably.  To be sure they were drunk, every man Jack of them, the
+Collector included.  The Collector, indolent by nature but capable of
+long stretches of work at a pinch, had been at his desk since six
+o'clock in the morning.  The news brought by the _Fish-hawk_ had reached
+him at five; and after bathing, dressing, and drinking his chocolate, he
+had started to write, and had been writing letters all day.  The most of
+these were lengthy, addressed to England, to his relatives, his London
+lawyers, the steward at Carwithiel. . . . The Surveyor and
+Deputy-Collector could deal--as they usually did--with the official
+correspondence of the Custom House; his own Secretary had the light task
+of penning a score of invitations to dinner; but these letters of
+condolence and private business must be written by his own hand, as also
+a note to Governor Shirley formally announcing his accession and new
+title.
+
+The Collector dined at five.  He laid down his pen at four, having
+written for ten hours almost at a stretch, declining all food--for he
+hated to mix up work with eating and drinking.  Before dressing for
+dinner he refreshed himself with another bath; but he came to table with
+a jaded brain and a stomach fasting beyond appetite for food; and the
+wine was champagne.
+
+
+Miss Quiney and Ruth Josselin, seated that evening in the drawing-room
+at Sabines, were startled at eight o'clock or thereabouts by a
+knocking on the front door.  Miss Quiney looked up from her
+tambour-work, with hand and needle suspended in mid-air, and gazed
+across at Ruth, who, seated at the harpsichord, had been singing
+softly--murmuring rather--the notes of Ben Jonson's _Charis her
+Triumph_--
+
+    "Have you seen but a bright Lillie grow
+      Before rude hands have touch'd it?"--
+
+--but desisted at the noise and slewed her body half around, letting her
+fingers rest on the keys.
+
+"Who in the world--at this hour?" demanded Miss Quiney.
+
+A serving-maid ushered in Manasseh.
+
+The tall black halted a little within the doorway, saluted and stood
+grinning respectfully, his white teeth gleaming in the candle-light.
+
+"Yo' pardon, ladies.  His Honah sends to say he entertainin' to-night.
+Plenty people drink his Honah's health an' long life to Sir Olivah
+Vyell.  He wish pertick'ly Mis' Josselin drink it.  He tol' me run, get
+out sedan-chair an' fetch Mis' Josselin along; fetch her back soon as
+she likes.  Chairmen at de door dis moment, waitin'.  I mak' 'em run."
+
+Ruth stood up.  Her hand went to the edge of her bodice open below the
+throat.
+
+"Must I?" she asked, turning from Manasseh to Miss Quiney.  Her voice
+was tense.
+
+"I--I think so, dear," Miss Quiney answered after a pause.  "It is a
+command, almost; and to-night naturally Captain Vyell--Sir Oliver--has a
+claim on our congratulations."
+
+"You tell me to go? . . . Oh! but let me be sure you know what you are
+advising."  She faced the negro again.  "What guests is Sir Oliver
+entertaining?"
+
+Manasseh enumerated a dozen.
+
+"All gentlemen!  So, you see!"
+
+"Captain--Sir Oliver (bless me, how I forget! ) has an aversion from
+ladies' society--Boston ladies. . . . It is not for me to criticise, but
+the distaste is well known."
+
+"And the gentlemen, Manasseh--they will have taken a great deal of wine
+by now?"
+
+Manasseh spread out his hands, and again his teeth gleamed.  "To be
+sho', Mis' Josselin; it is not ebery day in the yeah dat Cap'n Vyell
+become Sir Olivah--"
+
+"I did not ask you," interrupted Ruth coldly, "to excuse your errand.
+. . . And now, Tatty dear, do you still bid me to go?"
+
+"On the contrary, I forbid it."
+
+Ruth stepped close to the little lady.  Said she, standing straight
+before her and looking down, "It cost you some courage to say that."
+
+"It may cost me more to-morrow; but I am not afraid."
+
+"My brave Tatty!  But the courage is thrown away, for I am going."
+
+"You do not mean this?"
+
+"I do mean it.  My master sends for me.  You know what duty I owe him."
+
+"He is just.  He will thank you to-morrow that you disobeyed."
+
+"I shall not disobey."
+
+Little Miss Quiney, looking up into her ward's eyes, argued this point
+no further.  "Very well," said she.  "Then I go too."  She closed her
+mouth firmly, squaring her jaw.
+
+"But in the sedan there is room for one only."
+
+"Then I go first," said Miss Quiney, "and the chair shall return for
+you.  That," she went on, falling back upon her usual pedantic speech,
+"presents no difficulty whatever to me.  What I wear does not matter--
+the gentlemen will not regard it.  But you must dress in what you have
+of the best.  It--it will assist you.  Being without experience, you
+probably have no notion how dress assists one's self-respect."
+
+"I think I have some little notion," Ruth assured her demurely.
+
+"And while the chair is taking me and returning, you will have good time
+to dress.  On no account are you to hurry. . . . It is essential that at
+no point--at _no_ point, dear--you allow yourself to be hurried, or to
+show any trace of hurry."
+
+Ruth nodded slowly.  "Yes, Tatty.  I understand.  But, little lioness
+that you are, do _you?_  You will be alone, and for some time with
+these--with these--"
+
+"I have never mentioned it to a living soul before," said Miss Quiney,
+dismissing Manasseh with a wave of the hand and closing the door upon
+him; "but I had an eldest brother--in the Massachusetts militia--who,
+not to put too fine a point on it, was sadly addicted to the bottle.
+It shortened his days. . . . A bright young genius, of which we hoped
+much, and (I fear me) not all unselfishly, for our family was
+impoverished.  But he went astray.  Towards the end he would bring home
+his boon companions--I will say this for poor dear George, that his
+footsteps, at their unsteadiest, ever tended homeward; he never affected
+low haunts--and it fell to me as the eldest daughter of the house to
+keep his hospitality within bounds--"
+
+"Dear Tatty!" Ruth stooped and kissed the plain little face, cutting
+short the narrative.  It was strange to note how these two of diverse
+ages--between whom for the length of their acquaintance no dispute of
+mastery had arisen--now suddenly and in quick alternation, out of pure
+love, asserted will against will.  "You shall tell me to-morrow.
+(I always knew that your meekness and weakness were only pretence.)
+But just now we must hurry."
+
+"Hurry, as I must repeat," answered Miss Quiney primly, smoothing down
+the front of her creased grey satin skirt, "is--will be--our capital
+mistake.  For me, I need in this weather but an additional shawl.
+I am ready. . . . Go to your room . . . and let me enjoin a certain
+deliberation even in crossing the hall.  Manasseh is there, and before
+servants--even a negro--The white brocade if I may advise; it is fresher
+than the rose-coloured silk--and the hair combed a trifle higher off the
+brows.  That, with the brocade, will correct your girlishness somewhat.
+Brocades are for dignity, and it is dignity we chiefly need to-night.
+. . . Shall I send Selina to you?  No?  Well, she would be persuading
+you to some new twist or experiment with your hair, and you are better
+without her.  Also I shall want a last word with you when I have fetched
+my cloak, and Selina is better out of the way."
+
+
+Miss Quiney's last word was a curious one.  It took the form of a pearl
+necklace, her one possession of value, last surviving heirloom of the
+Quineys, of whom she was the last surviving descendant: her last
+tangible evidence, too, of those bygone better days.  She never wore it,
+and it never saw the light save when she unlocked the worn jewel-case to
+make sure that her treasure had not been stolen.
+
+She entered Ruth's room with it furtively.  Despite her injunction
+against hurry, the girl had already indued the white brocade and stood
+before the mirror conning herself.  She wore no jewels; she owned none.
+
+"Shut your eyes, dear," commanded Miss Quiney, and, stealing up behind
+her, slipped and clasped the necklace about her throat, then fell back,
+admiring the reflection in the glass.
+
+"Oh, Tatty!"
+
+But Ruth, too, had to pause for a moment to admire.  When she turned,
+Miss Quiney, forgetting her own injunction, had stolen in haste from the
+room.
+
+The girl's eyes moistened.  For a moment she saw herself reflected from
+the glass in a blur.  Then through the blur the necklace took shape,
+point by point of light, pearl by pearl, until the whole chain grew
+definite in the parting of the bodice, resting on the rise of her young
+bosom.
+
+Yes, and the girl saw that it was good.
+
+A string of words danced upon her brain, as though the mirrored pearls
+reflected them.
+
+_She shall be brought unto the King . . . the virgins that be her
+fellows shall bear her company_.
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+SIR OLIVER'S HEALTH.
+
+
+"De lady is here, yo' Honah!"
+
+Manasseh announced it from the doorway and stood aside.  Of the company
+four had already succumbed and slid from their chairs.  The others
+staggered to their feet, Sir Oliver as promptly as any.  With a face
+unnaturally white he leaned forward, clutching the edge of the long oval
+table, and stared between the silver candelabra down the broken ranks of
+his guests--Mr. Silk, purple of face as his patron was pale; Ned Manley,
+maundering the tag of a chorus; Captain St. Maur, Captain Goodacre, and
+Ensign Lumley, British officers captured by the French at Fort Chanseau
+and released to live at Boston on parole until the war should end; Mr.
+Fynes, the Collector's Secretary; Mr. Bythesea, Deputy-Collector; young
+Shem Hacksteed and young Denzil Baynes, sons of wealthy New Englanders,
+astray for the while, and sowing their wild oats in a society openly
+scornful of New England traditions.
+
+Batty Langton's was the chair nearest the door, and Batty Langton was
+the one moderately sober man of the company.  He had not heard, in time
+to interfere, the proposal to send for Ruth: it had started somewhere at
+the Collector's end of the table.  But trifler though he was, he thought
+it cruel to the girl--a damnable shame--and pulled himself together to
+prevent what mischief he might.  At the same time he felt curious to see
+her, curious to learn if these many months of seclusion had fulfilled
+the Collector's wager that Ruth Josselin would grow to be the loveliest
+woman in America.  At Manasseh's announcement he faced about, and, with
+a gasp, clutched at the back of his chair.
+
+In the doorway stood little Miss Quiney.  It was so ludicrous a
+disappointment that for the moment no one found speech.  Langton heard
+Goodacre, behind him, catch his breath upon a wondering "O--oh!" and
+felt the shock run down the table along the unsteady ranks.  At the far
+end a voice--Mr. Silk's--cackled and burst into unseemly laughter.
+
+Langton swung round.  "Mr. Fynes," he called sharply, "oblige me,
+please, by silencing that clergyman--with a napkin in his mouth, if
+necessary."
+
+He turned again to Miss Quiney.  "Madam," he said, offering his arm,
+"let me lead you to a seat by Sir Oliver."
+
+The little lady accepted with a curtsy.  A faint flush showed upon
+either cheek bone, and in her eyes could be read the light of battle.
+It commanded his admiration the more that her small arm trembled against
+his sleeve.  "The courage of it," he murmured; "and Miss Quiney of all
+women!"
+
+She needed courage.  The Collector's handsome face greeted her with a
+scowl and a hard stare; he could be intractable in his cups.
+
+"Excuse me, madam, but I sent for Miss Josselin."
+
+She answered him, but first made low obeisance.  "Ruth Josselin will
+attend, sir, with all despatch.  The sedan is capable of accommodating
+but one at a time."
+
+There stood an empty chair on the Collector's right.  To set it for her
+Mr. Langton had, as a preliminary, to stoop and drag aside the legs of a
+reveller procumbent on the floor.  The effort flushed him; but Miss
+Quiney, with an inclination of the head, slipped into the seat as though
+she had seen nothing unusual.
+
+"And it gives me the occasion," she continued respectfully, as her eyes
+passed over the form of young Manley opposite, who stood with his glass
+at an angle, spilling its wine on the mahogany, "of expressing--I thank
+you. . . . What?  Is it Mr. Silk?  A pleasure, indeed! . . .Yes, I
+rarely take wine, but on such an occasion as this--an occasion, as I was
+saying, to felicitate Sir Oliver Vyell on his accession to a title which
+we, who have served him, best know his capacity to adorn."
+
+"Oh, damn!" growled the Collector under his breath.
+
+"Half a glassful only!" Miss Quiney entreated, as Mr. Silk poured for
+her.  She was, in fact, desperately telling herself that if she
+attempted to lift a full glass, her shaking hand would betray her.
+
+
+"Yo' Honah--Mis' Josselin!"
+
+Mr. Langton had caught the sound of Manasseh's footfall in the corridor
+without, and was on the alert before the girl entered.  But at sight of
+her in the doorway he fell back for a moment.
+
+Yes, the Collector's promise had come true--and far more than true.
+She was marvellous.
+
+It was by mere beauty, too, that she dazzled, helped by no jewels but
+the one plain rope of pearls at her throat.  She stood there holding
+herself erect, but not stiffly, with chin slightly lifted; not in
+scorn, nor yet in defiance, though you were no sooner satisfied of this
+than a tiniest curve of the nostril set you doubting.  But no; she was
+neither scornful nor defiant--alert rather, as a fair animal quivering
+with life, confronting some new experience that for the moment it fails
+to read.  Or--borrowing her morning's simile, to convert it--you might
+liken her to huntress-maiden Diana, surprised upon arrested foot;
+instep arched, nostril quivering to the unfamiliar, eyes travelling in
+sudden speculation over a group of satyrs in a glade.  For a certainty
+that poise of the chin emphasised the head's perfect carriage; as did
+the fashion of her head-tire, too--the hair drawn straight above the
+brows and piled superbly, to break and escape in two careless
+love-locks on the nape of the neck--in the ripple of each a smile,
+correcting the goddess to the woman.  The right arm hung almost straight
+at her side, the hand ready to gather a fold of the white brocaded
+skirt; the left slanted up to her bosom, where its finger-tips touched
+the stem of a white rose in the lace at the parting of the bodice. . . .
+
+So she stood--for ten seconds maybe--under the droop of the heavy
+curtain Manasseh held aside for her.  The hush of the room was homage to
+her beauty.  Her gaze, passing between the lines of his guests, sought
+the Collector.  It was fearless, but held a hint of expectancy.  Perhaps
+she waited for him to leave his place and come forward to receive her.
+But he made no motion to do this; not being, in fact, sufficient master
+of his legs.
+
+"Good-evening, my lord!"  She swept him a curtsy.  "You sent for me?"
+
+Before he could answer, she had lowered her eyes.  They rested on a
+chair that happened to stand empty beside Batty Langton, and a slight
+inclination of the head gave Langton to understand that she wished him
+to offer it.  He did so, and she moved to it.  The men, embarrassed for
+a moment by their host's silence--they had expected him to answer her,
+but he stood staring angrily as one rebuffed--followed her cue and
+reseated themselves.  He, too, dropped back in his chair, leaned forward
+for the decanter, and poured himself more wine.  The buzz of talk
+revived, at first a word or two here and there, tentative after the
+check, then more confidently.  Within a minute the voices were babel
+again.
+
+Batty Langton pondered.  A baronet should not be addressed as "my lord,"
+and she had been guilty of a solecism.  At the same time her manner had
+been perfect; her carriage admirably self-possessed.  Her choice of a
+seat, too, at the end of the table and furthest from Sir Oliver--if she
+had come unwillingly--had been wittily taken, and on the moment, and
+with the appearance of deliberate ease.
+
+"They will be calling on you presently to drink our host's health," he
+suggested, clearing a space of the table in front of her and collecting
+very dexterously two or three unused wine-glasses.  Champagne? . . .
+Miss Quiney is drinking champagne, I see, though her neighbours have
+deserted it for red wine.  Sir Oliver, by the way, grows lazy in pushing
+the decanters. . . . Shall I signal to him?"
+
+"On no account.  Champagne, if you please . . . though I had rather you
+kept it in readiness."
+
+"I am sorry, Miss Josselin, but there you ask of me the one thing
+impossible.  I cannot abide to let wine stand and wait; and champagne--
+watch it, how it protests!"  He filled her glass and refilled his own.
+"By the way," he added, sinking his voice, "one is permitted to
+congratulate a debutante?"
+
+"And to criticise."
+
+"There was nothing to criticise except--Oh, well, a trifle.  At home in
+England we don't 'my lord' a mere baronet, you know."
+
+"But since he _is_ my lord?"  She smiled gently, answering his puzzled
+stare.  "How, otherwise, should I be here?"
+
+Mr. Langton took wine to digest this.  He shook his head.  "You must
+forgive me.  It is clear that I am drunk--abominably drunk--for I miss
+the point--"
+
+"You accuse yourself unjustly."
+
+"Do I?  Well, I have certainly drunk a deal more wine than is good for
+me, and it will be revenged to-morrow.  As a rule,"--he glanced around
+at his fellow-topers--"I pride myself that in head and legs I am
+inexpugnable.  We all have our gifts; and i' faith until a moment ago I
+was patting myself on the back for owning this one."
+
+"And why, Mr. Langton?"
+
+"On the thought, Mistress Josselin, that I had cut out the frigate, as
+our tars say, and towed the prize to moorings before the others could
+fire a gun."
+
+"I had hoped," she murmured, and bent her eyes on the wine-bubbles
+winking against the rim of her glass, "you did it in simple kindness."
+
+"Well," he owned slowly, "and so I did.  This belittling of good
+intentions, small enough to begin with, is a cursed habit, and I'll
+renounce it for once.  It was little--it was nothing; yet behold me
+eager to be thanked."
+
+"I thank you."  She fingered the stem of the glass, not lifting her
+eyes.  "But you have belittled me, too.  I read it in books, and here on
+the threshold, as I step outside of books, you meet me with it.  We
+women are always, it seems, poor ships, beating the seas, fleeing
+capture; and our tackle, our bravery--"  She broke off, and sat musing,
+while her fingers played with the base of the glass.
+
+"I take back my metaphors, Miss Josselin.  I admit myself no buccaneer,
+but a simple ass who for once pricked ears on an honest impulse."
+
+"That is better.  But hush!  Mr. Manley, yonder, is preparing to sing."
+
+Mr. Manley, a young protege of the Collector's, had a streak of genius
+as an architect and several lesser gifts, among them a propensity for
+borrowing and a flexible tenor voice.  He trolled an old song, slightly
+adapted--
+
+    "Here's a health unto Sir Oliver,
+       With a fal-la-la, lala-la-la;
+     Confusion to his enemies,
+       With a fa-la-la, lala-la-la;
+     And he that will not drink his health,
+     I wish him neither wit nor wealth,
+     Nor yet a rope to hang himself--
+       With a fa-la-la, lala-la-la."
+
+The effort was applauded.  Above the applause the bull voice of Mr. Silk
+shouted,--
+
+"But Miss Josselin has not drunk it yet!  Langton monopolises her.
+Miss Josselin!  What has Miss Josselin to say?"
+
+The cry was taken up.  "Miss Josselin!  Miss Josselin!"
+
+Batty Langton arose, glass in hand.  "Is it a toast, gentlemen?"
+He glanced at Sir Oliver, who sat sombre, not lifting his eyes.
+"Our host permits me. . . . Then I give you 'Miss Josselin!'"
+Acclamations drowned his voice here, and the men sprang up, waving their
+glasses.  Sir Oliver stood with the rest.
+
+"Miss Josselin!  Miss Josselin!" they shouted, and drank what their
+unsteady hands left unspilt.  Langton waited, his full glass half
+upraised.
+
+"Miss Josselin," he repeated very deliberately on the tail of the
+uproar, "who honours this occasion as Sir Oliver's ward."
+
+For about five seconds an awkward silence held the company.
+Their fuddled memories retained scraps of gossip concerning Ruth, her
+history and destiny--gossip scandalous in the main.  One or two glanced
+at the Collector, who had resumed his seat--and his scowl.
+
+"The more reason she should drink his health."  Again Mr. Silk was
+fugleman.
+
+His voice braved it off on the silence.  Ruth was raising her glass.
+Her eyes sought Miss Quiney's; but Miss Quiney's, lifted heavenward, had
+encountered the ceiling upon which Mr. Manley had recently depicted the
+hymeneals of Venus and Vulcan, not omitting Mars; and the treatment--a
+riot of the nude--had for the moment put the redoubtable little lady out
+of action.
+
+Ruth leaned forward in her seat, lifting her glass high.  It brimmed,
+but she spilled no drop.
+
+"To Sir Oliver!"
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+CAPTAIN HARRY AND MR. HANMER.
+
+
+"Guests, has he?--Out of my road, you rascal!  Guests?  I'll warrant
+there's none so welcome--"
+
+A good cheery voice--a voice the curtain could not muffle--rang it down
+the corridor as on the note of a cornet.
+
+The wine was at Ruth's lip, scarcely wetting it.  She lowered the glass
+steadily and turned half-about in her chair at the moment when, as
+before a whirlwind, the curtain flew wide and a stranger burst in on the
+run with Manasseh at his heels.
+
+"Oliver!"  The stranger drew himself up in the doorway--a well-knit
+figure of a man, clear of eye, bronzed of hue, clad in blue sea-cloth
+faced with scarlet, and wearing a short sword at the hip.  "Where's my
+Oliver?" he shouted.  "You'll forgive my voice, gentlemen.  I'm Harry
+Vyell, at your service, fresh from shipboard, and not hoarse with
+anthems like old what-d'ye-call-him."  Running his gaze along the table,
+he sighted the Collector and broke into a view-halloo.
+
+"Oliver!  Brother Noll!"  Captain Harry made a second run of it, caught
+his foot on the prostrate toper whom Langton had dragged out of Miss
+Quiney's way, and fell on his brother's neck.  Recovering himself with a
+"damn," he clapped his left hand on Sir Oliver's shoulder, seized Sir
+Oliver's right in his grip and started pump-handling--"as though"
+murmured Langton, "the room were sinking with ten feet of liquor in the
+hold."
+
+"Harry--is it Harry?"  Sir Oliver stammered, and made a weak effort to
+rise.
+
+"Lord!  You're drunk!"  Captain Harry crowed the cheerful discovery.
+"Well, and I'll join you--but in moderation, mind!  Newly married man--
+if some one will be good enough to pass the decanter? . . . My dear
+fellow! . . . Cast anchor half an hour ago--got myself rowed ashore
+hot-foot to shake my Noll by the hand.  Lord, brother, you can't think
+how good it feels to be married!  Sally won't be coming ashore
+to-night; the hour's too late, she says; so I'm allowed an hour's
+liberty."  Here the uxorious fellow paused on a laugh, indicating that
+he found irony in the word.  "But Sally--capital name, Sally, for a
+sailor's wife; she's Sarah to all her family, Sal to me--Sally is
+cunning.  Sally gives me leave ashore, but on condition I take Hanmer to
+look after me.  He's my first lieutenant--first-rate officer, too--but
+no ladies' man.  Gad!" chuckled Captain Harry, "I believe he'd run a
+mile from a petticoat.  But where is he?  Hi, Hanmer! step aft-along
+here and be introduced!"
+
+A tall grave man, who had entered unnoticed, walked past the line of
+guests and up to his captain.  He too wore a suit of blue with scarlet
+facings, and carried a short sword or hanger at his belt.  He stood
+stiffly, awaiting command.  The candle-light showed, beneath his right
+cheek bone, the cicatrix of a recent wound.
+
+But Captain Harry, slewing round to him, was for the moment bereft of
+speech.  His gaze had happened, for the first time, on little Miss
+Quiney.
+
+"Eh?" he stammered, recovering himself.  "Your pardon, ma'am.  I wasn't
+aware that a lady--"  Here his eyes, travelling to the end of the table,
+were arrested by the vision of Ruth Josselin.  "Wh-e-ew!" he whistled,
+under his breath.
+
+"Sir Oliver--" Batty Langton stood up.
+
+"Hey?"  The name gave Captain Harry yet another shock.  He spun about
+again upon his brother.  "'Sir Oliver'?  _Whats_ he saying?"
+
+"You've not heard?" said the Collector, gripping his words slowly, one
+by one.  "No, of course you've not.  Harry, our uncle is dead."
+
+There was a pause.  "Poor old boy!" he muttered.  "Used to be kind to
+us, Noll, after his lights.  If it hadn't been for his womenkind."
+
+"They're coming across to visit me, damn 'em!"
+
+"What?  Aunt Carrie and Di'? . . . Good Lord!"
+
+"They're on the seas at this moment--may be here within the week."
+
+"Good Lord!" Captain Harry repeated, and his eyes wandered again to Ruth
+Josselin.  "Awkward, hey? . . . But I say, Noll--you really _are_ Sir
+Oliver!  Dear lad, I give you joy, and with all my heart. . . .
+Gad, here's a piece of news for Sally!"
+
+Again he came to a doubtful halt, and again with his eyes on Ruth
+Josselin.  He was not a quick-witted man, outside of his calling, nor a
+man apt to think evil; but he had been married a month, and this had
+been long enough to teach him that women and men judge by different
+standards.
+
+"Sir Oliver," repeated Langton, "Miss Josselin craves your leave to
+retire."
+
+"Yes, dear"--Miss Quiney launched an approving nod towards her--"I was
+about to suggest it, with Sir Oliver's leave.  The hour is late, and by
+the time the sedan-chair returns for me--"
+
+"There is no reason, Tatty, why we should not return together," said
+Ruth quietly.  "The night is fine; and, with Manasseh for escort, I can
+walk beside your chair."
+
+"Pardon me, ladies," put in Mr. Silk.  "Once in the upper town, you may
+be safe enough; but down here by the quay the sh--sailors--I know 'em--
+it's my buishness.  'Low me--join the eshcort."
+
+But here, perceived by few in the room, a somewhat remarkable thing
+happened.  Mr. Hanmer, who had stood hitherto like a statue, put out a
+hand and laid it on Mr. Silk's shoulder; and there must have been some
+power in that grip, for Mr. Silk dropped into his seat without another
+word.
+
+Captain Harry saw it, and broke into a laugh.
+
+"Why, to be sure!  Hanmer's the very man!  The rest of ye too drunk--
+meaning no offence; and, for me,--well, for me, you see there's Sally
+to be reckoned with."  He laughed aloud at this simple jocularity.
+"Hanmer!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Convoy."
+
+"If you wish it, sir." The lieutenant bowed stiffly; but it was to be
+noted that the scar, which had hitherto showed white on a bronzed cheek,
+now reddened on a pale one.
+
+Miss Quiney hesitated.  "The gentleman, as a stranger to Boston--"
+
+"I'll answer for Hanmer, ma'am.  You'll get little talk out of him; but,
+be there lions at large in Boston, Jack Hanmer'll lead you past 'em."
+
+"Like Mr. Greatheart in the parable," spoke up Ruth, whose eyes had been
+taking stock of the proposed escort, though he stood in the penumbra and
+at half the room's length away.  "Tatty--if my lord permit and
+Lieutenant Hanmer be willing--"
+
+She stood up, and with a curtsy to Sir Oliver, swept to the door.
+Miss Quiney pattered after; and Mr. Hanmer, with a bow and hand lifted
+to the salute, stalked out at their heels.
+
+"I'll warrant Jack Hanmer 'd liefer walk up to a gun," swore Captain
+Harry as the curtain fell behind them.  "He bolts from the sight of
+Sally.  I'll make Sally laugh over this."  But here he pulled himself up
+and added beneath his voice, "I can't tell her, though."
+
+
+The road as it climbed above the town toward Sabines grew rough and full
+of pitfalls.  Even by the light of the full moon shining between the
+elms Miss Quiney's chairmen were forced to pick their way warily, so
+that the couple on the side-walk--which in comparison was well paved--
+easily kept abreast of them.
+
+Ruth walked with the free grace of a Dryad.  The moonlight shone now and
+again on her face beneath the arch of her wimple; and once, as she
+glanced up at the heavens, Mr. Hanmer--interpreting that she lifted her
+head to a scent of danger, and shooting a sidelong look despite
+himself--surprised a lustre as of tears in her eyes; whereupon he felt
+ashamed, as one who had intruded on a secret.
+
+"Mr. Hanmer."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"I have a favour to beg. . . . Is it true, by the way," she asked
+mischievously, "that to talk with a woman distresses you?"
+
+"Ma'am--"
+
+"My name is Ruth Josselin."
+
+Mr. Hanmer either missed to hear the correction or heard and put it
+aside.  "Been at sea all my life," he explained.  "They caught me
+young."
+
+Ruth looked sideways at him and laughed--a liquid little laugh, much
+like the bubbling note of a thrush.  "You could not have given an answer
+more pat, sir.  I want to speak to you about a child, caught young and
+about to be taken to sea.  You are less shy with children, I hope?"
+
+"Not a bit," confessed Mr. Hanmer.  He added, "They take to me, though--
+the few I've met.
+
+"Dick will take to you, for certain.  Dicky is Sir Oliver's child."
+
+"I didn't know--"  Mr. Hanmer came to a full stop.
+
+"No," said Ruth, as though she echoed him.  "He is eight years old
+almost."  Her eyes looked straight ahead, but she was aware that his had
+scanned her face for a moment, and almost she felt his start of
+reassurance.
+
+"So, the child being a friend of mine, and his father having promised
+him a cruise in the _Venus_, you see that I very much want to know what
+manner of lady is Captain Harry's wife; and that I could not ask you
+point-blank because you would have set the question down to idle
+curiosity. . . . It might make all the difference to him," she added,
+getting no answer.
+
+"A child of eight, and the country at war!" Mr. Hanmer muttered.
+"His father must know that we cruise ready for action."
+
+"I tell you, sir, what Dicky told me this morning."
+
+"But it's impossible!"
+
+"To that, sir, I might find you half a dozen answers.  To begin with, we
+all know--and Sir Oliver perhaps, from private information, knows better
+than any of us--that peace is in sight.  Here in the northern Colonies
+it has arrived already; the enemy has no fleet on this side of the
+world, and on this coast no single ship to give you any concern."
+
+"Guarda-costas?  There may be a few left on the prowl, even in these
+latitudes.  I don't believe it for my part; we've accounted for most of
+'em.  Still--"
+
+"And Captain Harry thinks so much of them that he sails from Carolina to
+Boston with his bride on board!"
+
+"You are right, Miss Josselin, and you are wrong. . . . Mistress Vyell
+has come to Boston in the _Venus_; and by reason that her husband, when
+he started, had as little acquaintance with fear for others as for
+himself.  But if she return to Carolina it will be by land or when peace
+is signed.  Love has made the Captain think; and thought has made him--
+well, with madam on board, I am thankful--"  He checked himself.
+
+"You are thankful he did not sight a guarda-costa."  She concluded the
+sentence for him, and walked some way in silence, while he at her side
+was silent, being angry at having said so much.
+
+"Yet Captain Harry is recklessly brave?" she mused.
+
+"To the last degree, Miss Josselin," Mr. Hanmer agreed eagerly.  "To the
+last degree within the right military rules.  Fighting a ship's an art,
+you see."
+
+It seemed that she did not hear him.  "It runs in the blood," she said.
+She was thinking, fearfully yet exultantly, of this wonderful power of
+women, for whose sake cowards will behave as heroes and heroes turn to
+cowards.
+
+They had outstripped the chairmen, and were at the gate of Sabines.
+He held it open for her.  She bethought her that his last two or three
+sentences had been firmly spoken, that his voice had shaken off its
+husky stammer, and on the impulse of realised power she took a fancy to
+hear it tremble again.
+
+"But if madam will not be on board to look after Dicky, the more will he
+need a friend.  Mr. Hanmer, will you be that friend?"
+
+"You are choosing a rough sort of nurse-maid."
+
+"But will you?"  She faced him, wonderful in the moonlight.
+
+His eyes dropped.  His voice stammered, "I--I will do my best, Miss
+Josselin."
+
+She held out a hand.  He took it perforce in his rope-roughened paw,
+held it awkwardly for a moment, and released it as one lets a bird
+escape.
+
+Ruth smiled.  "The best of women," ran a saying of Batty Langton's,
+"if you watch 'em, are always practising; even the youngest, as a kitten
+plays with a leaf."
+
+They stood in silence, waiting for the chair to overtake them.
+
+
+"Tatty, you are a heroine!"
+
+Miss Quiney, unwinding a shawl from her head under the hall-lamp,
+released herself from Ruth's embrace.  Her nerve had been strained and
+needed a recoil.
+
+"Maybe," she answered snappishly.  "For my part, I'd take more comfort,
+just now, to be called a respectable woman."
+
+Ruth laughed, kissed her again, and stood listening to the footsteps as
+they retreated down the gravelled way.  Among them her ear
+distinguished easily the firm tread of Mr. Hanmer.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+FIRST OFFER.
+
+
+A little before noon next day word came to her room that Sir Oliver had
+called and desired to speak with her.
+
+She was not unprepared.  She had indeed dressed with special care in
+the hope of it; but she went to her glass and stood for a minute or two,
+touching here and there her seemly tresses.
+
+Should she keep him waiting--keep him even a long while? . . .
+He deserved it. . . . But ah, no!  She was under a vow never to be other
+than forthright with him; and the truth was, his coming filled her with
+joy.
+
+
+"I am glad you have come!"  These, in fact, were her first words as he
+turned to face her in the drawing-room.  He had been standing by the
+broad window-seat, staring out on the roses.
+
+"You guess, of course, what has brought me?"  He had dressed himself
+with extreme care.  His voice was steady, his eye clear, and only a
+touch of pallor told of the overnight debauch.  "I am here to be
+forgiven."
+
+"Who am I, to forgive?"
+
+"If you say that, you make it three times worse for me.  Whatever you
+are does not touch my right to ask your pardon, or my need to be
+forgiven--which is absolute."
+
+"No," she mused, "you are right. . . . Have you asked pardon of Tatty?"
+
+"I have, ten minutes ago.  She sent the message to you."
+
+"Tatty was heroic"--Ruth paused on the reminiscence with a smile--"
+and, if you will believe me, quite waspish when I told her so."
+
+"You should have refused to come.  You might have known that I was
+drunk, or I could never have sent."
+
+"How does it go?"  She stood before him, puckering her brows a little as
+she searched to remember the words--"'_On the seventh day, when the
+heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded the seven
+chamberlains_--'"
+
+"Spare me."
+
+"'--_to bring Vasbti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to
+show the people and the princes her beauty, for she was fair to look
+on_.'  Do I quote immodestly, my lord?"
+
+"Not immodestly," he answered.  "For I think--I'll be sworn--no woman
+ever had half your beauty without knowing it.  But you quote
+_mal a propos_.  Queen Vashti refused to come."
+
+"'_Therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him_.'"
+
+"I think, again, that you were not the woman to obey any such fear."
+
+"No.  Queen Vashti refused to come, being a queen.  Whereas I, my lord--
+
+    "'Being your slave, what should I do but tend
+      Upon the hours and times of your desire?'"
+
+"My slave?" he asked.  "Setting aside last night--when I was
+disgustingly drunk--have you a single excuse for using that word?"
+
+"Of your giving, none.  You have been more than considerate.  Of my own
+choosing, yes."
+
+He stared.
+
+"At any rate Tatty is not your slave," she went on, and he smiled with
+her.  "I am glad you asked Tatty's pardon.  Did she forgive you
+easily?"
+
+"Too easily.  She was aware, she said, that gentlemen would be
+gentlemen."
+
+"She must have meant precisely the reverse."
+
+"Was I pretty bad?"
+
+She put a hand across her eyes as if to brush the image from them.
+"What matters the degree?  It was another man seated and wearing my
+lord's body.  _That_ hurt."
+
+"By God, Ruth, it shall never happen again!"
+
+She winced as he spoke her name, and her colour rose.  "Please make no
+promise in haste," she said.
+
+"Excuse me; when a man takes an oath for life, the quicker he's through
+with it the better--at least that's the way with us Vyells.
+It's trifles--like getting drunk, for instance--we do deliberately.
+Believe me, child, I have a will of my own."
+
+"Yes," she meditated, "I believe you have a strong will."
+
+"'Tis a swinish business, over-drinking, when all's said and done."
+He announced it as if he made a discovery; and indeed something of a
+discovery it was, for that age.  "Weakens a man's self-control, besides
+dulling his palate. . . . They tell me, by the way, that after you left
+I beat Silk."
+
+Ruth looked grave.  "You did wrong, then."
+
+"Silk is a beast."
+
+"An excellent reason for not making him your guest; none for striking
+him at your own table."
+
+"Perhaps not."  Sir Oliver shrugged his shoulders.  "Well, he can have
+his revenge, if he wants it."
+
+"How so?  As a clergyman he cannot offer to fight you, and as a coward
+he would not if he could."
+
+"Is one, then, to be considerate with cowards?"
+
+"Certainly, if you honour cowards with your friendship."
+
+"Friendship! . . . The dog likes his platter and I suffer him for his
+talk.  When his talk trespasses beyond sufferance, I chastise him.
+That's how I look at it."
+
+"I am sorry, my lord, that Mr. Silk should make the third on your list
+this morning."
+
+"Oh, come; you don't ask me to _apologise_ to Silk!"
+
+"To him rather than to me."
+
+"But--oh nonsense!  He was disgusting--unspeakable, I tell you.  If you
+suppose I struck him for nothing--"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"You cannot think what he said."
+
+"Something about me, was it not?"  Then, as Sir Oliver stood silent,
+"Something a great many folk--your guests included--are quite capable of
+thinking about me, though they have not Mr. Silk's gift of language."
+
+"--That gift for which (you will go on to remind me) I suffer him."
+
+"No; that gift which (you said) trespasses beyond sufferance."
+She did not remind him that he, after all, had exposed her and provoked
+Mr. Silk's uncleanly words.
+
+
+Both were beating time now.  He had come, as was meet, to offer an
+apology, and with no intent beyond.  He found not only that Ruth
+Josselin was grown a woman surpassing fair, but that her mere presence
+(it seemed, by no will of hers, but in spite of her will) laid hold of
+him, commanding him to face a further intent.  It was wonderful, and yet
+just at this moment it mattered little, that the daylight soberly
+confirmed what had dazzled his drunkenness over night; that her speech
+added good sense to beauty. . . . What mattered at the moment was a
+sense of urgency, oppressing and oppressed by an equal sense of
+helplessness.
+
+He had set the forces working and, with that, had chosen to stand
+aside--in indolence partly, partly in a careful cultivated indifference,
+but in part also obeying motives more creditable.  He had stood aside,
+promising the result, but himself dallying with time.  And lo! of a
+sudden the result had overtaken him.  Had he created a monster, in place
+of a beautiful woman, he had not been more at its mercy.
+
+But why this sense of urgency?  And why should he allow it to oppress
+him?
+
+Here was a creature exquisite, desirable, educated for no purpose but to
+be his.  Then why not declare himself, leap the last easy fence and in a
+short while make her his?
+
+To be sure her education--which, as we have seen, owned one source and
+spring, the passion to make herself perfect for his sake--had fashioned
+a woman very different to the woman of _his_ planning.  She had built
+not upon his careless defective design but upon her own incessant
+instinct for the best.  So much his last night's blunder had taught him.
+He had sent for her as for a handmaid; and as a handmaid she had
+obeyed--but in spirit as a queen.
+
+To put it brutally, she could raise her terms, and he as a gentleman
+could not beat her down.  With ninety-nine women out of a hundred those
+higher terms could be summed up in one word--marriage.  Well and again,
+why not?  He was rich and his own master.  In all but her poor origin
+and the scandal of an undeserved punishment she was worthy--more than
+worthy; and for the Colonials, among whom alone that scandal would count
+against her, he had a habit of contempt.  He could, and would in his
+humour, force Boston to court her salons and hold its tongue from all
+but secret tattle.  The thought, too, of Lady Caroline at this moment
+crossing the high seas to be met with the news agreeably moved him to
+mirth.
+
+But somehow, face to face here, he divined that Ruth was not as
+ninety-nine women in the hundred; that her terms were different.
+They might he less, but also they were more.  They might be less.
+Had she not crossed her arms and told him she was his slave?  But in
+that very humility he read that they were more.  There was no last easy
+fence.  There was no fence at all.  But a veil there was; a veil he
+lacked the insight to penetrate, the brutality to tear aside.
+
+Partly to assure himself, partly to tempt her from this mysterious ring
+of defence, he went on, "I ought to apologise, too, for having sent Silk
+yesterday with my message.  You received it?"
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"My aunt and cousin invite themselves to Boston, and give me no chance
+to say anything but 'Welcome.'  Two pistols held to my head."
+He laughed.  "There's a certain downrightness in Lady Caroline.
+And what do you suppose she wants?"
+
+"Mr. Silk says she wants you to marry your cousin."
+
+"Told you that, did he?"  His eyes were on her face, but it had not
+changed colour; her clear gaze yet baffled him.  "Well, and what do you
+say?"
+
+"Must I say anything?"
+
+"Well"--he gave a short, impatient laugh--"we can hardly pretend--can
+we?--that it doesn't concern you."
+
+"I do not pretend it," she answered.  "I am yours, to deal with as you
+will; to dismiss when you choose.  I can never owe you anything but
+gratitude."
+
+"Ruth, will you marry me?"
+
+He said it with the accent of passion, stepping half a pace forward,
+holding out his hands.  She winced and drew back a little; she, too,
+holding out her hands, but with the palms turned downward.  Upon that
+movement his passion hung fire.  (Was it actual passion, or rather a
+surrender to the inevitable--to a feeling that it had all happened
+fatally, beyond escape, that now--beautiful, wonderful as she had
+grown--he could never do without her?  At any rate their hands,
+outstretched thus, did not meet.)
+
+"You talked lightly just now," she said, and with the smallest catch in
+her voice, "of vows made in haste.  You forget your vow that after three
+years I should go back--go back whence you took me--and choose."
+
+"No," he corrected.  "My promise was that you should go back and
+announce your choice.  If some few months are to run, nothing hinders
+your choosing here and now.  I do not ask you to marry me before the
+term is out, but only to make up your mind.  You hear what I offer?"
+
+She swept him a low, obedient bow.  "I do, and it is much to me, my dear
+lord.  Oh, believe me, it is very much! . . . But I do not think I want
+to be your wife--thus."
+
+"You could not love me?  Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Not love you?" Her voice, sweet and low, choked on the words.
+"Not love you?" she managed to repeat.  "You, who came to me as a god--
+to me, a poor tavern drudge--who lifted me from the cart, the scourge;
+lifted me out of ignorance, out of shame?  Lord--love--doubt what you
+will of me--but not that!"
+
+"You do love me?  Then why--"  He paused, wondering.  The impalpable
+barrier hung like a mist about his wits.
+
+"Did Andromeda not love Perseus, think you?" she asked lightly,
+recovering her smile, albeit her eyes were dewy.
+
+"I am dull, then," he confessed.  "I certainly do not understand."
+
+"You came to me as a god when you saved me.  Shall you come to me as
+less by an inch when you stoop to love me?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, as if at length he comprehended; "I was drunk last night,
+and you must have time to get that image out of your mind."
+
+She shook her head slowly.  "You did not ask me last night to marry you.
+I shall always, I think, be able to separate an unworthy image of you,
+and forget it."
+
+"Then you must mean that I am yet unworthy."
+
+"My dear lord," she said after a moment or two, in which she seemed to
+consider how best to make it plain to him, "you asked me just now to
+marry you, but not because you knew me to be worthy; and though you may
+command what you choose, and I can deny you nothing, I would not
+willingly be your wife for a smaller reason.  Nor did you ask me in the
+strength of your will, your passion even, but in their weakness.
+Am I not right?"
+
+He was dumb.
+
+"And is it thus," she went on, "that the great ones love and beget noble
+children?"
+
+"I see," he said at length, and very slowly.  "It means that I must very
+humbly become your wooer."
+
+"It means that, if it be my honour ever to reward you, I would fain it
+were with the best of me. . . . Send me away from Sabines, my lord, and
+be in no hurry to choose.  Your cousin--what is her name?  Oh, I shall
+not be jealous!"
+
+With a change of tone she led him to talk of the new home he had
+prepared for her--at a farmstead under Wachusett.  He was sending
+thither two of his gentlest thoroughbreds, that she might learn to ride.
+
+"Books, too, you shall have in plenty," he promised.  "But there will be
+a dearth of tutors, I fear.  I could not, for example, very well ask Mr.
+Hichens to leave his cure of souls and dwell with two maiden ladies in
+the wilderness."
+
+She laughed.  Her eyes sparkled already at the thought of learning to
+be a horsewoman.
+
+"I will do without tutors."  She spread her arms wide, as with a
+swimmer's motion, and he could not but note the grace of it.  The palms,
+turned outward and slightly downward, had an eloquence, too, which he
+interpreted.
+
+"I have mewed you here too long.  You sigh for liberty."
+
+She nodded, drawing a long breath.  "I come from the sea-beach,
+remember."
+
+"Say but the word, and instead of the mountain, the beach shall be
+yours."
+
+"No.  I have never seen a mountain.  It will have the sound of waters,
+too--of its own cataracts.  And on the plain I shall learn to gallop,
+and feel the wind rushing past me.  These things, and a few books, and
+Tatty--"  Here she broke off, on a sudden thought.  "My lord, there is a
+question I have put to myself many times, and have promised myself to
+put to you.  Why does Tatty never talk to me about God and religion and
+such things?"
+
+He did not answer at once.
+
+She went on: "It cannot only be because you do not believe in them.
+For Tatty is very religious, and brave as a lion; she would never be
+silent against her conscience."
+
+"How do you know that I don't believe in them?"
+
+She laughed.  "Does my lord truly suppose me so dull of wit? or will he
+fence with my question instead of answering it?"
+
+"The truth is, then," he confessed, "that before she saw you I thought
+fit to tell Miss Quiney what you had suffered--"
+
+"She has known it from the first?  I wondered sometimes.  But oh, the
+dear deceit of her!"
+
+"--And seeing that this same religion had caused your sufferings, I
+asked her to deal gently with you.  She would not promise more than to
+wait and choose her own time.  But Tatty, as you call her, is an
+honourable woman."
+
+Ruth stretched out her hands.
+
+"Ah, you were good--you were good! . . . If only my heart were a glass,
+and you might see how goodness becomes you!"
+
+He took her hands this time, and laying one over another, kissed the
+back of the uppermost, but yet so respectfully that Miss Quiney,
+entering the room just then, supposed him to be merely taking a
+ceremonious leave.
+
+
+For a few minutes he lingered out his call, hat and walking-cane in
+hand, talking pleasantly of his last night's guests, and with a smile
+that assumed his pardon to be granted.  Incidentally Ruth learned how it
+had happened that a chair stood empty for her by Mr. Langton's side.
+It appeared that Governor Shirley himself had called, earlier in the
+evening, to offer his felicitations; and finding the seat on Sir
+Oliver's right occupied by a toper who either would not or could not
+make room, he had with some tact taken a chair at the far end of the
+table and _vis-a-vis_ with his host, protesting that he chose it as the
+better vantage-ground for delivering a small speech.  His speech, too,
+had been neat, happy in phrase, and not devoid of good feeling.  Having
+delivered it, he had slipped away early, on an excuse of official
+business.
+
+Sir Oliver related this appreciatively; and it had, in fact, been one of
+those small courtesies which, among men of English stock, give a grace
+to public life and help to keep the fighting clean.  But in fact also
+(Ruth gathered) the two men did not love one another.  Shirley--able and
+_ruse_ statesman--had some sense of colonial independence, colonial
+ambition, colonial self-respect.  Sir Oliver had none; he was a Whig
+patrician, and the colonies existed for the use and patronage of
+England.  More than a year before, when Massachusetts raised a militia
+and went forth to capture Louisbourg--which it did, to the astonishment
+of the world--the Governor, whose heart was set on the expedition, had
+approached Captain Vyell and privately begged him to command it.  He was
+answered that, having once borne the King's commission, Captain Vyell
+did not find a colonial uniform to his taste.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+CONCERNING MARGARET.
+
+
+He called again, next morning.  He came on horseback, followed by a
+groom.  The groom led a light chestnut mare, delicate of step us a
+dancer, and carrying a side-saddle.
+
+Ruth's ear had caught the sound of hoofs.  She looked forth at her open
+window as Sir Oliver reined up and hailed, frank as a schoolboy.
+
+"Your first riding lesson!" he announced.
+
+"But I have no riding-skirt," she objected, her eyes opening wide with
+delight as they looked down and scanned the mare.
+
+"You shall have one to-morrow."  He swung himself out of saddle and gave
+over his own horse to the groom.  "To-day you have only to learn how to
+sit and hold the reins and ride at a walk."
+
+She caught up a hat and ran downstairs, blithe as a girl should be
+blithe.
+
+
+He taught her to set her foot in his hand and lifted her into place.
+
+"But are you not riding also?" she asked as he took the leading-rein.
+
+"No.  I shall walk beside you to-day . . . Now take up the reins--so; in
+both hands, please.  That will help you to sit square and keep the right
+shoulder back, which with a woman is half the secret of a good seat.
+Where a man uses grip, she uses balance. . . . For the same reason you
+must not draw the feet back; it throws your body forward and off its
+true poise on the hips."
+
+She began to learn at once and intelligently; for, unlike her other
+tutors, he started with simple principles and taught her nothing without
+giving its reason.  He led her twice around the open gravelled space
+before the house, and so aside and along a grassy pathway that curved
+between the elms to the right.  The pathway was broad and allowed him to
+walk somewhat wide of the mare, yet not so wide as to tauten the
+leading-rein, which he held (as she learned afterwards) merely to give
+her confidence; for the mare was docile and would follow him at a word.
+
+"I am telling you the why-and-how of it all," he said, "because after
+this week you will be teaching yourself.  This week I shall come every
+morning for an hour; but on Wednesday you start for Sweetwater Farm."
+
+"And will there be nobody at the Farm to help me," she asked, a trifle
+dismayed.
+
+"The farmer--his name is Cordery--rides, after a fashion.  But he knows
+nothing of a side-saddle, if indeed he has ever seen one."
+
+"Then to trot, canter, and gallop I must teach myself," she thought; for
+among the close plantations of Sabines there was room for neither.
+"If I experiment here, they will find me hanging like Absalom from a
+bough."  But aloud she said nothing of her tremors.
+
+"Dicky sits a horse remarkably well for his age," said Sir Oliver after
+a pause.  "I had some thought to pack him off holidaying with you.
+But the puppy has taken to the water like a spaniel.  He went off to the
+_Venus_ yesterday, and it seems that on board of her he struck up, there
+and then, a close friendship with Harry's lieutenant, a Mr. Hanmer; and
+now he can talk of nothing but rigging and running-gear.  He's crazed
+for a cruise and a hammock.  Also it would seem that he used his time to
+win the affections of Madam Harry; which argues that his true calling is
+not the Navy, after all, but diplomacy."
+
+Ruth sighed inaudibly.  Dicky's companionship would have been
+delightful.  But she knew the child's craze, and would not claim him, to
+mar his bliss--though she well knew that at a word from her he would
+renounce it.
+
+"Diplomacy?" she echoed.
+
+"Well," said Sir Oliver, looking straight before him.  "Sally--my
+brother insists on calling her Sally--appears to have her head fixed
+well on her shoulders: she looks--as you must not forget to look--
+straight between the horse's ears.  But your young bride is apt to be
+the greatest prude in the world.  And Dicky, you see--"
+
+Her hand weighed on the rein and brought the mare to a halt.
+
+"Tell me about Dicky?"
+
+"About Dicky?" he repeated.
+
+"About his mother, then."
+
+"She is dead," he answered, staring at the mare's glossy shoulder and
+smoothing it.  His brows were bent in a frown.
+
+"Yes . . . he told me that, in the coach, on our way from Port Nassau.
+It was the first thing he told me when he awoke.  We had been rolling
+along the beach for hours in the dark; and I remember how, almost at the
+end of the beach, it grew light inside the coach and he opened his
+eyes. . . ."
+
+She did not relate that the child had awaked in her arms.
+
+"It was the first thing Dicky told me," she repeated; "and the only
+thing about--her.  I think it must be the only thing he knows about
+her."
+
+"Probably; for she died when he was born and--well, as the child grew
+up, it was not easy to explain to him.  Other folks, no doubt--the
+servants and suchlike--were either afraid to tell or left it to me as my
+business.  And I am an indolent parent."  He paused and added,
+"To be quite honest, I dare say I distasted the job and shirked it."
+
+"You did wrongly then," murmured Ruth, and her eyes were moist.
+"Dicky started with a great hole in his life, and you left it unfilled.
+Often, being lonely, he must have needed to know something of his
+mother.  You should have told him all that was good; and that was not
+little, I think, if you had loved her?"
+
+"I loved her to folly," he answered at length, his eyes still fixed on
+the mare's shoulder; "and yet not to folly, for she was a good woman: a
+married woman, some three or four years older than I and close upon
+twenty years younger than her husband, who was major of my regiment."
+
+"You ran away with her? . . . Say that he was not your friend."
+
+"He was not; and you may put it more correctly that I helped her to run
+away from him.  He was a drunkard, and in private he ill-used her
+disgustingly. . . . Having helped her to escape I offered him his
+satisfaction.  He refused to divorce her; but we fought and I ran him
+through the arm to avoid running him through the body, for he was a
+shockingly bad swordsman."
+
+Ruth frowned.  "You could not marry her?"
+
+"No, and to kill him was no remedy; for if I could not marry an
+undivorced woman, as little could she have married her husband's
+murderer."  He hunched his shoulders and concluded, "The dilemma is not
+unusual."
+
+"What happened, then?"
+
+"My mother paid twenty calls upon the Duke of Newcastle, and after the
+twentieth I received the Collectorship of this port of Boston.
+It was exile, but lucrative exile.  My good mother is a Whig and devout;
+and there is nothing like that combination for making the best of both
+worlds.  Indeed you may say that at this point she added the New World,
+and made the best of all three.  She assured me that its solitudes would
+offer, among other advantages, great opportunity for repentance.
+'Of course,' she said, 'if you must take the woman, you must.'"
+
+He ended with a short laugh.  Ruth did not laugh.  Her mind was
+masculine at many points, but like a true woman she detested ironical
+speech.
+
+"That is Mr. Langton's way of talking," she said; "and you are using it
+to hide your feelings.  Will you tell me her name?--her Christian name
+only?"
+
+"She was called Margaret--Margaret Dance.  There is no reason why you
+should not have it in full."
+
+"Is there a portrait of her?"
+
+"Yes; as a girl she sat to Kneller--a Dryad leaning against an oak.
+The picture hangs in my dressing-room."
+
+"It should have hung, rather, in Dicky's nursery; which," she added,
+picking up and using the weapon she most disliked, "need not have
+debarred your seeing it from time to time."
+
+He glanced up, for he had never before heard her speak thus sharply.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he agreed; "though, for me, I let the dead bury
+the dead.  I have no belief, remember, in any life beyond this one.
+Margaret is gone, and I see not how, being dead, she can advantage me or
+Dicky."
+
+His words angered Ruth and at the same time subtly pleased her; and on
+second thoughts angered her the more for having pleased.  She thought
+scorn of herself for her momentary jealousy of the dead; scorn for
+having felt relief at his careless tone; and some scorn to be soothed by
+a doctrine that, in her heart, she knew to be false.
+
+For the moment her passions were like clouds in thunder weather,
+mounting against the wind; and in the small tumult of them she let
+jealousy dart its last lightning tongue.
+
+"I am not learned in these matters, my lord.  But I have heard that man
+must make a deity of something.  The worse sort of unbeliever, they say,
+lives in the present and burns incense to himself.  The better sort,
+having no future to believe in, idolises his past."
+
+"Margaret is dead," he repeated.  "I am no sentimentalist."
+
+She bent her head.  To herself she whispered.  "He may not idolise his
+past, yet he cannot escape from it." . . . And her thoughts might have
+travelled farther, but she had put the mare to a walk again and just
+then her ears caught an unaccustomed sound, or confusion of sounds.
+
+At the end of the alley she reined up, wide-eyed.
+
+A narrow gateway here gave access to what had yesterday been a sloping
+paddock where Miss Quiney grazed a couple of cows.  To-day the cows had
+vanished and given way to a small army of labourers.  Broad strips of
+turf had vanished also and the brown loam was moving downhill in scores
+of wheel-barrows, to build up the slope to a level.
+
+Sir Oliver marked her amazement and answered it with an easy laugh.
+
+"The time is short, you see, and already we have wasted half an hour of
+it unprofitably. . . . These fellows appear to be working well."
+
+She gazed at the moving gangs as one who, having come by surprise upon a
+hive of bees, stands still and cons the small creatures at work.
+
+"But what is the meaning of it?"
+
+"The meaning?  Why, that for this week I am your riding-master, and that
+by to-morrow you will have a passable riding-school."
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+THE PROSPECT.
+
+
+This happened on a Thursday.  On the following Wednesday, a while before
+day-break, he met her on horseback by the gate of Sabines, and they rode
+forth side by side, ahead of the coach wherein Miss Quiney sat piled
+about with baggage, clutching in one hand a copy of Baxter's _Saint's
+Everlasting Rest_ and with the other the ring of a canary-cage.  (It was
+Dicky's canary, and his first love-offering.  Yesterday had been Ruth's
+birthday--her eighteenth--and under conduct of Manasseh he had visited
+Sabines to wish her "many happy returns" and to say good-bye.)
+
+Sir Oliver would escort the travellers for twelve miles on their way, to
+a point where the inland road broke into cart-tracks, and the tracks
+diverged across a country newly disafforested and strewn with jagged
+stumps among which the heavy vehicle could by no means be hauled.
+Here Farmer Cordery was to be in waiting with his light tilt-covered
+wagon.
+
+They had started thus early because the season was hot and they desired
+to traverse the open highway and the clearings and to reach the forest
+before the sun's rays grew ardent.  Once past the elms of Sabines their
+road lay broad before them, easy to discern; for the moon, well in her
+third quarter, rode high, with no trace of cloud or mist.  So clear she
+shone that in imagination one could reach up and run a finger along her
+hard bright edge; and under moon and stars a land-breeze, virginally
+cool, played on our two riders' cheeks.  Ungloving and stretching forth
+a hand, Ruth felt the dew falling, as it had been falling ever since
+sundown; and under that quiet lustration the world at her feet and
+around her, unseen as yet, had been renewed, the bee-ravished flowers
+replaced with blossoms ready to unfold, the turf revived, reclothed in
+young green, the atmosphere bathed, cleansed of exhausted scents, made
+ready for morning's "bridal of the earth and sky ":--
+
+"_As a vesture shall he fold them up. . . . In them hath he set a
+tabernacle for the sun; which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his
+chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course_."
+
+Darkling they rode, and in silence, as though by consent.  Ruth had
+never travelled this high way before: it glimmered across a country of
+which she knew nothing and could see nothing.  But no shadow of fear
+crossed her spirit.  Her heart was hushed; yet it exulted, because her
+lord rode beside her.
+
+They had ridden thus without speech for three or four miles, when her
+chestnut blundered, tripped, and was almost down.
+
+"All right?" he asked, as she reined up and steadied the mare.
+
+"Yes. . . . She gave me a small fright, though."
+
+"What happened?  It looked to me as if she came precious near crossing
+her feet.  If she repeats that trick by daylight I'll cast her--as I
+would to-morrow, if I were sure."
+
+"Is it so bad a trick?"
+
+"It might break your neck.  It would certainly bring her down and break
+her knees."
+
+"Oh!" Ruth shivered.  "Do you mean that it would actually break them?"
+she asked in her ignorance.
+
+He laughed.  "Well, that's possible; but I meant the skin of the knee."
+
+"That would heal, surely?"
+
+He laughed again.  "A horse is like a woman--" he began, but checked
+himself of a sudden.  She waited for him to continue, and he went on,
+"It knocks everything off the price, you see.  Some won't own a horse
+that has once been down; and any knowledgeable man can tell, at a
+glance.  It is the first thing he looks for."
+
+She considered for a moment.  "But if the mark had been a scratch only--
+and the scratch had healed--might she not be as good a horse as ever?"
+
+"It would damage her price, none the less."
+
+"But you are not a horse-dealer.  Would _you_ value a horse by its
+selling price?"
+
+He laughed.  "I am afraid," he owned, "that I should be ruled by other
+men's opinions.  Your connoisseur does not collect chipped chinaware.
+. . . There's the chance, too, that the mare, having once fallen, will
+throw herself again by the same trick."
+
+"And women are like horses," thought Ruth as they rode on.  The night
+was paling about them, and she watched the rolling champaign as little
+by little it took shape, emerging from the morning mist and passing from
+monochrome into faint colours: for albeit the upper sky was clear as
+ever, mist filled the hollows of the hills and rolled up their sides
+like a smoke.
+
+"Look!" commanded Sir Oliver, reining up and turning in his saddle.
+
+He pointed with his horse-whip.  Behind them, over a tree-clad hill, lay
+a long purple cloud; and above it, while he pointed, the sun thrust its
+edge as it were the rim of a golden paten.  Ruth wheeled her mare about,
+to face the spectacle, and at that moment the cloud parted horizontally
+as though a hand had ripped the veil across.  A flood of gold poured
+through the rent, dazzling her eyes.
+
+The sun mounted and swam free: the upper portion of the veil floated off
+like a wisp and drifted down the wind.  Where the glory had shone, it
+lingered through tint after tint--rose, pale lemon, palest sea-green--
+and so passed into azure and became one with the rest of the heavens.
+
+Sir Oliver withdrew his eyes and sought hers.  "When I find the need of
+faith," he said, "I shall turn sun-worshipper."
+
+"You have never found that need?" she asked slowly.
+
+"Never," he confessed.  "And you?"
+
+"Never as a need.  I mean," she explained, "that though I always
+despised religion--yes, always, even before I came to hate it--I never
+doubted that some wisdom must be at watch and at work all around me,
+ordering the sun and stars, for instance, and separating right from
+wrong.  I just cannot understand how any one can do without a faith of
+that sort: it's as necessary as breath."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "To me one Jehovah's as good as another, as
+unnecessary, and as incredible.  I find it easier to believe that chaos
+hurtled around until it struck out some working balance; that the stars
+learned their places pretty much as men and women are learning theirs
+to-day.  A painful process, I'll grant you, and damnably tedious; but
+they came to it in the end, and so in the end, maybe, will poor
+imitative man.  But," he broke off, "this faith of yours must have
+failed you, once."
+
+She shivered.  "No; I made no claim on it, you see.  Perhaps"--with a
+little smile--"I did not think myself important enough.  I only know
+that, whatever was right, those men were horribly wrong: for it _must_
+be wrong to be cruel.  Then I woke up, and you were beside me--"
+
+She would have added, "How could I doubt, then?"  But her voice failed
+her, and she wheeled about that he might not see her tears.
+
+He, too, turned his horse.  They rode on for a few paces in silence.
+
+"I wish," she said, recovering her voice--"I wish, for your sake, you
+could have felt what I have been feeling since we left Sabines; the
+_goodness_ all about us, watching us out of the night and the stars."
+
+She looked up; but the stars were gone, faded out into daylight.  He
+pushed his horse half a pace ahead, and glanced sideways at her face.
+Tears shone yet in her eyes, and his own, as he quickly averted them,
+fell on a tall mullein growing by the roadside.  Big drops of dew
+adhered upon its woolly leaves and twinkled in the sunshine; and by
+contrast he knew the colour of her eyes--that they were violet and of
+the night--their dew distilled out of such violet darkness as had been
+the quality of one or two Mediterranean nights that lingered among his
+memories of the Grand Tour.  More and more this girl surprised him with
+graces foreign to this colonial soil, graces supposed by him to be
+classical and lost, the appanage of goddesses.
+
+Like a goddess now she lifted an arm and pointed west, as he had pointed
+east.  Ahead of them, to the right of the road, rose a tall hill, wooded
+at the base, broken at the summit by craggy terraces.  Two large birds
+wheeled and hovered above it, high in the blue, fronting the sunlight.
+
+"Eagles, by Jove!" cried Sir Oliver.
+
+Ruth drew a breath and watched them.  She had never before seen an
+eagle.
+
+"Will they have their nest in the cliffs?" she asked.
+
+"Perhaps. . . . No, more likely they come from Wachusett; more likely
+still, from the mountains beyond.  They are here seeking food."
+
+"They do not appear to be seeking food," she said after a pause during
+which she watched their ambits of flight circling and intersecting
+"See the nearest one mounting, and the other lifting on a wider curve to
+meet him above.  One would say they followed some pattern, like folks
+dancing."
+
+"Some act of homage to the sun," he suggested.  "They have come down to
+the sea to meet him--they look over the Atlantic from aloft there--and
+perform in his honour.  Who knows?"
+
+Across Ruth's inner vision there flashed a memory of Mr. Hichens,
+black-suited and bald, bending over his Hebrew Bible and expounding a
+passage of Job: "_Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her
+nest on high?  She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of
+the rock, and the strong place_. . . ."
+
+To herself she said: "If it be so, the eagle's faith is mine; my lord's
+also, perchance, if he but knew it."
+
+Aloud she asked, "Why are the noblest, birds and beasts, so few and
+solitary?"
+
+Sir Oliver laughed.  "You may include man.  The answer is the same, and
+simple: the strong of the earth feed on the weak, and it takes all the
+weaklings to make blood for the few."
+
+She mused; but when she spoke again it was not to dispute with him.
+"You say they look over the sea from aloft there.  Might we have sight
+of it from the top of the hill?"
+
+"Perhaps.  There is plenty of time to make sure before the coach
+overtakes us--though I warn you it will be risky."
+
+"I am not afraid."
+
+They cantered off gaily, plunged into the woods and breasted the slope,
+Sir Oliver leading and threading his way through the undergrowth.
+By-and-by they came to the bed of a torrent and followed it up, the
+horses picking their steps upon the flat boulders between which the
+water trickled.  Some of these boulders were slimed and slippery, and
+twice Sir Oliver reached out a hand and hauled the mare firmly on to her
+quarters.
+
+The belt of crags did not run completely around the hill.  At the back
+of it, after a scramble out of the gully, they came on a slope of good
+turf, and so cantered easily to the summit.
+
+Ruth gave a little cry of delight, and followed it up with a yet smaller
+one of disappointment.  The country lay spread at her feet like a vast
+amphitheatre, ringed with wooded hills.  Across the plain they encircled
+a river ran in loops, and from the crag at the edge of which she stood a
+streamlet emerged and took a brave leap down the hill to join it.
+
+"But where is the sea?"
+
+"That small hill yonder must hide it.  You see it, with its line of
+elms?  If those trees were down, we should see the Atlantic for a
+certainty.  If you like the spot otherwise, I will have them removed."
+
+He said it seriously; but of course she took it for granted that he
+spoke in jest, albeit the jest puzzled her a little.  Indeed when she
+glanced up at him he was smiling, with his eyes on the distant
+landscape.
+
+"The mountain too," he added, "if the trees will not suffice.  Though
+not by faith, it shall be removed."
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+THREE LADIES.
+
+
+"You may smoke," said Dicky politely, setting down his glass.
+
+"Thank you," answered Mr. Hanmer.  "But are you sure?  In my experience
+of houses there's always some one that objects."
+
+Dicky lifted his chin.  "We call this the nursery because it has always
+been the nursery.  But I do what I like here."
+
+Mr. Hanmer had accepted the boy's invitation to pay him a visit ashore
+and help him to rig a model cutter--a birthday gift from his father; and
+the pair had spent an afternoon upon it, seated upon the floor with the
+toy between them and a litter of twine everywhere, Dicky deep in the
+mysteries of knots and splices, the lieutenant whittling out miniature
+blocks and belaying-pins with a knife that seemed capable of anything.
+
+They had been interrupted by Manasseh, bearing a tray of refreshments--
+bread and honey and cakes, with a jug of milk for the one; for the other
+a decanter of brown sherry with a dish of ratafia biscuits.  The repast
+was finished now, and Dicky, eager to fall to work again, feared that
+his friend might make an excuse for departing.
+
+Mr. Hanmer put a hand in his pocket and drew out his pipe.
+
+"Your father would call it setting a bad example, I doubt?"
+
+To this the boy, had he been less loyal, might have answered that his
+father took no great stock in examples, bad or good.  He said:
+"Papa smokes.  He says it is cleaner than taking snuff; and so it is, if
+you have ever seen Mr. Silk's waistcoat."
+
+So Mr. Hanmer filled and lit his pipe, doing wonders with a pocket
+tinder-box.  Dicky watched the process gravely through every detail,
+laying up hints for manhood.
+
+"I ought to have asked you before," he said.  "Nobody comes here ever,
+except Mr. Silk and the servants."
+
+Hapless speech and bootless boast!  They had scarcely seated themselves
+to work again, the lieutenant puffing vigorously, before they heard
+footsteps in the corridor, with a rustle of silks, and a hand tapped on
+the door.
+
+It opened as Dicky jumped to his feet, calling "Come in!"--and on the
+threshold appeared Mrs. Vyell, in walking dress.  Dicky liked "Mrs.
+Harry," as he called her; but he stared in dismay at two magnificent
+ladies in the doorway behind her, and more especially at the elder of
+the twain, who, attired in puce-coloured silk, stiff as a board, walked
+in lifting a high patrician nose and exclaiming,--
+
+"Fah! What a detestable odour!"
+
+Mr. Hanmer hurriedly hid his pipe and scrambled up, stammering an
+apology.  Dicky showed more self-possession.  He gave a little bow to
+the two strangers and turned to Mrs. Harry.
+
+"I am sorry, Aunt Sarah.  But I didn't know, of course, that you were
+coming and bringing visitors."
+
+"To be sure you did not, child," said Mrs. Harry with a good-natured
+smile.  She was a cheerful, commonsensical person, pleasant of face
+rather than pretty, by no means wanting in wit, and radiant of
+happiness, just now, as a young woman should be who has married the man
+of her heart.  "But let me present you--to Lady Caroline Vyell and Miss
+Diana."
+
+Dicky bowed again.  "I am sorry, ma'am," he repeated, addressing Lady
+Caroline.  "Mr. Hanmer has put out his pipe, you see, and the window is
+open."
+
+Lady Caroline carried an eyeglass with a long handle of tortoise-shell.
+Through it she treated Dicky to a deliberate and disconcerting scrutiny,
+and lowered it to turn and ask Mrs. Harry,--
+
+"You permit him to call you 'Aunt Sarah'?"
+
+Mrs. Harry laughed.  "It sounds better, you will admit, than
+'Aunt Sally,' and don't necessitate my carrying a pipe in my mouth.
+Oh yes," she added, with a glance at the boy's flushed face, "Dicky and
+I are great friends.  In any one's presence but Mr. Hanmer's I would say
+'the best of friends.'"
+
+Lady Caroline turned her eyeglass upon Mr. Hanmer.  "Is this--er--
+gentleman his tutor?" she asked.
+
+The question, and the sight of the lieutenant's mental distress, set
+Mrs. Harry laughing again.  "In seamanship only.  Mr. Hanmer is my
+husband's second-in-command and one of the best officers in the Navy."
+
+"I consider smoking a filthy habit," said Lady Caroline.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," murmured Mr. Hanmer.
+
+The odious eyeglass was turned upon Dicky again.  He, to avoid it,
+glanced aside at Miss Diana.  He found Miss Diana less unpleasant than
+her mother, but attractive only by contrast.  She was a tall woman,
+handsome but somewhat haggard, with a face saved indeed from peevishness
+by its air of distinction, but scornful and discontented.  She had been
+riding, and her long, close habit became her well, as did her
+wide-brimmed hat, severely trimmed with a bow of black ribbon and a
+single ostrich feather.
+
+"Diana," said Lady Caroline, but without removing her stony stare,
+"the child favours his mother."
+
+"Indeed!" the girl answered indifferently.  "I never met her."
+
+"Oliver has her portrait somewhere, I believe.  We must get him to show
+it to us.  A toast in her day, and quite notably good-looking--though
+after a style I abominate."  She turned to Mrs. Harry and explained:
+"One of your helpless clinging women.  In my experience that sort does
+incomparably the worst mischief."
+
+"Oh, hush, please!" murmured Mrs.  Harry.
+
+But Lady Caroline came of a family addicted to speaking its thoughts
+aloud.  "Going to sea, is he?  Well, on the whole Oliver couldn't do
+better.  The boy's position here must be undesirable in many ways; and
+at sea a lad stands on his own feet--eh, Mr.--I did not catch your
+name?"
+
+"Hanmer, ma'am."
+
+"Well, and isn't it so?"
+
+"Not altogether, ma'am," stammered Mr. Hanmer.  "If ever your ladyship
+had been in the Navy--"
+
+"God bless the man!" Lady Caroline interjected.
+
+"--you'd have found that--that a good deal of kissing goes by favour,
+ma'am."
+
+"H'mph!" said Lady Caroline when Mrs.  Harry had done laughing.
+"The child will not lack protection, of course.  Whether 'tis to their
+credit or not I won't say, but the Vyells have always shown a conscience
+for--er--obligations of this kind."
+
+
+On her way back to Sabines, where Sir Oliver had installed them,
+Lady Caroline again commended to her daughter his sound sense in packing
+the child off to sea.
+
+"They will take 'em at any age, I understand; and Mrs. Vyell, it
+appears, has no objection."
+
+"She is not returning to Carolina by sea."
+
+"No; but she can influence her husband.  I must have another talk with
+her . . . a pleasant, unaffected creature, and, for a sailor's wife,
+more than presentable.  One had hardly indeed looked to find such
+natural good manners in this part of the world.  Her mother was a
+Quakeress, she tells me: yet she laughs a good deal, which I had
+imagined to be against their principles.  She doesn't say 'thee' and
+'thou' either."
+
+"I heard her _tutoyer_ her husband."
+
+"Indeed? . . . Well," Lady Caroline went on somewhat inconsequently,
+"Harry is a lucky man.  When one thinks of the dreadful connections
+these sailors are only too apt to form--though one cannot wholly blame
+them, their opportunities being what they are . . . But, as I was
+saying, Oliver couldn't have done better, for himself or for the child.
+At home the poor little creature could never be but a question; and
+since he has this craze for salt water--curious he should resemble his
+uncle in this rather than his father--one may almost call it
+providential. . . . At the same time, my dear, I wish you could have
+shown a little more interest."
+
+"In the child?  Why?"
+
+"Really, Diana, I wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt
+questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family,
+remember.  He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put himself
+out not a little--"
+
+"I can believe _that_," said Diana brusquely.
+
+"And it says much.  All men are selfish, and Oliver as a youth was very
+far from being an exception.  I find the change in him significant of
+much. . . . At the same time you have mixed enough in the world, dear,
+to know that young men will be young men, and this sort of thing
+happens, unfortunately."
+
+"If, mamma, you suppose I bear Cousin Oliver any grudge because of this
+child--"
+
+"I am heartily glad to hear you say it.  There should be, with us women,
+a Christian nicety in dealing with these--er--situations; in retrospect,
+at all events.  A certain--disgust, shall we say?--is natural, proper,
+even due to our sex: I should think the worse--very far the worse--of my
+Diana did she not feel it.  But above all things, charity! . . . And let
+me tell you, dear, what I could not have told at the time, but I think
+you are now old enough to know that such an experience is often the best
+cure for a man, who thereafter, should he be fortunate in finding the
+right woman, anchors his affections and proves the most assiduous of
+husbands.  This may sound paradoxical to you--"
+
+"Dear mamma"--Diana hid a smile and a little yawn together--"believe me
+it does not."
+
+"Such a man, then," pursued Lady Caroline, faintly surprised, "is likely
+to be the more appreciative of any kindness shown to--er--what I may
+call the living consequence of his error."
+
+"Why not say 'Dicky' at once, mamma, and have done with it."
+
+"To Dicky, then, if you will; but I was attempting to lay down the
+general rule which Dicky illustrates.  A little gentle notice taken of
+the child not only appeals to the man as womanly in itself, but
+delicately conveys to him that the past is, to some extent, condoned.
+He has sown his wild oats: he is, so to speak, _range_; but he is none
+the less grateful for some assurance--"
+
+Lady Caroline's discourse had whiled the way back to Sabines, to the
+drawing-room; and here Diana wheeled round on her with the question,
+sudden and straight,--
+
+"Do you suppose that Cousin Oliver is _range_, as you call it?"
+
+"My child, we have every reason to believe so."
+
+"Then what do you make of this?"  The girl took up a small volume that
+lay on the top of the harpsichord, and thrust it into her mother's
+hands.
+
+"Eh?  What?"  Lady Caroline turned the book back uppermost and spelled
+out the title through her eyeglass.  "'Ovid'--he's Latin, is he not?
+Dear, I had no notion that you kept up your studies in that--er--
+tongue."
+
+"I do not.  I have forgot what little I learned of it, and that was next
+to nothing.  But open the book, please, at the title-page."
+
+"I see nothing.  It has neither book-plate nor owner's signature."
+(Indeed Ruth never wrote her name in her books.  She looked upon them as
+her lord's, and hers only in trust.)
+
+"The title-page, I said.  You are staring at the flyleaf."
+
+"Ah, to be sure--" Lady Caroline turned a leaf.  "Is this what you
+mean?"  She held up a loose sheet of paper covered with writing.
+
+"Read it."
+
+The elder lady found the range of her eyeglass and conned--in silence
+and without well grasping its purport--the following effusion:--
+
+    Other maids make Love a foeman,
+       Lie in ambush to defeat him;
+       I alone will step to meet him
+    Valiant, his accepted woman.
+          Equal, consort in his car,
+          Ride I to his royal war.
+
+        Victims of his bow and targe,
+    Yet who toyed with lovers' quarrels,
+    Envy me my braver laurels!
+        Lord! thy shield of shadow large
+        Lift above me, shout the charge!
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I make nothing of it," owned Lady Caroline.  "It appears to be poetry
+of a sort--probably some translation from the Latin author."
+
+"You note, at least, that the handwriting is a woman's?"
+
+"H'm, yes," Lady Caroline agreed.
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Dear, you speak in riddles."
+
+"It _is_ a riddle," said Diana.  "Take the first letter of each line,
+and read them down, in order."
+
+"O, L, I, V, E, R  V, Y, E, L, L," spelled Lady Caroline, and lowered
+her eyeglass.  "My dear, as you say, this cannot be a mere coincidence."
+
+"_Did_ I say that?" asked Diana.
+
+"But who can it be, or have been? . . . That Dance woman, perhaps?
+She was infatuated enough."
+
+"It was not she," said Diana positively.
+
+"_Somebody_ can tell us. . . . That Mr. Silk, for instance."
+
+"Ah, you too think of him?"
+
+"As a clergyman--and to some extent a boon companion of Oliver's--he
+would be likely to know--"
+
+"--And to tell?  You are quite right, mamma: I have asked him."
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+
+THE ESPIAL.
+
+
+Ruth Josselin came down from the mountain to the stream-side, where, by
+a hickory bush under a knoll, her mare Madcap stood at tether.
+Slipping behind the bush--though no living soul was near to spy on her--
+she slid off her short skirt and indued a longer one more suitable for
+riding; rolled the discarded garment into a bundle which she strapped
+behind the saddle; untethered the mare, and mounted.
+
+At her feet the plain stretched for miles, carpeted for the most part
+with short sweet turf and dotted in the distance with cattle, red in the
+sunlight that overlooked the mountain's shoulder.  These were Farmer
+Cordery's cattle, and they browsed within easy radius of a clump of elms
+clustered about Sweetwater Farm.  Some four miles beyond, on the far
+edge of the plain, a very similar clump of elms hid another farm,
+Natchett by name, in like manner outposted with cattle; and these were
+the only habitations of men within the ring of the horizon.
+
+The afternoon sun cast the shadow of the mountain far across this plain,
+almost to the confines of Sweetwater homestead.  A breeze descended from
+the heights and played with Ruth's curls as she rested in saddle for a
+moment, scanning the prospect; a gentle breeze, easily out-galloped.
+Time, place, and the horse--all promised a perfect gallop; her own
+spirits, too.  For she had spent the day's hot hours in clambering among
+the slopes, battling with certain craggy doubts in her own mind; and
+with the afternoon shadow had come peace at heart; and out of peace a
+certain careless exultation.  She would test the mare's speed and enjoy
+this hour before returning to Tatty's chit-chat, the evening lamp, and
+the office of family prayer with which Farmer Cordery duly dismissed his
+household for the night.
+
+She pricked Madcap down the slope, and at the foot of it launched her on
+the gallop.  Surely, unless it be that of sailing on a reach and in a
+boat that fairly heels to the breeze, there is no such motion to catch
+the soul on high.  The breeze met the wind of her flight and was beaten
+by it, but still she carried the moment of encounter with her as a wave
+on the crest of which she rode.  It swept, lifted, rapt her out of
+herself--yet in no bodiless ecstasy; for her blood pulsed in the beat of
+the mare's hoofs.  To surrender to it was luxury, yet her hand on the
+rein held her own will ready at call; and twice, where Sweetwater brook
+meandered, she braced herself for the water-jump, judging the pace and
+the stride; and twice, with many feet to spare, Madcap sailed over the
+silver-grey riband.
+
+All the while, ahead of her, the mountain lengthened its shadow.
+She overtook and passed it a couple of furlongs short of the homestead;
+passed it--so clearly defined it lay across the pasture--with a firmer
+hold on the rein, as though clearing an actual obstacle. . . . She was
+in sunlight now.  Before her a wooden fence protected the elms and their
+enclosure.  At the gate of it by rule she should have drawn rein.
+
+She had never leapt a gate; had attempted a bank now and then, but
+nothing serious.  Her success at the water-jumps tempted her; and the
+mare, galloping with her second wind, seemed to feel the temptation
+every whit as strongly.
+
+In the instant of rising to it Ruth wondered what Farmer Cordery would
+say if she broke his top bar. . . . The mare's feet touched it lightly--
+rap, rap.  She was over.
+
+A wood pile stood within the gate to the left, hiding the house.  She
+had passed the corner of it before she could bring Madcap to a
+standstill, and was laughing to herself in triumph as she glanced
+around.
+
+Heavens!
+
+The house was of timber, with a deep timbered verandah; and in the
+verandah, not twenty paces away, beside a table laid for coffee, stood
+Tatty with three ladies about her--three ladies all elegantly dressed
+and staring.
+
+Ruth's hand went up quickly, involuntarily, to her dishevelled hair; and
+at the same moment the little lady, as though making a bolt from
+captivity, stepped down from the verandah and came shuffling across the
+yard towards her, almost at a run.
+
+"Ruth, dear!" she panted.  "Oh, dear, dear! I am so glad you have come!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter?"  The girl, scenting danger, faced it.
+She swung herself down from the saddle-crutch, picked up her skirt, and
+taking Madcap's rein close beside the curb, walked slowly up to the
+verandah.  "Have they been bullying you, dear?" she asked in a low quiet
+voice.
+
+"They have come all this way to see us--Lady Caroline Vyell, and Miss
+Diana; yes, and Mrs. Captain Vyell--'Mrs. Harry,' as Dicky calls her.
+They have ferreted us out, somehow--and the questions they have been
+asking!  I think, dear--I really think--that in your place I should walk
+Madcap round to her stable and run indoors for a tidy-up before facing
+them.  A minute or two to prepare yourself--I can easily make your
+excuses."
+
+"And a moment since you were calling me to come and deliver you!"
+answered Ruth, still advancing.  "Present me, please."
+
+Little Miss Quiney, turning and running ahead, stammered some words to
+Lady Caroline, who paid no heed to them or to her but kept her eyeglass
+lifted and fixed upon Ruth.  Miss Diana stood a pace behind her mother's
+shoulder; Mrs. Harry, after a glance at the girl, turned and made
+pretence to busy herself with the coffee-table.
+
+"So _you_ are the young woman!" ejaculated Lady Caroline.
+
+"Am I?" said Ruth quietly, and after a profound curtsy turned sideways
+to the mare.  "A lump of sugar, Tatty, if you please. . . . I thank
+you, ma'am--" as Mrs. Harry, anticipating Miss Quiney, stepped forward
+with a piece held between the sugar-tongs.  "And I think she even
+deserves a second, for clearing the yard gate."
+
+She fed the gentle creature and dismissed her.  "Now trot around to your
+stall and ask one of the boys to unsaddle you!"  She stood for ten
+seconds, may be, watching as the mare with a fling of the head trotted
+off obediently.  Then she turned again and met Mrs. Harry's eyes with a
+frank smile.
+
+"It is the truth," she said.  "We cleared the gate.  Come, please, and
+admire--"
+
+Mrs. Harry, in spite of herself, stepped down from the verandah and
+followed.  The others stood as they were, planted in stiff disapproval.
+
+The girl led Mrs.  Harry to the corner of the wood pile.  "Admire!" she
+repeated, pointing with her riding-switch; and then, still keeping the
+gesture, she sank her voice and asked quickly, "Why are you here?
+You have a good face, not like the others.  Tell me."
+
+"Lady Caroline--" stammered Mrs. Harry, taken at unawares.  "She has a
+right, naturally, to concern herself--"
+
+"Does _he_ know?"
+
+"Sir Oliver?  No--I believe not. . . . You see, the Vyells are a great
+family, and 'family' to them is a tremendous affair--a religion almost.
+Whatever touches one touches all; especially when that one happens to be
+the head of his house."
+
+"Is that how Captain Vyell--how your husband--feels it?--No, please keep
+looking towards the gate.  I mean no harm by these questions, and you
+will not mind answering them, I hope?  It gives me just a little more
+chance of fair play."
+
+"To tell you the truth," said Mrs. Harry, pretending to study the jump,
+"I looked at you because I could not help it.  You are an
+extraordinarily beautiful woman."
+
+"Thank you," answered Ruth.  "But about 'Captain Harry,' as we call him?
+I suppose he, as next of kin, is most concerned of all?"
+
+"He did not tell me about you, if that is what you mean; or rather he
+told me nothing until I questioned him.  Then he owned that there was
+such a person, and that he had seen you.  But he does not even know of
+this visit; he imagines that Lady Caroline is taking me for a pleasure
+trip, just to view the country."
+
+Ruth turned towards the house.  "You will tell him, of course," she said
+gravely, "when you return to the ship."
+
+"I--I suppose I shall," confessed Mrs.  Harry, and added, "There's one
+thing.  You may suppose that, as his wife, I am as much concerned as
+any--perhaps more than these others.  But I don't want you to think that
+I suggested hunting you up."
+
+"I do not think anything of the sort.  In fact I am sure you did not."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Ruth had a mind to ask "Who, then, had brought them?" but refrained.
+She had guessed, and pretty surely.
+
+"Well," she said with half a laugh, "you have been good and given me
+time to recover.  It's heavy odds, you see, and--and I have not been
+trained for it, exactly.  But I feel better.  Shall we go back and face
+them?"
+
+"One moment, again!"  Mrs. Harry's kindly face hung out signals of
+distress.  "It's heavy odds, as you say.  Everything's against you.
+But the Lord knows I'm a well-meaning woman, and I'd hate to be unjust.
+If only I could be sure--if only you would tell me--"
+
+Ruth stood still and faced her.
+
+"Look in my eyes."
+
+Mrs. Harry looked and was convinced.  "But you love him," she murmured;
+"and he--"
+
+"Ah, ma'am," said Ruth, "I answer you one question, and you would ask me
+another!"
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+
+LADY CAROLINE.
+
+
+She walked back to the verandah.
+
+"I understand," she said, "that Lady Caroline wishes a word with me."
+
+With a slight bow she led the way through a low window that opened upon
+the Corderys' best parlour, through that apartment, and across a passage
+to the door of a smaller room lined with shelves--formerly a stillroom
+or store-chamber for home-made wines, cordials, preserves, but now
+converted into a boudoir for her use.  Its one window looked out upon
+the farmyard, now in shadow, and a farther doorway led to the dairy.
+It stood open, and beyond it the eye travelled down a vista of cool
+slate flags and polished cream-pans.
+
+On the threshold Ruth stood aside to let Lady Caroline enter; followed,
+and closed the door; stepped across and closed the door of the dairy.
+Lady Caroline meanwhile found a seat, and, lifting her eyeglass, studied
+at long range the library disposed upon the store shelves.
+
+"We had best be quite frank," said she, as Ruth came back and stood
+before her.
+
+"If you please."
+
+"Of course it is all very scandalous and--er--nauseating, though I dare
+say you are unable to see it in that light.  I merely mention it in
+justice to myself, lest you should mistake me as underrating or even
+condoning Sir Oliver's conduct.  You will guess, at any rate, how it
+must shock my daughter."
+
+"Yes," said Ruth; and added, "Why did you bring her?"
+
+The girl's attitude--erect before her, patient, but unflinching--had
+already gone some way to discompose Lady Caroline.  This straight
+question fairly disconcerted her; the worse because she could not
+quarrel with the tone of it.
+
+"I wish," she answered, "my Diana to face the facts of life, ugly though
+they may be."  As if aware that this hardly carried conviction--for,
+despite herself, something in Ruth began to impress her--she shifted
+ground and went on, "But we will not discuss my daughter, please.
+The point is, this state of things cannot continue.  It may be hard for
+you--I am trying to take your view of it--but what may pass in a young
+man of blood cannot be permitted when he succeeds to a title and the--
+er--headship of his family.  It becomes then his duty to give that
+family clean heirs.  I put it plainly?"
+
+Ruth bent her head for assent.
+
+"Oliver Vyell, as no doubt you know, has already been mixed up in one
+entanglement, and has a child for reminder."
+
+"Oh, but Dicky is the dearest child!  The sweetest-natured, the
+cleanest-minded!  Have you not seen him yet?"
+
+Lady Caroline stared.  As little as royalty did she understand being
+cross-questioned.  It gave her a quite unexpected sense of helplessness.
+
+"I fear you do not at all grasp the position," she said severely.
+"After all, I had done better to disregard your feelings, whatever they
+may be, and come to terms at once."
+
+"No," answered Ruth, musing; "I do not understand the position; but I
+want to, more than I can say--and your ladyship must help me, please."
+She paused a moment.  "In New England we prize good birth, good
+breeding, and what we too call 'family'; but I think the word must mean
+something different to you who live at home in England."
+
+"I should hope so!" breathed Lady Caroline.
+
+"It must be mixed up somehow with the great estates you have held for
+generations and the old houses you have lived in.  No," she went on, as
+Lady Caroline would have interrupted; "please let me work it out in my
+own way, and then you shall correct me where I am wrong. . . . I have
+often thought how beautiful it must be to live in such an old house, one
+that has all its corners full of memories--the nurseries most of all--
+of children and grandchildren, that have grown up in gentleness and
+courtesy and honour--"
+
+"Good Lord!" Lady Caroline interjected.  "You mean"--Ruth smiled--
+"that I am talking like a book?  That is partly my fault and partly our
+New England way; because, you see, we have to get at these things from
+books.  Does it, after all, matter how--if only we get it right? . . .
+There's a tradition--what, I believe, you call an 'atmosphere'--and you
+are proud of it and very jealous."
+
+"If you see all this," said Lady Caroline, mollified, "our business
+should be easier, with a little common sense on your part."
+
+"And it knits you," pursued Ruth, "into a sort of family conspiracy--
+the womenkind especially--like bees in a hive.  The head of the family
+is the queen bee, and you respect him amazingly; but all the same you
+keep your own judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey him,
+for his own and the family's good.  I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in
+coming here; or, at least, deceived him and came here without his
+knowledge."
+
+"I am not accustomed," said Lady Caroline, rising, "to direct my conduct
+upon my nephew's advice."
+
+"That, more or less, is what I was trying to say.  Dear madam, let me
+warn you to do so, if you would manage his private affairs."
+
+They faced each other now, upon declared war.  Lady Caroline's neck was
+suffused to a purplish red behind the ears.  She gasped for speech.
+Before she found it there came a tapping on the door, and Diana Vyell
+entered.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+
+DIANA VYELL.
+
+
+"Have you not finished yet?"  Miss Diana closed the door, glanced from
+one to the other, and laughed with a genial brutality.  "Well, it's time
+I came.  Dear mamma, you seem to be getting your feathers pulled."
+
+There was a byword among the Whig families at home (who, by
+intermarrying, had learned to gauge another's weaknesses), that
+"the Pett medal showed ill in reverse."  Miss Diana had heard the
+saying.  As a Vyell--the Vyells were, before all things, critical--she
+knew it to be just, as well as malicious; but as a dutiful daughter she
+ought to have remembered.
+
+As it was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury.  The poor lady
+pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word
+for the very inelegant exhibition),--
+
+"A strumpet!  One that has been whipped through the public streets."
+
+There was a dreadful pause.  Miss Diana, the first to recover herself,
+stepped back to the door and held it open.
+
+"You must excuse dear mamma," she said coolly.  "She has overtired
+herself."
+
+But Lady Caroline continued to point a finger trembling with passion.
+
+"Her price!" she shrilled.  "Ask her that.  It is all these creatures
+ever understand!"
+
+Miss Diana slipped an arm beneath her elbow and firmly conducted her
+forth.  Ruth, hearing the door shut, supposed that both women had
+withdrawn.  She sank into a chair, and was stretching out her arms over
+the table to bury her face in them and sob, when the voice of the
+younger said quietly behind her shoulder,--
+
+"It is always hard, after mamma's tantrums, to bring the talk back to a
+decent level.  Nevertheless, shall we try?"
+
+Ruth had drawn herself up again, rallying the spirit in her.  It was
+weary, bruised; but its hour of default was not yet.  Her voice dragged,
+but just perceptibly, as she answered Miss Vyell, who nodded, noting her
+courage and wondering a little,--
+
+"I am sorry."
+
+"Sorry?"
+
+"Yes; it was partly my fault--very largely my fault.  But your mother
+angered me from the first by assuming--what she had no right to assume.
+It was horrible."
+
+Diana Vyell seated herself, eyed her steadily for a moment, and nodded
+again.  "Mamma can be _raide_, there's no denying.  She was wrong, of
+course; that's understood. . . . Still, on the whole you have done
+pretty well, and had your revenge."
+
+Ruth's eyes widened, for this was beyond her.
+
+Diana explained.  "You have let us make the most impossible fools of
+ourselves.  It may have been more by luck than by good management, as
+they say; but there it is.  Now don't say that revenge isn't sweet.
+. . . I've done you what justice I can; but if you pose as an angel from
+heaven, it's asking too much."  While Ruth considered this, she added,
+"I don't know if you can put yourself in mamma's place for a moment; but
+if you can, the hoax is complete enough, you'll admit."
+
+"I had rather put myself in yours."
+
+Their eyes met, and Diana's cheek reddened slightly.  "You are an
+extraordinary girl," she said, "and there seems no way but to be honest
+with you.  Unfortunately, it's not so easy, even with the best will in
+the world.  Can you understand _that?_"
+
+"If you love him--"
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake spare me!" Diana bounced up and stepped to the
+window.  The red on her cheek had deepened, and she averted it to stare
+out at the poultry in the yard.  "You are unconscionable," she said
+after a while, with a vexed laugh.  "I have known my cousin Oliver since
+we were children together.  Really, you know, you're almost as brutal as
+mamma. . . . The truth?  Let me see.  Well, the truth, so near as I can
+tell it, is that I just let mamma have her head, and waited to see what
+would happen.  This was her expedition, and I took no responsibility for
+it from the first."
+
+"I understand." Ruth, watching the back of her head, spoke musingly,
+with pursed lips.
+
+"Excuse me"--Diana wheeled about suddenly--"you cannot possibly
+understand just yet.  This last was my tenth season in London.
+One grows weary . . . and then in the confusion of papa's death--
+It comes to this, that I was ready for anything to get out of the old
+rut.  I--I--shall we say that I just cast myself on fate?  It may have
+been at the back of my head that whatever happened might be worse, but
+couldn't well be wearier.  But if you think I had any design of setting
+my cap at him--"
+
+"Hush!" said Ruth softly.  "I had no such thought."
+
+"And if you had, you would not have cared," said Diana, eyeing her again
+long and steadily.  "Mamma--you really must forgive mamma.  If you knew
+them, there was never a Pett that was not _impayable_.  Mamma spoke of
+asking your price. . . . As if, for any price, he would give you up!"
+
+"I have no price to ask, of him or of any one."
+
+"No, and you need have none.  I am often very disagreeable," said Diana
+candidly, "but my worst enemy won't charge me with disparaging good
+looks in other women."
+
+"May I use your words," said Ruth, with a shy smile, "and say that you
+have no need?"
+
+"Rubbish!  And don't talk like that to me, sitting here and staring you
+in the face, or I may change my mind again and hate you!  I never said I
+didn't _envy_. . . . But there, the fault was mine for speaking of
+'good looks' when I should have said, 'Oh, you wonder!'" broke off
+Diana.  "May I ask it--one question?"
+
+"Twenty, if you will."
+
+"It is a brutal one; horrible; worse even than mamma's."
+
+"As I remember," said Ruth gravely, "Lady Caroline asked none.  It was I
+who did the questioning, and--and I am afraid that led to the trouble."
+
+Diana laughed, and after a moment the two were laughing together.
+
+"But what is your question?"
+
+"No, I cannot ask it now." Diana shook her head, and was grave again.
+
+"Please!"
+
+"Well, then, tell me--"  She drew back, slightly tilting her chin and
+narrowing her eyes, as one who contemplates a beautiful statue or other
+work of art.  "Is it true they whipped _that_, naked, through the
+streets?"
+
+Ruth bent her head.
+
+"It is true."
+
+"I wonder it did not kill you," Diana murmured.
+
+"I am strong; strong and very healthy. . . . It broke something inside;
+I hardly know what.  But there's a story--I read it the other day--about
+a man who wandered in a dark wood, and came to a place where he looked
+into hell.  Just one glimpse.  He fainted, and when he awoke it was
+daylight, with the birds singing all around him.  But he was changed
+more than the place, for he listened and understood all the woodland
+talk--what the birds were saying, and the small creeping things.
+And when he went back among men he answered at random, and yet in a way
+that astonished them; for he saw and heard what their hearts were
+saying, at the back of their talk. . . . Of course," smiled Ruth,
+"I am not nearly so wonderful as that.  But something has happened to
+me--"
+
+Diana nodded slowly.  "--Something that, at any rate, makes you terribly
+disconcerting.  But what about Oliver?  They tell me that he browbeat
+the magistrates and insisted on sitting beside you."
+
+Ruth's eyes confirmed it.  They were moist, yet proud.  They shone.
+
+"I had always," mused Diana, "looked on my cousin as a carefully selfish
+person, even in the matter of that Dance woman.  You must have turned
+his head completely."
+
+"It was not _that_."
+
+Diana stared, the low tone was so earnest, vehement even.  "Well, at all
+events I know him well enough to assure you he will never give you up."
+
+"Ah!" Ruth drew a long sigh over the joy in her heart, and, a second
+later, hated herself for it.
+
+"--until afterwards."
+
+"Afterwards?" the girl echoed.
+
+"Afterwards.  My cousin Oliver is a tenacious man, and you would seem to
+have worked him up to temporary heroics.  But I beg you to reflect that
+what for you must have been a real glimpse into hell"--Diana shivered--"
+was likely enough for him no more than an occasion for posing.
+Fine posing, I'll allow." She paused.  "It didn't degrade him, actually.
+He's a Vyell; and as another of 'em I may tell you there never was a
+Vyell could face out actual degradation.  You almost make me wish we
+were capable of it.  To lose everything--"  She paused again.
+"You make it more alluring, somehow, than the prospect of endless London
+seasons--Diana Vyell, with a fading face and her market missed--that's
+how they'll put it--and, _pour me distraire_ this side of the grave, the
+dower-house, a coach, a pair of wind-broken horses, and the consolations
+of religion!  If we were capable of it. . . . But where's the use of
+talking?  We're Vyells.  And--here's my point--Oliver is a Vyell.
+He may be strong-willed, but--did mamma happen to talk at all about the
+'Family'?"
+
+"I think," answered Ruth with another faint flash of mirth, "it was I
+who asked her questions about it."
+
+Diana threw out her hands, laughing.  "You are invincible!  Well, I
+cannot hate you; and I've given you my warning.  Make him marry you; you
+can if you choose, and now is your time.  If there should be children--
+legitimate children, O my poor mamma!--there will be the devil to pay
+and helpless family councils, all of which I shall charge myself to
+enjoy and to report to you.  If there should be none, we're safe with
+Mrs. Harry.  She'll breed a dozen. . . . Am I coarse? Oh, yes, the
+Vyells can be coarse! while as for the Petts--but you have heard dear
+mamma."
+
+
+They talked together for a few minutes after this.  But their talk shall
+not be reported: for with what do you suppose it dealt?
+
+--With Dress.  As I am a living man, with Dress.
+
+In the midst of it, and while Ruth listened eagerly to what Diana had to
+tell of London fashions, Lady Caroline's voice was heard summoning her
+daughter away.
+
+Diana rose.  "It is close upon dusk," she said, "and Mrs. Harry has
+command of the waggon.  She drives very well--not better than I perhaps;
+but she understands this country better.  All the same, the road--call
+it an apology for one--bristles with tree-stumps, and mamma's temper
+will be unendurable if the dark overtakes us before we reach the next
+farm.  I forget its name."
+
+"Natchett?"
+
+"Yes, Natchett.  We spend the night there."
+
+"But why did not Mr. Silk drive you over?"
+
+"Did mamma tell you he was escorting us?"
+
+"No.  I guessed."
+
+"Nasty little fellow.  Sloppy underlip.  I cannot bear him.  Can you?"
+
+"I do not like him."
+
+"It's a marvel to me that my cousin tolerates him. . . . By the way, I
+shall not wonder if he--Oliver, I mean--loses his temper heavily when he
+learns of our expedition, and bundles us straight back to Europe.
+I warned mamma."
+
+"So--I am afraid--did I."
+
+"Yes?"--and again they laughed together.
+
+"My poor parent! . . . She assured me that her duty to the Family was
+her armour of proof.  Hark!  She's calling again."
+
+
+They found Lady Caroline impatient in the verandah.  Ruth, to avoid
+speech with her, walked away to the waggon.  Farmer Cordery stood at the
+horse's head, and Mrs. Harry beside the step, ready to mount and take
+the reins.
+
+But for some reason Mrs. Harry delayed to mount.  "Is it you?" she said
+vaguely and put out a hand, swaying slightly.  Ruth caught it.
+
+"Are you ill?"
+
+They were alone together for a moment and hidden from the farmer, who
+stood on the far side of the horse.
+
+"Nothing--a sudden giddiness.  It's quite absurd, too; when I've been as
+strong as a donkey all my life."
+
+Ruth asked her a question. . . . Some word of woman's lore, dropped
+years ago by her own silly mother, crossed her memory.  (They had been
+outspoken, in the cottage above the beach.)  It surprised Mrs. Harry,
+who answered it before she was well aware, and so stood staring,
+trembling with surmise.
+
+"God bless you!"  Ruth put out an arm on an impulse to clasp her waist,
+but checked it and beckoned instead to Diana.
+
+"_You_ take the reins and drive," she commanded.
+
+Diana questioned her with a glance, but obeyed and climbed on board.
+Ruth was helping Mrs. Harry to mount after her when Lady Caroline thrust
+herself forward, by the step.
+
+Now since Diana had hold of the reins, and Mrs. Harry was for the moment
+in no condition to lend a hand, and since Lady Caroline would as lief
+have touched leprosy as have accepted help from Ruth Josselin, her
+ascent into the van fell something short of dignity.  The rearward of
+her person was ample; she hitched her skirt in the step, thus exposing
+an inordinate amount of not over-clean white stocking; and, to make
+matters worse, Farmer Cordery cast off at the wrong moment and stood
+back from the horse's head.
+
+"Losh! but I'm sorry," said he, gazing after the catastrophic result.
+"Look at her, there, kickin' like a cast ewe. . . ."  He turned a
+serious face on Ruth and added, "Vigorous, too, for her years."
+
+
+Ruth, returning to the verandah, bent over little Miss Quiney, who sat
+unsmiling, with rigid eyes.  "Dear Tatty,"--she kissed her--"were they
+so very dreadful?"
+
+Miss Quiney started as if awaking from a nightmare.
+
+"That woman--darling, whatever her rank, I _cannot_ term her a lady!--"
+
+"Go on, dear."
+
+"I cannot.  Sit beside me, here, for a while, and let me feel my arm
+about you. . . ."
+
+They sat thus for a long while silent, while twilight crept over the
+plain and wrapped itself about the homestead.
+
+Ruth was thinking.  "If I forfeit this, it will be hardest of all."
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+
+MR. SILK PROPOSES.
+
+
+Farmer Cordery had six grown sons--Jonathan, George, William, Increase,
+Homer, and Lemuel--the eldest eight-and-twenty, the youngest sixteen.
+All were strapping fellows, and each as a matter of course had fallen
+over head and ears in love with Ruth.
+
+They were good lads and knew it to be hopeless.  She had stepped into
+their home as a goddess from a distant star, to abide with them for a
+while.  They worshipped, none confessing his folly; but it made them her
+slaves, and emulous to shine before her as though she had been a queen
+of tournay.  Because of her presence (it must be sadly owned)
+challengings, bickerings, even brotherly quarrels, disturbed more and
+more the patriarchal peace of Sweetwater Farm.  "I dunno what's come
+over the boys," their father grumbled; "al'ays showing off an'
+jim-jeerin'.  Regilar cocks on a dunghill.  A few years agone I'd 've
+cured it wi' the strap; but now there's no remedy."
+
+William had challenged his eldest brother Jonathan to "put" a large
+round-shot that lay in the verandah.  Their father had brought it home
+from the capture of Louisbourg as a souvenir.  Jonathan and George had
+served at Louisbourg too, in the Massachusetts Volunteers; but William,
+though of age to fight, had been left at home to look after the farm and
+his mother.  It had been a sore disappointment at the time; now that
+Jonathan and George had taken on a sudden to boast, it rankled.
+Hence the challenge.  The three younger lads joined in.  If they could
+not defeat their seniors, they could at least dispute the mastery among
+themselves.  Thereupon in all seriousness (ingenuous youths!) they voted
+that Miss Josselin should be asked to umpire.
+
+
+The contest took place next morning after breakfast, in a paddock beyond
+the elms, with Ruth for umpire and sole spectator.  Nothing had been
+said to the farmer, who was fast losing his temper with "these derned
+wagerings," and might have come down with a veto that none dared
+disobey.  He had ridden off, however, at sun-up to the mountain, to look
+after the half-wild hogs he kept at pasture among the woods at its base.
+
+Ruth measured out the casts conscientiously.  In no event would the
+young men have disputed her arbitrament; but, as it happened, this
+nicety was thrown away.  Jonathan's "put" of forty feet--the shot
+weighed close upon sixteen pounds--easily excelled the others', who were
+sportsmen and could take a whipping without bad blood or dispute.
+The winner crowed a little, to be sure; it was the New England way.
+But Lemuel the youngest, who had outgrown his strength, had made a
+deplorable "put," and the rest jeered at him, to relieve their feelings.
+The boy fired up.  "Oh, have your laugh!" he blazed, with angry tears in
+his eyes.  "But when it comes to running, there's not one of you but
+knows I can put circles round him."
+
+"Take you on, this moment," answered up young Increase.  "Say, boys,
+we'll all take him on."
+
+Jonathan had no mind for any such "foolishness."  He had won, and was
+content; and running didn't become the dignity of a grown man.
+"We didn't run at Louisbourg, I guess." George echoed him.  George could
+out-tire even Jonathan at wood-cutting, but had no length of leg.
+
+But Ruth having compassion on the boy's hurt feelings, persuaded them.
+They could refuse no straight request of hers.  She pointed to an
+outlying elm that marked the boundary of the second pasture field beyond
+the steading.  This should be the turning-post, and would give them a
+course well over half a mile, with a water-jump to be crossed twice.
+She ranged them in line, and dropped her handkerchief for signal.
+
+They were off.  She stood with the sun at her back and watched the race.
+George, of the short legs, broad shoulders, and bullet head, was a
+sprinter (as we call it nowadays) and shot at once to the front, with
+Homer not far behind, and Increase disputing the third place with
+Lemuel.  Jonathan and William made scarcely a show of competing.
+The eldest lad, indeed, coming to the brook, did not attempt to jump,
+but floundered heavily through it, scrambled up the farther bank, and
+lumbered on in hopeless pursuit.  It was here that Lemuel's long easy
+stride asserted itself, and taking first place he reached the tree with
+several yards' lead.
+
+"He will win at his ease now," said Ruth to herself; and just at that
+moment her ears caught the sound of a horse's footfall.  She turned; but
+the sun shone full in her eyes, and not for a second or two did she
+recognise her visitor, Mr. Silk.
+
+He was on horseback, and, stooping from his saddle, was endeavouring
+just now--but very unhandily--to unhasp the gate with the crook of his
+riding-whip.  Ruth did not offer to go to his help.
+
+He managed it at last, thrust the horse through by vigorous use of his
+knees, and was riding straight up to the house.  But just then he caught
+sight of her, changed his course, and came towards her at a walk.
+
+"Ah, good-morning!" he called.
+
+"Good-morning."
+
+He dismounted.  "Thought I'd ride over and pay you a call.  The ladies
+will not be starting on their return journey for another couple of
+hours.  So I borrowed a horse."
+
+"Evidently."
+
+"There's something wrong with him, I doubt."  Mr. Silk was disagreeably
+red and moist.
+
+"I dare say he is not used to being ridden mainly--or was it wholly?--on
+the curb."
+
+He grinned.  "Well, and I'm not used to riding, and that's a fact.
+But"--he leered the compliment--"there are few dangers I would not
+brave for a glance from Miss Josselin."
+
+"You flatter me, sir.  But I believe you braved a worse, yesterday,
+without claiming that reward."
+
+"Ah!  You mean that Sir Oliver will be angry when he gets wind of our
+little expedition?  The ladies persuaded me--Adam's old excuse; I can
+deny nothing to the sex. . . . But what have we yonder?  A race?"
+
+"It would appear so."
+
+"A very hollow one, if I may criticise.  That youngster moves like a
+deer. . . . And what is his reward to be?--another glance of these
+bright eyes?  Ah, Miss Josselin, you make fools--and heroes--of us all!"
+
+Ruth turned from him to applaud young Lemuel, who came darting into the
+enclosure.
+
+"See old Jonathan!" panted the boy, looking back and laughing.
+"That's how they ran at Louisbourg. . . . Miss Josselin, you should have
+made it a mile and I'd have shown you some broken-winded ones."
+He laughed again and turned in apology to Mr. Silk.  "I'll take your
+horse to stable, sir, if you'll let me catch my breath."
+
+The others came straggling up, a little abashed at sight of the
+stranger, but not surprised out of their good manners.
+
+"A clergyman?" said Jonathan.  "My father will be home before sundown,
+sir.  He will be proud if you can stay and have dinner with us."
+
+Mr. Silk explained that he had ridden over from Natchett to call on Miss
+Josselin and had but an hour to spare.  They insisted, however, that he
+must eat before leaving, and they led away his horse to bait, leaving
+him and Ruth together.
+
+"Will you come into the house?" she asked.
+
+"With your leave we can talk better here. . . . So you guessed that I
+made one of the party?  Miss Vyell told me."
+
+"It was not difficult to guess."
+
+"And you admired my courage?"
+
+Ruth's eyebrows went up to a fine arch.  "When you were careful to keep
+in hiding?"
+
+"From motives of delicacy, believe me.  It occurred to me that Lady
+Caroline might--er--speak her mind, and I had no wish to be distressed
+by it, or to distress you with my presence."
+
+"I thank you for so much delicacy, sir."
+
+"But Lady Caroline--let us do her justice!  She calls a spade a spade,
+but there's no malice in it.  You stood up to her, I gather.  We've been
+discussing you this morning, and you may take my word she don't think
+the worse of you for it.  They're sportsmen, these high-born people.
+I come of good family myself, and know the sort.  'Slog and take a
+slogging; shake hands and no bad blood'--that's their way.  The fine old
+British way, after all."  Mr. Silk puffed his cheeks and blew.
+
+"You have been discussing me with Lady Caroline?"
+
+"Yes," he answered flatly.  "Yes," he repeated, and rolled his eyes.
+"All for your good, you know.  Of course she started by calling you
+names and taking the worst for granted.  But I wouldn't have _that_."
+
+"Go on, sir, if you please."
+
+"I wouldn't have it, because I didn't believe it.  If I did--hang it!--
+I shouldn't be here.  You might do me that justice."
+
+"Why _are_ you here?"
+
+"I'm coming to that; but first I want you to open your eyes to the
+position.  You may think it's all very pretty and romantic and like Fair
+Rosamond--without the frailty as yet: that's granted.  But how will it
+end?  Eh?  That's the question, if you'd bring your common sense to
+bear on it."
+
+"Suppose you help me, sir," said Ruth meekly.
+
+"That's right.  I'm here to help, and in more ways than one. . . .
+Well, I know Sir Oliver; Lady Caroline knows him too; and if it's
+marriage you're after, you might as well whistle the moon.  You don't
+believe me?" he wound up, for she was eyeing him with an inscrutable
+smile.
+
+She lifted her shoulder a little.  "For the sake of your argument we
+will say that it is so."
+
+"Then what's to be the end? I repeat.  Look here, missy.  We spar a bit
+when we meet, you and I; but I'd be sorry to see you go the way you're
+going.  'Pon my honour I would.  You're as pretty a piece of flesh as a
+man could find on this side of the Atlantic, and what's a sharp tongue
+but a touch of spice to it?  Piquancy, begad, to a fellow like me! . . .
+And--what's best of all, perhaps--you'd pass for a lady anywhere."
+
+She shrank back a pace before this incredible vulgarity; but not even
+yet did she guess the man's drift.
+
+"So I put it to you, why not?" he continued, flushing as he came to the
+point and contemplated his prey.  "You don't see yourself as a parson's
+wife, eh?  You're not the cut.  But for that matter _I'm_ not the
+ordinary cut of parson.  T'other side of the water we'd fly high.
+They'll not have heard of Port Nassau, over there, nor of the little
+nest at Sabines; and with Lady Caroline to give us a jump-off--I have
+her promise.  She runs a Chapel of her own, somewhere off St. James's.
+Give me a chance to preach to the fashionable--let me get a foot inside
+the pulpit door--and, with you to turn their heads in the Mall below,
+strike me if I wouldn't finish up a Bishop!  _La belle Sauvage_--they'd
+put it around I'd found my beauty in the backwoods, and converted her.
+. . . Well, what d'ye say?  Isn't that a prettier prospect than to end
+as Sir Oliver's cast-off?"
+
+She put a hand backwards, and found a gate-rail to steady her.
+
+"Ah! . . . How you dare!" she managed to murmur.
+
+"Dare?  Eh! you're thinking of Sir Oliver?"  He laughed easily.
+"Lady Caroline will put _that_ all right.  He'll be furious at first, no
+doubt; my fine gentleman thinks himself the lion in the fable--when he
+shares out the best for himself, no dog dares bark.  But we'll give him
+the go-by, and afterwards he can't squeal without showing himself the
+public fool. . . . Squeal?  I hope he will.  I owe him one."
+
+At this moment young George and Increase Cordery came past the far
+corner of the house with their team, their harness-chains jingling as
+they rode afield.  At sight of them a strong temptation assailed Ruth,
+but she thrust it from her.
+
+"Sir"--she steadied her voice--"bethink you, please, that I have only to
+lift a hand and those two, with their brothers, will drag you through
+the farm pond."
+
+Before he could answer, she called to them.  As they turned and walked
+their horses towards her she glanced at Mr. Silk, half mischievously in
+spite of her fierce anger.  He was visibly perturbed; but his face,
+mottled yellow with terror, suggested loathing rather than laughter.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you, but will you please fetch Mr. Silk's horse?
+He must return at once."
+
+When they were gone she turned to him.
+
+"I am sorry to dismiss you thus, sir, after the--the honour you have
+done me; the more sorry because you will never understand."
+
+Indeed--his scare having passed--he was genuinely surprised, indignant.
+
+"I understand this much," he answered coarsely, "that I've offered to
+make you an honest woman, but you prefer to be--"  The word was on his
+tongue-tip, but hung fire there.
+
+She had turned her back on him, and stood with her arms resting for
+support on the upper rail of the gate.  She heard him walk away towards
+the stable-yard. . . . By-and-by she heard him ride off--heard the click
+of the gate behind him.  A while after this she listened, and then bowed
+her face upon her arms.
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+
+THE CHOOSING.
+
+
+The minutes passed, and still she leaned there.  At long intervals, when
+a sob would not be repressed, her shoulders heaved and fell.  But it was
+characteristic of Ruth Josselin throughout her life that she hated to
+indulge in distress, even when alone.  As a child she had been stoical;
+but since the day of her ordeal in Port Nassau she had not once wept in
+self-pity.  She had taught herself to regard all self-pity as shameful.
+
+She made no sound.  The morning heat had increased, and across it the
+small morning noises of the farm were borne drowsily--the repeated
+strokes of a hatchet in the backyard, where young Lemuel split logs; the
+voice of Mrs. Cordery, also in the backyard, calling the poultry for
+their meal of Indian corn; the opening and shutting of windows as rooms
+were redded and dusted; lastly, Miss Quiney's tentative touch on the
+spinet.  Sir Oliver in his lordly way had sent a spinet by cart from
+Boston; and Tatty, long since outstripped by her pupil, had a trick of
+picking out passages from the more difficult pieces of music and
+"sampling" them as she innocently termed it--a few chords now and again,
+but melodies for the most part, note by note hesitatingly attempted with
+one finger.
+
+For a while these noises fell on Ruth's ear unheeded.  Then something
+like a miracle happened.
+
+Of a sudden either the noises ceased or she no longer heard them.
+It was as if a hush had descended on the farmstead; a hush of
+expectancy.  Still leaning on the gate, she felt it operate within
+her--an instantaneous calm at first, soothing away the spirit's anguish
+as though it were ointment delicately laid on a bodily wound.  Not an
+ache, even, left for reminder! but healing peace at a stroke, and in the
+hush of it small thrills awaking, stirring, soft ripples scarcely
+perceptible, stealing, hesitating, until overtaken by reinforcements of
+bliss and urged in a flood, bathing her soul.
+
+_He_ was near!  He must be here, close at hand!
+
+She lifted her head and gazed around.  For minutes her closed eyeballs
+had been pressed down upon her arms, and the sunlight played tricks with
+her vision.  Strange hues of scarlet and violet danced on the sky and
+around the fringes of the elms.
+
+But he was there!  Yes, beyond all doubting it was he. . . .
+
+He had ridden in through the gateway on his favourite Bayard, and with a
+led horse at his side.  He was calling, in that easy masterful voice of
+his, for one of the Cordery lads to take the pair to stable.
+Lemuel came running.
+
+In the act of dismounting he caught sight of her and paused to lift his
+hat.  But before dismissing the horses to stable he looked them over, as
+a good master should.
+
+He was coming towards her. . . . Three paces away he halted, and his
+smile changed to a frown.
+
+"You are in trouble?"
+
+"It has passed.  I am happy now; and you are welcome, my lord."
+
+She gave him her hand.  He detained it.
+
+"Who has annoyed you?  Those women?"
+
+She shook her head.  "You might make a better guess, for you must have
+met him on the way.  Mr. Silk was here a while ago."
+
+"Silk?"
+
+"And he--he asked me to marry him."
+
+"The hound!  But I don't understand.  Silk here?  I see the game; he
+must have played escort to those infernal women. . . . Somehow I hadn't
+suspected it, and Lady Caroline kept that cat in the bag when I
+surprised her at Natchett an hour ago.  I wonder why?"
+
+Ruth had a shrewd guess; but, fearing violence, forbore to tell it.
+
+He went on: "But what puzzles me more is, how I missed meeting him."
+
+In truth the explanation was simple enough.  Mr. Silk, turning the
+corner of the lane, where it bent sharply around Farmer Cordery's
+wood-stacks, had chanced to spy Sir Oliver on a rise of the road to the
+eastward, and had edged aside and taken cover behind the stacks.  He was
+now making for Natchett at his best speed.
+
+"A while ago, you say?  How long ago?  The thief cannot have gone far--"
+Sir Oliver looked behind him.  Clearly he had a mind to call for his
+horse again and to pursue.
+
+But Ruth put out a hand.  "He is not worth my lord's anger."
+
+For a moment he stood undecided, then broke into a laugh.
+"Was he riding?"
+
+"He was on horseback, to be more exact."
+
+"Then he'll find it a stony long way back to Boston."  He laughed again.
+"You see, I've been worrying myself, off and on, about that trick of
+Madcap's--I'll be sworn she came within an ace of crossing her legs that
+day.  I'd a mind to ride over and bring you Forester--he's a soberer
+horse, and can be trusted at timber.  I'd resolved on it, in short, even
+before my brother Harry happened to blurt out the secret of Lady
+Caroline's little expedition.  Soon as I heard that, I put George the
+groom on Forester, and came in chase. . . . I find her ladyship at
+Natchett, and after some straight talking I put George in charge of the
+conspirators, with instructions to drive them home.  They chose to say
+nothing of Silk, and I didn't guess; so now the rogue must either leg it
+back or gall himself on a waggon-horse."
+
+"You worried yourself about me?"
+
+"Certainly.  You don't suppose I want my pupil to break her neck?"
+
+"You do Madcap injustice.  Why, yesterday she jumped--she almost flew--
+this very gate on which I am leaning."
+
+"The more reason--" he began, and broke off.  His tone had been light,
+but when he spoke again it had grown graver, sincerer.  "It is a fact
+that I worried about you, but that is not all the reason why I am here.
+The whole truth is more selfish. . . . Ruth, I cannot do without you."
+
+She put up a hand, leaning back against the gate as though giddy.
+
+"But why?" he urged, as she made no other response.  "Is it that you
+still doubt me--or yourself, perhaps?"
+
+"Both," she murmured.  "It is not so easy as you pretend."  Bliss had
+weakened her for a while, but the weakness was passing.
+
+"Those women have been talking to you.  I can engage, whatever they
+said, I gave it back to 'em with interest.  They sail by the next ship.
+. . . But what did they say?"
+
+"_They say.  What say they? Let them say_," Ruth quoted, her lips
+smiling albeit her eyes were moist.  "Does it matter what they said?"
+
+"No; for I can guess.  However the old harridan put it, you were asked
+to give me up; and, after all, everything turns on our answer to that.
+I have given you mine.  What of yours?"  He stepped close.  "Ruth, will
+you give me up?"
+
+She put out her hands as one groping, sightless, and in pain.
+
+"Ah, you are cruel! . . . You know I cannot."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+
+
+
+THE BRIDALS.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+BETROTHED.
+
+
+Sir Oliver rode back to Boston that same evening.  Ruth had stipulated
+that his promise to her folk in the beach cottage still held good; that
+when the three years were out, and not a day before, she would return to
+them and make her announcement.  Meanwhile, although the coast would
+soon be clear of her enemies and he desired to have her near, she begged
+off returning to Sabines.  Here at Sweetwater Farm she could ride, with
+the large air about her and freedom to think.  It was not that she
+shirked books and tutors.  She would turn to them again, by-and-by.
+But at Sweetwater she could think things out, and she had great need of
+thinking.
+
+He yielded.  He was passionately in love and could deny her nothing.
+He would ride over and pay his respects once a week.
+
+So he took his leave, and Ruth abode with the Corderys and Miss Quiney.
+Disloyal though she felt it, she caught herself wishing, more than once,
+that her lord could have taken dear Tatty back with him to Boston.
+
+I desire to depict Ruth Josselin here as the woman she was, not as an
+angel.
+
+Now Tatty, when Sir Oliver had led Ruth indoors and presented her as his
+affianced wife, had been taken aback; not scandalised, but decidedly--
+and, for so slight a creature, heavily--taken aback.  It is undoubted
+that she loved Ruth dearly; nay, so dearly that in a general way no
+fortune was too high to befall her darling.  What dreams she had
+entertained for her I cannot tell.  Very likely they had been at once
+splendid and vague.  Miss Quiney was not worldly-wise, yet her wisdom
+did not transcend what little she knew of the world.  She had great
+notions of Family, for example.  She had imagined, may be--still in a
+vague way--that Sir Oliver would some day provide his _protegee_ with a
+mate of good, or at least sufficient, Colonial birth.  She had been
+outraged by Lady Caroline's suggestions.  Now this, while it
+triumphantly refuted them, did seem to show that Lady Caroline had not
+altogether lacked ground for suspicion.
+
+In fine, the dear creature received a shock, and in her flurry could not
+dissemble it.
+
+Sir Oliver did not perceive this.  In the first flush of conquest all
+men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant.  No woman is.  Miss Quiney's arms
+did not suddenly go out to Ruth.  Ruth noted it.  She was just: she
+understood.  But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember
+indelibly whatever small thing happens at this crisis of their lives.
+
+In the end Miss Quiney stretched forth her arms; but at first she seemed
+to shrivel and grow very small in her chair.  Nor can her first comment
+be called adequate,--
+
+"Dear sir--oh, but excuse me!--this is so sudden!"
+
+Later, when she and Ruth were left alone, she explained, still a little
+tremulously, "You took me all of a heap, my dear!  I can hardly realise
+it, even now. . . . Such a splendid position!  You will go to London,
+I doubt not; and be presented at Court; and be called Lady Vyell. . . .
+Have you thought of the responsibilities?"
+
+She had, and she had not.  Her own promised splendours, the command of
+wealth and of a great household--this aspect of the future was blank to
+her as yet.  But another presented itself and frightened her: it engaged
+her conscience in doubts even when she shook it free of fears.
+The Family--that mysterious shadow of which Lady Caroline no doubt
+showed as the ugliest projection!  Ruth was conscientious.  She divined
+that behind Lady Caroline's aggressiveness the shadow held something
+truly sacred and worth guarding; something impalpable and yet immensely
+solid; something not to be defied or laughed away because inexplicable,
+but venerable precisely because it could not be explained; something not
+fashioned hastily upon reason, but built by slow accretion, with the
+years for its builders--mortared by sentiments, memories, traditions,
+decencies, trivialities good and bad, even (may be) by the blood of
+foolish quarrels--but founded and welded more firmly, massed more
+formidably, than any structure of mere reason; and withal a temple
+wherein she, however chastely, might never serve without profaning it.
+
+I do most eagerly desire you, at this point in her story, to be just to
+Ruth Josselin.  I wish you to remember what she had suffered, in the
+streets, at the hands of self-righteous folk; to understand that it had
+killed all religion in her, with all belief in its rites, but not the
+essential goodness of her soul.
+
+She at any rate, and according to the light given her, was incurably
+just.  Weighing on the one hand her love and Oliver Vyell's, on the
+other the half-guessed injury their marriage might do to him and to
+others of his race; weighing them not hastily but through long hours of
+thought: carrying her doubts off to the hills and there considering them
+in solitude, under the open sky; casting out from the problem all of
+self save only her exceeding love; this strange girl--made strange by
+man's cruelty--decided to give herself in due time, but to exact no
+marriage.
+
+Why should she?  The blessing of a clergyman meant nothing to her, as
+she was sure it meant nothing to her lover.  Why should she tie him a
+day beyond the endurance of his love?  Beyond the death of the thing
+itself what sanctity could live in its husk?  And, moreover, in any
+event was she not his slave?
+
+So she reasoned: and let the reader call her reasoning by any name he
+will.  By some standards it was wicked; by others wrong.  It forgot one
+of the strongest arguments against itself, as she was in time to prove.
+But let none call her unchaste.
+
+
+After certain weeks she brought her arguments to him; standing before
+him, halting in her speech a little, but entreating him with eyes as
+straight as they were modest.  Her very childishness appealed against
+her arguments.
+
+He listened, marvelled, and broke into joyous laughter.  He would have
+none of it.  Why, she was fit to be a queen!--a thousand times too good
+for him. His family?  Their prejudices should fall down before her and
+worship.  As little as she did he set store by rites of the Church or
+believe in them: but, as the world went, to neglect them would be to
+stint her of the chief honour.  Was this fair to him, who desired to
+heap honours upon her and would stretch for them even beyond his power?
+
+His passion, rather than his arguments, overbore her.  That passion
+rejuvenated him.  Once or twice it choked his voice, and her heart
+leapt; for she was a sensible girl and, remembering the dead Margaret
+Dance, had schooled herself to know that what was first love with her,
+drenching her heart with ecstasy, could never be first love with him.
+Yet now and again the miracle declared itself and instead of a lord,
+commanding her, he stood before her a boy: and with a boy's halting
+speech--ah, so much dearer than eloquence!
+
+Beyond a doubt he was over head and ears in love.  He was honest, too,
+in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her.  In Boston, Mr.
+Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of
+morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a
+slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile
+that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired
+ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked.
+Already on a hillside between Boston and Sweetwater Farm--the hill
+itself could be seen from the farmstead, but not their operations, which
+lay on the far side--three hundred labourers were toiling in gangs,
+levelling, terracing, hewing down forest trees, laying foundations.
+Already ships were heading for Boston Harbour with statuary and wrought
+marble in their holds, all to beautify a palace meet for Oliver Vyell's
+bride.  Thus love wrought in him, in a not extraordinary way if we allow
+for his extraordinary means.  He and Ruth, between them, were beginning
+to sing the eternal duet of courtship:--
+
+    _He_.--Since that I love, this world has grown;
+      Yea, widens all to be possest.
+    _She_--Since that I love, it narrows down
+      Into one little nest.
+
+    _He_.--Since that I love, I rage and burn
+      O'erwhelming Nineveh with Rome!
+    _She_.--In vain! in vain! Fond man return--
+      Such doings be at home!
+
+He had reached an age to know himself in his own despite.  He was no
+boy, to dream of building or overthrowing empires.  But he could build
+his love a palace.  His friend Batty Langton bore with all this energy
+and smiled wisely.
+
+Ruth guessed nothing of these preparations.  But his vehemence broke
+down her scruples, overbore and swept away what she had built in hours
+of patient thinking.  She yielded: she would be married, since he willed
+it.
+
+But the debate had been; and it left Tatty, with her maxims and
+taken-for-granted practicalities, hard to endure at times.
+
+"The outfit?" Tatty would suggest.  "At this distance from civilisation
+we cannot even begin to take it in hand.  Yet it should be worthy of the
+occasion, and men--speaking with all respect of Sir Oliver--are apt to
+overlook these things.  Dear Ruth, I do not know if you have thought of
+returning to Sabines. . . . So much handier. . . ."
+
+
+Ruth, half-wilfully, refused to think of returning to Sabines.
+
+But if Tatty fussed, the Cordery lads made more than recompense for her
+fussing.  From the hour when, at supper-time, Sir Oliver led Miss
+Josselin into the kitchen, his bride affianced, all discord ceased
+between these young men.  He was their master and patron, and they
+thenceforth were her servants only--her equal champions should
+occasion ever be given.
+
+Thenceforth too, and until the hour when at nightfall she drove away
+from Sweetwater Farm, she was their goddess: and as, while Phoebus
+served shepherd to Admetus, his fellow swains noted that never had
+harvest been so heavy or life so full of sweet and healthy rivalries, so
+these young men, who but once or twice saw Ruth Josselin after the hour
+of her departure, talked in scattered homesteads all their days of that
+good time at Sweetwater, and of the season's wonderful bearings.
+Undoubtedly the winter was a genial one--so genial that scarcely a day
+denied Ruth a bracing ride: the spring that followed seemed to rain and
+shine almost in obedience to Farmer Cordery's evening prayer (and it
+never left the Almighty in doubt of his exact wishes).  Summer came, and
+the young men, emulous but no longer bickering, scythed down prodigious
+swathes; harvest-fall, and they put in their sickles among tall stalk
+and full ear.
+
+Sir Oliver and Ruth watched the harvest.  When all was gathered, the
+young men begged that she would ride home on the last load.
+They escorted her back to the farmstead, walking two-by-two before the
+cart, under the young moon.
+
+Next evening at the same hour she bade them farewell and climbed into a
+light waggon that stood ready, its lamps throwing long shafts of light.
+Horses had been sent on ahead, with two servants for escort, and would
+await her at dawn, far on the road; but to-night she would sleep in the
+waggon, upon a scented bed of hay.  The reason for this belated start
+Sir Oliver kept a secret from her.  There was a certain hill upon the
+way, and he would not have her pass it by daylight.  He had returned
+that morning to Boston; Miss Quiney with him.
+
+Ruth's eyes were moist to leave these good folk.  Farmer Cordery cleared
+his throat and blessed her in parting.  She blessed them in return.
+
+The waggon, after following the Boston road for a while, turned
+northward, bearing her by strange ways and through the night towards
+Port Nassau.
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+THE RETURN.
+
+
+The breakers boomed up the beach, and in the blown spray Old Josselin
+pottered, bareheaded and barefoot.  His eyesight had grown dimmer, but
+otherwise his bodily health had improved, for nowadays he ate food
+enough: and, as for purblindness, why there was no real need to keep
+watch on the sea.  He did it from habit.
+
+Ruth came on him much as Sir Oliver had come on him three years before;
+the roar of the breakers swallowing all sound of Madcap's hoofs until
+she was close at his shoulder.  Now as then he turned about with a
+puzzled face, peered, and lifted his hand a little way as if to touch
+his forehead.
+
+"Your ladyship--" he mumbled, noting only her fine clothes.
+
+"Grandfather!"
+
+She slipped down from saddle and kissed him, in sight of the grooms, who
+had reined up fifty yards away.
+
+"What?  Ruth, is it? . . . Here's news, now, for your mother, poor
+soul!"
+
+"How is she?  Take me to her at once, please."
+
+"Eh! . . . Your mother keeps well enough; though doited, o' course--
+doited.  Properly grown you be, too, I must say. . . . I didn't
+reckernise ye comin' on me like that.  Inches ye've grown."
+
+"And you--well, you look just the same as ever; only fuller and haler."
+
+"Do I?"  The old man gave her in the old way certain details of his
+health.  "But I'm betterin'.  Food's a blessin', however ye come
+by it."
+
+On a sudden, as she read his thought, the very tokens of health in his
+face accused her . . . and, a moment since, she had been merely glad to
+note them.
+
+"Clothes too, ye'll say?  I don't set store by clothes, meself; but a
+fine han'some quean they make of ye.  That's a mare, too!  Cost a
+hundred guineas, I shouldn't wonder. . . . Well, an' how's the gentleman
+keepin'?  Turned into a lord, you told us, in one o' your letters: that,
+or something o' the sort."
+
+"Then at any rate you have read my letters?"
+
+"Why, to be sure.  My old eyes can't tackle 'em; but your mother reads
+'em out, over an' over, an' I tell her what this an' that means, an' get
+the sense into her head somehow."
+
+"Take me to her."  Ruth signalled to the grooms, who came forward.
+They were well-trained servants, recent imports from England, and Sir
+Oliver had billeted them where they could hear no gossip of her history.
+They had kept their distance with faces absolutely impassive while their
+mistress kissed and chatted with this old man, and they merely touched
+their hats, with a "Very good, miss," when she gave over the mare,
+saying she would walk up to the cottage and rest for an hour.
+
+"Oo-oof! the dear old smell!"  Ruth, before she turned, drew in a deep
+breath of it.  There was no one near to observe and liken her, standing
+there with blown tresses and wind-wrapt skirt on the edge of Ocean, to
+the fairest among goddesses, the Sea-born.
+
+She walked up the beach, the old man beside her.
+
+"Ay: you reckernise the taste of it, I dessay.  But you'd not come back
+to it, not you. . . . It must be nigh upon dinner: my belly still keeps
+time like a clock.  M'ria shall cook us a few clams.  Snuffin' won't
+bring it back like clams."  He chuckled, supposing he had made a joke.
+
+Her mother had caught sight of them from the window where she sat as
+usual watching the sea.  As they climbed the slope, picking their way
+along loosely-piled wreckwood, she opened the door and stood at first
+fastening a clean apron and then rubbing her palms up and down upon it,
+as though they were sweaty and she would dry them before she shook
+hands.
+
+"That's so, M'ria!" the old man shouted cheerfully, as his eyes made out
+the patch of white apron in the doorway.  "It's our Ruth, all right--
+come to pay us a visit!"  He bawled it, at close quarters.  This was his
+way of conveying intelligence to the crazed brain.
+
+Mrs. Josselin, awed by her daughter's appearance--a little perhaps, by
+her loveliness; more, belike, by her air of distinction and her fine
+dress (though this was simple enough--a riding suit of grey velvet, with
+a broad-brimmed hat and one black feather)--withdrew behind her back the
+hand she had been wiping, and stood irresolute, smiling in a timid way.
+
+It was horrible.  Ruth stretched out her arms lest in another moment her
+mother should bob a curtsy.
+
+"Mother--mother!"
+
+She took the poor creature in her arms and held her, shivering a little
+as she sought her lips; for Mrs. Josselin, albeit scrupulously clean,
+had a trace of that strange wild smell that haunts the insane.  Ruth had
+lived with it aforetime and ceased to notice it.  Now she recognised it,
+and shivered.
+
+"Surely, surely," said the mother as soon as the embrace released her.
+"I always said you would come back, some day.  In wealth or in trouble,
+I always told grandfather you would come back. . . . That hat, now--the
+very latest I'll be bound. . . . And how is your good gentleman?"
+
+"Mother!  Please do not call him that!"
+
+"Why, you ha'n't quarrelled, ha' you?"
+
+"Indeed, no."
+
+"That's right." Mrs. Josselin nodded, looking extremely wise.
+"Show a good face always, no matter what happens; and, with your looks
+there's no saying what you can't persuade him to.  All the Pococks were
+good-looking, though I say it who shouldn't: and as for the Josselins--"
+
+"Sit down, mother," Ruth commanded.  She must get this over, and soon,
+for it was straining at her heart.  "Sit down and listen to what I have
+to tell.  Afterwards you shall get me something to eat; and while you
+are dishing it--dear mother, you were always briskest about the
+fireplace--we will talk in the old style."
+
+"Surely, surely." Mrs. Josselin seated herself on the block-stool.
+
+"You remember the promise?  In three years--and yesterday the three
+years were up--I was to come back and report myself."
+
+"Is it three years, now?  Time _do_ slip away!"
+
+"The gel's right," corroborated old Josselin, pausing as he filled a
+pipe.  "I remember it."
+
+"This is what I have to report--Sir Oliver has asked me to marry him."
+
+There was a pause.  "I dunno," said the old man sourly--and Ruth knew
+that tone so well!  He always used it on hearing good news, lest he
+should be mistaken for genial--"I dunno why you couldn' ha' told us that
+straight off, without beatin' round the bush.  It's important enough."
+
+"He has asked me to marry him, and I have said 'yes.'"
+
+"What else _could_ ye say?"
+
+"Of _course_ she said 'yes,' the darling!"  Mrs. Josselin clapped her
+hands together, without noise.  "What did I ever say but that 'twas a
+chance, if you used it?  But when is it to be?" she added, suspiciously.
+
+"Very soon.  As soon as I please, in fact."
+
+"You take my advice and pin him to it.  The sooner the better--eh,
+darling?"
+
+Ruth rose wearily.  "I see the pot boiling," she said with a glance at
+the fireplace, "and I have been on horseback since seven o'clock.
+Mother, won't you give me food, at least?  I am hungry as a hunter."
+
+--But this was very nearly a fib.  She had been hungry enough, half an
+hour ago.  Now her throat worked in disgust--not at the hovel and its
+poverty; for these were dear--but at the thought that thus for three
+years her dearest had been thinking of her.  It had been the home of
+infinite mutual tolerance, of some affection--an affection not patent
+perhaps--and for years it had been all she owned.  Now it lived on, but
+was poisoned; the atmosphere of the humble place was poisoned, and
+through her.
+
+"Food?"--her mother rose.  "Food be sure, and a bed, deary: for you'll
+be sleeping here, of course?"
+
+"No.  I go on to Port Nassau; and thence in a few days to a lodging up
+in the back country."
+
+"Such a mare as she's ridin' too!" put in the old man.
+
+"I wouldn' put up at Port Nassau, if I was you," said her mother pausing
+as she made ready to lift the pot-handle.  "They won't know what you've
+told us, and they'll cast up the old shame on you."
+
+"M'ria ha'n't talked so sensible for days," said the old man.
+"Joy must ha' steadied her. . . . Clams, is it?  Clams, I hope."
+
+
+The meal over, Ruth took leave of them, reproaching herself for her
+haste, though troubled to have delayed the grooms so long.
+
+She mounted and rode forward thoughtfully.
+
+The grooms did not wear the Vyell white and scarlet, but a sober livery
+of dark blue.  Between more serious thoughts Ruth wondered if any one in
+Port Nassau would recognise her.
+
+The hostess of the Bowling Green did not, but came to the door and
+dropped curtsies to her, as to a grand lady.  She startled Ruth,
+however, by respectfully asking her name.
+
+Ruth, who had forgotten to provide against this, had a happy
+inspiration.
+
+"I am Miss Ruth," she said.
+
+The landlady desired to be informed how to spell it.  "For," said she,
+"I keep a list of all the quality that honour the Bowling Green."
+
+Ruth signed it boldly in the book presented, and ordered supper to be
+brought to her room; also a fire to be lit.  She was given the same room
+in which she had knelt to pull off Oliver Vyell's boots.
+
+Whilst supper was preparing, in a panic lest she should be recognised
+she tied her hair high and wound it with a rope of pearls--her lover's
+first gift to her.  In her dress she could make little change.
+The waggon following in her wake would be due to-morrow with her boxes;
+but for to-night she must rely on the few necessaries of toilet the
+grooms had brought, packed in small hold-alls at their saddle bows.
+
+Her fears proved to be idle.  The meal was served by a small maid, upon
+whom she once or twice looked curiously.  She wondered if the landlady
+scolded her often.
+
+After supper she sat a long while in thought over the fire, shielding
+its heat from her with her hands.  They were exquisite hands, but once
+or twice she turned them palms-uppermost, as though to make sure they
+bore no scars.
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+NESTING.
+
+
+She spent a week in Port Nassau, recognised by none.  She walked its
+streets, her features half hidden by a veil; and among the Port
+Nassauers she passed for an English lady of quality who, by one of those
+freaks from which the wealthy suffer, designed to rent or build herself
+a house in the neighbourhood.  Her accent by this time was English; by
+unconscious preference she had learnt it from her lover, translating and
+adapting it to her own musical tones.  It deceived the Port Nassauers
+completely.
+
+She visited many stores, always with a manservant in attendance; and,
+always paying down ready-money, bought of the best the little town could
+afford (but chiefly small articles of furniture, with some salted
+provisions and luxuries such as well-to-do skippers took to sea for
+their private tables).  The waggon had arrived; it, too, contained a
+quantity of wine and provisions, camp furniture, clothes, etc.
+
+At the end of the week she left Port Nassau with her purchases, the two
+men escorting her, the laden waggon following.  They climbed the hill
+above the town, and struck inland from the base of the peninsula,
+travelling north and by west.  The road--a passably good one--led them
+across a dip of cultivated land, shaped like a saddle-back, with a line
+of forest trees topping its farther ridge.  This was the fringe of a
+considerable forest, and beyond the ridge they rode for miles in the
+shade of boughs, slanting their way along a gentle declivity, with here
+and there glimpses of a broad plain below, and of a broad-banded river
+winding through it with many loops.
+
+But these glimpses were rare, and a stranger could not guess the extent
+of the plain until, stepping from the forest into broad day, he found
+himself on the very skirts of it.
+
+An ample plain it was; a grass ground of many thousand acres, where
+fifty years ago the Indians had pastured, but where now the farmers
+laboriously saved their hay when the floods allowed, and in spring
+launched their punts and went duck-shooting with long guns and
+wading-boots.  For in winter one sheet of water--or of ice, as it might
+happen--covered the meadows and made the great river one with the many
+brooks that threaded their way to her.  But at this season they ran low
+between their banks and the eye easily traced their meanderings, while
+the main stream itself rolled its waters in full view--in places three
+hundred yards wide, and seldom narrower than one hundred.  Dwarf willows
+fringed it: at some distance back from the shore, alders and reddening
+maples dotted the meadows, with oaks here and there, and everywhere wild
+cranberry bushes in great moss-like hummocks.
+
+It ran sluggishly, and always--however long the curve--up to its near or
+right bank the plain lay flat, or broken only by these hummocks.
+But from the farther shore the ground rose at a moderate slope, and here
+were farmhouses and haystacks planted above reach of the waters.
+A high ridge of forest backed this inhabited terrace, and dense forest
+filled the eastward gap through which the river passed down to these
+levels from the cleft hills.
+
+At one point on the farther shore the houses had drawn together in a
+cluster, and towards this the road ran in a straight line on the raised
+causeway that had suffered much erosion from bygone floods.  It cost the
+travellers an hour to reach the river-bank, where a ferry plied to and
+from the village.  It was a horse-boat, but not capable of conveying the
+waggon, the contents of which must be unladen and shipped across in
+parcels, to be repacked in a cart that stood ready on the village quay.
+Leaving her men to handle this, Ruth crossed alone with her mare and
+rode on, as the ferryman directed her, past the village towards her
+lodging, some two miles up the stream.  The house stood beside a more
+ancient ferry, now disused, to which it had formerly served as a tavern.
+It rested on stout oaken piles driven deep into the river-mud; a notable
+building, with a roof like the inverted hull of a galleon, pierced with
+dormer windows and topped by a rusty vane.  Its tenants were a childless
+couple--a Mr. and Mrs. Strongtharm: he a taciturn man of fifty, a born
+naturalist and great shooter of wildfowl; she a douce woman, with eyes
+like beads of jet, and an incurable propensity for mothering and
+spoiling her neighbours' children.
+
+The couple received her kindly, asking few questions.  Their dwelling
+was by many sizes too large for them, and she might have taken her
+choice among a dozen of the old guest-chambers.  But Sir Oliver
+had come and gone a month before and selected the best for her.
+Its roof-timbers, shaped like the ribs of a ship, curved outwards and
+downwards from a veritable keelson; and it was reached by way of a
+zig-zagging corridor, lit by port-holes, and adorned in every niche and
+corner with cases of stuffed wildfowl.  Ruth supped well on game Mr.
+Strongtharm's gun had provided, and slept soundly, lulled between her
+dreams by the ripple of water swirling between the piles that supported,
+far below her, the house's cellarage.
+
+She awoke at daybreak to the humming of wind; and looked forth on a
+leaden sky, on the river ruffled and clapping in small waves against a
+shrill north-easter, and on countless birds in flocks rising from the
+meadows and balancing their wings against it.  Before breakfast-time the
+weather had turned to heavy rain.  But this mattered nothing; she had a
+day's work indoors before her.
+
+She spent the morning in unpacking the stores, which had arrived late
+overnight from the ferry, and in putting a hundred small touches to her
+bedroom and sitting-room, to make them more habitable.  By noon she had
+finished the unpacking, and dismissed the two grooms to make their way
+back to Boston and report that all was well with her.  It rained until
+three in the afternoon; and then, the weather clearing, she saddled
+Madcap with her own hands and rode to the edge of the forest.
+Little light remained when she reached its outskirts, and she peered
+curiously between the dim boles for a few minutes before turning for her
+homeward ride.  She had brought a beautiful scheme in her head, and the
+forest was concerned in it; but for the moment, in this twilight, the
+forest daunted her.  She had--for she differed from most maidens--left
+her lover to arrange all the business of the marriage ceremony,
+stipulating only that it must be private.  But she had at the same time
+bound him by a lover's oath that all details of the honeymoon must be
+left to her; that he should neither know where and how it was to be
+spent, nor seek to enquire.  She would meet him at the church porch in
+the village below--in what garb, even, she would not promise; and after
+the ceremony he must be ready to ride away with her--she would not
+promise whither.
+
+Her project had been to build a camp far in the woods; and to this end
+she had made her many purchases in Port Nassau.  They included, besides
+an array of provisions and cooking-pots, a hunter's tent such as the
+backwoodsmen used in their expeditions after beaver and moose.
+It weighed many pounds, and a part of her problem was how to convey it
+to any depth of the forest unaided.
+
+The easterly gale blew itself out.  The next morning broke with rifts of
+blue, and steadied itself, after two hours, to clear sunshine.
+She awoke in blithe spirits, and after breakfast went off without waste
+of time to saddle Madcap.  By the stable door she found Mr. Strongtharm
+seated and polishing his gun, and paused to catechise him on the forest
+tracks, particularly on those leading up through Soldier's Gap--by which
+name he called the gorge at the head of the plain.
+
+"The best track beyond, you'll find, lies pretty close 'longside the
+river," he said.  "But 'tis no road for the mare.  I doubt if a mule
+could manage it after the third mile.  The river, you see, comes through
+in a monstrous hurry--by the look of it here you'd never guess.
+No, indeed, 'tisn't a river at all, properly speakin', but a whole heap
+o' streams tumblin' down this-a-way, that-a-way, out o' the side
+valleys; and what you may call the main river don't run in one body, but
+breaks itself up considerable over waterfalls.  Rock for the most part,
+an' pretty steep, with splashy ground below the falls.  I han't been
+right up the Gap these dozen years; an' a man's job it is at the best--a
+two days' journey.  The las' time I slept the night, goin' an' comin',
+in Peter Vanders' lodge."
+
+"A lodge?"
+
+"That's what they call it.  He was a trapper, and a famous one, but
+before my time; an' that was his headquarters--a sort o' cabin, pretty
+stout, just by the head in the sixth fall, or maybe 'tis the seventh--
+I forget.  He lived up there without wife or family--"  Mr. Strongtharm
+would have launched into further particulars about the dead trapper,
+whose skill and strange habits had passed into a legend in the valley.
+But Ruth wished to hear more of the cabin.
+
+"It's standin', no doubt, to this day.  Vanders was a Dutchman, an'
+Dutchmen build strong by nature.  The man who built _this_ yer house was
+a Dutchman, an' look at the piles of it--_an_ the ribs you may ha'
+noticed.  Ay, the lodge will be there yet; but you'll never find it, not
+unless I takes ye.  That fourth fall is a teaser."
+
+Ruth saddled her mare, and rode off in the direction of the gap,
+thoughtfully.  Mr. Strongtharm had given her a new notion. . . .
+
+
+It was close upon nightfall when she returned.  She was muddy, but
+cheerful; and she hummed a song to herself in her chamber as she slid
+off her mired garments and attired herself for supper.
+
+That song was her nesting song.  Away Boston-wards, her lover, too, was
+building in his magnificent fashion; but Ruth had found a secret place,
+such as birds love, and shyly, stealthily as a mating bird, she set
+about planning and furnishing.  It is woman's instinct. . . . Every day,
+as soon as breakfast was done, she saddled and rode towards the Gap, and
+always with a parcel or two dangling from the saddle-bow or strapped
+upon Madcap's back.
+
+For the first time in her life she had money to handle; money furnished
+by Sir Oliver to be spent at her own disposal on the honeymoon.
+It seemed to her a prodigious sum, but she was none the less economical
+with it.  I fear that sometimes she opened the bags and gloated over the
+coins as over a hoard.  She was neither miser nor spendthrift; but
+unlike many girls brought up in poverty, she brought good husbandry to
+good fortune.
+
+Yet "shopping"--to enter a store and choose among the goods for sale,
+having money to pay, but weighing quality and price--was undeniably
+pleasant.  Twice or thrice, bethinking her of some trifle overlooked at
+Port Nassau, she enjoyed visiting the village store--it boasted but
+one--and dallying with a purchase.
+
+She was riding back from one of these visits--it had been (if the Muse
+will smile and condescend) to buy a packet of hairpins--when, half-way
+up the village street, she spied a horseman approaching.  An instant
+later she recognised Mr. Trask.
+
+There was really nothing strange in her meeting him here.  Mr. Trask
+owned a herd of bullocks, and had ridden over from Port Nassau to
+bargain for their winter fodder.  He had not aged a day.  His horse was
+a tall grey, large-jointed, and ugly.
+
+Ruth wore a veil, but it was wreathed just now above the brim of her
+hat.  Her first impulse was to draw it over her face, and her hand went
+up; but she desisted in pride, and rode by her old enemy with a calm
+face.
+
+They passed one another, and she believed that he had not recognised
+her; but after a few paces she heard him check his horse.
+
+"Hi, madam!"
+
+She halted, and he came slowly back.
+
+"You are Ruth Josselin," he said.
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"And what are you doing here?"
+
+She smiled at him a little scornfully.  "Do you ask as a magistrate,
+sir, or in curiosity?"
+
+He frowned, narrowing his eyes.  "You are marvellously changed.
+You appear prosperous.  Has Vyell married you yet?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Nor as yet cast you off, it would seem."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Ah, well, go your ways.  You are a beautiful thing, but evil; and I
+would have saved ye from it.  I whipped ye, remember."
+
+Her face burned, but she held her eyes steady on him.  "Mr. Trask," she
+said, "do you believe in hell?"
+
+"Eh?"  He was taken aback, but he could not frown away the question; for
+she asked it with a certain authority, albeit very courteously.  "Eh?
+To be sure I do."
+
+"I am going to prove to you (and some day you may take comfort from it)
+that, except on earth, there is no such place."
+
+"Ye'd like to believe that, I daresay!"
+
+"For you see," she went on, letting the sneer pass, "it is agreed that,
+if there be a hell, none but the wicked go there."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why, then, hell must defeat itself.  For, where all are wicked
+together, no punishment can degrade, because no shame is felt."
+
+"There's the pain, madam."  He eyed her, and barked it in a short,
+savage laugh.  "The torment--the worm that dies not, the fire that's not
+quenched.  Won't these content ye, bating the shame?"
+
+Her eyes answered his in scorn.  "No, sir.  Because I once suffered your
+cruelty, you have less understanding than I; but you have more ingenuity
+than the Almighty, being able, in your district, to make a hell of
+earth."
+
+"You blaspheme thus to me, that honestly tried to save your soul?"
+
+"Did you? . . . Well, perhaps you did in your fashion, and you may take
+this comfort for reward.  Believe me, who have tried, hell is
+bottomless, but in its own way.  Should ever you attain to it--and there
+may in another world be such a place for the cruel--go down boldly; and
+it may be you will drop through into bliss."
+
+"You, to talk of another world!" he snapped.
+
+"And why not, Mr. Trask?  Once upon a time you killed me."
+
+He turned his grey horse impatiently.  "I whipped ye," was his parting
+shot.  "If 'twarn't too late, I'd take pleasure to whip ye again!"
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+THE BRIDEGROOM.
+
+
+Mr. Trask had not concluded the bargain for his winter fodder.
+Just a week later he rode over from Port Nassau, to clinch it, and had
+almost reached the foot of the descent to the river meadows when a
+better mounted rider overtook him.
+
+"Ah!" said the stranger, checking his horse's stride as he passed.
+"Good-morning, Mr. Trask!  But possibly you do not remember me?"
+
+"I remember you perfectly," answered Mr. Trask.  "You are Sir Oliver
+Vyell."
+
+"Whom, once on a time, you sentenced to the stocks.  You recall our last
+conversation?  Well, I bear you no malice; and, to prove it, will ask
+leave to ride to the ferry with you.  You will oblige me?  I like
+companionship, and my one fellow-traveller--a poor horseman--I have left
+some way behind on the road."
+
+"I have no wish to ride with you, Sir Oliver," said Mr. Trask stiffly.
+"Forbye that I consider ye a son of Belial, I have a particular quarrel
+with you.  At the time you condescend to mention, I took it upon me to
+give you some honest advice--not wholly for your own sake.  You flouted
+it, and 'that's nothing to me' you'll say; but every step we take
+worsens that very sin against which I warned ye, and therefore I want
+none of your company."
+
+"Honest Mr. Trask," Sir Oliver answered with a laugh.  "I put it to you
+that, having fallen in together thus agreeably, we shall make ourselves
+but a pair of fools if one rides ahead of the other in dudgeon.  Add to
+this that the ferry-man, spying us, will wait to tide us over together;
+and add also, if you will, that I have the better mount and it lies in
+my will that you shall neither lag behind nor outstrip me.  Moreover,
+you are mistaken."
+
+"I am not mistaken.  This day week I met Ruth Josselin and had speech
+with her."
+
+"Satisfactory, I hope?"
+
+"It was not satisfactory; and if I must ride with you, Sir Oliver,
+you'll understand it to be under protest.  You are a lewd man.  You have
+taken this child--"
+
+Here Mr. Trask choked upon speech.  Recovering, he said the most
+unexpected thing in the world.
+
+"I am not as a rule a judge of good looks; and no doubt 'tis unreason in
+me to pity her the more for her comeliness.  But as a matter of fact I
+do."
+
+Sir Oliver stared at him.  "_You_ to pity her!  _You_ to plead her
+beauty to _me_, who took it out of the mud where you had flung her,
+mauled by you and left to lie like a bloody clout!"
+
+But the armour of Mr. Trask's self-righteousness was not pierced.
+"I sentenced her," he replied calmly, "for her soul's welfare.
+Who said--what right have you to assume--that she would have been left
+to lie there?  Rather, did I not promise you in the market-square that,
+her chastening over, my cart should fetch her?  Did I not keep my word?
+And could you not read in the action some earnest that the girl would be
+looked after?  Your atheism, sir, makes you dull in spiritual
+understanding."
+
+"I am glad that it does, sir."
+
+"If your passion for Ruth Josselin held an ounce of honesty, you would
+not be glad; for even in this world you have ruined her."
+
+"Mr. Trask, I have not."
+
+Mr. Trask glanced at him quickly.
+
+"--Upon my honour as a gentleman I have not, neither do I desire
+it . . . Sir, twice in this half-mile you have prompted me to ask,
+What, here on this meadow, prevents my killing you?  Wait; I know your
+answer.  You are a courageous man and would say that as a magistrate you
+have schooled yourself to accept risks and to despise threats.  Yes,"
+Sir Oliver admitted with a laugh, "you are an infernally hard nut to
+crack, and somehow I cannot help liking you for it.  Are you spending
+the night yonder, by-the-bye?"  He nodded towards the village.
+
+"No, sir.  I propose returning this evening to Port Nassau."
+
+"Then it is idle to invite you to my wedding.  I am to be married at
+nine o'clock to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Trask eyed him for a moment or two.  Then his gaze wandered ahead to
+the river, where already the ferrymen had caught sight of them and were
+pushing the horse-boat across with long sweeps; and beyond the river to
+a small wooden-spired church, roofed with mossy shingles that even at
+this distance showed green in the slant sunlight.
+
+"Yonder?" he asked.
+
+"Ay: you would have been welcome."
+
+"I will attend," said Mr. Trask.  "A friend of mine--a farmer--will
+lodge me for the night.  A hospitable man, who has made the offer a
+score of times.  After so many refusals I am glad of an excuse for
+accepting."
+
+"I stipulate that you keep the excuse a secret from him.  It is to be
+quite private.  That," said Sir Oliver, turning in saddle for a look
+behind him, "is one of my reasons for outriding my fellow-traveller."
+
+"The clergyman?"
+
+"Ay . . . To-morrow, maybe, you'll admit to having misjudged us."
+
+"Maybe," Mr. Trask conceded.  "I shall at any rate thank God,
+provisionally.  He is merciful.  But I have difficulty in believing that
+any good can come of it."
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+RUTH'S WEDDING DAY.
+
+
+She had left it all to him, receiving his instructions by letter.
+It was to be quite private, as he had told Mr. Trask.  She would ride
+down to the village in her customary grey habit, as though on an early
+errand of shopping.  He would lodge overnight at the Ferry Inn, and be
+awaiting her by the chancel step.  Afterwards--ah, that was her secret!
+In this, their first stage in married life, he had promised--reversing
+the marriage vow--to obey.
+
+Happiness bubbled within her like a spring; overshadowed by a little
+awe, but not to be held down.  Almost at the last moment she must take
+Mrs. Strongtharm into her confidence.  She could not help it.
+
+"Granny," she whispered.  (They were great friends.) "I am to be married
+to-morrow."
+
+"Sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Strongtharm, peering at her, misdoubting that
+she jested.
+
+But Ruth's face told its own tale.  "May I?" asked the elder woman, and
+her arm went about the girl's waist.  "God bless ye, dear, and send ye a
+long family!  Who's the gentleman?  Not him as came an' took the rooms
+for ye?  He said you was a near relation o' his. . . . Well, never mind!
+The trick's as old as Abram."
+
+"Be down at the church at nine to-morrow, and you shall see him, whoever
+he is.  But it is a secret, and you are not to tell Mr. Strongtharm."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs.  Strongtharm.  "_Him!_"
+
+
+"But you ought to make _some_ difference," whispered the good woman next
+morning, after breakfast, as she was preparing to slip away to the
+village.  "Be it but a flower in your bodice.  But we've no garden, and
+the season's late."
+
+Ruth took her kiss of benediction.  She was scarcely listening; but the
+words by a strange trick repeated themselves on her brain a few minutes
+later, upstairs, as she went about her last preparations.
+
+She leaned out at the lattice over the river.  A lusty creeper, rooted
+in _terra firma_ at the back of the house, had pushed its embrace over
+west side and front.  The leaves, green the summer through, were now
+turned to a vivid flame-colour.  She plucked three or four and pinned
+them over her bosom, glanced at the effect in the mirror, and went
+quickly down the stairs.
+
+Fairer day could hardly have been chosen.  "Happy is the bride the sun
+shines on." ...  In the sunshine by the stable door Mr. Strongtharm sat
+polishing his gun.  She asked him what sport he would be after to-day.
+
+He answered, "None.  I don't reckon 'pon luck, fishing, after a body's
+mentioned rabbits; and I don't go gunning if I've seen a parson.
+A new parson, I mean.  Th' old Minister's all in the day's work."
+
+"You have seen a strange clergyman to-day?"
+
+"Yes; as I pulled home past the Ferry.  I'd been down-stream early,
+tryin' for eels.  On my way back I saw him--over my left shoulder too.
+He was comin' out o' the Inn by the waterside door, wipin' his mouth: a
+loose-featured man, with one shoulder higher than t'other, and a hard
+drinker by his looks."
+
+Ruth saddled-up and mounted in silence.  Fatally she recognised the old
+fellow's description; but--was it possible her lover had brought this
+man to marry them?--this man, whose touch was defilement, to join their
+hands?  If the precisians of Port Nassau had made religion her tragedy,
+this man had come in, by an after-blow, to turn it into a blasphemous
+farce.  If Ruth had lost Faith, she yet desired good thoughts, to have
+everything about her pure and holy--and on this day, of all days!
+
+Surely Oliver--she had taught herself to call him Oliver--would never
+misunderstand her so!  Why, it was a misunderstanding that went down,
+down, almost to the roots.  _Those whom God hath joined together let no
+man put asunder_ . . . but here was cleavage, and from within.
+Say rather of such sundering.  What man could remedy it?  _Those whom
+God hath joined together_--ah, by such hands!
+
+It was not possible!  In all things her lover had shown himself
+considerate, tender; guessing, preventing her smallest wish.
+As she rode she sought back once more to the wellspring of love.
+Had he not stooped to her as a god, lifted her from the mire?
+It was not possible.
+
+Yet, as she rode, the unconquerable common sense within her kept
+whispering that this thing _was_ possible. . . . It darkened the
+sunlight.  She rode as one who, having sung carelessly for miles,
+surmises a dreadful leap close ahead.  Still she rode on, less and less
+sure of herself, and came to the church porch, and alighted.
+
+The church was a plain oblong building, homely within to the last
+degree.  The pews were of pitch-pine, the walls and rafters coated with
+white-wash, some of which had peeled off and lay strewing the floor.
+A smell of oil filled the air; it was sweet and sickly, and came from
+the oozings of half a dozen untended lamps.  Ornament the place had
+none, save a decent damask cloth on the Communion table.
+
+Oliver Vyell stood by the chancel rail.  The rest of the congregation
+comprised Mr. Trask, seated stiff and solitary in the largest pew, Mrs.
+Strongtharm, and half a score of children whom Mrs. Strongtharm had
+collected on the way and against her will.  They followed her by habit,
+after goodies; but just now, though they sat quiet, her reputation was
+suffering from a transient distrust.  (Allurements to piety rarely fell
+in the path of a New England child; but even he was child enough to
+suspect them when they occurred.) At the sound of the mare's footsteps
+they turned their heads, one and all.  Mr. Silk, clad in white surplice
+and nervously turning the pages of the Office by the holy table, faced
+about also.
+
+Ruth was seen alighting, out there in the sunlight.  She hitched the
+mare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadow
+of the porchway.  Her lover walked down the aisle to meet her.  He, too,
+stepped briskly, courteously.
+
+Three paces within the doorway she came to a halt.  The sunlight fell on
+her again, through the first of the southern windows.  It flamed on the
+leaves pinned to her bosom.
+
+He offered his arm.  But she, that had come stepping like a wild fawn,
+like a fawn stood at gaze, terrified, staring past him at the figure by
+the table.  Mr. Silk commanded an oily smile and, book in hand, advanced
+to the chancel step.
+
+"Ah, no!" she murmured.  "It is wicked--"
+
+She cast her eyes around, as though for help.  They did not turn--it was
+pitifullest of all--to him who was about to swear to help her throughout
+life.  They turned and encountered Mr. Trask's.
+
+With a sob, as Sir Oliver would have taken her arm, she threw it up,
+broke from him, and fled back through the porchway.  As she drew back
+that one pace before fleeing, the sun fell full again on that
+breast-knot of scarlet leaves.
+
+He stared after her dumbfoundered, still doubting her intent.
+He saw her catch at the mare's bridle, and, with a bitter curse, ran
+forward.  But he was too late.  She had mounted, and was away.
+
+He heard the mare's hoofs clattering up the street.  His own horse was
+stabled at the Ferry Inn.  It would cost him ten minutes at least to
+mount and pursue. . . .
+
+"I said 'provisionally.'"  It was Mr. Trask's voice, speaking at his
+elbow.  "Nay, man, don't strike me; since you meant business, 'tis
+yourself you should strike for a fool.  You were a fool to invite me;
+but she was scared before ever she caught sight of _me_--by that
+buck-parson of yours, I guess."
+
+
+He had fetched Bayard, had mounted, and was after her.  He pulled rein
+at her lodgings.  Yes, Mr. Strongtharm had seen her go by.
+The old fellow did not guess what was amiss; as how should he?
+"It's cruel for the mare's hoofs," he commented, "forcing her that pace
+on the hard road.  She rides well, s' far as ridin' goes; but the best
+womankind on horseback has neither bowels nor understandin'."
+
+He pointed towards Soldiers' Gap.  "She rides there most days," he said;
+"but it can't be far.  There's no Christian road for a horse, once
+you're past the second fall."
+
+Oliver Vyell struck spur and followed.  Already he had the decency to
+curse himself, but not yet could he understand his transgressing.
+
+
+"Your atheism"--Mr. Trask had said it--"makes you dull in spiritual
+understanding."
+
+Sceptics are of two orders, and religious disputants gain a potential
+advantage, but miss truth, by confusing them.  Oliver Vyell was dull,
+and his dullness had betrayed him, precisely because his reason was so
+lucid and logical that it shut out those half-tones in which abide all
+men's, all women's, tenderest feelings.  He knew that Ruth had no more
+faith than he in Christian dogma; no faith at all in what a minister's
+intervention could do to sanctify marriage.  He had inferred that she
+must consider the tying of the knot by Mr. Silk, if not as a fair jest,
+at least as a gentle mockery, the humour of which he and she would
+afterwards taste together.  Why had she not pleaded against rite of any
+kind? . . . Besides, the dog had once insulted her with a proposal.
+Sir Oliver never allowed Mr. Silk to guess that he had surprised his
+secret; and Mr. Silk, tortuous himself in all ways, could not begin to
+be on terms with a candid soul such as Ruth's, craving in all things to
+be open where it loves.  Sir Oliver had supposed it a pretty lesson to
+put on a calm, negligent face, and command the parson, who dared not
+disobey, to perform the ceremony.  Mr. Silk had cringed.
+
+Likewise, when inviting Mr. Trask to the nuptials, he had looked on him
+but as a witness to his triumph.  The very man who had sentenced her to
+degradation--was there not dramatic triumph in summoning him to behold
+her exalted?
+
+For behind all this reasoning, of course, and below all his real passion
+for her, lay the poisonous, proud, Whig sense of superiority, the
+conviction that, desirable though she was, his choice exalted her.
+Would not ten thousand women--would not a hundred thousand--have counted
+it heaven to stand in her place?
+
+Yet she had earnestly begged off the rite which to every one of these
+women would have meant everything.  This puzzled him.
+
+On second thoughts the puzzle had dissolved.  She accepted his
+negations, and, woman-like, improved on them.  The marriage service was
+humbug; therefore she had willed to have none of it.  The attitude was
+touching.  It might have been convenient, had he been less in love.
+
+But he was deeply in love, so deeply that in good earnest he longed to
+lift and set her above all women.  For this, nonsensical though they
+were, due rites must be observed.
+
+At the last pinch she had broken away.  Was it possible, then, that
+after all she did not love him?  She had crossed her arms once and
+called herself his slave. . . .
+
+Not for one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced
+out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the
+rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy
+that to contaminate the rite is to poison all.
+
+Not as yet did he understand one whit of this.  But he vehemently
+desired her, and his desire was straight.  Because it was straight,
+while he rode some inkling of the truth pierced him.
+
+For, as he rode, he recalled how she had cast up an arm and turned to
+flee.  His eyes had rested confusedly on the breast-knot of scarlet
+leaves, and it seemed to him, as he rode, that he had seen her heart
+beating there through her ribs.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+"YET HE WILL COME--".
+
+
+The cabin stood close above the fall.  It was built of oak logs split in
+two, with the barked and rounded sides turned outward.  Pete Vanders
+would have found pine logs more tractable and handier to come by, and
+they would have outlasted his time; but, being a Dutchman, he had built
+solidly by instinct.
+
+Also, he had chosen his ledge cunningly or else with amazing luck.
+A stairway shaped in the solid rock--eight treads and no more--led down
+to the very brink of the first cascade; yet through all these years,
+with their freshets and floods, the cabin had clung to its perch.
+Within doors the ears never lost the drone of the waters.  There were
+top-notes that lifted or sank as the wind blew, but below them the deep
+bass thundered on.
+
+Ruth had doffed her riding-dress for a bodice and short skirt of russet,
+and moved about the cabin tidying where she had tidied a score of times
+already.  Through the window-opening drifted wisps of smoke, aromatic
+and pungent, from the fire she had built in an angle of the crags a few
+yards from the house.  (It had been the Dutchman's hearth.  She had
+found it and cleared the creepers away, and below them the rock-face was
+yet black with the smoke of old fires.) Some way up the gorge, where, at
+the foot of a smaller waterfall, the river divided and swirled about an
+island covered with sweet grass--a miniature meadow--her mare grazed at
+will.  About a fortnight ago, having set aside three days for the
+search, on the second Ruth had found a circuitous way through the woods.
+A part of it she had cleared with a billhook, and since then Madcap had
+trodden a rough pathway with her frequent goings and comings.
+It had immensely lightened the labour of furnishing, but she feared that
+the pasturage would last but a day or two.  Her lover, when he came,
+must devise means of sending the mare back.
+
+She never doubted his coming.  He would probably miss the bridle-path,
+the opening of which she had carefully hidden, and be forced to make the
+ascent on foot.  But he would come.  See, she was laying out his clothes
+for him!  He had sent to Sweetwater, at her request, two valises full,
+packed by Manasseh; and she had conveyed them hither with the rest of
+the furniture.  Carefully now she made her selection from the store:
+coat, breeches of homespun and leather, stout boots, moccasined leggings
+such as the Indians wore, woollen shirts--but other shirts also of
+finest cambric--with underclothes of silk, and delicate nightshirts, and
+silken stockings that could be drawn like soft ribbons between the
+fingers.  She thrilled as she handled them garment by garment.
+Along the wall hung his two guns, with shot-bag and powder-flask.
+
+Here was his home.  Here were his clothes. . . . She had forgiven him,
+hours ago, without necessity for his pleading.  So would he forgive her.
+After all, what store did he set by church ceremony.  He had vowed to
+her a dozen times that he set none.  He loved her; that was enough, and
+assurance of his following.  He would confess that she had been right.
+ . . . As she moved about, touching, smoothing this garment and that,
+there crossed her memory the Virgilian refrain--
+
+          "_Nihil ille deos, nil carmina curat.
+     Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin._"
+
+She murmured it, smiling to herself as she recalled also the dour figure
+of Mr. Hichens in the library at Sabines, seated stiffly, listening
+while she construed.  If only tutors guessed what they taught!
+
+She hummed the lines: "_Nihil ille deos_"--he cared nothing for church
+rites; "_nil carmina_"--she needed no incantations.
+
+She never doubted that he would arrive; but, as the day wore on, she
+told herself that very likely he had missed his road.  He would arrive
+hungered, in any event. . . . She stepped out to the cooking-pot, and,
+on her way, paused for a long look down the glen.  The sun, streaming
+its rays over the high pines behind her, made rainbows in the spray of
+the fall and cast her shadow far over the hollow at her feet.
+The water, plunging past her, shot down the valley in three separate
+cascades, lined with slippery rock, in the crevices of which many ferns
+had lodged and grew, waving in the incessantly shaken air.  From the
+pool into which the last cascade tumbled--a stone dislodged by her foot
+dropped to it almost plumb--the stream hurtled down the glen, following
+the curve of its sides until they overlapped; naked cliffs above,
+touched with sunlight, their feet set in peat, up which the forest trees
+clambered as if in a race for the top--pines leading, with heather and
+scrubby junipers, oaks and hemlocks some way behind; alders, mostly by
+the waterside, with maples in swampy patches, and here and there a birch
+waving silver against the shadow.  The pines kept their funereal plumes,
+like undertakers who had made a truce with death by making a business of
+it.  But these deciduous trees, that had rioted in green through spring
+and summer, wrapped themselves in robes to die, the thinner the more
+royal; the maples in scarlet, the swamp-oak in purple--bloody purple
+where the sun smote on its upper boughs.  Already the robes had worn
+thin, and their ribs showed.  Leaves strewed the flat rock where Ruth
+stood, looking down.
+
+She was not thinking of the leaves, nor of the fall of the year.
+She was thinking that her lord would be hungered.  She went back to her
+cooking-pot under the cliff overhung with heath and juniper.
+
+Herself fearless--or less fearful than other women--she did not for some
+time let her mind run on possible accidents to him.  He was a man, and
+would arrive, though tired and hungered.  Not until the sun sank behind
+the upper pines did any sense of her own loneliness assail her.
+Then she bethought her that with night, if he delayed, the forest would
+wrap her around, formless, haunted by wild beasts.  The singing of
+birds, never in daylight utterly drowned by the roar of the fall, had
+ceased about her; the call of the hidden chickadees, the cheep-cheep of
+a friendly robin, hopping in near range of the cooking-pot, the sawing
+of busy chipmunks.
+
+These sounds had ceased; but she did not feel the silence until, far up
+the valley behind her, a loon sent forth its sole unhappy cry.
+It rang a moment between the cliffs.  As it died away she felt how
+friendly had been these casual voices, and wondered what beasts the
+forest might hold.
+
+She went back to the cabin, lit a lamp, and lifted one of the guns off
+its rack.  She charged it--well she had learnt how to charge a gun.
+
+Twilight was falling.  The fire burned beneath the cooking-pot; but,
+seated on the flat stone with the gun laid across her knees and the fall
+sounding beneath her, she had another thought--that the fire, set in an
+angle of the rock, and moreover hidden around the house's corner, was
+but a poor signal.  It shed no ray down the glen.
+
+She would light another fire on the flat stone.  In the dusk she
+collected dry twigs, piled stouter sticks above them, covered the whole
+with leaves, and lit it, fetching a live brand from under the
+cooking-pot.  The flame leapt up, danced over the leaves, died down and
+again revived.  When assured that it was caught, she sat beside it,
+staring across the flame over the valley now swallowed in darkness,
+still with the gun laid across her knees.
+
+"Ruth!  O Ruth!"
+
+His voice came up over the roar of the fall--which, while he stumbled
+among the boulders below, had drowned his footsteps.
+
+"Dear!  Ah--have a care!"
+
+"Yes; hold a light. . . . It must be dangerous here."
+
+She snatched a brand from the fire.  She had collected a fresh heap of
+twigs and leaves in the lap of her gown, groping in the dusk for them;
+and his first sight of her had been as she stood high emptying them in a
+red stream to feed the flames.  A witch she seemed, pouring sacrifice on
+that wild altar, while the light of it danced upon her face and figure.
+Having gained the ledge of the second cascade, he anchored himself on
+good foothold and stared up, catching breath before he hailed.
+
+Her first glimpse of him, as she held the blazing stick over the edge of
+the fall, was of a face damp with sweat or with spray, and of his hands
+reaching up the slimed rock, feeling for a grip.
+
+"Ah, be careful!  Shall I come down to you?"  For the first time she
+realised his peril.
+
+"_Over rocks that are steepest_," he quoted gaily, between grunts of
+hard breathing.  He had handhold now.  "Hero on her tower--and faith,
+Leander came near to swimming for it--once or twice" (grunt) "_Over the
+mountains, And over the waves_--hullo! that rock of yours overhangs.
+What's to the left?" (grunt) "Grass?  I mistrust grass on these ledges.
+ . . . Reach down your hand, dear Ruth, to steady me only. . . ."
+
+She flung herself prone on the flat rock beside the fire, and gave a
+hand to him.  He caught it, heaved himself over the ledge with a final
+grunt of triumph, and dropped beside her, panting and laughing.
+
+"You might have killed yourself!" she shivered.
+
+"And whom, then, would you have reproached?"
+
+"You might have killed yourself--and then--and then I think I should
+have died too."
+
+"Ruth!"
+
+"My lord will be hungry.  He shall rest here and eat."
+
+He flung a glance towards the cabin; or rather--for the dusk hid its
+outlines--towards the light that shone cosily through the window-hatch.
+
+"Not yet!" she murmured.  "My lord shall rest here for a while."
+She was kneeling now to draw off his shoes.  He drew away his foot,
+protesting.
+
+"Child, I am not so tired, but out of breath, and--yes--hungry as a
+hunter."
+
+"My lord will remember.  It was the first service I ever did for him."
+It may have been an innocent wile to anchor him fast there and helpless.
+ . . . At any rate she knelt, and drew off his shoes and carried them to
+a little distance.  "Next, my lord shall eat," she said; and having
+rinsed her hands in the stream and spread them a moment to the flame to
+dry, sped off to the cabin.
+
+In a minute she was back with glasses and clean napkins, knives, forks,
+spoons, and a bottle of wine; from a second visit she returned with
+plates, condiments, and a dish of fruit.  Then, running to the
+cooking-pot, she fetched soup in two bowls.  "And after that," she
+promised, "there will be partridges.  Mr. Strongtharm shot them for me,
+for I was too busy.  They are turning by the fire on a jack my mother
+taught me to make out of threads that untwist and twist again. . . .
+Shall I sit here, at my lord's feet?"
+
+"Sit where you will, but close; and kiss me first.  You have not kissed
+me yet--and it is our wedding day.  Our wedding feast!  O Ruth--Ruth, my
+love!"
+
+"Our wedding feast! . . . Could it be better!  O my dear, dear lord!
+ . . . But I'll not kiss you yet."
+
+"Why, Ruth?"
+
+"Why, sir, because I will not--and that's a woman's reason.
+Afterwards--but not now!  You boasted of your hunger.  What has become
+of it?"
+
+
+They ate for a while in silence.  The stream roared at their feet.
+Above them, in the gap of the hills, Jupiter already blazed, and as the
+last of the light faded, star after star came out to keep him company.
+
+He praised her roasting of the partridges.  "To-morrow," she answered,
+"you shall take your gun and get me game.  We must be good providers.
+To-morrow--"
+
+"To-morrow--and for ever and ever--"  He poured wine and drank it
+slowly.
+
+"Ah, look up at the heavens!  And we two alone.  Is this not best,
+after all?  Was I not right?"
+
+"Perhaps," he answered after a pause.  "It is good, at all events."
+
+"To-morrow we will explore; and when this place tires us--but my lord
+has not praised it yet--"
+
+"Must I make speeches?"
+
+"No.  When this place tires us, we will strike camp and travel up
+through the pass.  It may be we shall find boatmen on the upper waters,
+and a canoe.  But for some days, O my love, let these only woods be
+enough for us!"
+
+Their dessert of fruit eaten, she arose and turned to the business of
+washing-up.  He would have helped; but she mocked him, having hidden his
+shoes.  "You are to rest quiet, and obey!"
+
+Before setting to work she brought him coffee and a roll of
+tobacco-leaf, and held a burning stick for him while he lit and inhaled.
+
+For twenty minutes, perhaps, he watched her, stretched on the rock,
+resting on his elbow, his hunger appeased, his whole frame fatigued, but
+in a delicious weariness, as in a dream.
+
+Far down the valley the full moon thrust a rim above the massed oaks and
+hemlocks.  It swam clear, and he called to her to come and watch it.
+
+She did not answer.  She had slipped away to the house--as he supposed
+to restore the plates to their shelves.  Apparently it took her a long
+while. . . . He called again to her.
+
+The curtain of the doorway was lifted and she stood on the threshold,
+all in white, fronting the moon.
+
+"Will my lord come into his house?"
+
+Her voice thrilled down to him. . . . Then she remembered that he stood
+there shoeless; and, giving a little cry, would have run barefoot down
+the moonlit rocky steps, preventing him.
+
+But he had sprung to his unshod feet, and with a cry rushed up to her,
+disregarding the thorns.
+
+She sank, crossing her arms as a slave--in homage, or, it may be, to
+protect her maiden breasts.
+
+"No, no--" she murmured, sliding low within his arms.  "Look first
+around, if our house be worthy!"
+
+But he caught her up, and lifting her, crushing her body to his, carried
+her into the hut.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+
+She awoke at daybreak to the twittering of birds.  Raising herself
+little by little, she bent over him, studying the face of her beloved.
+He slept on; and after a while she slipped from the couch, collected her
+garments in a bundle, tiptoed to the door, and lifting its curtain,
+stole out to the dawn.
+
+Mist filled the valley below the fall.  A purple bank of vapour blocked
+the end of it.  But the rolling outline was edged already with gold, and
+already ray upon ray of gold shivered across the upper sky and touched
+the pinewoods at the head of the pass.
+
+Clad in cloak and night-rail, shod in loose slippers of Indian
+leather-work, she moved across to the fire she had banked overnight.
+Beside it a bold robin had perched on the rim of the cooking-pot.
+He fluttered up to a bough, and thence watched her warily.  She remade
+the fire, building a cone of twigs; fetched water, scoured the cauldron,
+and hung it again on its bar.  As she lifted it the sunlight glinted on
+the ring her lover had brought for the wedding and had slipped on her
+finger in the cabin, binding her by this only rite.
+
+The fire revived and crackled cheerfully.  She caught up the bundle
+again and climbed beside the stream, following its right bank until she
+came to the pool of her choice.  There, casting all garments aside, she
+went down to it, and the alders hid her.
+
+Half an hour later she returned and paused on the threshold of the hut,
+the sunlight behind her.  In her arms she carried a cluster--a bundle
+almost--of ferns and autumnal branches--cedar and black-alder, the one
+berried with blue the other with coral, maple and aromatic spruce, with
+trails of the grape vine.  He was awake and lay facing the door,
+half-raised on his left elbow.
+
+"This for good-morning!"  She held out the armful to show him, but so
+that it hid her blushes.  Then, dropping the cluster on the floor, she
+ran and knelt, bowing her face upon the couch beside him.  But laying a
+palm against either temple he forced her to lift it and gaze at him,
+mastering the lovely shame.
+
+He looked long into her eyes.  "You are very beautiful," he said slowly.
+
+She sprang to her feet.  "See the dew on my shoes!  I have bathed,
+and--" with a gesture of the hand towards the scattered boughs--
+"afterwards I pulled these for you.  But I was in haste and late
+because--because--"  She explained that while bathing she had let the
+ring, which was loose and heavy, slip from her finger into the pool.
+It had lodged endwise between two pebbles, and she had taken some
+minutes to find it.  "As for these," she said, "the flowers are all
+done, but I like the leaves better.  In summer our housekeeping might
+have been make-believe; now, with the frosts upon us, we shall have hard
+work, and a fire to give thanks for."
+
+He slid from the couch and, standing erect, threw a bath-gown over his
+shoulders.  "I must build a chimney," he said, looking around; "a
+chimney and a stone hearth."
+
+"Then our house will be perfect."
+
+"I will start this very day. . . . Show me the way to your pool."
+
+
+They ate their breakfast on the stone above the fall, in the warm
+sunshine, planning and talking together like children.  He would build
+the chimney; but first he must climb down to the lower valley and find
+Bayard, deserted at the foot of the falls, and left to wander all night
+at will.
+
+He must take the mare, too, she said; and promised to start him on the
+bridle-path, so that he could not miss it.
+
+"What!  Must I ride on a side-saddle?"
+
+"It should be easy for you," she laughed.  "You pretended to know all
+about it when you taught me."  In the end it was settled that she should
+ride and he walk beside till Bayard was found.  "Then you can lead her
+back and leave her with Mr. Strongtharm."
+
+"But I shall need Bayard to bring home a sack of lime for my mortar.
+And you are over thoughtful for Madcap.  I walked up to inspect the
+pasture, and there is enough to last the pair for a week.  It is odds,
+too, we find some burnt lands at the back of these woods, with patches
+of good grass.  Let us keep the horses up here, at any rate until the
+nights turn colder.  A taste of hard faring will be good for their
+pampered flesh, as for mine.  Besides--though you may not know it--I am
+a first-class groom."
+
+"As well as a mason?  You will have to turn hunter, too, before long,
+else your cook will be out of work.  Dear, dear, how we begin to crowd
+the days!"
+
+
+For a whole week he worked at intervals, building his chimney with
+stones from the river bed, and laying them well and truly.  Ruth helped
+him at whiles, when household duties did not claim her.  Now and then,
+when his back ached with the toil, he would break off for a spell and
+watch her as she stooped over the cooking-pot, or knelt by the
+stream-side, bare-legged, with petticoat kilted high, beating the linen
+on a flat stone.
+
+When the chimney was finished they were in great anxiety lest, being
+built close under the cliff, it should catch a down-draught of the wind
+and fill the dwelling with smoke.  But the wind came, and, as it turned
+out, made a leap from the cliff to the valley, singing high overhead and
+missing the chimney clear.  When they lit their first fire indoors and
+ran forth to see the smoke rising in a thin blue pillar against the
+pines, they laughed elated, and at supper drank to their handiwork.
+
+Ruth's first sacrifice on the new hearth was the solemn heating of a
+flat iron, to crimp and pleat her lover's body-linen.
+
+Next day he shot a deer and flayed it; and, the next, set to work to
+build a bed.  Their couch had been of white linen laid upon skins, the
+skins resting on a thick mat of leaves.  Now he raised it from the
+ground on four posts, joining the posts with a stout framework and
+lacing the framework with cords criss-crossed like the netting of a
+hammock.  Also he replaced the curtain at the entrance with a door of
+split pinewood, and fashioned a wooden bolt.
+
+The halcyon weather held for two weeks, the delicate weather of Indian
+summer.  Day by day the forest dropped its leaves under a blue windless
+sky; but the nights sharpened their frosts.  Ruth, stealing early to her
+bathing-pool, found it edged with thin ice, and paused, breaking it with
+taps of her naked foot while she braced her body for the cold shock.
+
+The flat rock over the fall was still their supper-table.  After supping
+they would wrap themselves closer in their cloaks of bearskin, and sit
+for long, his arm about her body.  The stars wheeled overhead.
+At a little distance shone the open window inviting them.
+From their ledge they overlooked the world.
+
+
+She marvelled at the zest he threw into every moment and detail of this
+strange honeymooning.  He had taken pride even in skinning and cutting
+up the slain deer.
+
+She had, in fact, being fearful of her experiment; had planned it, in
+some sort, as a test for him.  She was no sentimentalist.  She had
+believed that he loved her--well she knew it now.  But for him this
+could not be first love.  Many times she had bethought her of the dead
+Margaret Dance, and as a sensible girl without resentment.  But, herself
+in the ecstasy of first love, she marvelled how it could die and
+anything comparable spring up in its room; and she had only her own
+heart to interrogate.  Her own heart told her that it was impossible.
+"Fool!" said her own heart.  "Is it not enough that he condescends--that
+you have found favour in his sight--you, that asked but to be his
+slave?"
+
+"Fool!" said her heart again.  "Would you be jealous of this dead woman?
+Then jealousy is not cruel as the grave, but crueller."
+
+And she retorted, "The woman is dead and cannot grudge it.
+Ah, conscience! are you the only part of me that has not slept in his
+arms.  I want him all--all!"
+
+"How can that be--since you are not his first love?" objected
+conscience, falling back upon its old position.
+
+"Be still," she whispered back.  "See how love is recreating him!"
+
+Indeed, the secret may have lain in her passing loveliness--by night,
+beside their fire on the rock, he would sit motionless watching her face
+for minutes together, or the poise of her head, or the curve of her chin
+as she tilted it to ponder the stars; and, in part, the woodland life,
+chosen by her so cunningly, may have bewitched him for a space.  Certain
+it is that during their sojourn here he became a youth again, eager and
+glad as a youth, passionate as a youth, laughing, throwing his heart
+into simple things and not shrinking from coarser trials--as when he
+plunged his hands into the blood of the deer.
+
+This story is of Ruth, not of Oliver Vyell; or of him only in so far as
+his star ruled hers.  For the moment their stars danced together and the
+common cares of this world stood back for a space and left a floor for
+them.
+
+Their bliss was absolute.  But the seed of its corruption lay in him.
+Her spirit was chaste, as her life had been.  For him, before ever
+Margaret Dance met and crossed his path, he had lived loosely,
+squandering his manhood; and of this squandering let one who later
+underwent it record the inevitable sentence.
+
+    "But ah! it hardens all within,
+     And petrifies the feeling."
+
+Nor could this temporary miracle do more for Oliver Vyell than wake in
+him a false springtide of the heart and delay by so long the revenge of
+his past upon his present self.
+
+
+Midway in the third week the weather broke.  He had foreseen this, and
+early one morning set forth upon Bayard, the mare following obediently
+as a dog, along the downhill circuit to the village.  There he would
+leave them in stall at the Ferry Inn, to be fetched by his grooms.
+Ruth walked some way beside him, telling off a list of purchases to be
+made at the village store to replenish their household stock.
+
+She left him and turned back, under boughs too bare to hide the lowering
+sky.  She had gained the hut and he the village before the storm broke.
+Indeed it gave him time to make his purchases and reach the Inn, where a
+heavy mail-bag awaited him.  He was served with bread, cheese, and beer
+in the Inn parlour, and dealt with the letters then and there; answering
+some, tearing up others, albeit still with a sense of bringing back his
+habits of business to a world with which he had no concern.  While he
+wrote, always in haste, on the cheap paper the Inn supplied, the storm
+broke and with such darkness that he pulled out his watch.  It was yet
+early afternoon.  He called for candles and wrote on.
+
+The last letter, addressed to Batty Langton, Esquire, he superscribed
+"_Most urgent_," and having sealed it, arose and shouldered his sack for
+the homeward tramp.  By this time the wind howled through the village
+street, blowing squall upon squall of rain before it.  It blew, too,
+dead in his path; but he faced it cheerfully.
+
+Before he gained what should have been the shelter of the woods, the
+gale had increased so that they gave less than the road had given.
+The trees rocked above him; leaves and dead twigs beat on his face, and
+at length the blast forced him almost to creep on all fours.  It was
+dark, too, beneath the swaying boughs.  But uppermost in his mind was
+fear for his love, lest the hut should have given way before the
+tempest, and she be lying crushed beneath it.
+
+Still he fought his way.  Darkness--the real darkness--was falling, and
+he was yet a mile from the hut when in his path a figure arose from the
+undergrowth where it had been crouching.
+
+"Ruth!"
+
+"Ah, you are safe! . . . I could not rest at home--"
+
+They took hands and forced their way against the wind.
+
+"The cabin?"
+
+"It stands, please God!"
+
+After much battling they spied the light shining through the louvers of
+its closed shutter.  The gale streamed down the valley as through a
+funnel, but once past the angle of the cliff they found themselves
+almost in a calm.  He pushed the door open.
+
+On the hearth--the hearth of his building--a pile of logs burned
+cheerfully.  Over these the kettle hissed; and the firelight fell on
+their bed, with its linen oversheet turned back and neatly folded.
+
+She entered and he closed the door behind her.  She laughed as he pushed
+its bolt.  They were drenched to the skin, the pair.
+
+"This is best," said she with another soft and happy laugh.
+
+"This is best," he repeated after her.  "Better even than in fair
+weather."
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+HOME-COMING.
+
+
+A week later they broke camp and set forth to climb to the head of the
+pass.
+
+Behind it--so Sir Oliver had learnt from old Strongtharm--lay an almost
+flat table-land, of pine-forest for the most part, through which for
+maybe half a dozen miles their river ran roughly parallel with another
+that came down from the north-west.  At one point (the old fellow
+declared) less than a mile divided their waters.
+
+"Seems," he said, "as if Nature all along intended 'em to jine, and
+then, at the last moment, changed her mind."  He explained the cause of
+their severance--an outcropping ridge of rock, not above a mile in
+length; but it served, deflecting the one stream to the southward, the
+other to north of east, so that they reached the ocean a good twenty
+leagues apart.
+
+He showed a map and told Sir Oliver further that at the narrowest point
+between the two rivers there dwelt a couple of brothers, Dave and Andy
+M'Lauchlin, with their households and long families, of whom all the
+boys were expert log-drivers, like their fathers.  They were likewise
+expert boatmen, and for money, no doubt, if Sir Oliver desired, would
+navigate the upper reaches of either stream for him.  Of these reaches
+the old man could tell little save that their currents ran moderately--
+"nothing out of the way."  The M'Lauchlins sent all their timber down to
+sea by the more northerly stream.  "Our river 'd be the better by far,
+three-fourths of its way, but--" with a jerk of his thumb--"the Gap,
+yonder, makes it foolishness."
+
+Sir Oliver asked many questions, studying the map; and ended by
+borrowing it.
+
+
+He had it spread on his knee when Ruth came out of the cabin for the
+last time, having said farewell to her household gods.
+
+"What are you reading?" she asked.
+
+"A map." He folded it away hastily.
+
+"And I am not to see it?"
+
+"Some day.  Some day, if the owner will sell, you shall have it framed,
+with our travels marked out upon it.  But, just now, it holds a small
+secret."
+
+She questioned him no further.  "Come," she said, "reach your arm in at
+the window and draw the bolt, and afterwards we will pull the shutter
+and nail it.  Are you going inside for a last look around?"
+
+He laughed.  "Why?  The knapsacks are here, ready."
+
+"Our home!"
+
+"I take the soul of it with me, taking you."
+
+It was prettily said.  Yet perversely she remembered how he had once
+spoken of Margaret Dance, saying, "Let the dead bury their dead."
+
+The sky, after six angry days--two sullen, four tempestuous--was clear
+again and promised another stretch of fair weather.  This was
+important, for they counted on having to sleep a night in the open
+before reaching the M'Lauchlins' camp.  Old Strongtharm had told Sir
+Oliver of a cave at the head of the pass and directed him how to find
+it.  Should the sky's promise prove false, they would descend back to
+the hut.  Snow was their one serious peril.
+
+
+They carried but the barest necessaries; for although the worst of the
+falls lay below and behind them, the upper part of the Gap was arduous
+enough, and the more difficult for being unknown; also Sir Oliver had
+old Strongtharm's assurance that the M'Lauchlins would furnish them with
+all things requisite for voyaging by water.
+
+Sir Oliver climbed in silence.  He was flinging a bridge, albeit a short
+one, across the unknown, and the risk of it weighed on him.  For himself
+this would have counted nothing, but he was learning the lesson common
+to all male animals whose mates for the first time travel beside them.
+As for Ruth, it was wonderful--the course of the path once turned, the
+small home left out of sight--how securely she breasted the upward path.
+Her lover and she were as gods walking, treading the roof of the world.
+
+Through thickets they climbed, and by stairways beside the singing
+falls.  In a pool below one of these falls they surprised a great loon
+that had resorted here to live solitary through his moulting-season.
+He rose and winged away with a cry like an inhuman laugh; and they
+recognised a sound which had often been borne down the gorge--once or
+twice at night, to awake and puzzle them.
+
+They came to the uppermost fall a good hour before sunset, and after a
+little search Sir Oliver found the cave.  They could have pushed on, but
+decided to sleep here: and they slept soundly, being in truth more weary
+than their spirits, exhilarated in the high air, allowed them to guess.
+
+They might, as it turned out, by forcing the march, have found the
+M'Lauchlins' settlement before dusk.  For scarcely had they travelled
+five miles next morning before they came on an outpost of it: a large
+hut, half dwelling-house, half boat-shed.  It stood in a clearing on the
+left shore, and close by the water's edge was a young man, patching the
+bottom of an upturned canoe.  Two children--a boy and a girl--had
+dropped their play to watch him.  A flat-bottomed boat lay moored to the
+bank, close by.
+
+The children, catching sight of our travellers, must have uttered some
+exclamation; for the young man turned quickly, and after a brief look
+called "Good-morning."  There was a ford (he shouted) fifty yards
+upstream; but no need to wade.  Let them wait a minute and he would
+fetch them.
+
+He laid down his tools, unmoored the flat-bottomed boat, and poled
+across.  On the way back he told them that he was Adam M'Lauchlin, son
+of David.  The little ones were children of his father by a second wife;
+but he had seven brothers and sisters of his own. . . . Yes, their
+settlement stood by the other river; at no great distance.  "If you'll
+hark, maybe you can hear the long saws at work. . . ."
+
+He led them to it, the small children bringing up the rear of the
+procession.  The _Z'm--Z'm_ of the saws grew loud in Ruth's ears before
+crossing the ridge she spied the huts between the trees--a congregation
+of ten or a dozen standing a little way back from a smooth-flowing
+river.  Between the huts and the river were many saw-pits, with men at
+work.
+
+At young Adam's hail the men in view desisted, quite as though he had
+sounded the dinner horn.  Heads of others emerged from the pits.
+Within a minute there was a small crowd gathered, of burly fellows
+diffusing the fragrance of pine sawdust, all stamped in their degrees
+with the M'Lauchlin family likeness, and all eager to know the
+strangers' business.
+
+Sir Oliver explained that he wanted a boat and two strong guides, to
+explore the upper waters.  He would pay any price, in moderation.
+
+"Ay," said their spokesman.  He wore a magnificent iron-grey beard
+powdered with saw-dust; and he carried a gigantic pair of shoulders, but
+rheumatism had contracted them to a permanent stoop.  "Ay, I'm no
+fearin' about the pay.  You'll be the rich man, the Collector from
+Boston."
+
+Ruth was startled.  She had supposed herself to be travelling deep into
+the wilderness.  She had yet to learn that in the wilderness, where men
+traffic in little else, they exchange gossip with incredible energy--
+talk it, in fact, all the time.  In those early colonial days the
+settlers overleapt and left behind them leagues of primeval forest, to
+all appearance inviolate.  But the solitude was no longer virgin.  Where
+foot of man had once parted the undergrowth the very breath of the wind
+followed and threaded its way after him, bearing messages to and fro.
+
+"I'm no speirin'," said the oldster cautiously.  "But though our lads
+have never been so far, there's talk of a braw house buildin'."
+
+Here, somewhat hastily, Sir Oliver took him aside, and they spent twenty
+minutes or so in converse together.  Ruth waited.
+
+He came back and selected young Adam, with a cousin of his--a taciturn
+youth, by name Jesse, son of Andrew--to be their boatman.  Five or six
+of the young men were evidently eager to be chosen; but none disputed
+his choice.  Rome, which reaches everywhere, reigned in the forest here;
+its old law of family unquestioned and absolute.  The two youths swung
+off to pack and provision the canoe.  An hour later they reported that
+all was ready; and by three in the afternoon the voyagers were on their
+way up-stream.
+
+
+The voyage lasted four days and was seldom laborious; for the river ran
+in long loops through the table-land, and with an easy current.
+But here and there shallow runs of rock made stairways for it from one
+level to another, and each of these miniature rapids compelled a
+portage; so that towards the end of the second day the young men had
+each a red shoulder spot chafed by the canoe's weight.
+
+They camped by night close beside the murmuring water, ate their supper
+beside a fire of boughs, slept on piled leaves beneath a tent of canvas
+stretched over a long ridge-pole.  The two young men had a separate and
+similar tent.
+
+For two days the forest hemmed them in so closely that although frost
+had half-stripped the deciduous trees, the eye found few vistas save
+along the river ahead.  On either hand was drawn a continuous curtain of
+mossed stems and boughs overlapping and interlacing their delicate
+twigs.  Scarcely a bird sang within the curtain; scarcely a woodland
+sound broke in upon the monotonous plash of the paddles.  Alder, birch,
+maple, pine, spruce, and hemlock--the woods were a lifeless tapestry.
+Ahead curved and stretched the waterway, rippled now and again by a
+musk-rat crossing, swimming with its nose and no more above water.
+
+A little before noon on the third day they emerged from this forest upon
+a wide track of burnt land; and certain hills of which the blue summits
+had for some hours been visible above the tree-tops on their right, now
+took shape from the base up, behind thin clumps of birch, poplar, and
+spruce--all of them (but the spruce especially) ragged and stunted in
+growth.  For the rest this burnt land resembled a neglected pasture,
+being carpeted for the most part with moss and blueberry.  A mysterious
+blight lay over all, and appeared to extend to the foot of the hills.
+
+All through the afternoon the chine of these hills closed the landscape;
+purpled at times by passing clouds, at times lit up by sun-rays that
+defined every bush and seam on the slopes.  All through the afternoon
+the folded gullies between the slopes unwound themselves interminably,
+little by little, as the voyagers traced up the river, paddling almost
+due southward, along its loops and meanders.
+
+But by nightfall they had turned the last spur of the range, and the
+next morning opened to them a vastly different landscape: an undulating
+country, wooded like a park, with hills indeed, but scattered ones to
+the south and west, and behind the hills the faint purple dome of a
+far-distant mountain, so faintly seen that at first Ruth mistook it for
+a cloud.
+
+She could not tell afterwards--though she often asked herself the
+question--at what point the landscape struck her as being strangely
+familiar.  Yet she was sure that the recognition came to her suddenly.
+Sir Oliver since the morning's start had been indisposed to talk.
+From time to time he drew out his map and consulted it.  The M'Lauchlin
+lads, on the other hand, seemed to be restless.  During the halt for the
+midday meal they drew aside together and Ruth heard them conversing in
+eager whispers.
+
+Possibly this stirred some expectation in her, which passed into
+surmise, into certainty.  Late in the afternoon she drew in the paddle
+she had been plying, laid it across the canoe, and called softly,--
+
+"Oliver!"
+
+He turned.  She was pointing to a hill now full in view ahead of them.
+
+"That cliff . . . you remember--the eagles?"
+
+He laughed as though the question amused him.
+
+"It is very like.  Yes, certainly, it is very like.  But wait until we
+open the clump of trees yonder. . . ."
+
+They opened it, and her heart gave a leap.  A moment before she had been
+sure this was the very hill.  His laugh had confirmed it. . . .
+She remembered how, at the foot of it, just such a river as this looped
+itself through the plain. . . . But, lo! in the opening gap, inch by
+inch, a long building displayed itself: a mansion, gleaming white, with
+a pillared front and pillared terraces, rising--terrace on terrace--from
+the woodland, into which a cascade of water, spouting half-way down the
+slope, plunged and was lost.
+
+She sat dumb.  His eyes were upon her; and he laughed quietly.
+
+"It is yours--as you commanded.  See!"
+
+He flung out a hand to the left.  She beheld a clearing--an avenue, that
+ran like a broad ribbon to the summit of a flat-topped rise.
+
+"You demanded sight of the ocean," he was saying, and his voice seemed
+to lose itself in the beat of the churning paddles.  "We cannot see it
+from here; but from the house--_your_ house--you shall look on it every
+day.  Did you not bid me remove a mountain?"
+
+
+For the rest of the way she sat as in a dream.  One of the M'Lauchlin
+lads had produced a cow-horn and was blowing it lustily. . . .
+They came to shore by river-stairs of stone, where two servants in the
+Vyell livery stood like statues awaiting them.
+
+It was falling dusk when Sir Oliver disembarked and gave her his hand.
+The men-servants, who had bent to hold the canoe steady as she stepped
+ashore, drew themselves erect and again touched foreheads to their lord
+and lady.
+
+Still as in a dream, her arm resting within her lover's, she went up the
+broad stairways from terrace to terrace.  Above her the long facade was
+lit with window after window blazing welcome.
+
+At the head of the perron, under the colonnaded portico, other tall
+men-servants stood in waiting, mute, deferential.  She passed between
+their lines into a vast entrance hall, and there, almost as her foot
+crossed its threshold, across the marbled floor little Miss Quiney came
+running a-flutter, inarticulate, with reaching hands.
+
+Ruth drew back, almost with a cry.  But before she could resist, Tatty's
+arms were about her and Tatty's lips lifted, pressed against either
+cheek.  She suffered the embrace.
+
+"My darling Ruth!--at last!"  Then with a laugh, "And in what strange
+clothes! . . . But come--come and be arrayed!"  She caught Ruth's cold
+hand and led her towards the staircase.  "Nay, never look about you so:
+your eyes will not take in a tenth of all the wonders!"
+
+
+Later, as an Indian gong sounded below, he came from his dressing-room
+into the great bride-chamber where she stood, arrayed in satin, before
+her mirror, hesitating as her fingers touched one after another of the
+jewels scattered on the dressing-table under the waxen lights.  Her maid
+slipped away discreetly.
+
+"Well?" he asked.  He was resplendent in a suit of sapphire velvet, with
+cravat and ruffles of old Spanish lace.  "Is my love content with
+her home-coming?"
+
+She crossed her arms slowly.
+
+"You are good to me," she said.  "You do me too great honour, my lord."
+
+He laughed, and catching up a necklace of diamonds from the
+dressing-table, looped it across her throat, clasped it, leaned over her
+shoulder and kissed her softly between the ear and the cheek's delicate
+round.  Their eyes met in the mirror.
+
+"I invited the Quiney," he said gaily, "to give you a feeling of home
+among these strange faces.  She will not dine with us, though, unless
+you choose."
+
+"Let us be alone, to-night!" she pleaded.
+
+"So be it. . . . But you shiver: you are cold.  No?  Then weary,
+perhaps--yes, and hungry.  I've a backwoods hunger, for my part.
+Let us go down and dine."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+
+LADY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+BATTY LANGTON, CHRONICLER.
+
+
+
+_From Batty Langton, Esquire, to the Hon.  Horatio Walpole_.
+
+                             BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS,
+                               January 21st, 1748.
+
+. . . . . You ask me, my dear Sir, why I linger on year by year in this
+land of Cherokees and Choctaws, as you put it, at the same time hinting
+very delicately that now, with my poor old father in his grave and my
+own youthful debts discharged, you see no enduring reason for this
+exile.  It is kind of you to be so solicitous: kinder still to profess
+that you yet miss me.  But that I am missed at White's is more than you
+shall persuade me to believe.  In an earlier letter, written when the
+Gaming Act passed, you told me they were for nailing up an escutcheon to
+mourn the death of play; they nailed up none for me.  And I gather that
+play has recovered, and Dick Edgcumbe holds my cards.  I doubt if I
+could endure to revisit St. James's--save by moonlight perhaps.
+_Rappelez-moi_ to the waiters.  They will remember me.
+
+But in good deed, dear Sir, what should I be doing at home among the
+Malvern Hills upon a patrimony of 800 pounds?--for to that it has
+dwindled.  Can I hoe turnips, or poke a knowledgeable finger into the
+flanks of beeves?  I wonder if your literary explorations ever led you
+across the furrow of an ancient ploughman who--
+
+      --on a May morning, on Malvern hills
+
+was weary of wandering and laid him down to sleep beside a brook--having
+been chased thither betimes, no doubt, by a nagging bedfellow.
+I have no wife, nor mean to take one, and find it more to my comfort to
+sleep here by the River Charles and dream of Malvern, secure that I
+shall wake to find myself detached from it by half a world.
+
+Yet your last letter touched me closely; for it happens that Sir O. V.,
+for love of whom rather than for any better reason I have kept this
+exile, has taken to himself a Lady.  That, you'll say, should be my
+dismissal; and that I like her, as she appears willing to be friends
+with me, gives me, you'll say again, no excuse to linger.  Yet I do, and
+shall.
+
+As for her history, Vyell picked her up in a God-forsaken fishing town,
+some leagues up the coast; brought her home; placed her under
+gouvernante and tutors; finally espoused her.  Stay: finally he has
+built a palace for her, "Eagles" by name, whither he forces all Boston
+to pay its homage.  For convenience of access to the goddess he has cut
+a road twenty feet broad through the woodlands of her demesne.
+
+    The palace in a woody vale they found,
+      High-raised, of stone--
+
+or, to speak accurately, of stone and timber combined.  Be pleased to
+imagine a river very much like that of Richmond, but covered with grey
+crags.  "Fie," you will say, "the site is savage, then, like all else in
+this New World?"  My dear sir, you were never more mistaken.
+Mr. Manley's young eye of genius fastened upon it at once, to adapt it
+to a house and gardens in the Italian style.
+
+Have I mentioned this Mr. Manley in former letters?  He is a young
+gentleman of good Midland blood (his county, I believe, Bedfordshire),
+with a moderate talent for drinking, a something more than talent for
+living on his friends, and a positive genius for architecture.
+He will have none of your new craze for Gothic.  Palladio is his god,
+albeit he allows that Palladio had feet of clay, and corrects him
+boldly--though always, as he tells me, with help of his minor deities,
+Vignola and the rest, who built the great villas around Rome.  He has
+studied in Italy, and tells me that at Florence he was much beholden to
+your friend Mann, who, I dare swear, lost money by the acquaintance.
+
+Vyell, his present patron, takes him out and shows him the site.
+"Italy!" exclaims the Youth of Genius.  "Italy?" echoes Maecenas,
+astonished.  "We'll make it so," says the Youth.  "These terraces, this
+spouting water, these pines to serve us for cypresses!"  "But, my good
+sir, the House?" cries the impatient Vyell.  "A fig for your house!
+Any fool can design a house when the Almighty and an artist together
+have once made the landscape for it.  Grant me two years for the
+gardens," he pleads.  "You shall have ten months to complete landscape,
+house, everything."  "I shall need armies of workmen."  "You shall have
+them."  The Youth groaned.  "I shall have to be sober for ten months on
+end!"  "What of that?" says V.  Lovers are unconscionable.
+
+Well, the Youth sits down to his plans, and at once orders begin to fly
+across ocean to this port and that for the rarest marbles--_rosso
+antico_ from Mount Taenarus, _verde antico_ from Thessally; with green
+Carystian, likewise shipped from Corinth; Carrara, Veronese Orange,
+Spanish _broccatello_, Derbyshire alabaster, black granite from Vyell's
+Cornish estate, red and purple porphyries from high up the Nile. . . .
+The Youth conjures up his gardens as by magic.  Here you have a terrace
+fenced with columns; below it a cascade pouring down a stairway of
+circular basins--the hint of it borrowed from Frascati (from the Villa
+Torlonia, if I remember); there an alley you'd swear was Boboli dipping
+to rise across the river, on a stairway you'd swear as positively was
+Val San Zibio.  Yet all is congruous.  The dog scouts the Villa d'Este
+for a "toy-shop."
+
+The house at first disappoints one, being straight and simple to the
+last degree.  ("D----n me," says he, "what can you look for, in ten
+months?")  It is of two storeys, the windows of the upper storey loftier
+by one-third than those beneath; and has for sole ornament a balustraded
+parapet broken midway by an Ionic portico of twelve columns, with a
+_loggia_ deeply recessed above its entrance door.  To this portico a
+flight of sixteen steps conducts you from the uppermost terrace.
+
+Such is Vyell's new pleasance of Eagles, Boston's latest wonder.  I have
+described it at this length because you profess to take more interest in
+houses than in women; and also, to tell the truth, be cause I am shy of
+describing Lady V.  To call her roundly the loveliest creature I have
+ever set eyes on, or am like to, is (you will say) no description,
+though it may argue me in love with her.
+
+On my honour, no! or only as all others are in love--all the men, I
+mean, and even some pro portion of the womankind.  The rest agree to
+call her "Lady Good-for-Nothing," upon a double rumour, of which one
+half is sad truth, and the other (my life on it) false as hell.
+
+They have heard that when Vyell found her she was a serving-girl,
+undergoing punishment (a whipping, to be precise) for some trumpery
+offence against the Sabbath.  Yes, my dear sir, this is true; as it is
+true also that Vyell, like a knight-errant of old, offered to share her
+punishment, and did indeed share it to the extent of sitting in the
+stocks beside her.  You'd have thought an honest mind might find food
+for compassion in this, and even an excuse to believe the better of
+human nature; but it merely scandalises these Puritan tabbies.
+They fear Vyell for his wealth and title; and he, despising them, forces
+them to visit her.
+
+Now for the falsehood.  The clergyman who read the marriage ceremony for
+V. somewhere in the backwoods (this, too, was his whim, and they have to
+be content with it) is a low-bred trencher-chaplain, by name Silk.
+He should have been unfrocked the next week, not for performing a
+function apostolically derived, but for spreading a report--I wait to
+fasten it on him--that before marriage she was no better than she should
+be.  I have earned better right than any other man to know Vyell, and I
+know it to be calumny.  But the wind blows, and the name
+"Lady Good-for-Nothing" is a by-breath of it.
+
+Vyell guesses nothing of this.  He has a masculine judgment and no small
+degree of wit--though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but through
+misprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack _flair_.  His lady,
+if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs and
+assemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin,
+or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong.
+(Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.)  She
+can know nothing of the worse slander.
+
+She moves through her duties as hostess with a pretty well-bred grace,
+and a childishness infinitely touching.  Yet something more protects
+her; a certain common sense, which now and then very nearly achieves
+wit.  For an instance--But yesterday a certain pompous lady lamented to
+her in my hearing (and with intention, as it seemed to me, who am grown
+suspicious), the rapid moral decay of Boston society.  "Alas!" sighs my
+heroine; "but what a comfort, ma'am, to think that neither of us belongs
+to it!"  Add to this that she has learning enough to equip ten
+_precieuses_--and hides it: has read Plato and can quote her Virgil by
+the page--but forbears.  Yet all this while you have suspected me, no
+doubt, of raving over a '_Belle Sauvage_, a Pocahontas.
+
+Well, I shall watch her progress. . . . I have become so nearly a part
+of Vyell that I charge myself to stand for him and supply what he lacks.
+He loves her; she loves him to doting; but I cannot see into their
+future.
+
+Vyell, by the way, charges me to request your good offices with Mr. Mann
+to procure him a couple of Tuscan vases.  I know that your friend is
+infinitely obliging to all who approach him through you: and this
+request which my letter carries as a tag should have been its pretext,
+as in fact it was its occasion.  Adieu! my dear sir.
+
+                  Yours most sincerely,
+
+                        BAT. LANGTON.
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+SIR OLIVER SAILS.
+
+
+Mr. Langton was right.  Theologians, preaching mysteries, are
+helpless before the logical mind until they abandon defence and
+boldly attack their opponents' capital incapacity, saying, "Precisely
+because you insist upon daylight, you miss discovering the stars."
+The battle is a secular one, and that sentence contains the reason,
+too, why it will never be ended in this world.  But the theologians
+may strengthen their conviction, if not their argument, by noting how
+often the more delicate shades of human feeling will oppose
+themselves to the logical mind as a mere wall of blindness.
+
+Oliver Vyell loved his bride as passionately as his nature, hardened
+by his past, allowed him.  To the women who envied her, to the
+gossips and backbiters, he opposed a nescience inexpugnable,
+unscalable as a wall of polished stone: but the mischief was, he
+equally ignored her sensitiveness.
+
+Being sensitive, she understood the hostile shadows better than the
+hard protecting fence.  To noble natures enemies are often nearer
+than friends, and more easily forgiven.
+
+But Mr. Langton was also right in guessing her ignorant of the
+rumours set going by Silk, who, as yet, had whispered falsehoods
+only.  The worst rumour of all--the truth--was beyond his courage.
+
+Ruth loved her lord devoutly.  To love him was so easy that it seemed
+no repayment of her infinite debt.  She desired some harder task; and
+therefore, since he laid this upon her, she--who would have chosen a
+solitude to be happy in--rejoiced to meet these envious ladies with
+smiles, with a hundred small graces of hospitality; and still her
+bliss swallowed up their rancour, scarcely tasting its gall.  He
+(they allowed) was the very pattern of a lover.
+
+He was also a model man of business.  Even from his most flagrant
+extravagances, as Batty Langton notes in another epistle, he usually
+contrived to get back something like his money's worth.
+He would lend money, or give it, where he chose: but to the man who
+overreached him in a money bargain he could be implacable. Moreover,
+though a hater of quarrels, he never neglected an enmity he had once
+taken up, but treated it with no less exactitude than a business
+account.
+
+Their happiness had endured a little more than three months when, one
+morning, he entered Ruth's morning-room with a packet of letters in
+his hand.  He was frowning, not so much in wrath, as in distaste of
+what he had to tell.
+
+"Dear," he said brusquely, bending to kiss her, "I have ill news.  I
+must go back to England, on business."
+
+"To England ?" she echoed.  Her wrists were laid along the arms of
+her chair, and, as she spoke, her fingers clutched sharply at the
+padding.  She was not conscious of it.  She was aware only that
+somehow, at the back of her happiness this shadow had always lurked;
+and that England lay across the seas, at an immense distance. . . .
+
+He went on--his tone moody, but the words brief and distinct.
+"For a few months, only; five or six, perhaps; with any luck, even
+less. That infernal aunt of mine--"
+
+"Lady Caroline ?"  She asked it less out of curiosity than as a
+prompter gives a cue; for he had come to a full stop.  She was
+wondering how Lady Caroline could injure him, being so far
+away. . . .
+
+He laughed savagely, yet--having broken his news, or the worst of
+it--with something of relief.  "She shall smart for it--if that
+console you?"
+
+"Is it on my account?"
+
+"Only, as I guess, in so far as she accuses you of having played the
+devil with her plan for marrying me up with my cousin Di'?  If Di'
+had been the last woman in the world. . . .  But the old harridan
+never spoke to me after the grooming I gave her that morning at
+Natchett.  'Faith, and I did treat her to some plain talk!" he wound
+up with another laugh.
+
+"But what harm can she do you?"
+
+He explained that his late uncle Sir Thomas had, in the closing years
+of his life, shown unmistakable signs of brain-softening, and that a
+symptom of his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of
+wills--"two-thirds of 'em incoherent.  Every two or three days he'd
+compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson,
+after reading the rigmarole through, as solemn as a judge, would get
+it solemnly witnessed and carry it off.  He had three boxes full of
+these lunacies when the old man died, and I'll wager he has not
+destroyed 'em.  Lawyers never destroy handwriting, however foolish.
+It's against their principles."
+
+"But," said Ruth, musing.  "I understood that he died of a jail
+fever, caught at the Assizes, where he was serving on--what do you
+call it?"
+
+"The Grand Jury."
+
+"Well, how could he be serving on a Grand Jury if his head was
+affected as you say?"
+
+"You don't know England," he assured her.  "Ten to one as a County
+magnate he stickled for it, and the High Sheriff put him on the panel
+to keep him amused."
+
+"But a Grand Jury deals sometimes with matters of life and death,
+does it not?"
+
+"Often, but only in the first instance.  It finds a true bill
+usually, and sends the cause down to be tried by judge and jury, who
+dispose of it.  Actually the incompetence of a grand juror or two
+doesn't count, if the scandal be not too glaring. . . .  But I see
+your drift.  It will be a point for the other side, no matter how
+lunatic the document, that after perpetrating it he was still thought
+capable by the High Sheriff of his county."
+
+"I do not know that the point struck me.  I was wondering--"  Here
+she broke off.  The thought, in fact, uppermost in her mind was that
+he had not suggested her voyaging to England with him.
+
+"It _is_ a point, anyway," he persisted.  "But it won't stand against
+Huskisson's documentary proof of lunacy. . . . You see, the greater
+part of the property was entailed, and the poor old fool couldn't
+touch it.  But there's an unentailed estate in Devonshire--Downton by
+name--worth about two thousand a year.  By a will made in '41, when
+his mind was admittedly sound, he left it to me with a charge upon it
+of five hundred for Lady Caroline.  By a second, made three years
+later and duly witnessed, he left her Downton for her life; and with
+that I chose not to quarrel, though I could have brought evidence
+that he was unfit to make any will.  I agreed with the infernal woman
+to let things stand on that.  But now, being at daggers drawn with
+me, she digs up (if you please) a will made in '46 and apparently
+sane in wording, by which, without any provision for the heir-at-law,
+the whole bagful, real and personal, goes to her, to be used by her
+and willed away, as she pleases; this, although she well knows I can
+prove Sir Thomas to have been a blethering idiot at the time."
+
+"Is it worth while?"
+
+"Worth while?" he echoed, as if doubtful that she had understood.
+"The woman is doing it out of spite, of course.  Very likely she is
+fool enough to think that, fixed here with the Atlantic between us, I
+shall give her the double gratification of annoying me and letting
+her win by default."
+
+"It is a large sum," she mused.
+
+"Of course it is," he agreed sharply.  "An estate yielding two
+thousand pounds interest.  You would not suggest my letting it go, I
+should hope!"
+
+"Certainly not, if you cannot afford it."
+
+"If it were a twentieth part of the sum, I'd not be jockeyed out of
+it." He laughed harshly.  "As men go, I am well-to-do: but, dear, has
+it never occurred to you to wonder what this place and its household
+cost me?"
+
+She answered with a small wry smile.  "Often it has occurred to me.
+Often I tell myself that I am wicked to accept, as you are foolish
+perhaps to give, all this luxury."
+
+"You adorn it. . . . Dear, do not misunderstand me.  All the offering
+I can bring is too little for my love."
+
+"I know," she murmured, looking up at him with moist eyes.  "I know;
+and yet--"
+
+"I meant only that you are not used to handling money or calculating
+it--as why should you be?"
+
+"If my lord will only try me!"
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"Of what use is a wife if she may not contrive for her husband's
+good--take thought for his household?  Ah, my dear, these cares are
+half a woman's happiness! . . . I might make mistakes.  Nay, 'tis
+certain.  I would the house were smaller: in a sense I would that
+your wealth were smaller--it would frighten me less.  But something
+tells me that, though frightened, I should not fail you."
+
+He stared down at her, pulling his lip moodily.  "I was thinking,"
+said he, "to ask Langton to be my steward.  Would you really choose
+to be cumbered with all this business?"
+
+She held her breath for a moment; for his question meant that he had
+no design to take her with him.  Her face paled a little, but she
+answered steadily.
+
+"It will at least fill my empty hours. . . .  Better, dear--it will
+keep you before me in all the day's duties; since, though I miss you,
+all day long I shall be learning to be a good wife."
+
+As she said it her hand went up to her side beneath her left breast,
+as something fluttered there, soft as a bird's wing stirring.
+It fluttered for a moment under her palm, then ceased.  The room had
+grown strangely still. . . .  Yet he was speaking.
+
+He was saying--"I'll teach these good people who's Head of the
+Family!"
+
+Ah, yes--"the Family!"  Should she tell him? . . . She bethought her
+of Mrs. Harry's sudden giddiness in the waggon.  Mrs. Harry
+was now the mother of a lusty boy--Sir Oliver's heir, and the
+Family's prospective Head. . . .  Should she tell him? . . .
+
+He stooped and kissed her.  "Love, you are pale.  I have broken this
+news too roughly."
+
+She faltered.  "When must you start?"
+
+"In three days.  That's as soon as the _Maryland_ can take in the
+rest of her cargo and clear the customs."
+
+"They will be busy days for you."
+
+"Desperately."
+
+"Yet you must spare me a part of one, and teach me to keep accounts,"
+said she, and smiled bravely albeit her face was wan.
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+MISCALCULATING WRATH.
+
+
+Mr. Langton sat in his private apartment by Boston Quay trying the
+balance of a malacca cane.
+
+Sir Oliver had sailed a week ago.  Mr. Langton had walked down to the
+ship with him and taken his farewell instructions.
+
+"By the way," said Sir Oliver, "I want you to make occasion to visit
+Eagles now and again, and pay your respects.  I shall write to you as
+well as to her; and the pair of you can exchange news from your
+letters.  She likes you."
+
+"I hope so," answered Langton, "because 'tis an open secret that I
+adore her."
+
+Sir Oliver smiled, a trifle ruefully.  "Then you'll understand how it
+hits a man to leave her.  Maybe--for I had meant to make you
+paymaster in my absence--you'll also forgive me for having changed my
+mind?"
+
+"I'd have called you a damned fool if you hadn't," said Langton
+equably.  "She's your wife, hang it all: and I'll lay you five pounds
+you'll return to find her with hair dishevelled over your monstrous
+careless bookkeeping.  My dear Noll, a woman--a good woman--is never
+completely happy till convinced that she, and only she, has saved the
+man she loves from ruin; and, what's more, she's a fool if she can't
+prove it."
+
+"Nevertheless she's a beginner; and I'll be glad of your promise to
+run over from time to time.  A question or two will soon discover if
+things are running on an even keel."
+
+"I shall attempt no method so coarse," Langton assured him.  "I don't
+want to be ordered out of the house--must I repeat that I adore her?
+It may be news to you that she repays my attachment with a certain
+respect. . . .  Should she find herself in any difficulty--and she
+will not--I shall be sent for and consulted.  In any event, fond man,
+you may count on my calling."
+
+As they shook hands Sir Oliver asked, "Don't you envy me, Batty?"
+
+"Constantly and in everything," answered Langton; "though--ass that I
+am--I have rather prided myself on concealing it."
+
+"I mean, don't you wish that you, and not I, were sailing for
+England?  For that matter, though, there's nothing prevents you."
+
+"Oh yes--there is."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"Use and wont, if you will; indolence, if you choose; affection for
+you, Noll, if you prefer it."
+
+"That had been an excellent reason for coming with me."
+
+"It may be a better one for staying. . . . Well, as you walk up St.
+James's, give it my regards."
+
+
+"For so fine an intelligence Noll can be infernally crass at times,"
+muttered Mr. Langton to himself as he walked back to his lodgings.
+
+He kept his promise and rode over to Eagles ten days later, to pay
+Ruth a visit.  He found her astonishingly cheerful.  The sum left by
+Sir Oliver for her stewardship had scared her at first.  It scared
+her worse to discover how the heap began to drain away as through a
+sieve.  But slowly she saw her way to stop some of the holes in that
+sieve.  He had calculated her expenses, taking for basis the accounts
+of the past few months; and in the matter of entertaining, for
+example, she would save vast sums. . . . She foresaw herself a miser
+almost, to earn his praise.
+
+"_--Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.
+The heart of her husband shall safely trust in her, so that he shall
+have no need of spoil.  She will do him good and not evil all the
+days of his life_."
+
+"_She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
+She is like the merchants's ships; she bringeth her food from afar.
+She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her
+household. . . . She considereth a field and buyeth it. . . .
+She looketh well into the ways of her household_."
+
+"_Her children rise up, and call her blessed. . . ._"  Her children?
+But she had let him go, after all, without telling her secret.
+
+
+Mr. Langton sat and balanced a malacca cane in his hand.  When his
+man announced the Reverend Mr. Silk, he laid it down carefully on the
+floor beside him.
+
+"Show Mr. Silk up, if you please."
+
+Mr. Silk entered with an affable smile.  "Ah, good-morning, Mr.
+Langton!" said he, depositing his hat on the table and pulling off a
+pair of thick woollen gloves.  "I am prompt on your call, eh?
+But this cold weather invites a man to walk briskly.  Not to
+mention," he added, with an effort at facetiousness, "that when Mr.
+Langton sends for a clergyman his need is presumably urgent."
+
+"It is," said Mr. Langton, seemingly blind to the hand he proferred.
+"Would you, before taking a seat, oblige me by throwing a log on the
+fire? . . . Thank you--the weather is raw, as you say."
+
+"Urgent?  But not serious, I hope?"
+
+"Both.  Sit down, please. . . . I am, as you know, a particular
+friend of Sir Oliver Vyell's."
+
+"Say, rather, his best."  Mr. Silk bowed and smiled.
+
+"Possibly.  At all events so close a friend that, being absent, he
+gives me the right to resent any dishonouring suspicion that touches
+him--or touches his lady.  It comes to the same thing."
+
+Mr. Silk cocked his head sideways, like a bird considering a worm.
+"Does it?" he queried, after a slight pause.
+
+"Certainly.  A rumour is current through Boston, touching Lady
+Vyell's virtue; or, at least, her conduct before marriage."
+
+"'Tis a censorious world, Mr. Langton."
+
+"Maybe; but let us avoid generalities, Mr. Silk.  What grounds have
+you for imputing this misconduct to Lady Vyell?"
+
+"Me, sir?" cried Mr. Silk, startled out of his grammar.
+
+"You, sir." Mr. Langton arose lazily, and stepping to the door,
+turned the key; then returning to the hearth, in leisurely manner
+turned back his cuff's.  "I have traced the slander to you, and hold
+the proofs.  Perhaps you had best stand up and recant it before you
+take your hiding.  But, whether or no, I am going to hide you," he
+promised, with his engaging smile.  Stooping swiftly he caught up the
+malacca.  Mr. Silk sprang to his feet and snatched at the chair,
+dodging sideways.
+
+"Strike as you please," he snarled; "Ruth Josselin is a--"  But
+before the word could out Batty Langton's first blow beat down his
+guard.  The second fell across his exposed shoulders, the third
+stunningly on the nape of his neck.  The fourth--a back-hander--
+welted him full in the face, and the wretched man sank screaming for
+pity.
+
+Batty Langton had no pity.  "Stand up, you hound!" he commanded.
+The command was absurd, and he laughed savagely, tickled by its
+absurdity even in his fury, while he smote again and again.
+He showered blows until, between blow and blow, he caught his breath
+and panted.  Mr. Silk's screams had sunk to blubbings and whimpers.
+Between the strokes he heard them.
+
+His valet was knocking timorously on the door.  "All right!" called
+Langton, lifting his cane and lowering it slowly--for his victim lay
+still.  He stooped to drag aside the arm covering the huddled face.
+As he did so, Mr. Silk snarled again, raised his head and bit
+blindly, fastening his teeth in the flesh of the left hand.  Langton
+wrenched free and, as the man scrambled to his feet, dealt him with
+the same hand a smashing blow on the mouth--a blow that sent him
+reeling, to overbalance and pitch backward to the floor again across
+an overturned chair.
+
+Somehow the pleasure of getting in that blow restored--literally at a
+stroke--Langton's good temper.  He laughed and tossed the cane into a
+corner.
+
+"You may stand up now," said he sweetly.  "You are not going to be
+beaten any more."
+
+Mr. Silk stood up.  His mouth trickled blood, and he nursed his right
+wrist, where the cane had smitten across the bone.  Langton stepped
+to the door and, unlocking it, admitted his trembling valet.
+
+"My good fool," he said, "didn't I call to you not to be alarmed?
+Mr. Silk, here, has been seized with a--a kind of epileptic fit.
+Help him downstairs and call a chair for him.  Don't stare; he will
+not bite again for a very long time."
+
+
+But in this Mr. Langton was mistaken.
+
+He took the precaution of cauterising his bitten hand; and before
+retiring to rest that night contemplated it grimly, holding it out to
+the warmth of his bachelor fire.  It was bandaged; but above the edge
+of the bandage his knuckles bore evidence how they had retaliated
+upon Mr. Silk's teeth.
+
+He eyed these abrasions for a while and ended with a soft complacent
+laugh.  "Queer, how little removed we are, after all, from the
+natural savage!" he murmured.  "Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to
+introduce to your notice Batty Langton, Esquire, a child of nature--
+not perhaps of the best period--still using his naked fists and for a
+woman--primitive cause of quarrel.  And didn't he enjoy it, by
+George!"
+
+He laughed again softly.  But, could he have foreseen, he had been
+willing rather to cut the hand off for its day's work.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+THE TERRACE.
+
+
+Ruth was happy.  To-day, and for a whole week to come, she was
+determined to be purely happy, blithe as the spring sunshine upon the
+terrace.  For a week she would, like Walton's milkmaid, cast away
+care and refuse to load her mind with any fears of many things that
+will never be.  Her spirit sang birdlike within her.  And the
+reason?--that the _Venus_ had arrived in harbour, with Dicky on
+board.
+
+Peace had been signed, or was on the point to be signed, and in the
+North Atlantic waters His Majesty's captains of frigates could make
+a holiday of duty.  Captain Harry used his holiday to sail up for
+Boston, standing in for Carolina on his way and fetching off his
+wife and his firstborn--a bouncing boy.  It was time, they agreed,
+to pay their ceremonial visit to Sir Oliver and his bride; high
+time also for Dicky to return and embrace his father.
+
+Sir Oliver had written of his approaching marriage.  "Well, dear,"
+was Mrs. Harry's comment, "'twas always certain he would marry.  As
+for Ruth Josselin, she is an amazingly beautiful girl and I believe
+her to be good.  So there's no more to be said but to wish 'em joy."
+
+Captain Harry kissed his wife.  "Glad you take it so, Sally.  I was
+half afraid--for of course there _was_ the chance, you know--"
+
+"I'm not a goose, I hope, to cry for the moon!"
+
+"Is that the way of geese?" he asked, and they both laughed.
+
+A second letter had come to them from Eagles, telling them of his
+happiness, and franking a note in which Ruth prettily acknowledged
+Mrs. Harry's congratulations.
+
+A third had been despatched; a hurried one, announcing his departure
+for England.  Before this reached Carolina, however, the _Venus_ had
+sailed, and Dicky rushed home to find his father gone.
+
+But a message came down to Boston Quay, with the great coach for Mrs.
+Vyell, and the baggage and saddle-horses for the gentlemen.  There
+were three saddle-horses, for Ruth added an invitation for
+Mr. Hanmer, "if the discipline of the ship would allow."
+
+"She always was the thoughtfullest!" cried Dicky.  "Why, sir, to be
+sure you must come too. . . . We'll go shooting.  Is it too late for
+partridge? . . . One forgets the time of year, down in the islands."
+
+Strangely enough Mr. Hanmer, so shy by habit, offered but a slight
+resistance.
+
+
+It was Dicky who, as Ruth sped to him with a happy little cry, hung
+on his heel a moment and blushed violently.  She took him in her
+arms, exclaiming at his growth.
+
+"Why--look, Tatty--'tis a man!  And is that what he means?--Ah,
+Dicky, don't say you're too tall to kiss your old playmate."
+
+Then, holding him a little away and still observing his confusion,
+she remembered his absurd boyish love for her and how he had
+confessed it.  Well, she must put him at his ease. . . . She turned
+laughingly to welcome the others, and now for a moment she too
+flushed rosy-red as she shook hands with Mr. Hanmer.  She could not
+have told why; but perhaps it was that instead of returning her
+smile, his eyes rested on her face gravely, intently, as though
+unable to drag themselves away.
+
+Captain Harry and his wife marvelled, as well they might, at the
+house and its wonders.  Sir Oliver had chosen to take his meals
+French fashion and at French hours; and Ruth apologised for having
+kept up the custom. Captain Harry, after protesting against so
+ungodly a practice, admitted that his ride had hungered him, and at
+_dejeuner_ proved it not only upon the courses but upon the cold
+meats on the side-table.
+
+"You must have a jewel of a housekeeper, my dear!" Mrs.  Harry had
+been taking in every detail of the ordered service.  "'Housekeeper,'
+do I say?  'Major-domo'--you'll forgive me--"
+
+Ruth swept her a bow.  "I take the compliment."
+
+"And she deserves it," added Miss Quiney.
+
+"What? You don't tell me you manage it all yourself? . . . This
+palace of a house!"
+
+"Already you are making it feel less empty to me.  Yes, alone I do
+it; but if you wish to praise me, you should see my accounts.  _They_
+are my real pride.  But no, they are too holy to be shown!"
+
+They sat later--the gentlemen by their wine--on the stone terrace
+overlooking the wide champaign.
+
+"But," said Ruth, for she observed that the boy was restless, "I must
+leave Tatty to play hostess while I take a scamper with Dick.
+There's a pool below here, Dicky, with oh, such trout!"
+
+Dicky was on his feet in a trice.  "Rods?"
+
+"Rods, if you will.  But there are the stables, too, to be seen; and
+the gunroom--"
+
+"Stables?  Gunroom?--Oh, come along!--the day is too short!"  Here
+Dicky paused.  "But would you like to come too, sir?" he asked,
+addressing Mr. Hanmer.
+
+Mrs. Harry laughed.  "Those two," she told Ruth, "are like master and
+dog, and one never can be quite sure which is which."
+
+"My dear boy," said Mr. Hanmer, "you must surely see that Lady Vyell
+wants you all to herself.  Yet I dare say the captain and I will be
+strolling around to the stables before long."
+
+"Ay, when this decanter is done," agreed Captain Harry.
+
+
+"That was rather pretty of you," said Ruth, as she and the boy went
+down the terrace stairs together.
+
+"What?--asking old Hanmer to come with us? . . . Oh, but he's the
+best in the world, and, what's more, never speaks out of his turn.
+He has a tremendous opinion of you, too."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Worships the very ground you tread on."
+
+Ruth laughed.  "Were those his words?"
+
+Dicky laughed too.  "Likely they would be! Fancy old Han talking like
+a sick schoolgirl!  I made the words up to please you: but it's the
+truth, all the same."
+
+They reached the pool; and the boy, after ten minutes spent in
+discovering the biggest monster among the trout and attempting to
+tickle him with a twig, fell to prodding the turfed brink
+thoughtfully.
+
+"We talked a deal about you, first-along," he blurted at length.  "I
+fancy old Han guessed that I was--was--well, fond of you and all that
+sort of thing."
+
+"Dear Dicky!"
+
+"Boys are terrible softies at this age," my young master admitted.
+"And, after all, it was rather a knockdown, you know, when papa's
+letter came with the news."
+
+"But we're friends, eh?--you and I--just as before?"
+
+"Oh, of course--only you might have told. . . . And I've brought you
+a parrot.  Remember the parrots in that old fellow's shop in Port
+Nassau?"
+
+She led him to talk of his sea adventures, of the ship, of the West
+Indies among which they had been cruising; and as they wandered
+back from terrace to terrace he poured out a stream of boyish
+gossip about his shipmates, from Captain Vyell down to the cook's
+dog.  Half of it was Hebrew to her; but in every sentence of it, and
+in the gay, eager voice, she read that the child had unerringly
+found his vocation; that the sea lent him back to the shore for a
+romp and a holiday, but that to the sea he belonged.
+
+"There's one thing against shipboard though."  He had come to a halt,
+head aslant, and said it softly, eyeing a tree some thirty yards
+distant.
+
+"What?"
+
+"No stones lying about."  Picking up one, he launched it at a
+nuthatch that clung pecking at the moss on the bark.  "Hit him, by
+George!  Come--"
+
+He ran and she raced after him for a few paces, but stopped half-way,
+with her hand to her side.  The nuthatch was not hit after all, but
+had bobbed away into the green gloom.
+
+"Tell you what--you can't run as you used," he said critically.
+
+"No? . . ."  She was wondering at the mysterious life a-flutter in
+her side--that it should be his brother.
+
+"Not half.  I'll have to get you into training. . . . Now show me the
+stables, please."
+
+They were retracing their steps when along a green alley they saw Mr.
+Hanmer coming down to meet them.  He was alone, and his face, always
+grave, seemed to Ruth graver than ever.
+
+"Dicky!" said he.  "Service, if you please."
+
+"Ay, sir!"  Dicky's small person stiffened at once, and Dicky's hand
+went up to the salute.
+
+"Wait here, please.  I wish a word in private with Lady Vyell--if you
+will forgive me, ma'am?"
+
+"Why to be sure, sir," she answered, wondering.  As he turned, she
+walked on with him.  After some fifty paces she confronted him under
+the pale-green dappled shadows of the alley.
+
+"Something has happened?  Is it serious?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Looking straight before him, as they resumed their walk, he told her;
+in brief words that seemed, as he jerked them out, to be pumped from
+him; that made no single coherent sentence, and yet were concise as a
+despatch.
+
+This in substance was Mr. Hanmer's report:--
+
+They had remained on the terrace, seated, as she had left them--
+Captain and Mrs. Harry, Miss Quiney and he. The Captain was talking.
+. . . A servant brought word that two ladies--Mr. Hanmer could not
+recall their names--had called from Boston and desired to see Mrs.
+Vyell.  "Surely," protested Mrs. Harry, "they must mean Lady Vyell?"
+The servant was positive: Mrs. Captain Vyell had been the name.
+"They are anxious to pay their respects," suggested Miss Quiney.
+"Anxious indeed!  Why we landed but a few hours since.  They must
+have galloped."  Miss Quiney was sent to offer them refreshment and
+discover their business.
+
+Miss Quiney goes off on her errand.  Minutes elapse.  After many
+minutes the servant reappears.  "Miss Quiney requests Mrs. Harry's
+attendance." Mrs. Harry goes.
+
+"Women are queer cattle," says Captain Harry sententiously, and
+talks on.  By-and-by the servant appears yet again.  Mr. Hanmer is
+sent for.  "Why, 'tis like a story I've read somewhere, about a
+family sent one by one to stop a tap running," says Captain Harry.
+"But I'll say this for the women--I'm always the last they bother."
+
+Following the servant, Mr. Hanmer--so runs his report--enters the
+great drawing-room to find Miss Quiney stretched on the sofa, her
+face buried in cushions, and Mrs. Harry standing erect and
+confronting two ladies of forbidding aspect.
+
+"In brief," concluded Mr. Hanmer, "she sent me for you."
+
+"To confront them with her?  I wonder what their business can
+be. . . ."  With a glance at his side face she added, "I think you
+have not told me all."
+
+"No," he confessed haltingly; "that's true enough.  In--in fact
+Mrs. Harry first employed me to show them to the door."
+
+"And--on the way?"
+
+"Honoured madam--"
+
+"They said--what?--quoting whom?"
+
+"A Mr. Silk.  But again--ma'am, I am awkward at lying.  I cannot
+manage it."
+
+"I like you the better for it."
+
+"I did not believe--"
+
+"Yet you might have believed. . . . And suppose that it were true,
+sir?"
+
+He shook visibly.  "I pray God to protect you," he managed to
+stammer.
+
+Her face was white, but she answered him steadily.  "I believe you to
+be a good man. . . . I will go to them.  Where is Dicky?"
+She glanced back along the alley.
+
+"Dicky will stand where I have told him to stand: for hours unless I
+release him."
+
+"Is that your naval code?  And can a mere child stand by it so
+proudly?  Oh," cried she, fixing on him a look he remembered all his
+days, "would to God I had been born a man!"
+
+
+Yet fearlessly as any man she entered the great drawing-room.  Miss
+Quiney still lay collapsed on her sofa.  Mrs. Harry bent over her,
+but faced about.
+
+"Mr. Hanmer managed, then, to discover you?  Two women have called.
+. . . I thought it better, their errand being what it was, to show
+them out."
+
+"I can guess it, perhaps," Ruth caught her up with a wan smile.
+"They managed to talk with him before he gave them their dismissal."
+
+"Forgive me.  I had not thought them capable--"
+
+"There is nothing to forgive," Ruth assured her.  "They probably told
+the truth, and the fault is mine."
+
+Miss Quiney, incredulous, slowly raised her face from the cushions
+and stared.
+
+"Yes," repeated Ruth, "the fault is entirely mine."
+
+
+"But--but," stammered Mrs. Harry.  Ruth had turned away towards the
+window, and the honest wife stared after her, against the light.
+"But he will make it all right when he returns."  She started, of a
+sudden.  Cunningly as Ruth had dressed herself, Mrs. Harry's eyes
+guessed the truth.  "You have written to him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He guesses, at least?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you are writing to him?  There is enough time."
+
+"No."
+
+Their eyes met.  Ruth's asked, "And if I do not, will you?" Mrs.
+Harry's met them for a few seconds and were abased.
+
+No words passed between these two.  "And as for my Tatty," said Ruth
+lightly, stepping to the sofa, "she is not to write.  I command her."
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.
+
+
+Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully.  His lawsuit was prospering; his prompt
+invasion of the field had disconcerted Lady Caroline and her
+advisers.  He had discovered fresh evidence of the late Sir Thomas's
+insanity.  His own lawyers were sanguine.  They assured him that, at
+the worst, the Courts would set aside the '46 will, and fall back for
+a compromise on that of '44, which gave the woman a life-interest
+only in the Downton estates.  But the case would not be taken this
+side of the Long Vacation. . . . (It was certain, then, that he could
+not return in time.)
+
+He had visited Bath and spent some weeks with his mother.  He devoted
+a page or two to criticism of that fashionable city.  It was clear he
+had picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed old
+acquaintances and made a hundred new ones.  Play, he wrote, was a
+craze in England; the stakes frightened a home-comer from New
+England.  For his part, he gamed but moderately.
+
+"As for the women, you have spoilt me for them.  I see none--not one,
+dearest--who can hold a taper to you.  Their artifices disgust me;
+and I watch them, telling myself that my Ruth has only to enter their
+balls and assemblies to triumph--nay, to eclipse them totally. . . .
+And this reminds me to say that I have spoken with my mother.
+She had heard, of course, from more than one.  Lady Caroline's
+account had been merely coarse and spiteful; but by that lady's later
+conduct she was already prepared to discount it.  The pair
+encountered in London, at my Lady Newcastle's; and my mother (who has
+spirit) refused her bow.  Diana, to her credit, appears to have done
+you more justice; and Mrs. Harry writes reams in your praise.
+To be sure my mother, not knowing Mrs. Harry, distrusts her judgment
+for a Colonial's; but I vow she is the soundest of women. . . .
+In short, dear Ruth, we have only to regularise things and we are
+forgiven.  The good soul dotes on me, and imagines she has but a few
+years left to live.  This softens her. . . .
+
+"There is a rumour--credit it, if you can!--that my Aunt Caroline
+intends to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a wine
+merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich) to arm herself with
+money to pay her lawyers.  What _his_ object can be, poor man, I am
+unable to conjecture.  It is a strange world.  While her ugly mother
+mates at the age of fifty, Diana--who started with all the advantages
+of looks--withers upon the maiden thorn. . . ."
+
+His letters, every one, concluded with protests of affection.
+She rejoiced in them.  But it was now certain that he could not
+return in time.
+
+
+At length, as her day drew near, she wrote to him, conceiving this to
+be her duty.  She knew that he would take a blow from what she had to
+tell, and covered it up cleverly, lightly covering all her own dread.
+She hoped the child would be a boy.  ("But why do I hope it?" she
+asked herself as she penned the words, and thought of Dicky.)
+
+
+She said nothing of Mr. Silk's treachery; nothing of her ostracism.
+This indeed, during the later months, she recognised for the blessing
+it was.
+
+
+Towards the end she felt a strange longing to have her mother near,
+close at hand, for her lying-in.  The poor silly soul could not travel
+alone. . . . Ruth considered this and hit on the happy inspiration of
+inviting Mrs. Strongtharm to bring her.  Tatty was useless, and among
+the few women who had been kind Mrs. Strongtharm had been the
+kindest.
+
+Ruth sat down and penned a letter; and Mrs. Strongtharm, unable to
+write, responded valiantly.  She arrived in a cart, with Mrs.
+Josselin at her side; and straightway alighting and neglecting Mrs.
+Josselin, sailed into a seventh heaven of womanly fuss.  She examined
+the baby-clothes critically.
+
+"Made with your own pretty hands--and with all this mort o' servants
+tumblin' over one another to help ye.  But 'tis nat'ral. . . .
+It came to nothing with me, but I know.  And expectin' a boy o'
+course. . . . La! ye blushin' one, don't I know the way of it!"
+
+
+When Ruth's travail came on her the three were gathered by
+candle-light in Sir Oliver's dressing-room.  Beyond the door,
+attended by her maid and a man-midwife, Ruth shut her teeth upon her
+throes.  So the prologue opens.
+
+                               PROLOGUE.
+
+_Mrs. Josselin sits in an armchair, regarding the pattern of the
+carpet with a silly air of self-importance; Mrs. Strongtharm in a
+chair opposite.  By the window Miss Quiney, pulling at her knuckles,
+stares out through the dark panes.  A clock strikes_.
+
+_Miss Quiney (with a nervous start)_.  Four o'clock . . .
+nine hours. . . .
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm._  More.  The pains took her soon after six. . . .
+When her bell rang I looked at the clock.  I remember.
+
+_Miss Quiney_.  My poor Ruth.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  Eh?  The first, o' course. . . .  But a long
+labour's often the best.
+
+_Miss Quiney_.  There has not been a sound for hours.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  She's brave.  They say, too, that a man-child,
+if he's a real strong one, will wait for daybreak; but that's old
+women's notions, I shouldn't wonder.
+
+_Miss Quiney_.  A man-child?  You think it will be?
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  (She exchanges a glance with Mrs. Josselin, who
+has looked up suddenly and nods.)  Certain.
+
+_Mrs. Josselin_.  Certain, certain!  I wonder, now, what they'll call
+him!  After Sir Oliver, perhaps.  Her own father's name was Michael.
+In my own family--that's the Pocock's--the men were mostly Williams
+and Georges.  Called after the Kings of England.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm (yawns)_.  Oliver Cromwell was as good as any king,
+and better.  Leastways my mar says so.  For my part, I don't bother
+my head wi' these old matters.
+
+_Miss Quiney (tentatively)_.  Do you know, I was half hoping it would
+be a girl, just like my darling.  _(To herself)_ God forgive me, when
+I think--
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm (interrupting the thought)_.  _She_ won't be hoping
+for a girl.  You don't understand these things, beggin' your pardon,
+ma'am.
+
+_Miss Quiney (meekly)_.  No.
+
+_Mrs. Josselin_.  You don't neither of you understand.  How should
+you?
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm (stung)_.  I understand as well as a fool, I should
+hope!  _(She turns to Miss Quiney.)_  'Twas a nat'ral wish in ye,
+ma'am, that such a piece o' loveliness should bear just such another.
+But wait a while; they're young and there's time. . . . My lady wants
+a boy first, like every true woman that loves her lord.
+There's pride an' wonder in it.  All her life belike she's felt
+herself weak an' shivered to think of battles, and now, lo an'
+behold, she's the very gates o' strength with an army marchin' forth
+to conquer the world.  Ha'n't ye never caught your breath an' felt
+the tears swellin' when ye saw a regiment swing up the street?
+
+_Miss Quiney_.  Ah! . . . Is it like that?
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  It's like all that, an' more. . . . An' though
+I've wet my pillow afore now with envy of it, I thank the Lord for
+givin' a barren woman the knowledge.
+
+                              _A pause_.
+
+_Mrs. Josselin (with a silly laugh)_.  What wonderful patterns they
+make in the carpets nowadays!  Look at this one, now--runnin' in and
+out so that the eye can't hardly follow it; and all for my lord's
+dressing-room!  Cost a hundred pound, I shouldn't wonder.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  T'cht!
+
+_Mrs. Josselin_.  He must be amazing fond of her.  Fancy, my Ruth!
+ . . . It's a pity he's not home, to take the child.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  Men at these times are best out o' the way.
+
+_Mrs. Josselin_.  When my first was born, Michael--that's my
+husband--stayed home from sea o' purpose to take it.  My first was a
+girl.  No, not Ruth; Ruth was born after my man died, and I had her
+christened Ruth because some one told me it stood for "sorrow."
+I had three before Ruth--a girl an' two boys, an' buried them all.
+
+_Miss Quiney (listening)_.  Hush!
+
+_Mrs. Josselin (not hearing, immersed in her own mental flow)_.
+If you call a child by a sorrowful name it's apt to ward off the
+ill-luck.  Look at Ruth now--christened in sorrow an' married, after
+all, to the richest in the land!
+
+_Miss Quiney (in desperation)_.  Oh, hush! hush!
+
+_A low moan comes from the next room.  The women sit silent, their
+faces white in the dawn that now comes stealing in at the window,
+conquering the candle-light by little and little_.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm_.  I thought I heard a child's cry. . . . They cry
+at once.
+
+_Miss Quiney_.  Ah?  I fancied it, too--a feeble one.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm (rising after a long pause)_.  Something is
+wrong. . . .
+
+_As she goes to listen at the door, it opens, and the man-midwife
+enters.  His face is grave_.
+
+_Mrs. Strongtharm and Miss Quiney ask him together, under their
+breath_--Well?
+
+_He answers:_ It is well.  We have saved her life, I trust.
+
+--And the child?
+
+--A boy.  It lived less than a minute. . . . Yet a shapely
+child. . . .
+
+_Miss Quiney clasps her hands.  Shall she, within her breast, thank
+God?  She cannot.  She hears the voice saying_,--
+
+A very shapely child. . . . But the labour was difficult.  There was
+some pressure on the brain, some lesion.
+
+They would have denied Ruth sight of the poor little body, but she
+stretched out her arms for it and insisted.  Then as she held it,
+flesh of her flesh, to her breast and felt it cold, she--she, whose
+courage had bred wonder in them, even awe--she who had smiled between
+her pangs, murmuring pretty thanks--wailed low, and, burying her
+face, lay still.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+CHILDLESS MOTHER.
+
+
+In the sad and cheated days that followed, she, with the milk of
+motherhood wasting in her, saw with new eyes--saw many things
+heretofore hidden from her.
+
+She did not believe in any scriptural God.  But she believed--she
+could not help believing--in an awful Justice overarching all human
+life with its law, as it overarched the very stars in heaven.
+And this law she believed to rest in goodness, accessible to the pure
+conscience, but stern against the transgressor.
+
+Because she believed this, she had felt that the marriage rite, with
+such an one as Mr. Silk for intercessor between her vows and a clean
+Heaven, could be but a sullying of marriage.  Yes, and she felt it
+still; of this, at any rate, she was sure.
+
+But in her pride--as truly she saw it, in her pride of chastity--she
+had left the child out of account.  _He_ had inherited the world to
+face, not armed with her weapon of scorn.  _He_ had not won freedom
+through a scourge.  He had grown to his fate in her womb, and in the
+womb she had betrayed him.
+
+She had been blind, blind!  She had lived for her lover and herself.
+To him and to her (it had seemed) this warm, transitory life
+belonged; a fleeting space of time, a lodge leased to bliss. . . .
+Now she fronted the truth, that between the selfish rapture of lovers
+Heaven slips a child, smiling at the rapture, provident for the race.
+Now she read the secret of woman's nesting instinct; the underlying
+wisdom stirring the root of it, awaking passion not to satisfy
+passion, but that the world may go on and on to its unguessed ends.
+Now she could read ironically the courtship of man and maid, dallying
+by river-paths, beside running water, overarched by boughs that had
+protected a thousand such courtships.  Each pair in turn--poor fools!
+--had imagined the world theirs, compressed into their grasp; whereas
+the wise world was merely flattering, coaxing them, preparing for the
+child.
+
+She should have been preparing, too.  For what are women made but for
+motherhood?  She?  She had had but a hand to turn, a word to utter,
+and this child--healthily begotten, if ever child was, and to claim,
+if ever child could, the best--has broken triumphing through the gate
+of her travail.  But she had betrayed him.  The new-born spirit had
+arrived expectant, had cast one look across the threshold, and with
+one wail had fled.  Through and beyond her answering wail, as she
+laid her head on the pillow, she heard the lost feet, the small
+betrayed feet, pattering away into darkness.
+
+
+When she grew stronger, it consoled her a little to talk with Mrs.
+Strongtharm; not confiding her regrets and self-reproaches, but
+speculating much on this great book of Maternity into which she had
+been given a glimpse.  The metaphor was Mrs. Strongtharm's.
+
+"Ay," said that understanding female, "a book you may call it, and a
+wonderful one; written by all the women, white an' black, copper-skin
+an' red-skin, that ever groped their way in it with pangs an' joys;
+for every one writes in it as well as reads.  What's more, 'tis all
+in one language, though they come, as my man would say, from all the
+airts o' Babel."
+
+"I wonder," mused Ruth, "if somewhere in it there's a chapter would
+tell me why, when I lie awake and think of my lost one, 'tis his
+footsteps I listen for--feet that never walked!"
+
+"Hush ye, now. . . . Isn't it always their feet, the darlings!
+Don't the sound of it, more'n their voices, call me to door a dozen
+times a day? . . .  I never bore child; but I made garments in hope
+o' one.  Tell me, when you knitted his little boots, wasn't it
+different from all the rest?"
+
+"Ah, put them away!"
+
+"To be sure, dearie, to be sure--all ready for the next."
+
+"I shall never have another child."
+
+Mrs. Strongtharm smiled tolerantly.
+
+"Never," Ruth repeated; "never; I know it."
+
+
+With the same assurance of prophesy she answered her lover on his
+return, a bare two months later.
+
+"But you must have known. . . .  Even your letters kept it secret.
+Yet, had you written, the next ship would have brought me.  Surely
+you did not doubt _that?_"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why did you not tell me?"
+
+It was the inevitable question.  She had forestalled it so often in
+her thoughts that, when uttered at last, it gave her a curious
+sensation of re-enacting some long-past scene.
+
+"I thought you did not care for children."
+
+He was pacing the room.  He halted, and stared at her in sheer
+astonishment.  Many a beautiful woman touches the height of her
+beauty after the birth of her first child; and this woman had never
+stood before him in loveliness that, passing comprehension, so nearly
+touched the divine.  But her perversity passed comprehension yet
+farther.
+
+"Do you call that an answer?" he demanded.
+
+"No. . . . You asked, and I had to say something; but it is no
+answer.  Forgive me.  It was the best I could find."
+
+He still eyed her, between wrath and admiration.
+
+"I think," she said, after a pause, "the true answer is just that I
+did wrongly--wrongly for the child's sake."
+
+"That's certain.  And your own?"
+
+"My own? That does not seem to me to count so much. . . .  Neither of
+us believe that a priest can hallow marriage; but once I felt that
+the touch of a certain one could defile it."
+
+"You have never before reproached me with that."
+
+"Nor mean to now.  I chose to run from him; but, dear, I do not ask
+to run from the consequences."
+
+"The blackguard has had his pretty revenge.  Langton told me of it.
+ . . . All the prudes of Boston gather up their skirts, he says."
+
+"What matter?  Are we not happier missing them? . . .  Honester,
+surely, and by that much at any rate the happier."
+
+"Marry me, and I promise to force them all back to your feet."
+
+She laughed quietly, almost to herself, a little wearily.  "Can you
+not see, my dear lord, that I ask for no such triumph?  It is good of
+you--oh, I see how good!--to desire it for me.  But did we want these
+people in our forest days?"
+
+"One cannot escape the world," he muttered.
+
+"What?  Not when the world is so quick to cast one out?"
+
+"Ruth," he said, coming and standing close to her, "I do not believe
+you have given me the whole answer even yet.  The true reason,
+please!"
+
+"Must a woman give all her reasons? . . .  She follows her fate, and
+at each new turning she may have a dozen, all to be forgotten at the
+next."
+
+"I am sure you harbour some grudge--some reservation?"  His eyes
+questioned her.
+
+She kept him waiting for some seconds.
+
+"My lord, women have no consistency but in this--they are jealous
+when they love.  As your slave, I demand nothing; as your mistress, I
+demand only you.  But if you wished also to set me high among women,
+you should have given me all or nothing. . . . You did not offer to
+take me with you.  I was not worthy to be shown to that proud folk,
+your family."
+
+"If you had breathed a wish, even the smallest hint of one--"
+
+"I had no wish, save that you should offer it.  I had only some
+pride.  I was--I am--well content; only do not come back and offer me
+these women of Boston, or anything second best in your eyes, however
+much the gift may cost you."
+
+"Have it as you will," said he, after a long pause.  "I was wrong,
+and I beg your pardon.  But I was less wrong than your jealousy
+suspects.  My family will welcome you.  Forgive me that I thought it
+well--that it might save you any chance of humiliation--to prepare
+them."
+
+She swept him a curtsy.  "They are very good," she said.
+
+He detected the irony, yet he persisted, holding his temper well in
+control.  "But all this presupposes, you see, that you marry me.
+ . . . Ruth, you confess that you were wrong, for the child's sake.
+He is dead; and, on the whole, so much the better, poor mite!
+But for another, should another be born--"
+
+"There would be time," she said quietly.  "But we shall never have
+another."
+
+
+She had hardened strangely.  It was as if the milk of motherhood,
+wasting in her, had packed itself in a crust about her heart.
+He loved her; she never ceased to love him; but whereas under the
+public scourge something had broken, letting her free of opinion, to
+love the good and hate the evil for their own sakes, under this
+second and more mysterious visitation, she kept her courage indeed,
+but certainty was hers no longer; nor was she any longer free of
+opinion, but hardened her heart against it consciously, as against an
+enemy.
+
+Not otherwise can I account for the image of Ruth Josselin--my Lady
+Vyell--Lady Good-for-Nothing--as under these various names it flits,
+for the next few years, through annals, memoirs, correspondence,
+scandalous chronicles; now vindicated, now glanced at with unseemly
+nods and becks, anon passionately denounced; now purely shining, now
+balefully, above and between the clouds of those times; but always a
+star and an object of wonder.
+
+"In all Massachusetts," writes the Reverend Hiram Williams, B.D., in
+his tract entitled _A Shoe Over Edom_, "was no stronghold of Satan to
+compare with that built on a slope to the rearward of Boston, by Sir
+O--V--, Baronet.  Here with a woman, born of this Colony, of passing
+wit and beauty (both alike the dower of the Evil One), he kept house
+to the scandal of all devout persons, entertaining none but professed
+Enemies of our Liberties, Atheists, Gamesters."  Here one may pause
+and suspect the reverend castigator of confusing several dislikes in
+one argument.  It is done sometimes, even in our own day, by
+religious folk who polemise in politics.  "Cards they played on the
+Sabbath.  Plays they rehearsed too, by Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve
+and others, whose names may guarantee their lewdness. . . .  The
+woman, I have said, was fair; but of that sort their feet go down
+ever _to_ Hell. . . ."
+
+"My Noll's _Belle Sauvage_," writes Langton to Walpole, "continues a
+riddle.  I shall never solve it; yet 'till I have solved it, expect
+me not.  'Tis certain she loves him; and because she loves him, her
+loyalty allows not hint of sadness even to me, his best friend.
+Guess why she likes me?  'Tis because (I am sure of it) even in the
+old clouded days I never took money from Noll, nor borrowed a
+shilling that I didn't repay within the week.  She is a puzzle, I
+say; but somehow the key lies in this--_She is a woman that pays her
+debts_. .  . .
+
+"They sail for Europe next spring; but not, as I understand for
+England, where his family may not receive her, and where by
+consequence he will not expose her to their slights.  If I have made
+you impatient to set eyes on her, you must e'enpack and pay that
+long-promised visit to Florence.  She is worth the pilgrimage."
+
+
+They sailed in the early spring of 1752--Langton with them--and duly
+came to port in the Tagus.  From Lisbon, after a short stay, they
+travelled to Paris, and from Paris across Switzerland to Italy,
+visiting in turn Turin, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and
+returning from that port to Lisbon, where (the situation so charmed
+him) Sir Oliver bought and furnished a villa overlooking the Tagus.
+
+
+As she passes through Paris we get a glimpse of her in the Memoirs of
+that agreeable rattle, Arnauld de Jouy:--
+
+"I must not forget to tell of an amusing little comedy of error
+played at the Opera-house this season (1752).  All Paris was agog to
+see the famous English--or rather Irish--beauty, my Lady Coventry,
+newly arrived in the Capital.  She was one of the Gunning sisters,
+over whom all London had already lost its head so wildly that I am
+assured a shoemaker made no small sum by exhibiting their
+_pantoufles_ to the porters and chairmen at three sous a gaze. . . .
+On a certain night, then, it was rumoured that she would pay her
+first visit to the Opera, but none could say whose box she intended
+to honour. . . . It turned out to be the Duc de Luxembourg's, and
+upon my lady's entrance--a little late--the whole audience rose to
+its feet in homage, though Visconti happened just then to be midway
+in an _aria_.  The singer faltered at the interruption, perplexed;
+her singing stopped, and lifting her eyes to the lines of boxes she
+dropped a sweeping curtsy--to the opposite side of the house! . . .
+All eyes turn, and behold! right opposite to Beauty Number One, into
+the box of Mme. the Marechale de Lowendahl there has just entered a
+Beauty Number Two, not one whit less fair--so regally fair indeed
+that the audience, yet standing, turn from one to the other,
+uncertain which to salute.  Nor were they resolved when the act
+closed.
+
+"Meantime my Lady Coventry (for in truth the first-comer was she) has
+sent her husband out to the _foyer_, to make enquiries.  He comes
+back and reports her to be the lady of Sir Oliver Vyell, a great
+American Governor [But here we detect de Jouy in a slight error]
+newly arrived from his Province; that she is by birth an American,
+and has never visited Europe before.  'She must be Pocahontas
+herself, then,' says the Gunning, and very prettily sends across
+after the second Act, desiring the honour of her acquaintance.
+Nay, this being granted, she goes herself to the Marechale's box, and
+the pair sit together in full view of all--a superb challenge, and
+made with no show (as I believe, with no feeling) of jealousy.  The
+audience is entranced. . . . Report said later that my Lady Coventry,
+who was given to these small indiscretions, asked almost in her first
+breath, yet breathlessly, her rival's age.  Her rival smiled and told
+it.  'Then you are older than I--but how long have you been married?'
+This, too, her rival told her.  'Then,' sighed the Gunning, 'perhaps
+you do not love your lord as I love my Cov.  It _is_ wearing to the
+looks; but 'faith, I cannot help it!'"
+
+
+From Lisbon Sir Oliver paid several flying visits to England, where
+his suit against Lady Caroline still dragged.  Nor was it concluded
+until the summer of 1754, when the _Gentleman's Magazine_ yields us
+the following:--
+
+
+"_June 4_.  A cause between Sir Oliver Vyell, baronet, plaintiff, and
+the lady of the late Sir Thomas, defendant, was tried in the Court of
+King's Bench by a special jury.  The subject of the litigation was a
+will of Sir Thomas, suspected to be made when he was not of sound
+mind; and it appeared that he had made three--one in 1741, another in
+1744, and a third in 1746.  In the first only a slender provision was
+made for his lady, by the second a family estate in Devonshire, of
+2,000 pounds per annum, was given her for her life, and by the third
+the whole estate real and personal was left to be disposed of at her
+discretion without any provision for the heir-at-law.  The jury,
+after having withdrawn for about an hour and a half, set aside the
+last and confirmed the second.  In a hearing before the Lord
+Chancellor some time afterwards in relation to the costs, it was
+deemed that the lady should pay them all, both at common law and in
+Chancery."
+
+
+Thus we see our Ruth by glimpses in these years which were far from
+being the best or the happiest of her life--"an innocent life, yet
+far astray."
+
+But one letter of hers abides, kept in contrition by the woman to
+whom she wrote it, and in this surely the noble soul of her mounts
+like a star and shines, clear above the wreck of her life.
+
+
+"MY DEAR MRS. HARRY,--"
+
+"Let there be few words between us.  My child
+did not live, and I shall never bear my lord another; therefore,
+outside of your feelings and mine, what you did or left undone
+matters not at all in this world.  You talk of the next, and there
+you go beyond me; but if there be a next world, and my forgiveness
+can help you there, why you had it long ago! . . . 'You reproach
+yourself constantly,' you say; 'You should have told him and you
+withheld the letter;' 'You did wickedly'--and the rest.  Oh, my dear,
+will you not see that I have been a mother, too, and understand?
+In your place I might have done the same.  Yes?  No?  At any rate I
+should have known the temptation.
+
+"Yours affectionately,"
+
+"RUTH."
+
+
+The law business ended, she and Sir Oliver sailed for Boston and
+spent a few weeks at Eagles.  He had resigned the Collectorship of
+Customs, but with no intent to return and make England his home.
+His attachment to Eagles had grown; he was perpetually making fresh
+plans to enlarge and adorn it; and he proposed henceforth, laying
+aside all official cares, to spend his summers in New England, his
+winters in the softer climate of Lisbon.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+
+LISBON AND AFTER.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+ACT OF FAITH.
+
+
+"How is it possible for people beholding that glorious Body to
+worship any Being but Him who created it!"
+
+
+Upon the stroke of nine the procession filed forth into the Square.
+It was headed by about a hundred Dominican friars, bearing the banner
+of their founder.  The banner displayed a Cross betwixt an olive tree
+and a sword, with the motto _Justitia et Misericordia_.
+
+After the Dominicans walked five penitents; each with a sergeant, or
+Familiar, attending.  Two of the five wore black mitres, three were
+bareheaded.  All walked barefoot, clad in black sleeveless coats, and
+each carried a long wax candle.  These had escaped the extreme
+sentence; and after them came one, a woman, who had escaped it also,
+but narrowly and as by fire.  In token of this her black robe was
+painted over with flames, having their points turned downward.
+Close behind followed three men on whose san-benitos the flames
+pointed upward.  These were being led to execution, and two of them
+who carried boards on their breasts, painted with dogs and serpents,
+were to die by fire for having professed doctrines contrary to the
+Faith; the third, who carried no board, was a "Relapsed," and might
+look forward to the privilege of being strangled before being cast to
+the flame.  To each of these three was assigned, in addition to the
+Familiar, a couple of Jesuit priests, to walk beside him and exhort
+him.
+
+The man who was to be strangled came through the gateway of the
+Inquisition Office with his gaze bent to the ground, apparently
+insensible to the mob of sightseers gathered in the Square.
+The doomed man who followed--a mere youth, and, by his face,
+a Jew--stared about him fiercely and eagerly.  The third was an old
+man, with ragged hair and beard, and a complexion bleached by long
+imprisonment in the dark.  He halted, blinking, uncertain how to
+plant his steps.  Then, feeling rather than seeing the sun, he
+stretched up both arms to it, dropping his taper, calling aloud as
+might a preacher, "How is it possible for people, beholding that
+glorious Body, to worship any Being but Him who created it!"
+
+A Jesuit at his side flung an arm across the old man's mouth; and as
+quickly the Familiar whipped out a cloth, pulled his head back, and
+gagged him.  The young Jew had turned and was staring, still with his
+fierce, eager look.  He was wheeled about and plucked forward.
+
+Next through the gateway issued a troupe of Familiars on horseback,
+some of them nobles of the first families in Portugal; after them the
+Inquisitors and other Officers of the Court upon mules; last of all,
+amid a train of nobles, the Inquisitor-General himself on a white
+horse led by two grooms: his delicate hands resting on the reins, his
+face a pale green by reason of the sunlight falling on it through a
+silken scarf of that colour pendant over the brim of his immense
+black hat.
+
+
+All this passed before Ruth's eyes, and close, as she sat in the
+mule-chaise beside Sir Oliver.  She would have drawn the leathern
+curtains, but he had put out a hand forbidding this.
+
+She could not at any rate have escaped hearing the old man's
+exclamation; for their chaise was jammed in the crowd beside the
+gateway.  Her ears still kept the echo of his vibrant voice; almost
+she was persuaded that his eyes had singled her out from the crowd.
+
+--And why not?  Had not she, also, cause to know what cruelties men
+will commit in the name of religion?
+
+
+Her heart was wrathful as well as pitiful.  Her lord had given her no
+warning of the auto-da-fe, and she now suspected that in suggesting
+this Sunday morning drive he had purposely decoyed her to it.
+Presently, as the crowd began to clear, he confirmed the suspicion.
+
+"Since we are here, we may as well see the sp--"  He was going to say
+"sport," but, warned by a sudden stiffening of her body, he corrected
+the word to "spectacle."  "They erect a grand stand on these
+occasions; or, if you prefer, we can bribe them to give room for the
+chaise."
+
+He bent forward and called to the coachman, "Turn the mules' heads,
+and follow!"
+
+"Indeed I will not," she said firmly.  "Do you go--if such crimes
+amuse you. . . . For me, I shall walk home."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "It is the custom of the country. . . .
+But, as for your walking, I cannot allow it for a moment.  Juan shall
+drive you home."
+
+She glanced at him.  His eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the
+square, and she surprised in them a look of recognition not intended
+for her.  Following the look, she saw a chaise much like their own,
+moving slowly with the throng, and in it a woman seated.
+
+Ruth knew her.  She was Donna Maria, Countess of Montalagre; and of
+late Sir Oliver's name had been much coupled with hers.
+
+This Ruth did not know; but she had guessed for some time that he was
+unfaithful.  She had felt no curiosity at all to learn the woman's
+name.  Now an accident had opened her eyes, and she saw.
+
+Her first feeling was of slightly contemptuous amusement.
+Donna Maria, youthful wife of an aged and enfeebled lord, passed for
+one of the extremely devout.  She had considerable beauty, but of an
+order Ruth could easily afford to scorn.  It was the _bizarrerie_ of
+the affair that tickled her, almost to laughter--Donna Maria's
+down-dropt gaze, the long lashes veiling eyes too holy-innocent for
+aught but the breviary; and he--he of all men!--playing the lover to
+this little dunce, with her empty brain, her narrow religiosity!
+
+But on afterthought, she found it somewhat disgusting too.
+
+"I thank you," she said.  "Juan shall drive me home, then.  It will
+not, I hope, inconvenience you very much, since I see the Countess of
+Montalagre's carriage across the way.  No doubt she will offer you a
+seat."
+
+He glanced at her, but her face was cheerfully impassive.
+
+"That's an idea!" he said.  "I will run and make interest with her."
+
+He alighted, and gave Juan the order to drive home.  He lifted his
+hat, and left her.  She saw Donna Maria's start of simulated
+surprise.  Also she detected, or thought she detected, the sly
+triumph of a woman who steals a man.
+
+All this she had leisure to observe; for Juan, a Gallician, was by no
+means in a hurry to turn the mules' heads for home.  He had slewed
+his body about, and was gazing wistfully after the throng.
+
+"Your Excellency, it would be a thousand pities!"
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"There has not been a finer burning these two years, they tell me.
+And that old blasphemer's beard, when they set a light to it! . . .
+I am a poor Gallego, your Excellency, and at home get so few chances
+of enjoyment.  Also I have dropped my whip, and it is trodden on,
+broken.  In the crowd at the Terreiro de Paco I may perchance borrow
+another."
+
+Ruth alighted in a blaze of wrath.
+
+"Wretched man," she commanded, "climb down!"
+
+"Your Excellency--"
+
+"Climb down!  You shall go, as your betters have gone, to feed your
+eyes with these abominations. . . . Nay, how shall I scold you, who
+do what your betters teach?  But climb down.  I will drive the mules
+myself."
+
+"His Excellency will murder me when he hears of it.  But, indeed, was
+ever such a thing heard of?"  Nevertheless the man was plainly in two
+minds.
+
+"It is not for you to argue, but to obey my orders."
+
+He descended, still protesting.  She mounted to his seat, and took
+the reins and whip.
+
+"The brutes are spirited, your Excellency.  For the love of God have
+a care of them!"
+
+For answer she flicked them with the whip--he had lied about the
+broken whip--and left him staring.
+
+The streets were deserted.  All Lisbon had trooped to the auto-da-fe.
+If any saw and wondered at the sight of a lady driving like a mere
+_bolhero_, she heeded not.  The mules trotted briskly, and she kept
+them to it.
+
+She had ceased to be amused, even scornfully.  As she drove up the
+slope of Buenos Ayres--the favourite English suburb, where his villa
+stood overlooking Tagus--a deep disgust possessed her.  It darkened
+the sunshine.  It befouled, it tarnished, the broad and noble mirror
+of water spread far below.
+
+"Were all men beasts, then?"
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+DONNA MARIA.
+
+
+They would dine at four o'clock.  On Sundays Sir Oliver chose to dine
+informally with a few favoured guests; and these to-day would make
+nine, not counting Mr. Langton, who might be reckoned one of the
+household.
+
+By four o'clock all had arrived--the British envoy, Mr. Castres, with
+his lady; Lord Charles Douglas, about to leave Lisbon after a visit
+of pleasure; Mrs. Hake, a sister of Governor Hardy of New York--she,
+with an invalid husband and two children, occupied a villa somewhat
+lower down the slope of Buenos Ayres; white-haired old Colonel
+Arbuthnot, _doyen_ of the English residents; Mr. Hay, British Consul,
+and Mr. Raymond, one of the chiefs of the English factory, with their
+wives. . . . Ruth looked at the clock.  All were here save only their
+host, Sir Oliver.
+
+Mr. Langton, with Lord Charles Douglas, had returned from the
+auto-da-fe.  Like his friend George Selwyn--friend these many years
+by correspondence only--Mr. Langton was a dilettante in executions
+and like horrors, and had taken Lord Charles to the show, to initiate
+him.  He reported that they had left Sir Oliver in a press of the
+crowd, themselves hurrying away on foot.  He would doubtless arrive
+in a few minutes.  Mr. Langton said nothing of the executions.
+
+Mr. Castres, too, ignored them.  He knew, of course, that the
+auto-da-fe had taken place, and that the Court had witnessed it in
+state from a royal box.  But his business, as tactful Envoy of a
+Protestant country, was to know nothing of this.  He went on talking
+with Mrs. Hake, who--good soul--actually knew nothing of it.
+Her children absorbed all her care; and having heard Miriam, the
+younger, cough twice that morning, she was consulting the Envoy on
+the winter climate of Lisbon--was it, for instance, prophylactic
+against croup.
+
+At five minutes past four Sir Oliver arrived.  Before apologising he
+stood aside ceremoniously in the doorway to admit a companion--the
+Countess of Montalegre.
+
+"I have told them," said he as Donna Maria tripped forward demurely
+to shake hands, "to lay for the Countess.  The business was long, by
+reason of an interminable sermon, and at the end there was a crush at
+the exit from the Terreiro de Paco and a twenty good minutes' delay--
+impossible to extricate oneself.  Had I not persuaded the Countess to
+drive me all the way home, my apologies had been a million instead of
+the thousand I offer."
+
+Had he brought the woman in defiance?  Or was it merely to discover
+how much, if anything, Ruth suspected?  If to discover, his design
+had no success.  Ruth saw--it needed less than half a glance--Batty
+Langton bite his lip and turn to the window.  Lord Charles wore a
+faintly amused smile.  These two knew, at any rate.  For the others
+she could not be sure.  She greeted Donna Maria with a gentle
+courtesy.
+
+"We will delay dinner with pleasure," she said, "while my
+waiting-woman attends on you."
+
+During the few minutes before the Countess reappeared she conversed
+gaily with one and another of her guests.  Her face had told him
+nothing, and her spirit rose on the assurance that, at least, she was
+puzzling him.
+
+Yet all the while she asked herself the same questions.  Had he done
+this to defy her?  Or to sound her suspicions?
+
+In part he was defying her; as he proved at table by talking freely
+of the auto-da-fe.  Donna Maria sat at his right hand, and added a
+detail here and there to his description.  The woman apparently had
+no pity in her for the unhappy creatures she had seen slowly and
+exquisitely murdered.  Were they not heretics, serpents, enemies of
+the true Faith?
+
+"But ah!" she cried once with pretty affectation.  "You make me
+forget my manners! . . . Am I not, even now, talking of these things
+among Lutherans?  Your good lady, for instance?"
+
+At the far end of the table, Ruth--speaking across Mr. Castres and
+engaging Mrs. Hake's ear, lest it should be attracted by this
+horrible conversation--discussed the coming war with France.
+She upheld that the key of it lay in America.  He maintained that
+India held it--"Old England, you may trust her; money's her blood,
+and the blood she scents in a fight.  She'll fasten on India like a
+bulldog." Colonel Arbuthnot applauded.  "Where the treasure is,"
+quoted Ruth, "there the heart is also.  You give it a good British
+paraphrase. . . . But her real blood--some of the best of it--beats
+in America.  There the French challenge her, and she'll have, spite
+of herself, to take up the challenge.  Montcalm! . . . He means to
+build an empire there."  "Pardon me"--Mr. Castres smiled
+indulgently--"you are American born, and see all things American in
+a high light.  We skirmish there . . . backwoods fighting, you may
+call it."
+
+"With a richer India at the back of the woods.  Oh! I trust England,
+and Pitt, when his hour comes.  England reminds me of Saul, always
+going forth to discover a few asses and always in the end discovering
+a kingdom.  Other nations build the dream, dreams being no gift of
+hers.  Then she steps in, thrusts out the dreamers, inherits the
+reality.  America, though you laugh at it, has cost the best dreaming
+of two nations--Spain first, and now France--and the best blood of
+both.  Bating Joan of Arc--a woman--France hasn't bred a finer spirit
+than Montcalm's since she bred Froissart's men.  But to what end?
+England will break that great heart of his."
+
+She was talking for talking's sake, only anxious to divert Mrs.
+Hake's ears from the conversation her own ears caught, only too
+plainly.
+
+Mrs. Hake said, "I prefer to believe Mr. Castres.  My brother writes
+that every one is quitting New York, and I'm only thankful-if war
+must come, over there--that we've taken our house on a three years'
+lease only.  No one troubles about Portugal, and I must say that I've
+never found a city to compare with Lisbon.  The suburbs! . . . Why,
+this very morning I saw the city itself one pall of smoke.
+You'd have thought a main square was burning.  Yet up here, in Buenos
+Ayres, it might have been midsummer. . . . The children, playing in
+the garden, called me out to look at the smoke.  _Was_ there a fire?
+I must ask Sir Oliver."
+
+Mrs. Hake had raised her voice; but Ruth managed to intercept the
+question.
+
+All the while she was thinking, thinking to herself.--"And he, who
+can speak thus, once endured shame to shield me!  He laughs at things
+infinitely crueller. . . . Yet they differ in degree only from what
+then stirred him to fight. . . ."
+
+--"Have I then so far worsened him?  Is the blame mine?"
+
+--"Or did the curse but delay to work in him?--in him, my love and my
+hero?  Was it foreordained to come to this, though I would at any
+time have given my life to prevent it?"
+
+Again she thought.--"I have been wrong in holding religion to be the
+great cause why men are cruel,--as in believing that free-thought
+must needs humanise us all.  Strange! that I should discover my error
+on this very day has showed me men being led by religion to deaths of
+torture. . . . Yet an error it must be.  For see my lord--hear how he
+laughs as cruelly, even, as the _devote_ at his elbow!"
+
+They had loitered some while over dessert, and Ruth's eye sought
+Donna Maria's, to signal her before rising and leaving the gentlemen
+to their wine.  But Donna Maria was running a preoccupied glance
+around the table and counting with her fingers. . . . Presently the
+glance grew distraught and the silly woman fell back in her chair
+with a cry.
+
+"Jesus!  We are thirteen!"
+
+"Faith, so we are," said Sir Oliver with an easy laugh, after
+counting.
+
+"And I the uninvited one!  The calamity must fall on _me_--there is
+no other way!"
+
+"But indeed there is another way," said Ruth, rising with a smile.
+"In my country the ill-luck falls on the first to leave the table.
+And who should that be, here, but the hostess?"
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+EARTHQUAKE.
+
+
+The auto-da-fe was but a preliminary to the festivities and great
+processions of All Saints.  For a whole week Lisbon had been sanding
+its squares and streets, painting its signboards, draping its
+balconies and windows to the fourth and fifth stories with hangings
+of crimson damask.  Street after street displayed this uniform vista
+of crimson, foil for the procession, with its riot of gorgeous
+dresses, gold lace, banners, precious stones.
+
+Ruth leaned on the balustrade of her villa garden, and looked down
+over the city, from which, made musical by distance, the bells of
+thirty churches called to High Mass.  Their chorus floated up to her
+on the delicate air; and--for the chimneys of Lisbon were smokeless,
+the winter through, in all but severest weather, and the citizens did
+their cooking over braziers--each belfry stood up distinct, edged
+with gold by the brilliant morning sun.  Aloft the sky spread its
+blue bland and transparent; far below her Tagus mirrored it in a lake
+of blue.  Many vessels rode at anchor there.  The villas to right and
+left and below her, or so much of them as rose out of their
+embosoming trees, took the sunlight on walls of warm yellow, with
+dove-coloured shadows.
+
+She was thinking. . . . He had tried to discover how much she
+suspected; and when neither in word or look would she lower her
+guard, he had turned defiant.  This very morning he had told her
+that, if she cared to use it, a carriage was at her disposal.
+For himself, the Countess of Montalegre had offered him a seat in
+hers, and he had accepted. . . . He had told her this at the last
+moment, entering her room in the full court dress the state
+procession demanded; and he had said it with a studied carelessness,
+not meeting her eyes.
+
+She had thanked him, and added that she was in two minds about going.
+She was not dressed for the show, and doubted if her maid could array
+her in time.
+
+"We go to the Cathedral," said he.  "I should recommend that or the
+Church of St. Vincent, where, some say, the Mass is equally fine."
+
+"If I go, I shall probably content myself with the procession."
+
+"If that's so, I've no doubt Langton will escort you.  He likes
+processions, though he prefers executions.  To a religious service I
+doubt your bribing him."
+
+Upon this they had parted, each well aware that, but a few weeks ago,
+this small expedition would have been planned together, discussed,
+shared, as a matter of course.  At parting he kissed her hand--he had
+always exquisite manners; and she wished him a pleasant day with a
+voice quite cheerful and unconstrained.
+
+
+From the sunlit terrace she looked almost straight down upon the
+garden of Mrs. Hake's villa.  The two little girls were at play
+there.  She heard their voices, shrill above the sound of the church
+bells.  Now and again she caught a glimpse of them, at hide-and-seek
+between the ilexes.
+
+She was thinking.  If only fate had given her children such as these!
+ . . . As it was, she could show a brave face.  But what could the
+future hold?
+
+She heard their mother calling to them.  They must have obeyed and
+run to her, for the garden fell silent of a sudden.  The bells, too,
+were ceasing--five or six only tinkled on.
+
+
+She leaned forward over the balustrade to make sure that the children
+were gone.  As she did so, the sound of a whimper caught her ear.
+She looked down, and spoke soothingly to a small dog, an Italian
+greyhound, a pet of Mr. Langton's, that had run to her trembling, and
+was nuzzling against her skirt for shelter.  She could not think what
+ailed the creature.  Belike it had taken fright at a noise below the
+terrace--a rumbling noise, as of a cart mounting the hill heavily
+laden with stones.
+
+The waggon, if waggon it were, must be on the roadway to the left.
+Again she leaned forward over the balustrade.  A faint tremor ran
+through the stonework on which her arms rested.  For a moment she
+fancied it some trick of her own pulse.
+
+But the tremor was renewed.  The pulsation was actually in the
+stonework. . . . And then, even while she drew back, wondering, the
+terrace under her feet heaved as though its pavement rested on a wave
+of the sea.  She was thrown sideways, staggering; and while she
+staggered, saw the great flagstones of the terrace raise themselves
+on end, as notes of a harpsichord when the fingers withdraw their
+pressure.
+
+She would have caught again at the balustrade.  But it had vanished,
+or rather was vanishing under her gaze, toppling into the garden
+below.  The sound of the falling stones was caught up in a long, low
+rumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below.  Again the
+ground heaved, and beneath her--she had dropped on her knees, and
+hung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where the
+balustrade had run--she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: the
+roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards.  Still the roar of
+it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have
+nothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily,
+like a game.  The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crash
+close behind her--a crash that seemed the end of all things. . . .
+The house!  She had not thought of the house.  Turning, she faced a
+cloud of dust, and above it saw, before the dust stung her eyes,
+half-blinding her, that the whole front of the villa had fallen
+outwards.  It had, in fact, fallen and spread its ruin within two
+yards of her feet.  Had the terrace been by that much narrower, she
+must have been destroyed.  As it was, above the dust, she gazed,
+unhurt, into a house from which the front screen had been sharply
+caught away, as a mask snatched from a face.
+
+By this the horror had become a dream to her.  As in a dream she saw
+one of her servants--a poor little under-housemaid, rise to her knees
+from the floor where she had been flung, totter to the edge of the
+house-front, and stand, piteously gazing down over a height
+impossible to leap.
+
+A man's voice shouted.  Around the corner of the house, from the
+stables, Mr. Langton came running, by a bare moment escaping death
+from a mass of masonry that broke from the parapet, and crashed to
+the ground close behind his heels.
+
+"Lady Vyell!  Where is Lady Vyell?"
+
+Ruth called to him, and he scrambled towards her over the gaping
+pavement.  He called as he came, but she could distinguish no words,
+for within the last few seconds another and different sound had grown
+on the ear--more terrible even than the first roar of ruin.
+
+"My God! look!"  He was at her side, shouting in her ear, for a wind
+like a gale was roaring past them down from the hills.  With one hand
+he steadied her against it, lest it should blow her over the verge.
+His other pointed out over Tagus.
+
+She stared.  She did not comprehend; she only saw that a stroke more
+awful than any was falling, or about to fall.  The first convulsion
+had lifted the river bed, leaving the anchored ships high and dry.
+Some lay canted almost on their beam ends.  As the bottom sank again
+they slowly righted, but too late; for the mass of water, flung to
+the opposite shore, and hurled back from it, came swooping with a
+refluent wave, that even from this high hillside was seen to be
+monstrous.  It fell on their decks, drowning and smothering: their
+masts only were visible above the smother, some pointing firmly,
+others tottering and breaking.  Some rose no more.  Others, as the
+great wave passed on, lurched up into sight again, broken, dismasted,
+wrenched from their moorings, spinning about aimlessly, tossed like
+corks amid the spume; and still, its crest arching, its deep note
+gathering, the great wave came on straight for the harbour quay.
+
+Ruth and Langton, staring down on this portent, did not witness the
+end; for a dense cloud of dust, on this upper side dun-coloured
+against the sunlight, interposed itself between them and the city,
+over which it made a total darkness.  Into that darkness the great
+wave passed and broke; and almost in the moment of its breaking a
+second tremor shook the hillside.  Then, indeed, wave and earthquake
+together made universal roar, drowning the last cry of thousands; for
+before it died away earthquake and wave together had turned the
+harbour quay of Lisbon bottom up, and engulfed it.  Of all the
+population huddled there to escape from death in the falling streets,
+not a corpse ever rose to the surface of Tagus.
+
+But Ruth saw nothing of this.  She clung to Langton, and his arm was
+about her.  She believed, with so much of her mind as was not
+paralysed, that the end of the world was come.
+
+As the infernal hubbub died away on the dropping wind, she glanced
+back over her shoulder at the house.  The poor little _criada-moga_
+was no longer there, peering over the edge she dared not leap.  Nay,
+the house was no longer there--only three gaunt walls, and between
+them a heap where rooms, floors, roof had collapsed together.
+
+Of a sudden complete silence fell about them.  As her eyes travelled
+along the edge of the terrace where the balustrade had run, but ran
+no longer, she had a sensation of standing on the last brink of the
+world, high over nothingness.  Langton's arm still supported her.
+
+"As safe here as anywhere," she heard him saying.  "For the chance
+that led you here, thank whatever Gods may be."
+
+"But I must find him!" she cried.
+
+"Eh? Noll?--find Noll?  Dear lady, small chance of that!"
+
+"I must find him."
+
+"He was to attend High Mass in the Cathedral--"
+
+"Yes . . . with that woman.  What help could such an one bring to him
+if--if--Oh, I must find him, I say!"
+
+"The Cathedral," he repeated.  "You are brave; let your own eyes look
+for it."  He had withdrawn his arm.
+
+"Yet I must search, and you shall search with me.  You were his
+friend, I think?"
+
+"Indeed, I even believed so. . . . I was thinking of _you_. . . .
+It is almost certain death.  Do you say that he is worth it?"
+
+"Do you fear death?" she asked.
+
+"Moderately," he answered.  "Yet if you command me, I come; if you
+go, I go with you."
+
+"Come."
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+THE SEARCH.
+
+
+They set out hand in hand.  The small dog ran with them.
+
+Even the beginning of the descent was far from easy, for the high
+walls that had protected the villa-gardens of Buenos Ayres lay in
+heaps, cumbering the roadway, and in places obliterating it.
+
+About a hundred and fifty yards down the road, by what had been the
+walled entrance to the Hakes' garden, they sighted two forlorn small
+figures--the six and five year old Hake children, Sophie and Miriam,
+who recognised Ruth and, running, clung to her skirts.
+
+"Mamma!  Where is mamma?"
+
+"Dears, where did you leave her last?"
+
+ "She pushed us out through the gateway, here, and told us to stand
+in the middle of the road while she ran back to call daddy.  She said
+no stones could fall on us here.  But she has been gone ever so long,
+and we can't hear her calling at all."
+
+While Ruth gathered them to her and attempted to console them,
+Mr. Langton stepped within the ruined gateway.  In a minute or so he
+came back, and his face was grave.
+
+She noted it.  "What can we do with them?" she asked, and added with
+a haggard little smile, "I had actually begun to tell them to run up
+to our house and wait, forgetting--"
+
+"They had best wait here, as their mother advised."
+
+"It is terrible!"
+
+He lifted his shoulders slightly.  "If once we begin--"
+
+"No, you are right," she said, with a shuddering glance down the
+road; and bade the little ones rest still as their mother had
+commanded.  She was but going down to the city (she said) to see if
+the danger was as terrible down there.  The two little ones cried and
+clung to her; but she put them aside firmly, promising to look for
+their mamma when she returned.  Langton did not dare to glance at her
+face.
+
+The dark cloud dust met them, a gunshot below, rolling up the
+hillside from the city.  They passed within the fringe of it, and at
+once the noonday sun was darkened for them.  In the unnatural light
+they picked their way with difficulty.
+
+"She was lying close within the entrance," said Langton.
+"The gateway arch must have fallen on her as she turned. . . . One
+side of her skull was broken.  I pulled down some branches and
+covered her."
+
+"Your own face is bleeding."
+
+"Is it?"  He put up a hand.  "Yes--I remember, a brick struck me, on
+my way from the stables--no, a beam grazed me as I ran for the
+back-stairs, meaning to get you out that way.  The stairs were
+choked. . . . I made sure you were in the house.  The horses . . .
+have you ever heard a horse scream?"
+
+She shivered.  At a turn of the road they came full in view of the
+black pall stretching over the city.  Flames shot up through it, here
+and there.  Lisbon was on fire in half a dozen places at least; and
+now for the first time she became aware that the wind had sprung up
+again and was blowing violently.  She could not remember when it
+first started: the morning had been still, the Tagus--she recalled
+it--unruffled.
+
+At the very foot of the hill they came on the first of three fires--
+two houses blazing furiously, and a whole side-street doomed, if the
+wind should hold.  Among the ruins of a house, right in the face of
+the fire, squatted a dozen persons, men and women, all dazed by
+terror.  The women had opened their parasols--possibly to screen
+their faces from the heat--albeit they might have escaped this quite
+easily by shifting their positions a few paces.  None of these folk
+betrayed the smallest interest in Ruth or in Langton.  Indeed, they
+scarcely lifted their eyes.
+
+The suburbs were deserted, for the earthquake had surprised all
+Lisbon in a pack, crowded within its churches, or in its central
+streets and squares.  Yet the emptiness of what should have been the
+thoroughfares astonished them scarcely less than did the piles of
+masonry, breast-high in places, over which they picked their way in
+the uncanny twilight.  They had scarcely passed beyond the glare of
+the burning houses when Langton stumbled over a corpse--the first
+they encountered.  He drew Ruth aside from it, entreating her in a
+low voice to walk warily.  But she had seen.
+
+"We shall see many before we reach the Cathedral," she said quietly.
+
+They stumbled on, meeting with few living creatures; and these few
+asked them no questions, but went by, stumbling, with hands groping,
+as though they moved in a dream.  A voice wailed "Jesus! Jesus!" and
+the cry, issuing Heaven knew whence, shook Ruth's nerve for a moment.
+
+Once Langton plucked her by the arm and pointed to some men with
+torches moving among the ruins.  She supposed that they were seeking
+for the dead; but they were, in fact, incendiaries, already at work
+and in search of loot.
+
+She passed three or four of these blazing houses, some kindled no
+doubt by incendiaries, but others by natural consequences of the
+earthquake; for the kitchens, heated for the great feast, had
+communicated their fires to the falling timberwork on which the
+houses were framed; and by this time the city was on fire in at least
+thirty different places.  The scorched smell mingled everywhere with
+an odour of sulphur.
+
+There were rents in the streets, too--chasms, half-filled with
+rubble, reaching right across the roadway.  After being snatched back
+by Langton from the brink of one of these chasms, Ruth steeled her
+heart to be thankful when a burning house shed light for her
+footsteps.  At the houses themselves, after an upward glance or two,
+she dared not look again.  They leaned this way and that, the fronts
+of some thrust outward at an angle to forbid any but the foolhardiest
+from passing underneath.
+
+But, indeed, they had little time to look aloft as they penetrated to
+streets littered, where the procession had passed, with wrecked
+chaises, dead mules, human bodies half-buried and half-burnt, charred
+limbs protruding awkwardly from heaps of stones.  Here, by ones and
+twos, pedestrians tottered past, crying that the world was at an end;
+here, on a heap where, belike, his shop had stood, a man knelt
+praying aloud; here a couple of enemies met by chance, seeking their
+dead, and embraced, beseeching forgiveness for injuries past.
+These sights went by Ruth as in a dream; and as in a dream she heard
+the topple and crack of masonry to right and left.  Langton guided
+her; and haggard, perspiring, they bent their heads to the strange
+wind now howling down the street as through a funnel, and foot by
+foot battled their way.
+
+The wind swept over their bent heads, carrying flakes of fire to
+start new conflagrations.  The stream of these flakes became so
+steady that Ruth began to count on it to guide her.  She began to
+think that amid all this dissolution to right and left, some charm
+must be protecting them both, when, as he stretched a hand to help
+her across a mound of rubble she saw him turn, cast a look up and
+fall back beneath a rush of masonry.  A flying brick struck her on
+the shoulder, cutting the flesh.  For the rest, she stood unscathed;
+but her companion lay at her feet, with legs buried deep, body buried
+to the ribs.
+
+"Your hand!" she gasped.
+
+He stretched it out feebly, but withdrew it in an agony; for the
+stones crushed his bowels.
+
+"You are hurt?"
+
+"Killed."  He contrived a smile.  "Not so wide as a church door," he
+quoted, looking up at her strangely through the wan light; "but
+'twill serve."
+
+"My friend! and I cannot help you!"  She plucked vainly at the mass
+of stones burying his legs.
+
+He gasped on his anguish, and controlled it.
+
+"Let be these silly bricks. . . . They belong to some grocer's
+kitchen-chimney, belike--but they have killed me, and may as well
+serve for my tomb.  Reach me your hand."
+
+He took it and thrust it gently within the breast of his waistcoat.
+There, guided by him, her fingers closed on the handle of a tiny
+stiletto.
+
+"The sheath too . . . it is sewn by a few stitches only." He looked
+up into her eyes.  "You are too beautiful to be wandering these
+streets alone."
+
+"I understand," she said gravely.
+
+"Now go."  He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, and released
+it.
+
+"Can I do nothing?" she asked, with a hard sob.
+
+"Yes . . . 'tis unlucky, they say, to accept a knife without paying
+for it.  One kiss. . . . You may tell Noll.  Is it too high a price?"
+
+She knelt and kissed him on the brow.
+
+"Ah! . . ."  He drew a long sigh.  "I have held you to-day, and
+to-day you have kissed me.  Go now."
+
+She went.  The dog ran with her a little way, then turned and crept
+back to its master.
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+THE FINDING.
+
+"Hola!" hailed a man, signalling by a brazier with his back to the
+wind.  "For what are you seeking?"
+
+Ruth halted, gripping her stiletto.  This man might help her,
+perhaps.  At any rate, he seemed a cool-headed fellow who made the
+best of things.
+
+For two hours she had searched, and for the time her strength was
+nearly spent.  Dust filled her hair and caked her long eyelashes.
+Her face, haggard with woe and weariness, was a mask of dust.
+
+"For one," she answered, "who was to have attended High Mass in the
+Cathedral."
+
+"Eh?"  The man swept a hand to the ruined shell of that building, at
+the end of the Square, and to a horrible pile of masonry covering
+many hundreds of bodies.  "If he reached there, your Excellency had
+better go home and pray for his soul; that is, if your Excellency
+believes it efficacious.  But first, will your Excellency sit here
+and rest?--no, not on the lee side, in the fumes of the charcoal, but
+to windward here, where the fire is bright, and where I have the
+honour to give room. . . . So your Excellency did not attend the
+Mass?--not approving of it, maybe?"
+
+"It would seem that you know me?" said Ruth, answering something in
+his tone, not his words.
+
+The question set him chuckling.  "Not by that token--though 'faith
+'tis an ill wind blows nobody good.  This earthquake, considered
+philosophically, is a great opportunity for heretics.  You and I, for
+example, may sit here in the very middle of the square and talk
+blasphemy to our heart's content; whereas--"  He broke off.
+"But I forget my manners.  I ought to have started by saying that no
+one, having once set eyes on your Excellency's face could ever forget
+it; and, by St. James, that is no more than the truth!"
+
+"Where have you seen me before?"
+
+"By the gateway of the Holy Office, in a carriage with your lord
+beside you.  I marked his face, too.  What it is to be young and rich
+and beautiful! . . . And yet you might have remembered me, seeing
+that I made part of the procession, though--praise be to fate!--
+A modest one."
+
+Ruth gazed at him.  "I remember you," she said slowly; "you were one
+of the Penitents."
+
+"They were gracious enough to call me so.  Yes, I can understand that
+a san-benito makes some difference to a man's personal appearance.
+ . . . And old Gonsalvez--I saw your Excellency wince and your
+Excellency's beauty turn pale when he cast up his hands to the sun.
+ . . . Hey?  _How is it possible_--how went the words?"
+
+Ruth had them well by heart.  "_How is it possible for people,
+beholding that glorious Body, to worship any Being but Him who
+created it?_"
+
+Right--word for word!  Well, they made a lens for that glorious Body
+and fried old Gonsalvez with it.  Were you looking on?"
+
+"No," said Ruth, and shivered.
+
+"Well, I did--perforce.  'Twas part of my lesson; for you must know
+that I, too, had had my little difficulty over that same glorious
+Sun, touching his standing still over Gibeon at the command of
+ancient Joshua.  'Faith, I've no quarrel with a miracle or so, up and
+down; but that one! . . . Well, they convinced me I was a fool to
+have any doubt, and a worse fool to let it slip off the tongue.
+And yet," said the Penitent, warming his hands and casting a look up
+at the sky, where the dust-cloud had given place to a rolling pall of
+smoke, "what a treat it is to let the tongue wag at times!"
+
+Ruth, her strength refreshed by the few minutes' rest, thanked him
+and arose to continue her search.
+
+"Stay," said the Penitent.  "Your Excellency has not heard all the
+story, nor yet arrived near the moral. . . . Between ourselves the
+reverend fathers were lenient with me because--well, it may have been
+because I hold some influence among the beggars of Lisbon, who are
+numerous and not always meek, in spite of the promise that meekness
+shall inherit the earth.  I may confess, in short, that my presence
+in the procession was to some extent a farce, and the result of a
+compromise.  But, all the same, your Excellency does ill to
+disbelieve in miracles: as I dare say your Excellency, casting an eye
+about Lisbon on this particular day of All the Saints, will not
+dispute?"
+
+"Alas, sir! I have seen too many horrors to-day to be in any mood to
+argue."
+
+"Then," said the Penitent, skipping up, "you are in the precise mood
+to be convinced; as I have seen men, under extremity of torture,
+ready to believe anything.  Come!"
+
+She hesitated.  "Where would you lead me?"
+
+"To a miracle," he answered, and, with a fine gesture, flinging his
+tattered cloak over his shoulder, he led the way.  He strode rapidly
+down a couple of streets.  Once or twice coming to a chasm across the
+roadway he paused, drew back, and cleared it with a leap.  But at
+these pitfalls he neither turned nor offered Ruth a hand.
+She followed him panting, so agile was his pace.
+
+The first street ran south, the second east.  He entered a third
+which turned north again as if to lead back into the Square.
+After following it for twenty yards he halted and allowed her to
+catch up with him.
+
+"You are a devoted wife," said the Penitent admiringly.  "Would it
+alter your devotion at all to know that he was with another woman?"
+
+"No," answered Ruth.  "I knew it, in fact."  She wondered that this
+beggar man could force her to speak so frankly.
+
+"In an earthquake," said he, "one gets down to naked truth, or near
+to it.  If he were unfaithful now--would that alter your desire to
+find and save him?"
+
+"Sir, why do you ask these things?"
+
+"Did your Excellency not know that its beggars are the eyes of
+Lisbon?  But you have not answered me."
+
+"Nor will.  That I am here--is it not enough?"
+
+The Penitent peered at her in the dim light and nodded.  He led her
+forward a pace or two and pointed to something imbedded in a pile of
+stones, lime, rubble.  It was the wreck of a chaise.  Two males lay
+crushed under it, their heads and a couple of legs protruding.
+A splintered door, wrenched from its hinges, lay face-uppermost
+crowning the heap.  It bore a coronet and the arms of Montalegre.
+
+"Are they--" she stammered, but caught at her voice and recovered it.
+"--Are they _here_, under this?"
+
+"No," he said, and again led the way, crossing the street to a house
+of which the upper storey overhung the street, supported by a line of
+pillars.  Three or four of these pillars had fallen.  Of the rest,
+nine out of ten stood askew, barely holding up the house, through the
+floors of which stout beams had thrust themselves and stuck at all
+angles from the burst plaster.
+
+"Here is Milord Vyell," said the Penitent, picking up a broken lath
+and pointing with it.
+
+
+He lay on his back, as he had lain for close upon three hours, deep
+in the shadow of the overhanging house.  His eyes were wide open.
+They stared up at the cobwebs that dangled from the broken plaster.
+A pillar, in weight maybe half a ton, rested across his thighs; an
+oaken beam across his chest and his broken left arm.  The two pinned
+him hopelessly.
+
+Clutched to him in his right lay Donna Maria.  She seemed to sleep,
+with her head turned from his breast and laid upon the upper arm.
+The weight of the pillar resting on her bowels had squeezed the life
+out of her.  She was dead: her flesh by this time almost cold.
+
+"Oliver!--Ah, look at me!--I am here--I have come to help!"
+
+The lids twitched slightly over his wide eyes.  In the dim light she
+could almost be sworn that the lips, too, moved as though to speak.
+But no words came, and the eyes did not see her.
+
+He was alive.  What else mattered?
+
+She knelt and flung her arms about the pillar.  Frantically, vainly,
+she tugged at it: not by an inch or the tenth part of an inch could
+she stir it.
+
+"Speak to me, Oliver! . . . Look at least!"
+
+"If your Excellency will but have patience!"  The Penitent stepped
+out into the street and she heard him blowing a whistle.  Clearly he
+was a man to be obeyed; for in less than ten minutes a dozen figures
+crowded about the entrance, shutting out the day.  This darkness of
+their making was in truth their best commendation.  For against any
+one of them coming singly Ruth had undoubtedly held her dagger ready.
+They grumbled, too, and some even cursed the Penitent for having
+dragged them away from their loot.  The Penitent called them
+cheerfully his little sons of the devil, and adjured them to fall to
+work or it would be the worse for them.
+
+For his part, he lifted no hand: but stood overseer as the ruffians
+lifted the pillar, Ruth straining her strength with theirs.
+
+But when they came to lift Donna Maria, for a moment something
+hitched, and Ruth heard the sound of rending cloth.  The poor wretch
+in her death-agony had bitten through Sir Oliver's arm to the bone.
+The corpse yet clenched its jaws on the bite.  They had to wrench the
+teeth open--delicate pretty teeth made for nibbling sweetmeats.
+
+To his last day Oliver Vyell bore the mark of those pretty teeth, and
+took it to the grave with him.
+
+
+Ruth drew out a purse.  But the Penitent, though they grumbled, would
+suffer his scoundrels to take no fee.  Nay, he commanded two, and
+from somewhere out of devastated Lisbon they fetched a sedan-chair
+for the broken man.  "You may pay these if you will," said he.
+"Honestly, they deserve it."
+
+On her way westward, following the chair, she called to them to stop
+and search whereabouts Mr. Langton had fallen.  They found him with
+the small greyhound standing guard beside the body.  His head was
+pillowed on his arm, and he lay as one quietly sleeping.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+DOCUMENTS.
+
+I.
+
+
+_From Abraham Castres Esq.: his Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary to the
+King of Portugal, to the Secretary of State, Whitehall, London._
+LISBON, _November 6th_, 1755.
+
+"SIR,--You will in all likelihood have heard before this of the
+inexpressible Calamity befallen the whole Maritime Coast, and in
+particular this opulent City, now reduced to a heap of Rubbish and
+Ruin, by a most tremendous Earthquake on the first of this Month,
+followed by a Conflagration which has done ten times more Mischief
+than the Earthquake itself.  I gave a short account of our Misfortune
+to _Sir Benjamin Keene_, by a _Spaniard_, who promised (as all
+intercourse by Post was at a stand) to carry my Letter as far as
+_Badajoz_ and see it safe put into the Post House.  It was merely to
+acquaint His Excellency that, God be praised, my House stood out the
+Shocks, though greatly damaged; and that, happening to be out of the
+reach of the Flames, several of my Friends, burnt out of their
+Houses, had taken refuge with me, where I have accommodated them as
+well as I could, under Tents in my large Garden; no Body but _Lord
+Charles Dowglass_, who is actually on board the Packet, besides my
+Chaplain and myself having dared hitherto to sleep in my House since
+the Day of our Disaster.  The Consul and his Family have been saved,
+and are all well, in a Country House near this City.  Those with me
+at present are the _Dutch_ Minister, his Lady, and their three
+Children, with seven or eight of their Servants.  The rest of my
+Company of the better Sort consists of several Merchants of this
+Factory, who, for the most part have lost all they had; though some
+indeed, as Messrs. _Parry_ and _Mellish's_ House, and Mr. _Raymond_,
+and _Burrell_, have had the good Fortune to save their Cash, either
+in whole or in part.  The number of the Dead and Wounded I can give
+no certain Account of as yet; in that respect our Poor Factory has
+escaped pretty well, considering the number of Houses we have here.
+I have lost my Good and Worthy Friend the _Spanish_ Ambassador, who
+was crushed under the Door, as he attempted to make his Escape into
+the Street.  This with the Anguish I have been in for these five Days
+past, occasioned by the dismal Accounts brought to us every instant
+of the Accidents befallen to one or other of our Acquaintance among
+the Nobility, who for the most part are quite Undone, has greatly
+affected me; but in particular the miserable Objects among the lower
+sort of His Majesty's Subjects, who fly also to me for Bread, and lie
+scattered up and down in my Garden, with their Wives and Children.
+I have helped them all hitherto, and shall continue to do so, as long
+as Provisions do not fail Us, which I hope will not be the Case, by
+the Orders which _M. de Carvalho_ has issued in that respect.
+One of our great Misfortunes is, that we have neither an _English_ or
+_Dutch_ Man of War in the Harbour.  Some of their Carpenters and
+Sailors would have been of great use to me on this occasion, in
+helping to prop up my House; for as the Weather, which has hitherto
+been remarkably fair, seems to threaten us with heavy Rains, it will
+be impossible for the Refugees in my Garden to hold out much longer;
+and how to find Rooms in my House for them all I am at a loss to
+devise; the Floors of most of them shaking under our Feet; and must
+consequently be too weak to bear any fresh number of Inhabitants.
+The Roads for the first Days having been impracticable, it was
+but yesterday I had the Honour in Company with _M. de la Calmette_,
+of waiting on the King of _Portugal_, and all the Royal Family at
+_Belem_, whom we found encamped; none of the Royal Palaces being fit
+to harbour Them.  Though the loss His Most Faithful Majesty has
+sustained on this occasion is immense, and that His Capital-City is
+utterly Destroyed; He received us with more Serenity than we
+expected, and among other things told us, that He owed Thanks to
+Providence for saving His and His Family's Lives: and that He was
+extremely glad to see us both safe.  The Queen in her own Name, and
+all the young Princesses, sent us word that they were obliged to us
+for our attention; but that being under their Tents, and in a Dress
+not fit to appear in, They desired that for the present we would
+excuse their admitting our Compliments in Person.  Most of the
+considerable Families in our Factory have already secured to
+themselves a passage to _England_, by three or four of our _London_
+Traders, that are preparing for their departure.  As soon as the
+fatigue and great trouble of Mind I have endured for these first Days
+are a little over, I shall be considering of some proper method for
+sheltering the poorer Sort, either by hiring a _Portuguese_ Hulk, or
+if that is not to be had, some _English_ Vessel till they can be sent
+to _England; _and there are many who desire to remain, in hopes of
+finding among the Ruins some of the little Cash they may have lost in
+their Habitations.  The best orders have been given for preventing
+Rapine, and Murders, frequent instances of which we have had within
+these three Days, there being swarms of _Spanish_ Deserters in Town,
+who take hold of this opportunity of doing their business.  As I have
+large sums deposited in my House, belonging to such of my Countrymen
+as have been happy enough to save some of their Cash, and that my
+House was surrounded all last Night with _Ruffians_; I have wrote
+this Morning to _M. de Carvalho_, to desire a Guard, which I hope
+will not be refused.  We are to have in a Day or two a Meeting of our
+scattered Factory at my House, to consider of what is best to be done
+in our present wretched Circumstances.  I am determined to stay
+within call of the Distressed, as long as I can remain on Shore with
+the least Appearance of Security: and the same Mr. _Hay_ (the Consul)
+seemed resolved to do, the last time I conferred with him about it.
+I most humbly beg your Pardon, Sir, for the Disorder of this Letter,
+surrounded as I am by many in Distress, who from one instant to the
+other are applying to me either for Advice or Shelter.  The Packet
+has been detained at the Desire of the Factory, till another appears
+from _England_, or some Man of War drops in here from the
+_Streights_.  This will go by the first of several of our Merchant
+Ships bound to _England_.  I must not forget to acquaint you, that
+_Sir Oliver Vyell_ and Lady are safe and well, and have the Honour to
+be, &c."
+
+
+II.
+
+
+_From the Same to the Same._
+'BELEM, _November 7th_, 1755.
+
+"Sir,--. . . The present Scene of Misery and Distress is not to be
+described; the Kingdom of _Portugal_ is ruined and undone, and
+_Lisbon_, one of the finest Cities that ever was seen, is now no
+more.  The Escape of the forementioned _Sir. O. Vyell_ is one of the
+most providential Things that ever was heard of; for whilst he was
+riding about the middle of the City in his Chaise, on the first
+instant, he observed the Driver to look behind him, and immediately
+to make the Mules gallop as fast as possible, but both he and they
+were very soon killed and buried in the Ruins of a House which fell
+on them; whereupon _Sir Oliver_ jumped out of the Chaise, and ran
+into a House that instantly fell also to the Ground, and buried him
+in the Ruins for a considerable Time; but it pleased God that he was
+taken out alive, and not much bruised.  His Lady likewise was
+providentially in the Garden when their House fell, and so escaped.
+About half an Hour after the first Shock, the City was on fire in
+five different Parts, and has been burning ever since, so that the
+_English_ Merchants here are entirely ruined.  There have been three
+Shocks every Day since the first, but none so violent as the first.
+The King has ordered all the Soldiers to assist in burying the Dead,
+to prevent a Plague; and indeed upon that Account the Fire was of
+Service in consuming the Carcasses both of Men and Beasts.
+The _English_ have miraculously escaped, for notwithstanding the
+Factory was so numerous, not more than a Dozen are known to have been
+killed; amongst whom was poor _Mrs. Hake_, Sister to Governor _Hardy_
+of _New York_, who suffered as she was driving her Children before
+her; and the _Spanish_ Ambassador was killed also, with his young
+Child in his Arms.  Every person, from the King to the Beggar, is at
+present obliged to lie in the Fields, and some are apprehensive that
+a Famine may ensue."
+
+
+III.
+
+_An Extract of a Letter from on board a Ship in Lisbon Harbour,
+Nov: 19, to the same Purport_.
+
+"Mine will not bring you the first News of the most dreadful Calamity
+befallen this City and whole Kingdom.  On _Saturday_ the first
+instant, about half an Hour past nine o'clock, I was retired to my
+Room after Breakfast, when I perceived the House began to shake, but
+did not apprehend the Cause; however, as I saw the Neighbours about
+me all running down Stairs, I also made the best of my Way; and by
+the time I had cross'd the Street, and got under the Piazzas of some
+low House, it was darker than the darkest Night I ever was out in,
+and continued so for about a Minute, occasioned by the Clouds of Dust
+from the falling of Houses on all sides.  After it cleared up, I ran
+into a large Square adjoining; but being soon alarmed with a Cry that
+the Sea was coming in, all the People crowded foreward to run to the
+Hills, I among the rest, with Mr. _Wood_ and Family.  We went near
+two Miles thro' the Streets, climbing over the Ruins of Churches,
+Houses, &c., and stepping over hundreds of dead and dying People,
+Carriages, Chaises and Mules, lying all crushed to Pieces; and that
+Day being a great Festival in their Churches, and happening just at
+the time of celebrating the first Mass, thousands were assembled in
+the Churches, the major part of whom were killed; for the great
+Buildings, particularly those which stood on any Eminence, suffered
+the most Damage.  Very few of the Churches or Convents have escaped.
+We staid near two Hours in an open Campo; and a dismal scene it was,
+the People howling and crying, and the Sacrament going about to dying
+persons: so I advised, as the best, to return to the Square near our
+own House and there wait the event, which we did immediately; but by
+the Time we got there the City was in Flames in several distant
+Parts, being set on fire by some Villains, who confessed it before
+Execution.  This completed the Destruction of the greatest Part of
+the City; for in the Terror all Persons were, no Attempt was made to
+stop it; and the Wind was very high, so that it was communicated from
+one Street to another by the Flakes of Fire drove by the Winds.
+It raged with great Violence for eight Days, and this in the
+principal and most thronged Parts of the City; People being fled into
+the Fields half naked, the Fire consumed all sorts of Merchandise,
+Household Goods, and Wearing Apparel, so that hardly anything is left
+to cover People, and they live in Tents in the Fields.  If the Fire
+had not happened, People would have recovered their Effects out of
+the Ruins; but this has made such a Scene of Desolation and Misery as
+Words cannot describe."
+
+"The King's Palace in the City is totally destroyed, with all the
+Jewels, Furniture, &c.  The _India_ Warehouses adjoining, full of
+rich Goods, are all consumed.  The Custom-house, piled up with Bales
+upon Bales, is all destroyed; and the Tobacco and other Warehouses,
+with the Cargoes of three _Brazil_ Fleets, shared the same Fate.
+In short, there are few Goods left in the whole City."
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+_From a Ship's Captain writing home under the same date_.
+
+". . . On Saturday the first instant, I arose at Five, in order to
+remove my Ship from the Custom-house, agreeable to my Order; by Nine
+we sailed down and anchored off the upper end of the _Terceras_.
+Wind at N.E. a small Breeze, and a fine clear morning.  Ten Minutes
+before Ten, I felt the Ship have an uncommon Motion, and could not
+help thinking she was aground, although sure of the Depth of Water.
+As the Motion increased, my Amazement increased also; and as I was
+looking round to find out the Meaning of this uncommon Motion, I was
+immediately acquainted with the direful Cause; when at that Instant
+looking towards the City, I beheld the tall and stately Buildings
+tumbling down, with great Cracks and Noise, and particularly that
+part of the City from _St. Paul's_ in a direct Line to _Bairroalto_;
+as also, at the same Time, that Part from the said Church along the
+River-side Eastward as far as the Gallows, and so in a curve Line
+Northward again; and the Buildings as far as _St. Joze_ and the
+_Rofcio_, were laid in the three following Shocks, which were so
+violent as I heard many say they could with great Difficulty stand on
+their Legs.  There is scarce one House of this great City left
+habitable.  The Earth opened, and rent in several Places, and many
+expected to be swallowed up.--As it happened at a Time when the
+Kitchens were furnished with Fires, they communicated their Heat to
+the Timber with which their Houses were built or adorned, and in
+which the Natives are very curious and expensive, both in Furniture
+and Ceilings; and by this means the City was in a Blaze in different
+Parts at once.  The Conflagration lasted a whole Week.--What chiefly
+contributed to the Destruction of the City, was the Narrowness of the
+Streets.  It is not to be expressed by Human Tongue, how dreadful and
+how awful it was to enter the City after the Fire was abated: when
+looking upwards one was struck with Terror at beholding frightful
+Pyramids of ruined Fronts, some inclining one Way, some another; then
+on the other hand with Horror, in viewing Heaps of Bodies crushed to
+death, half-buried and half-burnt; and if one went through the broad
+Places or Squares, there was nothing to be met with but People
+bewailing their Misfortunes, wringing their Hands, and crying
+_The World is at an End_.  In short, it was the most lamentable Scene
+that Eyes could behold.  As the Shocks, though Small, are frequent,
+the People keep building Wooden Houses in the Fields; but the King
+has ordered no Houses to be built to the Eastward of _Alcantara_
+Gate.--Just now four _English_ Sailors have been condemned for
+stealing Goods, and hiding them in the Ballast, with Intent to make a
+Property of them."
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+THE LAST OFFER
+
+
+His villa being destroyed, they had carried Sir Oliver out to Belem,
+to one of the wooden hospitals hastily erected in the royal grounds.
+There the King's surgeon dressed his wounds and set the broken left
+arm, Ruth attending with splints and bandages.
+
+When all was done and the patient asleep, she crept forth.  She would
+fain have stayed to watch by him; but this would have meant crowding
+the air for the sufferers, who already had much ado to breathe.
+She crept forth, therefore, and slept that night out on the naked
+ground, close under the lee of the canvas.
+
+Early next morning she was up and doing.  A dozen hospitals had been
+improvised and each was crying out for helpers.  She chose that of
+her friend Mr. Castres, the British envoy.  It stood within a
+high-walled garden, sheltered from the wind which, for some days
+after the earthquake, blew half a gale.  At first the hospital
+consisted of two tents; but in the next three days these increased to
+a dozen, filling the enclosure.  Then, just as doctors and nurses
+despaired of coping with it, the influx of wounded slackened and
+ceased, almost of a sudden.  In the city nothing remained now but to
+bury the dead, and in haste, lest their corpses should breed
+pestilence.  It was horribly practical; but every day, as she awoke,
+her first thought was for the set of the wind; her first fear that in
+the night it might have shifted, and might be blowing from the east
+across Lisbon.  The wind, however, kept northerly, as though it had
+been nailed to that quarter.  She heard that gangs were at work
+clearing the streets and collecting the dead; at first burying them
+laboriously after the third day, burning them in stacks.  As the
+Penitent had said, in an earthquake one gets down to nakedness.
+During those next ten days Ruth lived hourly face to face with her
+kind, men and women, naked, bleeding, suffering.
+
+She contrived too, all this while, to have the small motherless Hake
+children near her, inventing a hundred errands to keep them busy.
+Thus, to be sure, they saw many things too sad for their young eyes,
+yet Ruth perceived that in feeling helpful they escaped the worst
+broodings of bereavement, and, on the whole, watching them at times,
+as their small hands were busy tearing up bandages or washing out
+medicine bottles, she felt satisfied that their mother would have
+wished it so.
+
+
+Sir Oliver's arm healed well, and in general (it seemed) he was
+making a rapid recovery.  It was remarkable, though, that he seldom
+smiled, and scarcely spoke at all save to answer a question.
+He would rest for hours at a time staring straight in front of him,
+much as he had lain and stared up at the ceiling of the fatal house.
+Something weighed on his mind; or maybe the brain had received a
+shock and must have time to recover.  Ruth watched him anxiously,
+keeping a cheerful face.
+
+But there came an evening when, as she returned, tired but cheerful,
+from the hospital, he called her to him.
+
+"Ruth!"
+
+"My lord." She was beside his couch in a moment.
+
+"I have something to say to you; something I have wanted to say for
+days.  But I wanted also to think it all out. . . . I have not yet
+asked you to forgive me--"
+
+"Dear, you were forgiven long ago."
+
+"--But I have asked Heaven to forgive me."
+
+Ruth gave a little start and stared at him doubtfully.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "as I lay pinned--those hours through, waiting for
+death--something opened to me; a new life, I hope."
+
+"And by a blessing I do not understand--by a blessing of blessings--
+you were given back to it, Oliver."
+
+"Back to it?" he repeated.  "You do not understand me.  The blessing
+was God's special grace; the new life I speak of was a life
+acknowledging that grace."
+
+There was silence for many seconds; for a minute almost, Ruth's hands
+had locked themselves together, and she pulled at the intertwisted
+fingers.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said at length.  "You are right--I do not
+understand."  Her voice had lost its ring; the sound of it was
+leaden, spiritless.  But he failed to note this, being preoccupied
+with his own thoughts.  Nor did he observe her face.
+
+"I would not speak of this before," he went on, still with his eyes
+turned to the window, "because I wanted to think it all out.  But it
+is true, Ruth; I am a changed man."
+
+"I hope not."
+
+Again he did not hear, or he failed to heed.  "Not," he pursued,
+"that any amount of thinking could alter the truth.  The mercy of God
+has been revealed to me.  When a man has been through such horrors--
+lying there, with that infernal woman held to me--"
+
+"Ah!" she interposed with a catch of the breath.  "Do not curse her.
+She was dead, poor thing!"
+
+"I tell you that I cursed her as I cursed myself. . . . Yes, we both
+deserved to die.  She died with her teeth in my flesh--the flesh
+whose desire was all we ever had in common."
+
+"Yes . . . I knew."
+
+"Have you the coat I wore?"
+
+"It is folded away.  Some boxes of clothes were saved from the house,
+and I laid it away in one of them."
+
+"Her teeth must have torn it?"
+
+"Yes." Ruth would have moved away in sheer heart-sickness.  Why would
+he persist in talking thus?
+
+"I shall always keep that coat.  If ever I am tempted to forget the
+mercy of God, the rent in that coat shall remind me."
+
+She wanted to cry aloud, "Oh, cease, cease!"  This new pietism of his
+revolted her almost to physical sickness.  She recognised in it the
+selfishness she had too fatally learned to detect in all pietism.
+"At least he had owed enough to his poor little fellow-sinner to
+spare a thought of pity!" . . . But a miserable restraint held her
+tongue as he went on--
+
+"Yes, Ruth.  God showed Himself to me in that hour; showed me, too,
+all the evil of my past life.  I had no hope to live; but I vowed to
+Him then, if I lived, to live as one reformed."
+
+He paused here, as if waiting for her to speak.  She did not speak.
+She felt her whole body stiffening; she wanted too to laugh outright,
+scornfully.  "The evil of his past life?  Am I next to be expelled,
+as a part of it?  Is it up to _this_ he would lead? . . . God help
+me, if there be a God!--that this should be the man I loved!"
+
+"And another oath I swore,"  he went on solemnly: "to do what
+compensation I may to any my sinning has injured.  You are the chief
+of these."
+
+"I, Oliver?"
+
+"You, who under Heaven were made, and properly, the means of saving
+my life to repentance."
+
+Somehow with this new piety he had caught the very phraseology and
+intonation of its everyday professors, even those very tricks of bad
+logic at which he had been used to laugh.  Ruth had always supposed,
+for example, that the presumption of instructing the Deity in
+appropriate conduct was impossible even to second-rate minds until by
+imitation slowly acquired as a habit.  It was monstrous to her that
+he should so suddenly and all unconsciously be guilty of it.
+Indeed for the moment these small evidences of the change in him
+distressed her more than the change itself, which she had yet to
+realise; just as in company a solecism of speech or manners will make
+us wince before we have time to trace it to the ill-breeding from
+which it springs.  His mother, she had heard (he, in fact, had told
+her), was given to these pious tricks of speech.  Surely his fine
+brain had suffered some lesion.  He was not himself, and she must
+wait for his recovery.  But surely, too, he would recover and be
+himself again.
+
+"Ruth, I have done you great wrong."
+
+"O cease! cease, Oliver!"  Her voice cried it aloud now, as she
+dropped to her knees and buried her face in the coverlet.  "Do not
+talk like this--I had a hundred times rather you neglected me than
+hear you talk so!  _You_ have done me evil?  _You_, my lord, my love?
+You, who saved me?  You, in whose eyes I have found grace, and in
+that my great, great happiness?  You, in whose light my life has
+moved? . . . Ah, love, do not break my heart!"
+
+"You misunderstand," he said quietly.  "Why should what I am saying
+break your heart?  I am asking you to marry me."
+
+She rose from her knees very slowly and went to the window.
+Standing there, again she battled off the temptation to laugh wildly.
+. . . She fought it down after a minute, and turned to encounter his
+gaze, which had not ceased to rest on her as she stood with her
+beautiful figure silhouetted against the evening light.
+
+"You really think my marrying you would make a difference?"
+
+"To me it would make all the difference," he urged, but still very
+gently, as one who, sure of himself, might reason with a child.
+"I doubt if I shall recover, indeed, until this debt is paid."
+
+"A debt, Oliver?  What kind of debt?"
+
+"Why, of gratitude, to be sure.  Did you not win me back from
+death?--to be a new and different man henceforth, please God!"
+
+
+Upon an excuse she left him and went to her own sleeping tent.
+It stood a little within the royal garden of Belem and (the weather
+being chilly) the guard of the gate usually kept a small brazier
+alight for her.  This evening for some reason he had neglected it,
+and the fire had sunk low.  She stooped to rake its embers together,
+and, as she did so, at length her laughter escaped her; soft
+laughter, terrible to hear.
+
+In the midst of it a voice--a high, jolly, schoolboy voice--called
+out from the gateway demanding, in execrable Portuguese, to be shown
+Lady Vyell's tent.  She dropped the raking-iron with a clatter and
+stood erect, listening.
+
+"Dicky?" . . . she breathed.
+
+Yes; the tent flap was lifted and Dicky stood there in the twilight;
+a Dicky incredibly grown.
+
+"Dicky!"
+
+"Motherkin!"  He was folded in her arms.
+
+"But what on earth brings you to this terrible Lisbon, of all
+places?"
+
+"Well, motherkin," said he with the finest air of importance, "a man
+would say that if a crew of British sailors could be useful
+anywhere--We'll teach your Portuguese, anyhow.  Oh, yes, the
+_Pegasus_ was at Gibraltar--we felt the shock there pretty badly--and
+the Admiral sent us up the coast to give help where we could.
+A coaster found us off Lagos with word that Lisbon had suffered worst
+of all.  So we hammered at it, wind almost dead foul all the
+way . . . and here we are.  Captain Hanmer brought me ashore in his
+gig.  My word, but the place is in a mess!"
+
+"That is Captain Hanmer's footstep I hear by the gate."
+
+"Yes, he has come to pay his respects.  But come," said the boy,
+astonished, "you don't tell me you know Old Han's footstep--begging
+his pardon--at all this distance."
+
+Yes she did.  She could have distinguished that tread had it marched
+among a thousand.  Her brain had held the note of it ever since the
+night she had heard it at Sabines, crushing the gravel of the drive.
+Dicky laughed, incredulous.  She held the boy at arm's length,
+lovingly as Captain Hanmer came and stood by the tent door.
+
+So life might yet sound with honest laughter; ay, and at the back of
+laughter, with the firm tread of duty.
+
+
+The story of Ruth Josselin and Oliver Vyell is told.  They were
+married ten days later in the hospital at Belem by a priest of the
+Church of Rome; and afterwards, on their way to England in His
+Majesty's frigate _Calliope_, which had brought out stores for the
+relief of the suffering city and was now returning with most of the
+English survivors, Sir Oliver insisted on having the union again
+ratified by the services of the ship's chaplain.  Ruth, whose sense
+of humour had survived the earthquake, could smile at this
+supererogation.
+
+They landed at Plymouth and posting to Bath, were tenderly welcomed
+by Lady Jane, to whom her son's conversion was hardly less a matter
+of rejoicing than his rescue from a living tomb.  In Bath Ruth Lady
+Vyell might have reigned as a toast, a queen of society; but Sir
+Oliver had learnt a distaste for fashionable follies, nor did she
+greatly yearn for them.
+
+He remained a Whig, however, and two years later received appointment
+to the post of Consul-General at Lisbon.  Its duties were not
+arduous, and allowed him to cross the Atlantic half a dozen times
+with Lady Vyell and revisit Eagles, where Miss Quiney held faithful
+stewardship.  He never completely recovered his health.  The pressure
+under which he had lain during those three terrible hours had left
+him with some slight curvature of the spine.  It increased, and ended
+in a constriction of the lungs, bringing on a slow decline.  In 1767
+he again retired to Bath, where next year he died, aged fifty-one
+years.  His epitaph on the wall of the Abbey nave runs as follows:--
+
+     "To the memory of Sir Oliver Hastings Pelham Vyell of
+      Carwithiel, Co. Cornwall, Baronet, Consul-General for many
+      years at Lisbon, whence he came in hopes of Recovery from a Bad
+      State of Health to Bath.  Here, after a tedious and painful
+      illness, sustained with the Patience and Resignation becoming
+      to a Christian, he died Jan. 11, 1768, in the Fifty-second Year
+      of his Life, without Heir.  This Monument is erected by his
+      affectionate Widow, Ruth Lady Vyell."
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+Ruth Lady Vyell stood in the empty minster beneath her husband's
+epitaph, and conned it, puckering her brow slightly in the effort to
+keep her thoughts collected.
+
+She had not set eyes on the tablet since the day the stonemasons had
+fixed it in place; and that was close upon eight years ago.  On the
+morrow, her pious duty fulfilled, she had taken post for Plymouth,
+there to embark for America; and the intervening years had been lived
+in widowhood at Eagles until the outbreak of the Revolution had
+forced her, early in 1775, to take shelter in Boston, and in the late
+fall of the year to sail back to England.  For Eagles, though
+unravaged, had passed into the hands of the "rebels"; and Ruth,
+though an ardent loyalist, kept her old clearness of vision, and
+foresaw that King George could not beat his Colonists; that the stars
+in their courses fought against this stupid monarch.
+
+This pilgrimage to Bath had been her first devoir on reaching
+England.  She had nursed him tenderly through his last illness, as
+she had been in all respects an exemplary wife.  Yet, standing
+beneath his monument, she felt herself an impostor.  She could find
+here no true memories of the man whose look had swayed her soul,
+whose love she had served with rites a woman never forgets.
+This city of Bath did not hold the true dust of her lord and love.
+He had perished--though sinning against her, what mattered it?--years
+ago, under a fallen pillar in a street of Lisbon.  Doubtless the site
+had been built over; it would be hard to find now, so actively had
+the Marquis de Pombal, Portugal's First Minister, renovated the
+ruined city.  But whether discoverable or not, there and not here was
+written the last of Oliver Vyell.
+
+Somehow in her thoughts of him on the other side of the Atlantic,
+in her demesne of Eagles where they had walked together as lovers,
+she had not separated her memories of him so sharply.  Now, suddenly,
+with a sense of having been cheated, she saw Oliver Vyell as two
+separate men.  The one had possessed her; she had merely married the
+other.
+
+With the blank sense of having been cheated mingled a sense that she
+herself was the cheat.  The tablet accused her of it, confronting her
+with words which, all too sharply, she remembered as of her own
+composing.  "_After a tedious and painful Illness, sustained with the
+Patience and resignation becoming to a Christian_."  Why to a
+Christian more than to another?  Was it not mere manliness to bear
+(as, to do him justice, he had borne) ill-health with fortitude, and
+face dissolution with courage?  How had she ever come to utter coin
+that rang with so false and cheap a note?  She felt shame of it.
+The taint of its falsehood seemed to blend and become one with a
+general odour of humbug, sickly, infectious, insinuating itself,
+stealing along the darkened Gothic aisles.  Since nothing is surer
+than death, nothing can be corrupter than mortality deceiving itself.
+ . . . The west door of the Abbey stood open.  Ruth, striving to
+collect her thoughts, saw the sunlight beyond it spread broad upon
+the city's famous piazza.  Sounds, too, were wafted in through the
+doorway, penetrating the hush, distracting her; rumble of workday
+traffic, voices of vendors in distant streets; among these--asserting
+itself quietly, yet steadily, regularly as a beat in music--a
+footfall on the pavement outside. . . . She knew the footfall.
+She distinguished it from every other.  Scores of times in the
+watches of the night she had lain and listened to it, hearing it in
+imagination only, echoed from memory, yet distinct upon the ear as
+the tramp of an actual foot, manly and booted; hearing it always with
+a sense of helplessness, as though with that certain deliberate tread
+marched her fate upon her, inexorably nearing.  This once again--she
+told herself--it must be in fancy that she heard it.  For how should
+_he_ be in Bath?
+
+She stepped quickly out through the porchway to assure herself.
+She stood there a moment, while her eyes accustomed themselves to the
+sunlight, and Captain Hanmer came towards her from the shadow of the
+colonnade by the great Pump-room.  He carried his left arm in a
+sling, and with his right hand lifted his hat, but awkwardly.
+
+
+"I had heard of your promotion," she said after they had exchanged
+greetings, "and of your wound, and I dare say you will let me
+congratulate you on both, since the same gallantry earned them.
+ . . . But what brings you to Bath? . . .  To drink the waters, I
+suppose, and help your convalescence."
+
+"They have a great reputation," he answered gravely; "but I have
+never heard it claimed that they can extract a ball or the splinters
+from a shattered forearm.  The surgeons did the one, and time must do
+the other, if it will be so kind. . . . No, I am in Bath because my
+mother lives here.  It is my native city, in fact."
+
+"Ah," she said, "I was wondering--"
+
+"Wondering?"   He echoed the word after a long pause.  He was plainly
+surprised.  "You knew that I was here, then?"
+
+"Not until a moment ago, when I heard your footstep." As this
+appeared to surprise him still more, she added, "You have, whether
+you know it or not, a noticeable footstep, and I a quick ear.
+Shall I tell you where, unless fancy played me a trick, I last proved
+its quickness?"
+
+He bent his head as sign for assent.
+
+"It was in Boston," she said, "last June--on the evening after the
+fight at Bunker Hill.  At midnight, rather.  Before seven o'clock the
+hospitals were full, and they brought half a dozen poor fellows to my
+lodgings in Garden Court Street.  Towards midnight one of them, that
+had lain all the afternoon under the broiling sun by the _Mystic_ and
+had taken a sunstroke on top of his wound, began raving.  My maid and
+I were alone in the house, and we agreed that he was dangerous.
+I told her that there was nothing to fear; that for an hour past some
+one had been patrolling the side-walk before the house; and I bade
+her go downstairs and desire him to fetch a surgeon.  You were that
+sentinel."
+
+Again he bent his head.  "I was serving on board the _Lively_," he
+said, "in the ferry-way between you and Charlestown.  I had heard of
+you--that you had taken lodgings in Boston, and that the temper of
+the mob might be uncertain.  So that night I got leave ashore, on the
+chance of being useful.  I brought the doctor, if you remember."
+
+"But would not present yourself to claim our thanks."  She looked at
+him shrewdly.  "To-day--did you know that I was in Bath?" she asked.
+
+He owned, "Yes; he had read of her arrival in the _Gazette_, among
+the fashionable announcements."  He did not add, but she divined,
+that he had waited for her by the Abbey, well guessing that her steps
+would piously lead her thither and soon.  She changed the subject in
+some haste.
+
+"Your mother lives in Bath?"
+
+"She has lived here all her life."
+
+"Sir Oliver spent his last days here.  I am sorry that I had not her
+acquaintance to cheer me."
+
+"It was unlikely that you should meet.  We live in the humblest of
+ways."
+
+"Nevertheless it would be kind of you to make us acquainted.
+Indeed," she went on, "I very earnestly desire it, having a great
+need--since you are so hard to thank directly--to thank you through
+somebody for many things, and especially for helping Dicky."
+
+He laughed grimly as he fell into step with her, or tried to--but his
+obstinate stride would not be corrected.  "All the powers that ever
+were," he said, "could not hinder Dicky.  He has his captaincy in
+sight--at his age!--and will be flying the blue before he reaches
+forty.  Mark my words."
+
+On their way up the ascent of Lansdowne Hill he told her much
+concerning Dicky--not of his success in the service, which she knew
+already, but of the service's inner opinion of him, which set her
+blood tingling.  She glanced sideways once or twice at the strong,
+awkward man who, outpaced by the stripling, could rejoice in his
+promotion without one twinge of jealousy, loving him merely as one
+good sailor should love another.  She noted him as once or twice he
+tried to correct his pace by hers.  Her thoughts went back to the
+tablet in the Abbey, commemorating a husband who (if it told truth)
+had never been hers.  She compared him, all in charity, with two who
+had given her an unpaid devotion.  One slept at Lisbon, in the
+English cemetery.  The other walked beside her even with such a tread
+as out somewhere on the dark floor of the sea he had paced his
+quarter-deck many a night through, pausing only to con his helm
+beneath the stars.
+
+They turned aside into an unfashionable by-street, and halted before
+a modest door in a row.  Ruth noted the railings, that they were
+spick-and-span as paint could make them; the dainty window-blinds.
+Through the passage-way, as he opened the door, came wafted from a
+back garden the clean odour of flowering stocks.
+
+In the parlour to the right of the passage, a frail, small woman rose
+from her chair to welcome them.
+
+"Mother," said her son, "this is Lady Vyell."
+
+The little woman stretched out her hands, and then, before Ruth could
+take them, they were lifted and touched her temples softly, and she
+bent to their benediction.
+
+"My son has often talked of you.  May the Lord bless you my dear.
+May the Lord bless you both.  May the Lord cause His face to shine
+upon you all your days!"
+
+
+
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