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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Noughts and Crosses, by Arthur Thomas
+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: Noughts and Crosses
+       Stories, Studies and Sketches: The Omnibus; Fortunio; The Outlandish Ladies; Statement of Gabriel Foot, Highwayman; The Return of Joanna; Psyche; The Countess of Bellarmine; A Cottage in Troy; Old Aeson; The Affair of Bleakirk-on-Sands; The Constant Post-Boy; A Dark Mirror; The Small People; The Mayor of Gantick; The Doctor's Foundling; The Gifts of Feodor Himkoff; Yorkshire Dick; The Carol; The Paradise of Choice; Beside the Bee Hives; The Magic Shadow
+
+
+Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
+
+Release Date: May 19, 2005  [eBook #15865]
+[Last updated: October 20, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOUGHTS AND CROSSES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
+
+
+
+NOUGHTS AND CROSSES
+
+Stories, Studies and Sketches
+
+by
+
+ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH (Q)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Two of the following stories were first published in _Longman's
+Magazine_; the rest are selected from a number contributed to _The
+Speaker_.  For permission to reprint them I must sincerely thank the
+two Editors.
+                  Q.
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+The Omnibus.
+
+Fortunio.
+
+The Outlandish Ladies.
+
+Statement of Gabriel Foot, Highwayman.
+
+The Return of Joanna.
+
+Psyche.
+
+The Countess of Bellarmine.
+
+A Cottage in Troy--
+
+     I.     A. Happy Voyage.
+
+     II.    These-An'-That's Wife.
+
+     III.  "Doubles" and Quits.
+
+     IV.    The Boy by the Beach.
+
+Old Aeson.
+
+Stories of Bleakirk--
+
+     I.     The Affair of Bleakirk-on-Sands.
+
+     II.    The Constant Post-Boy.
+
+A Dark Mirror.
+
+The Small People.
+
+The Mayor of Gantick.
+
+The Doctor's Foundling.
+
+The Gifts of Feodor Himkoff.
+
+Yorkshire Dick.
+
+The Carol.
+
+The Paradise of Choice.
+
+Beside the Bee Hives.
+
+The Magic Shadow.
+
+
+
+
+NOUGHTS AND CROSSES.
+
+
+
+THE OMNIBUS.
+
+
+It was not so much a day as a burning, fiery furnace.  The roar of
+London's traffic reverberated under a sky of coppery blue; the
+pavements threw out waves of heat, thickened with the reek of
+restaurants and perfumery shops; and dust became cinders, and the
+wearing of flesh a weariness.  Streams of sweat ran from the bellies
+of 'bus-horses when they halted.  Men went up and down with
+unbuttoned waistcoats, turned into drinking-bars, and were no sooner
+inside than they longed to be out again, and baking in an ampler
+oven.  Other men, who had given up drinking because of the expense,
+hung about the fountains in Trafalgar Square and listened to the
+splash of running water.  It was the time when London is supposed to
+be empty; and when those who remain in town feel there is not room
+for a soul more.
+
+We were eleven inside the omnibus when it pulled up at Charing Cross,
+so that legally there was room for just one more.  I had travelled
+enough in omnibuses to know my fellow-passengers by heart--
+a governess with some sheets of music in her satchel; a minor actress
+going to rehearsal; a woman carrying her incurable complaint for the
+hundredth time to the hospital; three middle-aged city clerks; a
+couple of reporters with weak eyes and low collars; an old
+loose-cheeked woman exhaling patchouli; a bald-headed man with hairy
+hands, a violent breast-pin, and the indescribable air of a
+matrimonial agent.  Not a word passed.  We were all failures in life,
+and could not trouble to dissemble it, in that heat.  Moreover, we
+were used to each other, as types if not as persons, and had lost
+curiosity.  So we sat listless, dispirited, drawing difficult breath
+and staring vacuously.  The hope we shared in common--that nobody
+would claim the vacant seat--was too obvious to be discussed.
+
+But at Charing Cross the twelfth passenger got in--a boy with a
+stick, and a bundle in a blue handkerchief.  He was about thirteen;
+bound for the docks, we could tell at a glance, to sail on his first
+voyage; and, by the way he looked about, we could tell as easily that
+in stepping outside Charing Cross Station he had set foot on London
+stones for the first time.  When we pulled up, he was standing on the
+opposite pavement with dazed eyes like a hare's, wondering at the new
+world--the hansoms, the yelling news-boys, the flower-women, the
+crowd pushing him this way and that, the ugly shop-fronts, the hurry
+and stink and din of it all.  Then, hailing our 'bus, he started to
+run across--faltered--almost dropped his bundle--was snatched by our
+conductor out of the path of a running hansom, and hauled on board.
+His eyelids were pink and swollen; but he was not crying, though he
+wanted to.  Instead, he took a great gulp, as he pushed between our
+knees to his seat, and tried to look brave as a lion.
+
+The passengers turned an incurious, half-resentful stare upon him,
+and then repented.  I think that more than one of us wanted to speak,
+but dared not.
+
+It was not so much the little chap's look.  But to the knot of his
+sea-kit there was tied a bunch of cottage-flowers--sweet williams,
+boy's love, love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carnations, and
+a rose or two--and the sight and smell of them in that frowsy 'bus
+were like tears on thirsty eyelids.  We had ceased to pity what we
+were, but the heart is far withered that cannot pity what it has
+been; and it made us shudder to look on the young face set towards
+the road along which we had travelled so far.  Only the minor actress
+dropped a tear; but she was used to expressing emotion, and half-way
+down the Strand the 'bus stopped and she left us.
+
+The woman with an incurable complaint touched me on the knee.
+
+"Speak to him," she whispered.
+
+But the whisper did not reach, for I was two hundred miles away, and
+occupied in starting off to school for the first time.  I had two
+shillings in my pocket; and at the first town where the coach baited
+I was to exchange these for a coco-nut and a clasp-knife.  Also, I
+was to break the knife in opening the nut, and the nut, when opened,
+would be sour.  A sense of coming evil, therefore, possessed me.
+
+"Why don't you speak to him?"
+
+The boy glanced up, not catching her words, but suspicious: then
+frowned and looked defiant.
+
+"Ah," she went on in the same whisper, "it's only the young that I
+pity.  Sometimes, sir--for my illness keeps me much awake--I lie at
+night in my lodgings and listen, and the whole of London seems filled
+with the sound of children's feet running.  Even by day I can hear
+them, at the back of the uproar--"
+
+The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as we halted at the top of
+Essex Street.  I saw him slip a couple of half-crowns into the
+conductor's hand: and he whispered something, jerking his head back
+towards the interior of the 'bus.  The boy was brushing his eyes,
+under pretence of putting his cap forward; and by the time he stole a
+look around to see if anyone had observed, we had started again.
+I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on
+his hand as he laid it on his lap.
+
+In less than a minute it was my turn to alight.  Unlike the
+matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching
+the sick woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say--
+
+"Good luck, my boy."
+
+"Good day, sir."
+
+A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and
+west for miles.  And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in
+street and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a
+multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless
+pelting feet of children--of Whittingtons turning and turning again.
+
+
+
+FORTUNIO.
+
+
+At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two different ways;
+and as no one who comes to the fair would dream of eating any other
+food, you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey
+street soon after mid-day.
+
+As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go to the goose-fair; and
+it was on my way thither across the moors, that I first made
+Fortunio's acquaintance.  I wore a new pair of corduroys, that smelt
+outrageously--and squeaked, too, as I trotted briskly along the bleak
+high road; for I had a bright shilling to spend, and it burnt a hole
+in my pocket.  I was planning my purchases, when I noticed, on a
+windy eminence of the road ahead, a man's figure sharply defined
+against the sky.
+
+He was driving a flock of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up;
+and such a man or such geese I had never seen.  To begin with, his
+rags were worse than a scarecrow's.  In one hand he carried a long
+staff; the other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean
+shoulders bent over as he read in it.  It was clear, from the man's
+undecided gait, that all his eyes were for this book.  Only he would
+look up when one of his birds strayed too far on the turf that lined
+the highway, and would guide it back to the stones again with his
+staff.  As for the geese, they were utterly draggle-tailed and
+stained with travel, and waddled, every one, with so woe-begone a
+limp that I had to laugh as I passed.
+
+The man glanced up, set his forefinger between the pages of his book,
+and turned on me a long sallow face and a pair of the most beautiful
+brown eyes in the world.
+
+"Little boy," he said, in a quick foreign way--"rosy little boy.
+You laugh at my geese, eh?"
+
+No doubt I stared at him like a ninny, for he went on--
+
+"Little wide-mouthed Cupidon, how you gaze!  Also, by the way, how
+you smell!"
+
+"It's my corduroys," said I.
+
+"Then I discommend your corduroys.  But I approve your laugh.
+Laugh again--only at the right matter: laugh at this--"
+
+And, opening his book again, he read a long passage as I walked
+beside him; but I could make neither head nor tail of it.
+
+"That is from the 'Sentimental Journey,' by Laurence Sterne, the most
+beautiful of your English wits.  Ah, he is more than French!
+Laugh at it."
+
+It was rather hard to laugh thus to order; but suddenly he set me the
+example, showing two rows of very white teeth, and fetching from his
+hollow chest a sound of mirth so incongruous with the whole aspect of
+the man, that I began to grin too.
+
+"That's right; but be louder.  Make the sounds that you made just
+now--"
+
+He broke off sharply, being seized with an ugly fit of coughing, that
+forced him to halt and lean on his staff for a while.  When he
+recovered we walked on together after the geese, he talking all the
+way in high-flown sentences that were Greek to me, and I stealing a
+look every now and then at his olive face, and half inclined to take
+to my heels and run.
+
+We came at length to the ridge where the road dives suddenly into
+Tregarrick.  The town lies along a narrow vale, and looking down, we
+saw flags waving along the street and much smoke curling from the
+chimneys, and heard the church-bells, the big drum, and the confused
+mutterings and hubbub of the fair.  The sun--for the morning was
+still fresh--did not yet pierce to the bottom of the valley, but fell
+on the hillside opposite, where cottage-gardens in parallel strips
+climbed up from the town to the moorland beyond.
+
+"What is that?" asked the goose-driver, touching my arm and pointing
+to a dazzling spot on the slope opposite.
+
+"That's the sun on the windows of Gardener Tonken's glass-house."
+
+"Eh?--does he live there?"
+
+"He's dead, and the garden's 'to let;' you can just see the board
+from here.  But he didn't live there, of course.  People don't live
+in glass-houses; only plants."
+
+"That's a pity, little boy, for their souls' sakes.  It reminds me of
+a story--by the way, do you know Latin?  No?  Well, listen to this:--
+if I can sell my geese to-day, perhaps I will hire that glass-house,
+and you shall come there on half holidays, and learn Latin.  Now run
+ahead and spend your money."
+
+I was glad to escape, and in the bustle of the fair quickly forgot my
+friend.  But late in the afternoon, as I had my eyes glued to a
+peep-show, I heard a voice behind me cry "Little boy!" and turning,
+saw him again.  He was without his geese.
+
+"I have sold them," he said, "for 5 pounds; and I have taken the
+glass-house.  The rent is only 3 pounds a year, and I shan't live
+longer, so that leaves me money to buy books.  I shall feed on the
+snails in the garden, making soup of them, for there is a beautiful
+stove in the glass-house.  When is your next half-holiday?"
+
+"On Saturday."
+
+"Very well.  I am going away to buy books; but I shall be back by
+Saturday, and then you are to come and learn Latin."
+
+It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly it was no desire for
+learning, that took me to Gardener Tonken's glass-house next Saturday
+afternoon.  The goose-driver was there to welcome me.
+
+"Ah, wide-mouth," he cried; "I knew you would be here.  Come and see
+my library."
+
+He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered volumes, arranged on an old
+flower-stand.
+
+"See," said he, "no sorrowful books, only Aristophanes and Lucian,
+Horace, Rabelais, Moliere, Voltaire's novels, 'Gil Blas,'
+'Don Quixote,' Fielding, a play or two of Shakespeare, a volume or so
+of Swift, Prior's Poems, and Sterne--that divine Sterne!  And a Latin
+Grammar and Virgil for you, little boy.  First, eat some snails."
+
+But this I would not.  So he pulled out two three-legged stools, and
+very soon I was trying to fix my wandering wits and decline _mensa_.
+
+
+After this I came on every half-holiday for nearly a year.  Of course
+the tenant of the glass-house was a nine days' wonder in the town.
+
+A crowd of boys and even many grown men and women would assemble and
+stare into the glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he gave no
+other name) seemed rather to like it than not.  Only when some
+wiseacres approached my parents with hints that my studies with a
+ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff were uncommonly like
+traffic with the devil, Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one
+morning to our home and had an interview with my mother.  I don't
+know what was said; but I know that afterwards no resistance was made
+to my visits to the glass-house.
+
+They came to an end in the saddest and most natural way.
+One September afternoon I sat construing to Fortunio out of the first
+book of Virgil's "Aeneid"--so far was I advanced; and coming to the
+passage--
+
+     "Tum breviter Dido, vultum demissa, profatur". . .
+
+I had just rendered _vultum demissa_ "with downcast eyes," when the
+book was snatched from me and hurled to the far end of the
+glass-house.  Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a transport of passion.
+
+"Fool--little fool!  Will you be like all the commentators?  Will you
+forget what Virgil has said and put your own nonsense into his golden
+mouth?"
+
+He stepped across, picked up the book, found the passage, and then
+turning back a page or so, read out--
+
+     "Saepta armis _solioque alte subnixa_ resedit."
+
+"_Alte! Alte!_" he screamed: "Dido sat on high: Aeneas stood at the
+foot of her throne.  Listen to this:--'Then Dido, bending down her
+gaze . . . '"
+
+He went on translating.  A rapture took him, and the sun beat in
+through the glass roof, and lit up his eyes.  He was transfigured;
+his voice swelled and sank with passion, swelled again, and then, at
+the words--
+
+                  "Quae te tam laeta tulerunt
+     Saecula?  Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?"
+
+It broke, the Virgil dropped from his hand, and sinking down on his
+stool he broke into a wild fit of sobbing.
+
+"Oh, why did I read it?  Why did I read this sorrowful book?"
+And then checking his sobs, he put a handkerchief to his mouth, took
+it away, and looked up at me with dry eyes.
+
+"Go away, little one, Don't come again: I am going to die very soon
+now."
+
+I stole out, awed and silent, and went home.  But the picture of him
+kept me awake that night, and early in the morning I dressed and ran
+off to the glass-house.
+
+He was still sitting as I had left him.
+
+"Why have you come?" he asked, harshly.  "I have been coughing.
+I am going to die."
+
+"Then I'll fetch a doctor."
+
+"No."
+
+"A clergyman?"
+
+"No."
+
+But I ran for the doctor.
+
+Fortunio lived on for a week after this, and at length consented to
+see a clergyman.  I brought the vicar, and was told to leave them
+alone together and come back in an hour's time.
+
+When I returned, Fortunio was stretched quietly on the rough bed we
+had found for him, and the Vicar, who knelt beside it, was speaking
+softly in his ear.
+
+As I entered on tiptoe, I heard--
+
+". . . in that kingdom shall be no weeping--"
+
+"Oh, Parson," interrupted Fortunio, "that's bad.  I'm so bored with
+laughing that the good God might surely allow a few tears."
+
+The parish buried him, and his books went to pay for the funeral.
+But I kept the Virgil; and this, with the few memories that I impart
+to you, is all that remains to me of Fortunio.
+
+
+
+THE OUTLANDISH LADIES.
+
+
+A mile beyond the fishing village, as you follow the road that climbs
+inland towards Tregarrick, the two tall hills to right and left of
+the coombe diverge to make room for a third, set like a wedge in the
+throat of the vale.  Here the road branches into two, with a
+sign-post at the angle; and between the sign-post and the grey scarp
+of the hill there lies an acre of waste ground that the streams have
+turned into a marsh.  This is Loose-heels.  Long before I learnt the
+name's meaning, in the days when I trod the lower road with slate and
+satchel, this spot was a favourite of mine--but chiefly in July, when
+the monkey-flower was out, and the marsh aflame with it.
+
+There was a spell in that yellow blossom with the wicked blood-red
+spots, that held me its mere slave.  Also the finest grew in
+desperate places.  So that, day after day, when July came round, my
+mother would cry shame on my small-clothes, and my father take
+exercise upon them; and all the month I went tingling.  They were
+pledged to "break me of it"; but they never did.  Now they are dead,
+and the flowers--the flowers last always, as Victor Hugo says.
+When, after many years, I revisited the valley, the stream had
+carried the seeds half a mile below Loose-heels, and painted its
+banks with monkey-blossoms all the way.  But the finest, I was glad
+to see, still inhabited the marsh.
+
+Now, it is rare to find this plant growing wild; for, in fact, it is
+a garden flower.  And its history here is connected with a bit of mud
+wall, ruined and covered with mosses and ragwort, that still pushed
+up from the swampy ground when I knew it, and had once been part of a
+cottage.  How a cottage came here, and how its inhabitants entered
+and went out, are questions past guessing; for the marsh hemmed it in
+on three sides, and the fourth is a slope of hill fit to break your
+neck.  But there was the wall, and here is the story.
+
+
+One morning, near the close of the last century, a small child came
+running down to the village with news that the cottage, which for ten
+years had stood empty, was let; there was smoke coming out at the
+chimney, and an outlandish lady walking in the garden.  Being
+catechised, he added that the lady wore bassomy bows in her cap, and
+had accosted him in a heathen tongue that caused him to flee, fearing
+worse things.  This being told, two women, rulers of their homes,
+sent their husbands up the valley to spy, who found the boy had
+spoken truth.
+
+Smoke was curling from the chimney, and in the garden the lady was
+still moving about--a small yellow creature, with a wrinkled but
+pleasant face, white curls, and piercing black eyes.  She wore a
+black gown, cut low in the neck, a white kerchief, and bassomy (or
+purplish) bows in her cap as the child had stated.  Just at present
+she was busy with a spade, and showed an ankle passing neat for her
+age, as she turned up the neglected mould.  When the men plucked up
+gallantry enough to offer their services, she smiled and thanked them
+in broken English, but said that her small forces would serve.
+
+So they went back to their wives; and their wives, recollecting that
+the cottage formed part of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson
+Morth, "than whom," as the tablet to his memory relates, "none was
+better to castigate the manners of the age."  He was a burly,
+hard-riding ruffian, and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben
+in Launceston streets is yet told on the countryside.
+
+Parson Morth wanted to know if he couldn't let his cottage to an
+invalid lady and her sister without consulting every wash-mouth in
+the parish.
+
+"Aw, so there's two!" said one of them, nodding her head.  "But tell
+us, Parson dear, ef 'tes fitty for two unmated women to come
+trapesing down in a po'shay at dead o' night, when all modest flesh
+be in their bed-gowns?"
+
+Upon this the Parson's language became grossly indelicate, after the
+fashion of those days.  He closed his peroration by slamming the
+front door on his visitors; and they went down the hill "blushing"
+(as they said) "all over, at his intimate words."
+
+So nothing more was known of the strangers.  But it was noticed that
+Parson Morth, when he passed the cottage on his way to meet or
+market, would pull up his mare, and, if the outlandish lady were
+working in the garden, would doff his hat respectfully.
+
+"_Bon jour, Mamzelle Henriette_"--this was all the French the Parson
+knew.  And the lady would smile back and answer in English.
+
+"Good-morning, Parson Morth."
+
+"And Mamzelle Lucille?"
+
+"Ah, just the same, my God!  All the day stare--stare.  If you had
+known her before!--so be-eautiful, so gifted, _si bien elevee!_
+It is an affliction: but I think she loves the flowers."
+
+And the Parson rode on with a lump in his throat.
+
+
+So two years passed, during which Mademoiselle Henriette tilled her
+garden and turned it into a paradise.  There were white roses on the
+south wall, and in the beds mignonette and boy's-love, pansies,
+carnations, gillyflowers, sweet-williams, and flaming great
+hollyhocks; above all, the yellow monkey-blossoms that throve so well
+in the marshy soil.  And all that while no one had caught so much as
+a glimpse of her sister, Lucille.  Also how they lived was a marvel.
+The outlandish lady bought neither fish, nor butcher's meat, nor
+bread.  To be sure, the Parson sent down a pint of milk every morning
+from his dairy; the can was left at the garden-gate and fetched at
+noon, when it was always found neatly scrubbed, with the price of the
+milk inside.  Besides, there was a plenty of vegetables in the
+garden.
+
+But this was not enough to avert the whisper of witchcraft.  And one
+day, when Parson Morth had ridden off to the wrestling matches at
+Exeter, the blow fell.
+
+Farmer Anthony of Carne--great-grandfather of the present farmer--had
+been losing sheep.  Now, not a man in the neighbourhood would own to
+having stolen them; so what so easy to suspect as witchcraft?  Who so
+fatally open to suspicion as the two outlandish sisters?  Men, wives,
+and children formed a procession.
+
+The month was July; and Mademoiselle Henriette was out in the garden,
+a bunch of monkey-flowers in her hand, when they arrived.  She turned
+all white, and began to tremble like a leaf.  But when the spokesman
+stated the charge, there was another tale.
+
+"It was an infamy.  Steal!  She would have them know that she and her
+sister were of good West Indian family--_tres bien elevees._"
+Then followed a torrent of epithets.  They were _laches-poltrons_.
+Why were they not fighting Bonaparte, instead of sending their wives
+up to the cliffs, dressed in red cloaks, to scare him away, while
+they bullied weak women?
+
+They pushed past her.  The cottage held two rooms on the ground
+floor.  In the kitchen, which they searched first, they found only
+some garden-stuff and a few snails salted in a pan.  There was a door
+leading to the inner room, and the foremost had his hand on it, when
+Mademoiselle Henriette rushed before him, and flung herself at his
+feet.  The yellow monkey-blossoms were scattered and trampled on the
+floor.
+
+"_Ah--non, non, messieurs!  Je vous prie--Elle est si--si horrible!_"
+
+They flung her down, and pushed on.
+
+The invalid sister lay in an arm-chair with her back to the doorway,
+a bunch of monkey-flowers beside her.  As they burst in, she started,
+laid both hands on the arms of her chair, and turned her face slowly
+upon them.
+
+She was a leper!
+
+They gave one look at that featureless face, with the white scales
+shining upon it, and ran back with their arms lifted before their
+eyes.  One woman screamed.  Then a dead stillness fell on the place,
+and the cottage was empty.
+
+On the following Saturday Parson Morth walked down to the inn, just
+ten minutes after stalling his mare.  He strode into the tap-room in
+his muddy boots, took two men by the neck, knocked their skulls
+together, and then demanded to hear the truth.
+
+"Very well," he said, on hearing the tale; "to-morrow I march every
+man Jack of you up to the valley, if it's by the scruff of your
+necks, and in the presence of both of those ladies--of _both_, mark
+you--you shall kneel down and ask them to come to church.  I don't
+care if I empty the building.  Your fathers (who were men, not curs)
+built the south transept for those same poor souls, and cut a slice
+in the chancel arch through which they might see the Host lifted.
+That's where _you_ sit, Jim Trestrail, churchwarden; and by the Lord
+Harry, they shall have your pew."
+
+He marched them up the very next morning.  He knocked, but no one
+answered.  After waiting a while, he put his shoulder against the
+door, and forced it in.
+
+There was no one in the kitchen.  In the inner room one sister sat in
+the arm-chair.  It was Mademoiselle Henriette, cold and stiff.
+Her dead hands were stained with earth.
+
+At the back of the cottage they came on a freshly-formed mound, and
+stuck on the top of it a piece of slate, such as children erect over
+a thrush's grave.
+
+On it was scratched--
+
+                            Ci-Git
+                           Lucille,
+                        Jadis si Belle;
+          Dont dix-neuf Jeunes Hommes, Planteurs de
+                        Saint Domingue.
+                     ont demande la Main.
+               Mais La Petite ne Voulait Pas.
+                            R.I.P.
+
+This is the story of Loose-heels, otherwise Lucille's.
+
+
+
+STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, HIGHWAYMAN.
+
+
+The jury re-entered the court after half an hour's consultation.
+
+It all comes back to me as vividly as though I stood in the dock at
+this very moment.  The dense fog that hung over the well of the
+court; the barristers' wigs that bobbed up through it, and were
+drowned again in that seething cauldron; the rays of the guttering
+candles (for the murder-trial had lasted far into the evening) that
+loomed through it and wore a sickly halo; the red robes and red face
+of my lord judge opposite that stared through it and outshone the
+candles; the black crowd around, seen mistily; the voice of the usher
+calling "Silence!"; the shuffling of the jurymen's feet; the pallor
+on their faces as I leant forward and tried to read the verdict on
+them; the very smell of the place, compounded of fog, gaol-fever, the
+close air, and the dinners eaten earlier in the day by the crowd--all
+this strikes home upon me as sharply as it then did, after the numb
+apathy of waiting.
+
+As the jury huddled into their places I stole a look at my counsel.
+He paused for a moment from his task of trimming a quill, shot a
+quick glance at the foreman's face, and then went on cutting as
+coolly as ever.
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury"--it was the judge's voice--"are you agreed
+upon your verdict?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"
+
+"_Not guilty_."
+
+It must have been full a minute, as I leant back clutching the rail
+in front of me, before I saw anything but the bleared eyes of the
+candles, or heard anything but a hoarse murmur from the crowd.
+But as soon as the court ceased to heave, and I could stare about me,
+I looked towards my counsel again.
+
+He was still shaping his pen.  He made no motion to come forward and
+shake hands over my acquittal, for which he had worked untiringly all
+day.  He did not even offer to speak.  He just looked up, nodded
+carelessly, and turned to his junior beside him; but in that glance I
+had read something which turned my heart cold, then sick, within me,
+and from that moment my hatred of the man was as deep as hell.
+
+
+In the fog outside I got clear of the gaping crowd, but the chill of
+the night after that heated court pierced my very bones.  I had on
+the clothes I had been taken in.  It was June then, and now it was
+late in October.  I remember that on the day when they caught me I
+wore my coat open for coolness.  Four months and a half had gone out
+of my life.  Well, I had money enough in my pocket to get a
+greatcoat; but I must put something warm inside me first, to get out
+the chill that cursed lawyer had laid on my heart.
+
+I had purposely chosen the by-lanes of the town, but I remembered a
+certain tavern--the "Lamb and Flag"--which lay down a side alley.
+Presently the light from its windows struck across the street, ahead.
+I pushed open the door and entered.
+
+The small bar was full of people newly come from the court, and
+discussing the trial in all its bearings.  In the babel I heard a
+dozen different opinions given in as many seconds, and learnt enough,
+too, to make me content with the jury I had had.  But the warmth of
+the place was pleasant, and I elbowed my way forward to the counter.
+
+There was a woman standing by the door as I entered, who looked
+curiously at me for a moment, then turned to nudge a man at her side,
+and whisper.  The whisper grew as I pressed forward, and before I
+could reach the counter a hand was laid on my shoulder from behind.
+I turned.
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+It was a heavy-looking drover that had touched me.
+
+"Are you the chap that was tried to-day for murder of Jeweller Todd?"
+he asked.
+
+"Well?" said I again, but I could see the crowd falling back, as if I
+was a leper, at his question.
+
+"Well?  'Taint well then, as I reckon, to be making so free with
+respectable folk."
+
+There was a murmur of assent from the mouths turned towards me.
+The landlord came forward from behind the bar.
+
+"I was acquitted," I urged defiantly.
+
+"Ac-quitted!" said he, with big scorn in the syllables.  "Hear im
+now--'ac-quitted!'  Landlord, is this a respectable house?"
+
+The landlord gave his verdict.
+
+"H'out yer goes, and damn yer impudence!"
+
+I looked round, but their faces were all dead against me.
+
+"H'out yer goes!" repeated the landlord.  "And think yerself lucky it
+aint worse," added the drover.
+
+With no further defence I slunk out into the night once more.
+
+A small crowd of children (Heaven knows whence or how they gathered)
+followed me up the court and out into the street.  Their numbers
+swelled as I went on, and some began to hoot and pelt me; but when I
+gained the top of the hill, and a lonelier district, I turned and
+struck among them with my stick.  It did my heart good to hear their
+screams.
+
+After that I was let alone, and tramped forward past the scattered
+houses, towards the open country and the moors.  Up here there was
+scarcely any fog, but I could see it, by the rising moon, hanging
+like a shroud over the town below.  The next town was near upon
+twelve miles off, but I do not remember that I thought of getting so
+far.  I could not have thought at all, in fact, or I should hardly
+have taken the high-road upon which the jeweller had been stopped and
+murdered.
+
+There was a shrewd wind blowing, and I shivered all over; but the
+cold at my heart was worse, and my hate of the man who had set it
+there grew with every step.  I thought of the four months and more
+which parted the two lives of Gabriel Foot, and what I should make of
+the new one.  I had my chance again--a chance gained for me beyond
+hope by that counsel but for whom I should be sleeping to-night in
+the condemned cell; a chance, and a good chance, but for that same
+cursed lawyer.  Ugh! how cold it was, and how I hated _him_ for it!
+
+There was a little whitewashed cottage on the edge of the moorland
+just after the hedgerows ceased--the last house before the barren
+heath began, standing a full three hundred yards from any other
+dwelling.  Its front faced the road, and at the back an outhouse and
+a wretched garden jutted out on the waste land.  There was a light in
+each of its windows tonight, and as I passed down the road I heard
+the dismal music of a flute.
+
+Perhaps it was this that jogged my thoughts and woke them up to my
+present pass.  At any rate, I had not gone more than twenty yards
+before I turned and made for the door.  The people might give me a
+night's lodging in the outhouse; at any rate, they would not refuse a
+crust to stay the fast which I had not broken since the morning.
+I tapped gently with my knuckles on the door, and listened.
+
+I waited five minutes, and no one answered.  The flute still
+continued its melancholy tune; it was evidently in the hands of a
+learner, for the air (a dispiriting one enough at the best) kept
+breaking off suddenly and repeating itself.  But the performer had
+patience, and the sound never ceased for more than two seconds at a
+time.  Besides this, nothing could be heard.  The blinds were drawn
+in all the windows.  The glow of the candles through them was
+cheerful enough, but nothing could be seen of the house inside.
+I knocked a second time, and a third, with the same result.
+Finally, tired of this, I pushed open the low gate which led into the
+garden behind, and stole round to the back of the cottage.
+
+Here, too, the window on the ground floor was lit up behind its
+blinds, but that of the room above was shuttered.  There was a hole
+in the shutter, however, where a knot of the wood had fallen out, and
+a thin shaft of light stretched across the blackness and buried
+itself in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden.  From the
+loudness of the sounds I judged this to be the room where the
+flute-playing was going on.  The crackling of my footsteps on the
+thin soil did not disturb the performer, so I gathered a handful of
+earth and pitched it up against the pane.  The flute stopped for a
+minute or so, but just as I was expecting to see the shutter open,
+went on again: this time the air was "Pretty Polly Oliver."
+
+I crept back again, and began to hammer more loudly at the door.
+"Come," said I, "whoever this may be inside, I'll see for myself at
+any rate," and with that I lifted the latch and gave the door a heavy
+kick.  It flew open quite easily (it had not even been locked), and I
+found myself in a low kitchen.  The room was empty, but the relics of
+supper lay on the deal table, and the remains of what must have been
+a noble fire were still smouldering on the hearthstone.  A crazy,
+rusty blunderbuss hung over the fireplace.  This, with a couple of
+rough chairs, a broken bacon-rack, and a small side-table, completed
+the furniture of the place.  No; for as I sat down to make a meal off
+the remnants of supper, something lying on the lime-ash floor beneath
+this side-table caught my eye.  I stepped forward and picked it up.
+
+It was a barrister's wig.
+
+"This is a queer business," thought I; and I laid it on the table
+opposite me as I went on with my supper.  It was a "gossan" wig, as
+we call it in our parts; a wig grown yellow and rusty with age and
+wear.  It looked so sly and wicked as it lay there, and brought back
+the events of the day so sharply that a queer dread took me of being
+discovered with it.  I pulled out my pistol, loaded it (they had
+given me back both the powder and pistol found on me when I was
+taken), and laid it beside my plate.  This done, I went on with my
+supper--it was an excellent cold capon--and all the time the flute
+up-stairs kept toot-tootling without stopping, except to change the
+tune.  It gave me "Hearts of Oak," "Why, Soldiers, why?" "Like Hermit
+Poor," and "Come, Lasses and Lads," before I had fairly cleared the
+dish.
+
+"And now," thought I, "I have had a good supper; but there are still
+three things to be done.  In the first place I want drink, in the
+second I want a bed, and in the third I want to thank this kind
+person, whoever he is, for his hospitality.  I'm not going to begin
+life No. 2 with housebreaking."
+
+I rose, slipped the pistol into my tail-pocket, and followed the
+sound up the ramshackle stairs.  My footsteps made such a racket on
+their old timbers as fairly to frighten me, but it never disturbed
+the flute-player.  He had harked back again to "Like Hermit Poor" by
+this time, and the dolefulness of it was fit to make the dead cry
+out, but he went whining on until I reached the head of the stairs
+and struck a rousing knock on the door.
+
+The playing stopped.  "Come in," said a cheery voice; but it gave me
+no cheerfulness.  Instead of that, it sent all the comfort of my
+supper clean out of me, as I opened the door and saw _him_ sitting
+there.
+
+There he was, the man who had saved my neck that day, and whom most I
+hated in the world, sitting before a snug fire, with his flute on his
+knee, a glass of port wine at his elbow, and looking so comfortable,
+with that knowing light in his grey eyes, that I could have killed
+him where he sat.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, just the very least bit surprised and
+no more.  "Come in."
+
+I stood in the doorway hesitating.
+
+"Don't stay letting in that monstrous draught, man; but sit down.
+You'll find the bottle on the table and a glass on the shelf."
+
+I poured out a glassful and drank it off.  The stuff was rare (I can
+remember its trick on the tongue to this day), but somehow it did not
+drive the cold out of my heart.  I took another glass, and sat
+sipping it and staring from the fire to my companion.
+
+He had taken up the flute again, and was blowing a few deep notes out
+of it, thoughtfully enough.  He was a small, squarely-built man, with
+a sharp ruddy face like a frozen pippin, heavy grey eyebrows, and a
+mouth like a trap when it was not pursed up for that everlasting
+flute.  As he sat there with his wig off, the crown of his bald head
+was fringed with an obstinate-looking patch of hair, the colour of a
+badger's.  My amazement at finding him here at this hour, and alone,
+was lost in my hatred of the man as I saw the depths of complacent
+knowledge in his face.  I felt that I must kill him sooner or later,
+and the sooner the better.
+
+Presently he laid down his flute again and spoke:--
+
+"I scarcely expected you."
+
+I grunted something in answer.
+
+"But I might have known something was up, if I'd only paid attention
+to my flute.  It and I are not in harmony to-night.  It doesn't like
+the secrets I've been blowing into it; it has heard a lot of queer
+things in its time, but it's an innocent-minded flute for all that,
+and I'm afraid that what I've told it to-night is a point beyond what
+it's prepared to go."
+
+"I take it, it knows a damned deal too much," growled I.
+
+He looked at me sharply for an instant, rose, whistled a bar or two
+of "Like Hermit Poor," reached down a couple of clay pipes from the
+shelf, filled one for himself, and gravely handed the other with the
+tobacco to me.
+
+"Beyond what it is prepared to go," he echoed quietly, sinking back
+in his chair and puffing at the pipe.  "It's a nice point that we
+have been discussing together, my flute and I, and I won't say but
+that I've got the worst of it.  By the way, what do you mean to do
+now that you have a fresh start?"
+
+Now I had not tasted tobacco for over four months, and its effect
+upon my wits was surprising.  It seemed to oil my thoughts till they
+worked without a hitch, and I saw my plan of action marked out quite
+plainly before me.
+
+"Do you want to know the first step of all?" I asked.
+
+"To be sure; the first step at any rate determines the direction."
+
+"Well then," said I, very steadily, and staring into his face,
+"the first step of all is that I am going to kill you."
+
+"H'm," said he after a bit, and I declare that not so much as an
+eyelash of the man shook, "I thought as much.  I guessed _that_ when
+you came into the room.  And what next?"
+
+"Time enough then to think of 'what next,'" I answered; for though I
+was set upon blowing his brains out, I longed for him to blaze out
+into a passion and warm up my blood for the job.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, as coolly as might be, "that would be the very
+worst time to think of it.  For, just consider: in the first place
+you will already be committed to your way of life, and secondly, if I
+know anything about you, you would be far too much flurried for any
+thought worth the name."
+
+There was a twinkle of frosty humour in his eye as he said this, and
+in the silence which followed I could hear him chuckling to himself,
+and tasting the words over again as though they were good wine.
+I sat fingering my pistol and waiting for him to speak again.
+When he did so, it was with another dry chuckle and a long puff of
+tobacco smoke.
+
+"As you say, I know a deal too much.  Shall I tell you how much?"
+
+"Yes, you may if you'll be quick about it."
+
+"Very well, then, I will.  Do you mind passing the bottle?
+Thank you.  I probably know not only too much, but a deal more than
+you guess.  First let us take the case for the Crown. The jeweller is
+travelling by coach at night over the moors.  He has one postillion
+only, Roger Tallis by name, and by character shady.  The jeweller has
+money (he was a niggardly fool to take only one postillion), and
+carries a diamond of great, or rather of an enormous and notable
+value (he was a bigger fool to take this).  In the dark morning two
+horses come galloping back, frightened and streaming with sweat.
+A search party goes out, finds the coach upset by the Four Holed
+Cross, the jeweller lying beside it with a couple of pistol bullets
+in him, and the money, the diamond, and Roger Tallis--nowhere.
+So much for the murdered man.  Two or three days after, you, Gabriel
+Foot, by character also shady, and known to be a friend of Roger
+Tallis, are whispered to have a suspicious amount of money about you,
+also blood-stains on your coat.  It further leaks out that you were
+travelling on the moors afoot on the night in question, and that your
+pistols are soiled with powder.  Case for the Crown closes.  Have I
+stated it correctly?"
+
+I nodded; he took a sip or two at his wine, laid down his pipe as if
+the tobacco spoiled the taste of it, took another sip, and
+continued:--
+
+"Case for the defence.  That Roger Tallis has decamped, that no
+diamond has been found on you (or anywhere), and lastly that the
+bullets in the jeweller's body do not fit your pistols, but came from
+a larger pair.  Not very much of a case, perhaps, but this last is a
+strong point."
+
+"Well?" I asked, as he paused.
+
+"Now then for the facts of the case.  Would you oblige me by casting
+a look over there in the corner?"
+
+"I see nothing but a pickaxe and shovel."
+
+"Ha! very good; 'nothing but a pickaxe and shovel.'  Well, to resume:
+facts of the case--Roger Tallis murders the jeweller, and you murder
+Roger Tallis; after that, as you say, 'nothing but a pickaxe and
+shovel.'"
+
+And with this, as I am a living sinner, the rosy-faced old boy took
+up his flute and blew a stave or two of "Come, Lasses and Lads."
+
+"Did you dig him up?" I muttered hoarsely; and although deathly cold
+I could feel a drop of sweat trickling down my forehead and into my
+eye.
+
+"What, before the trial?  My good sir, you have a fair, a very fair,
+aptitude for crime, but believe me, you have much to learn both of
+legal etiquette and of a lawyer's conscience."  And for the first
+time since I came in I saw something like indignation on his ruddy
+face.
+
+"Now," he continued, "I either know too much or not enough.
+Obviously I know enough for you to wish, and perhaps wisely, to kill
+me.  The question is, whether I know enough to make it worth your
+while to spare me.  I think I do; but that is for you to decide.
+If I put you to-night, and in half an hour's time, in possession of
+property worth ten thousand pounds, will that content you?"
+
+"Come, come," I said, "you need not try to fool me, nor think I am
+going to let you out of my sight."
+
+"You misunderstand.  I desire neither; I only wish a bargain.
+I am ready to pledge you my word to make no attempt to escape before
+you are in possession of that property, and to offer no resistance to
+your shooting me in case you fail to obtain it, provided on the other
+hand you pledge your word to spare my life should you succeed within
+half an hour.  And, my dear sir, considering the relative value of
+your word and mine, I think it must be confessed you have the better
+of the bargain."
+
+I thought for a moment.  "Very well then," said I, "so be it; but if
+you fail--"
+
+"I know what happens," replied he.
+
+With that he blew a note or two on his flute, took it to pieces, and
+carefully bestowed it in the tails of his coat.  I put away my pistol
+in mine.
+
+"Do you mind shouldering that spade and pickaxe, and following me?"
+he asked.  I took them up in silence.  He drained his glass and put
+on his hat.
+
+"Now I think we are ready.  Stop a moment."
+
+He reached across for the glass which I had emptied, took it up
+gingerly between thumb and forefinger, and tossed it with a crash on
+to the hearthstone.  He then did the same to my pipe, after first
+snapping the stem into halves.  This done, he blew out one candle,
+and with great gravity led the way down the staircase.  I shouldered
+the tools and followed, while my heart hated him with a fiercer spite
+than ever.
+
+We passed down the crazy stairs and through the kitchen.  The candles
+were still burning there.  As my companion glanced at the
+supper-table, "H'm," he said, "not a bad beginning of a new leaf.
+My friend, I will allow you exactly twelve months in which to get
+hanged."
+
+I made no answer, and we stepped out into the night.  The moon was
+now up, and the high-road stretched like a white ribbon into the
+gloom.  The cold wind bore up a few heavy clouds from the north-west,
+but for the most part we could see easily enough.  We trudged side by
+side along the road in silence, except that I could hear my companion
+every now and then whistling softly to himself.
+
+As we drew near to the Four Holed Cross and the scene of the murder I
+confess to an uneasy feeling and a desire to get past the place with
+all speed.  But the lawyer stopped by the very spot where the coach
+was overturned, and held up a finger as if to call attention.  It was
+a favourite trick of his with the jury.
+
+"This was where the jeweller lay.  Some fifteen yards off there was
+another pool of blood.  Now the jeweller must have dropped instantly
+for he was shot through the heart.  Yet no one doubted but that the
+other pool of blood was his.  Fools!"
+
+With this he turned off the road at right angles, and began to strike
+rapidly across the moor.  At first I thought he was trying to escape
+me, but he allowed me to catch him up readily enough, and then I knew
+the point for which he was making.  I followed doggedly.
+Clouds began to gather over the moon's face, and every now and then I
+stumbled heavily on the uneven ground; but he moved along nimbly
+enough, and even cried "Shoo!" in a sprightly voice when a startled
+plover flew up before his feet.  Presently, after we had gone about
+five hundred yards on the heath, the ground broke away into a little
+hollow, where a rough track led down to the Lime Kilns and the thinly
+wooded stream that washed the valley below.  We followed this track
+for ten minutes or so, and presently the masonry of the disused kilns
+peered out, white in the moonlight, from between the trees.
+
+There were three of these kilns standing close together beside the
+path; but my companion without hesitation pulled up almost beneath
+the very arch of the first, peered about, examined the ground
+narrowly, and then motioned to me.
+
+"Dig here."
+
+"If we both know well enough what is underneath, what is the use of
+digging?"
+
+"I very much doubt if we do," said he.  "You had better dig."
+
+
+I can feel the chill creeping down my back as I write of it; but at
+the time, though I well knew the grisly sight which I was to
+discover, I dug away steadily enough.  The man who had surprised my
+secret set himself down on a dark bank of ferns at about ten paces'
+distance, and began to whistle softly, though I could see his fingers
+fumbling with his coat-tails as though they itched to be at the flute
+again.
+
+The moon's rays shone fitfully upon the white face of the kiln, and
+lit up my work.  The little stream rushed noisily below.  And so,
+with this hateful man watching, I laid bare the lime-burnt remains of
+the comrade whom, almost five months before, I had murdered and
+buried there.  How I had then cursed my luck because forced to hide
+his corpse away before I could return and search for the diamond I
+had failed to find upon his body!  But as I tossed the earth and lime
+aside, and discovered my handiwork, the moon's rays were suddenly
+caught and reflected from within the pit, and I fell forward with a
+short gasp of delight.
+
+For there, kindled into quick shafts and points of colour--violet,
+green, yellow, and fieriest red--lay the missing diamond among
+Roger's bones.  As I clutched the gem a black shadow fell between the
+moon and me.  I looked up.  My companion was standing over me, with
+the twinkle still in his eye and the flute in his hand.
+
+"You were a fool not to guess that he had swallowed it.  I hope you
+are satisfied with the bargain.  As we are not, I trust, likely to
+meet again in this world, I will here bid you _Adieu_, though
+possibly that is scarcely the word to use.  But there is one thing I
+wish to tell you.  I owe you a debt to-night for having prevented me
+from committing a crime.  You saw that I had the spade and pickaxe
+ready in the cottage.  Well, I confess I lusted for that gem.  I was
+arguing out the case with my flute when you came in."
+
+"If," said I, "you wish a share--"
+
+"Another word," he interrupted very gravely, "and I shall be forced
+to think that you insult me.  As it is, I am grateful to you for
+supporting my flute's advice at an opportune moment.  I will now
+leave you.  Two hours ago I was in a fair way of becoming a criminal.
+I owe it to you, and to my flute, that I am still merely a lawyer.
+Farewell!"
+
+With that he turned on his heel and was gone with a swinging stride
+up the path and across the moor.  His figure stood out upon the
+sky-line for a moment, and then vanished.  But I could hear for some
+time the tootle-tootle of his flute in the distance, and it struck me
+that its note was unusually sprightly and clear.
+
+
+THE RETURN OF JOANNA.
+
+
+High and low, rich and poor, in Troy Town there are seventy-three
+maiden ladies.  Under this term, of course, I include only those who
+may reasonably be supposed to have forsworn matrimony.  And of the
+seventy-three, the two Misses Lefanu stand first, as well from their
+age and extraction (their father was an Admiral of the Blue) as
+because of their house, which stands in Fore Street and is faced with
+polished Luxulyan granite--the same that was used for the famous Duke
+of Wellington's coffin in St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+Miss Susan Lefanu is eighty-five; Miss Charlotte has just passed
+seventy-six.  They are extremely small, and Miss Bunce looks after
+them.  That is to say, she dresses them of a morning, arranges their
+chestnut "fronts," sets their caps straight, and takes them down to
+breakfast.  After dinner (which happens in the middle of the day) she
+dresses them again and conducts them for a short walk along the
+Rope-walk, which they call "the Esplanade."  In the evening she
+brings out the Bible and sets it the right way up for Miss Susan, who
+begins to meditate on her decease; then sits down to a game of ecarte
+with Miss Charlotte, who as yet has not turned her thoughts upon
+mortality.  At ten she puts them to bed.  Afterwards, "the good Bunce
+"--who is fifty, looks like a grenadier, and wears a large mole on
+her chin--takes up a French novel, fastened by a piece of elastic
+between the covers of Baxter's "Saint's Rest," and reads for an hour
+before retiring.  Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year, and her
+attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of inference rather than
+perception.
+
+
+One morning in last May, at nine o'clock, when Miss Bunce had just
+arranged the pair in front of their breakfast-plates, and was sitting
+down to pour out the tea, two singers came down the street, and their
+voices--a man's and a woman's--though not young, accorded very
+prettily:--
+
+     "Citizens, toss your pens away!
+      For all the world is mad to-day--
+                      Cuckoo--cuckoo!
+          The world is mad to-day."
+
+"What unusual words for a pair of street singers!" Miss Bunce
+murmured, setting down the tea-pot.  But as Miss Charlotte was busy
+cracking an egg, and Miss Susan in a sort of coma, dwelling perhaps
+on death and its terrors, the remark went unheeded.
+
+     "Citizens, doff your coats of black,
+      And dress to suit the almanack--
+                             Cuckoo--"
+
+The voices broke off, and a rat-tat sounded on the front door.
+
+"Say that we never give to beggars, under any circumstances,"
+murmured Miss Susan, waking out of her lethargy.
+
+The servant entered with a scrap of crumpled paper in her hand.
+"There was a woman at the door who wished to see Miss Lefanu."
+
+"Say that we never give--"  Miss Susan began again, fumbling with the
+note.  "Bunce, I have on my gold-rimmed spectacles, and cannot read
+with them, as you know.  The black-rimmed pair must be up-stairs, on
+the--"
+
+"How d'ye do, my dears?" interrupted a brisk voice.  In the doorway
+stood a plump middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly.  She wore
+a faded alpaca gown, patched here and there, a shawl of shepherd's
+plaid stained with the weather, and a nondescript bonnet.  Her face
+was red and roughened, as if she lived much out of doors.
+
+"How d'ye do?" she repeated   "I'm Joanna."
+
+Miss Bunce rose, and going discreetly to the window, pretended to
+gaze into the street.  Joanna, as she knew, was the name of the old
+ladies' only step-sister, who had eloped from home twenty years
+before, and (it was whispered) had disgraced the family.  As for the
+Misses Lefanu, being unused to rise without help, they spread out
+their hands as if stretching octaves on the edge of the table, and
+feebly stared.
+
+"Joanna," began the elder, tremulously, "if you have come to ask
+charity--"
+
+"Bless your heart, no!  What put that into your head?"  She advanced
+and took the chair which Miss Bunce had left, and resting her elbows
+on the table, regarded her sisters steadily.  "What a preposterous
+age you both must be, to be sure!  My husband's waiting for me
+outside."
+
+"Your husband?" Miss Charlotte quavered.
+
+"Why, of course.  Did you suppose, because I ran away to act, that I
+wasn't an honest woman?"  She stretched out her left hand; and there
+was a thin gold ring on her third finger.  "He isn't much of an
+actor, poor dear.  In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he has
+been hissed off two-and-thirty stages in Great Britain alone.
+Indeed, he's the very worst actor I ever saw, although I don't tell
+him.  But as a husband he's sublime."
+
+"Are there--" Miss Charlotte began, and broke down.  "Are there," she
+tried again, "are there--any--children?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, if there were, I might be tempted to repent."
+
+"Don't you?" jerked out Miss Bunce, turning abruptly from the window.
+There was a certain sharp emotion in the question, but her face was
+in the shadow.  Joanna regarded her for a moment or two and broke
+into a laugh.
+
+"My dears, I have been an actress and a mother.  I retain the pride
+of both,--though my little one died at three months, and no manager
+will engage me now, because I refuse to act unless my husband has a
+part.  Theoretically, he is the first of artists; in practice--
+You were asking, however, if I repent.  Well, having touched the two
+chief prizes within a woman's grasp, I hardly see how it is likely.
+I perceive that the object of my visit has been misinterpreted.
+To be frank, I came to gloat over you."
+
+"Your step-sisters are at least respectable," Miss Bunce answered.
+
+"Let us grant that to be a merit," retorted Joanna: "Do I understand
+you to claim the credit of it?"
+
+"They are very clean, though," she went on, looking from one to the
+other, "and well preserved.  Susan, I notice, shows signs of failing;
+she has dropped her spectacles into the teacup.  But to what end,
+Miss--"
+
+"Bunce."
+
+"To what end, Miss Bunce, are you preserving them?"
+
+"Madam, when you entered the room I was of your way of thinking.
+Book after book that I read"--Miss Bunce blushed at this point--
+"has displayed before me the delights of that quick artistic life
+that you glory in following.  I have eaten out my heart in longing.
+But now that I see how it coarsens a women--for it _is_ coarse to
+sneer at age, in spite of all you may say about uselessness being no
+better for being protracted over much time--"
+
+"You are partly right," Joanna interrupted, "although you mistake the
+accident for the essence.  I am only coarse when confronted by
+respectability.  Nevertheless, I am glad if I reconcile you to your
+lot."
+
+"But the point is," insisted Miss Bunce, "that a lady _never_ forgets
+herself."
+
+"And you would argue that the being liable to forget myself is only
+another development of that very character by virtue of which I
+follow Art.  Ah, well"--she nodded towards her stepsisters--"I
+ask you why they and I should be daughters of one father?"
+
+She rose and stepped to the piano in the corner.  It was a tall
+Collard, shaped, above the key-board, like a cupboard.  After
+touching the notes softly, to be sure they were in tune, she
+drew over a chair, and fell to playing Schumann's "_Warum?_" very
+tenderly.  It was a tinkling instrument, but perhaps her playing
+gained pathos thereby, before such an audience.  At the end she
+turned round: there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"You used to play the 'Osborne Quadrilles' very nicely," observed
+Miss Susan, suddenly.  "Your playing has become very--very--"
+
+"Disreputable," suggested Joanna.
+
+"Well, not exactly.  I was going to say 'unintelligible.'"
+
+"It's the same thing."  She rose, kissed her step-sisters, and walked
+out of the room without a look at Miss Bunce.
+
+"Poor Joanna!" observed Miss Susan, after a minute's silence.
+"She has aged very much.  I really must begin to think of my end."
+
+
+Outside, in the street, Joanna's husband was waiting for her--a dark,
+ragged man, with a five-act expression of face.
+
+"Don't talk to me for a while," she begged.  "I have been among
+ghosts."
+
+"Ghosts?"
+
+"They were much too dull to be real: and yet--Oh, Jack, I feel glad
+for the first time that our child was taken!  I might have left him
+there."
+
+"What shall we sing?" asked the man, turning his face away.
+
+"Something pious," Joanna answered with an ugly little laugh, "since
+we want our dinner.  The public has still enough honesty left to pity
+piety."  She stepped out into the middle of the street, facing her
+sisters' windows, and began, the man's voice chiming in at the third
+bar--
+
+     "In the sweet by-and-bye
+      We shall meet on that be-yeautiful shore." . . .
+
+
+
+PSYCHE.
+
+
+"_Among these million Suns how shall the strayed Soul find her way
+back to earth?_"
+
+The man was an engine-driver, thick-set and heavy, with a short beard
+grizzled at the edge, and eyes perpetually screwed up, because his
+life had run for the most part in the teeth of the wind.  The lashes,
+too, had been scorched off.  If you penetrated the mask of oil and
+coal-dust that was part of his working suit, you found a
+reddish-brown phlegmatic face, and guessed its age at fifty.
+He brought the last down train into Lewminster station every night at
+9.45, took her on five minutes later, and passed through Lewminster
+again at noon, on his way back with the Galloper, as the porters
+called it.
+
+He had reached that point of skill at which a man knows every pound
+of metal in a locomotive; seemed to feel just what was in his engine
+the moment he took hold of the levers and started up; and was
+expecting promotion.  While waiting for it, he hit on the idea of
+studying a more delicate machine, and married a wife.  She was the
+daughter of a woman at whose house he lodged, and her age was less
+than half of his own.  It is to be supposed he loved her.
+
+A year after their marriage she fell into low health, and her husband
+took her off to Lewminster for fresher air.  She was lodging alone at
+Lewminster, and the man was passing Lewminster station on his engine,
+twice a day, at the time when this tale begins.
+
+
+People--especially those who live in the West of England--remember
+the great fire at the Lewminster Theatre; how, in the second Act of
+the _Colleen Bawn_, a tongue of light shot from the wings over the
+actors' heads; how, even while the actors turned and ran, a sheet of
+fire swept out on the auditorium with a roaring wind, and the house
+was full of shrieks and blind death; how men and women were turned to
+a white ash as they rose from their seats, so fiercely the flames
+outstripped the smoke.  These things were reported in the papers,
+with narratives and ghastly details, and for a week all England
+talked of Lewminster.
+
+This engine-driver, as the 9.45 train neared Lewminster, saw the red
+in the sky.  And when he rushed into the station and drew up, he saw
+that the country porters who stood about were white as corpses.
+
+"What fire is that?" he asked one.
+
+"'Tis the theayter!  There's a hundred burnt a'ready, and the rest
+treadin' each other's lives out while we stand talkin', to get 'pon
+the roof and pitch theirselves over!"
+
+
+Now the engine-driver's wife was going to the play that night, and he
+knew it.  She had met him at the station, and told him so, at midday.
+
+But there was nobody to take the train on, if he stepped off the
+engine; for his fireman was a young hand, and had been learning his
+trade for less than three weeks.
+
+So when the five minutes were up--or rather, ten, for the porters
+were bewildered that night--this man went on out of the station into
+the night.  Just beyond the station the theatre was plain to see,
+above the hill on his left, and the flames were leaping from the
+roof; and he knew that his wife was there.  But the train was never
+taken down more steadily, nor did a single passenger guess what
+manner of man was driving it.
+
+At Drakeport, where his run ended, he stepped off the engine, walked
+from the railway-sheds to his mother-in-law's, where he still lodged,
+and went up-stairs to his bed without alarming a soul.
+
+In the morning, at the usual hour, he was down at the station again,
+washed and cleanly dressed.  His fireman had the Galloper's engine
+polished, fired up, and ready to start.
+
+"Mornin'," he nodded, and looking into his driver's eyes, dropped the
+handful of dirty lint with which he had been polishing.  After
+shuffling from foot to foot for a minute, he ended by climbing down
+on the far side of the engine.
+
+"Oldster," he said, "'tis mutiny p'raps; but s'help me, if I ride a
+mile longside that new face o' your'n!"
+
+"Maybe you're right," his superior answered wearily.  "You'd best go
+up to the office, and get somebody sent down i' my place.  And while
+you're there, you might get me a third-class for Lewminster."
+
+So this man travelled up to Lewminster as passenger, and found his
+young wife's body among the two score stretched in a stable-yard
+behind the smoking theatre, waiting to be claimed.  And the day after
+the funeral he left the railway company's service.  He had saved a
+bit, enough to rent a small cottage two miles from the cemetery where
+his wife lay.  Here he settled and tilled a small garden beside the
+high-road.
+
+
+Nothing seemed to be wrong with the man until the late summer, when
+he stood before the Lewminster magistrates charged with a violent and
+curiously wanton assault.
+
+It appeared that one dim evening, late in August, a mild gentleman,
+with Leghorn hat, spectacles, and a green gauze net, came sauntering
+by the garden where the ex-engine-driver was pulling a basketful of
+scarlet runners: that the prisoner had suddenly dropped his beans,
+dashed out into the road, and catching the mild gentleman by the
+throat had wrenched the butterfly net from his hand and belaboured
+him with the handle till it broke.
+
+There was no defence, nor any attempt at explanation.  The mild
+gentleman was a stranger to the neighbourhood.  The magistrates
+marvelled, and gave his assailant two months.
+
+At the end of that time the man came out of gaol and went quietly
+back to his cottage.
+
+
+Early in the following April he conceived a wish to build a small
+greenhouse at the foot of his garden, by the road, and spoke to the
+local mason about it.  One Saturday afternoon the mason came over to
+look at the ground and discuss plans.  It was bright weather, and
+while the two men talked a white butterfly floated past them--the
+first of the year.
+
+Immediately the mason broke off his sentence and began to chase the
+butterfly round the garden: for in the West country there is a
+superstition that if a body neglect to kill the first butterfly he
+may see for the season, he will have ill luck throughout the year.
+So he dashed across the beds, hat in hand.
+
+"I'll hat 'en--I'll hat 'en!  No, fay!  I'll miss 'en, I b'lieve.
+Shan't be able to kill 'n if hor's wunce beyond th' gaate--stiddy, my
+son!  Wo-op!"
+
+Thus he yelled, waving his soft hat: and the next minute was lying
+stunned across a carrot-bed, with eight fingers gripping the back of
+his neck and two thumbs squeezing on his windpipe.
+
+There was another assault case heard by the Lewminster bench; and
+this time the ex-engine-driver received four months.  As before, he
+offered no defence: and again the magistrates were possessed with
+wonder.
+
+
+Now the explanation is quite simple.  This man's wits were sound,
+save on one point.  He believed--why, God alone knows, who enabled
+him to drive that horrible journey without a tremor of the hand--that
+his wife's soul haunted him in the form of a white butterfly or moth.
+The superstition that spirits take this shape is not unknown in the
+West; and I suppose that as he steered his train out of the station,
+this fancy, by some odd freak of memory, leaped into his brain, and
+held it, hour after hour, while he and his engine flew forward and
+the burning theatre fell further and further behind.  The truth was
+known a fortnight after his return from prison, which happened about
+the time of barley harvest.
+
+A harvest-thanksgiving was held in the parish where he lived; and he
+went to it, being always a religious man.  There were sheaves and
+baskets of vegetables in the chancel; fruit and flowers on the
+communion-table, with twenty-one tall candles burning above them; a
+processional hymn; and a long sermon.  During the sermon, as the
+weather was hot and close, someone opened the door at the west end.
+
+And when the preacher was just making up his mind to close the
+discourse, a large white moth fluttered in at the west door.
+
+There was much light throughout the church; but the great blaze came,
+of course, from the twenty-one candles upon the altar.  And towards
+this the moth slowly drifted, as if the candles sucked her nearer and
+nearer, up between the pillars of the nave, on a level with their
+capitals.  Few of the congregation noticed her, for the sermon was a
+stirring one; only one or two children, perhaps, were interested--and
+the man I write of.  He saw her pass over his head and float up into
+the chancel.  He half-rose from his chair.
+
+"My brothers," said the preacher, "if two sparrows, that are sold for
+a farthing, are not too little for the care of this infinite
+Providence--"
+
+A scream rang out and drowned the sentence.  It was followed by a
+torrent of vile words, shouted by a man who had seen, now for the
+second time, the form that clothed his wife's soul shrivelled in
+unthinking flames.  All that was left of the white moth lay on the
+altar-cloth, among the fruit at the base of the tallest candlestick.
+
+And because the man saw nothing but cruelty in the Providence of
+which the preacher spoke, he screamed and cursed, till they
+overpowered him and took him forth by the door. He was wholly mad
+from that hour.
+
+
+
+THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE.
+
+Few rivers in England are without their "Lovers' Leap"; but the
+tradition of this one is singular, I believe.  It overhangs a dark
+pool, midway down a west country valley--a sheer escarpment of
+granite, its lip lying but a stone's throw from the high-road, that
+here finds its descent broken by a stiff knoll, over which it rises
+and topples again like a wave.
+
+I had drawn two shining peel out of the pool, and sat eating my lunch
+on the edge of the Leap, with my back to the road.  Forty feet
+beneath me the water lay black and glossy, behind the dotted foliage
+of a birch-tree.  My rod stuck upright from the turf at my elbow,
+and, whenever I turned my head, neatly bisected the countenance and
+upper half of Seth Truscott, an indigenous gentleman of miscellaneous
+habits and a predatory past, who had followed me that morning to
+carry the landing-net.
+
+It was he who, after lunch, imparted the story of the rock on which
+we sat; and as it seemed at the time to gain somewhat by the telling,
+I will not risk defacing it by meddling with his dialect.
+
+
+"I reckon, sir," he began, with an upward nod at a belt of larches,
+the fringe of a great estate, that closed the view at the head of the
+vale, "you'm too young to mind th' ould Earl o' Bellarmine, that
+owned Castle Cannick, up yonder, in my growin' days.  'Ould Wounds'
+he was nick-named--a cribbage-faced, what-the-blazes kind o' varmint,
+wi' a gossan wig an' a tongue like oil o' vitriol.  He'd a-led the
+fore-half o' his life, I b'lieve, in London church-town, by reason
+that he an' his father couldn' be left in a room together wi'out
+comin' to fisticuffs: an' by all accounts was fashion's favourite in
+the naughty city, doin' his duty in that state o' life an' playing
+Hamlet's ghost among the Ten Commandments.
+
+"The upshot was that he killed a young gentleman over a game o'
+whist, an' that was too much even for the Londoners.  So he packed up
+and sailed for furrin' parts, an' didn' show his face in England till
+th' ould man, his father, was took wi' a seizure an' went dead, bein'
+palsied down half his face, but workin' away to the end at the most
+lift-your-hair wickedness wi' the sound side of his mouth.
+
+"Then the new Earl turned up an' settled at Castle Cannick.  He was a
+wifeless man, an', by the look o't, had given up all wish to coax the
+female eye: for he dressed no better'n a jockey, an' all his
+diversion was to ride in to Tregarrick Market o' Saturdays, an' hang
+round the doorway o' the Pack-Horse Inn, by A. Walters, and glower at
+the men an' women passin' up and down the Fore Street, an' stand
+drinkin' brandy an' water while the horse-jockeys there my-lord'ed
+'en.  Two an' twenty glasses, they say, was his quantum' between noon
+an' nine o'clock; an' then he'd climb into saddle an' ride home to
+his jewelled four-poster, cursin' an' mutterin', but sittin' his mare
+like a man of iron.
+
+"But one o' these fine market-days he did a thing that filled the
+mouths o' the country-side.
+
+"He was loafin' by the Pack-Horse door, just as usual, at two
+o'clock, rappin' the head o' his crop on the side o' his ridin'
+boots, drawin' his brows down an' lookin' out curses from under 'em
+across the street to the saddler's opposite, when two drover-chaps
+came up the pavement wi' a woman atween 'em.
+
+"The woman--or maid, to call her by her proper title--was a
+dark-browed slut, wi' eyes like sloes, an' hair dragged over her face
+till she looked like an owl in an ivy-bush.  As for the gown o' her,
+'twas no better'n a sack tied round the middle, wi' a brave piece
+torn away by the shoulder, where one o' the men had clawed her.
+
+"There was a pretty dido goin' on atween the dree, an' all talkin'
+together--the two men mobbin' each other, an' the girl i' the middle
+callin' em every name but what they was chris'ened, wi'out
+distinction o' persons, as the word goes.
+
+"'What's the uproar?' asks Ould Wounds, stoppin' the tap-tap o' his
+crop, as they comes up.
+
+"'The woman b'longs to me,' says the first.  'I've engaged to make
+her my lawful wife; an' I won't go from my word under two gallon o'
+fourpenny.'
+
+"'You agreed to hand her over for one gallon, first along,' says
+t'other,' an' a bargain's a bargain.'
+
+"Says the woman, 'You're a pair o' hair-splitting shammicks, the pair
+of 'ee.  An' how much beer be I to have for my weddin' portion?'
+(says she)--'for that's all _I_ care about, one way or t'other.'
+
+"Now Ould Wounds looked at the woman; an' 'tis to be thought he found
+her eyeable, for he axed up sharp--
+
+"'Would 'ee kick over these two, an' marry me, for a bottle o' gin?'
+
+"'That would I.'
+
+"'An' to be called My Lady--Countess o' Bellarmine?'
+
+"'Better an' better.'
+
+"'I shall whack 'ee.'
+
+"'I don't care.'
+
+"'I shall kick an' cuff an' flog 'ee like a span'el dog,' says he:
+'by my body! I shall make 'ee repent.'
+
+"'Give 'ee leave to try,' says she.
+
+"An' that's how th' Earl o' Bellarmine courted his wife.  He took her
+into the bar an' treated her to a bottle o' gin on the spot.  At nine
+o'clock that evenin' she tuk hold of his stirrup-leather an' walked
+beside 'en, afoot, up to Castle Cannick.  Next day, their banns were
+axed in church, an' in dree weeks she was My Ladyship.
+
+"'Twas a battle-royal that began then.  Ould Wounds dressed the woman
+up to the nines, an' forced all the bettermost folk i' the county to
+pay their calls an' treat her like one o' the blood; and then, when
+the proud guests stepped into their chariots an' druv away, he'd fall
+to, an' lick her across the shoulders wi' his ridin'-whip, to break
+her sperrit.  'Twas the happiest while o' th' ould curmudgeon's life,
+I do b'lieve; for he'd found summat he cudn' tame in a hurry.
+There was a noble pond afore the house, i' those days, wi' urns an'
+heathen gods around the brim, an' twice he dragged her through it in
+her night-gown, I've heerd, an' always dined wi' a pistol laid by his
+plate, alongside the knives an' prongs, to scare her.  But not she!
+
+"An' next he tried to burn her in her bed: an' that wasn' no good.
+
+"An' last of all he fell i' love wi' her: an' that broke her."
+
+
+"One day--the tale goes--she made up her mind an' ordered a shay an'
+pair from the Pack-Horse.  The postillion was to be waitin' by the
+gate o' the deer-park--the only gate that hadn't a lodge to it--at
+ten o'clock that night.  'Twas past nine afore dinner was done, an'
+she got up from her end o' the table an' walked across to kiss th'
+ould fellow.  He, 'pon his side, smiled on her, pleased as Punch; for
+'twas little inore'n a fortni't since he'd discovered she was the
+yapple of his eye.  She said 'Good night' an' went up-stairs to pack
+a few things in a bag, he openin' the door and shuttin' it upon her.
+Then he outs wi' his watch, waits a couple o' minutes, an' slips out
+o' the house.
+
+"At five minutes to ten comes my ladyship, glidin' over the short
+turf o' the deer-park, an' glancin' over her shoulder at the
+light in his lordship's libery window.  'Twas burnin' in true
+watch-an'-fear-nothin' style, an' there, by the gate, was the shay
+and horses, and postillion, wrapped up and flapping his arms for
+warmth, who touched his cap and put down the steps for her.
+
+"'Drive through Tregarrick,' says she, 'an' don't spare whip-cord.'
+
+"Slam went the door, up climbed the postillion, an' away they went
+like a house afire.  There was half-a-moon up an' a hoar frost
+gatherin', an' my lady, lean in' back on the cushions, could see the
+head and shoulders of the postillion bob-bobbing, till it seemed his
+head must work loose and tumble out of his collar.
+
+"The road they took, sir, is the same that runs down the valley afore
+our very eyes.  An' 'pon the brow o't, just when it comes in sight,
+the off horse turned restive.  In a minute 'twas as much as the
+post-boy could ha' done to hold 'en.  _But he didn' try_.
+Instead, he fell to floggin' harder, workin' his arm up an' down like
+a steam-engin'.
+
+"'What the jiminy are 'ee doin?' calls out her ladyship--or words to
+that effec'--clutchin' at the side o' the shay, an' tryin' to stiddy
+hersel'.
+
+"'I thought I wasn' to spare whip-cord,' calls back the post-boy.
+
+"An' with that he turned i' the saddle; an' 'twas the face o' her own
+wedded husband, as ghastly white as if 't burned a'ready i' the
+underground fires.
+
+"Seem' it, her joints were loosed, an' she sat back white as he; an'
+down over the hill they swung at a breakneck gallop, shay lurchin'
+and stones flyin'.
+
+"About thirty yards from where we'm sittin', sir, Ould Wounds caught
+the near rein twice round his wrist an lean't back, slowly pullin'
+it, till his face was slewed round over his left shoulder an'
+grinnin' in my lady's face.
+
+"An' that was the last look that passed atween 'em.  For now feeling
+the wheels on grass and the end near, he loosed the rein and fetched
+the horse he rode a cut atween the ears--an' that's how 'twas,"
+concluded Seth, lamely.
+
+Like most inferior narrators, he shied at the big fence, flinched
+before the climax.  But as he ended, I flung a short glance downward
+at the birches and black water, and took up my rod again with a
+shiver.
+
+
+
+
+FROM A COTTAGE IN TROY.
+
+
+
+I.--A HAPPY VOYAGE.
+
+The cottage that I have inhabited these six years looks down on the
+one quiet creek in a harbour full of business.  The vessels that
+enter beneath Battery Point move up past the grey walls and green
+quay-doors of the port to the jetties where their cargoes lie.
+All day long I can see them faring up and down past the mouth of my
+creek; and all the year round I listen to the sounds of them--the
+dropping or lifting of anchors, the _wh-h-ing!_ of a siren-whistle
+cutting the air like a twanged bow, the concertina that plays at
+night, the rush of the clay cargo shot from the jetty into the lading
+ship.  But all this is too far remote to vex me.  Only one vessel
+lies beneath my terrace; and she has lain there for a dozen years.
+After many voyages she was purchased by the Board of Guardians in our
+district, dismasted, and anchored up here to serve as a hospital-ship
+in case the cholera visited us.  She has never had a sick man on
+board from that day to the present.  But once upon a time three
+people spent a very happy night on her deck, as you shall hear.
+She is called _The Gleaner_.
+
+I think I was never so much annoyed in my life as on the day when
+Annie, my only servant, gave me a month's "warning."  That was four
+years ago; and she gave up cooking for me to marry a young watchmaker
+down at the town--a youth of no mark save for a curious distortion of
+the left eyebrow (due to much gazing through a circular glass into
+the bowels of watches), a frantic assortment of religious
+convictions, a habit of playing the fiddle in hours of ease, and an
+absurd name--Tubal Cain Bonaday.  I noticed that Annie softened it to
+"Tubey."
+
+Of course I tried to dissuade her, but my arguments were those of a
+wifeless man, and very weak.  She listened to them with much
+patience, and went off to buy her wedding-frock.  She was a plain
+girl, without a scintilla of humour; and had just that sense of an
+omelet that is vouchsafed to one woman in a generation.
+
+So she and Tubal Cain were married at the end of the month, and
+disappeared on their honeymoon, no one quite knew whither.  They went
+on the last day of April.
+
+
+At half-past eight in the evening of May 6th I had just finished my
+seventh miserable dinner.  My windows were open to the evening, and
+the scent of the gorse-bushes below the terrace hung heavily
+underneath the verandah and stole into the room where I sat before
+the white cloth, in the lamp-light.  I had taken a cigarette and was
+reaching for the match-box when I chanced to look up, and paused to
+marvel at a singular beauty in the atmosphere outside.
+
+It seemed a final atonement of sky and earth in one sheet of vivid
+blue.  Of form I could see nothing; the heavens, the waters of the
+creek below, the woods on the opposite shore were simply
+indistinguishable--blotted out in this one colour.  If you can recall
+certain advertisements of Mr. Reckitt, and can imagine one of these
+transparent, with a soft light glowing behind it, you will be as near
+as I can help you to guessing the exact colour.  And, but for a
+solitary star and the red lamp of a steamer lying off the creek's
+mouth, this blue covered the whole firmament and face of the earth.
+
+I lit my cigarette and stepped out upon the verandah.  In a minute or
+so a sound made me return, fetch a cap from the hall, and descend the
+terrace softly.
+
+My feet trod on bluebells and red-robins, and now and then crushed
+the fragrance out of a low-lying spike of gorse.  I knew the flowers
+were there, though in this curious light I could only see them by
+peering closely.  At the foot of the terrace I pulled up and leant
+over the oak fence that guarded the abrupt drop into the creek.
+
+There was a light just underneath.  It came from the deck of the
+hospital-ship, and showed me two figures standing there--a woman
+leaning against the bulwarks, and a man beside her.  The man had a
+fiddle under his chin, and was playing "Annie Laurie," rather slowly
+and with a deal of sweetness.
+
+When the melody ceased, I craned still further over the oak fence and
+called down, "Tubal Cain!"
+
+The pair gave a start, and there was some whispering before the
+answer came up to me.
+
+"Is that you, sir?"
+
+"To be sure," said I.  "What are you two about on board _The
+Gleaner?_"
+
+Some more whispering followed, and then Tubal Cain spoke again--
+
+"It doesn't matter now, sir.  We've lived aboard here for a week, and
+to-night's the end of our honeymooning.  If 'tis no liberty sir,
+Annie's wishful that you should join us."
+
+Somehow, the invitation, coming through this mysterious atmosphere,
+seemed at once natural and happy.  The fiddle began again as I
+stepped away from the fence and went down to get my boat out.
+In three minutes I was afloat, and a stroke or two brought me to the
+ship's ladder.  Annie and Tubal Cain stood at the top to welcome me.
+
+
+But if I had felt no incongruity in paying this respectful visit to
+my ex-cook and her lover, I own that her appearance made me stare.
+For, if you please, she was dressed out like a lady, in a gown of
+pale blue satin trimmed with swansdown--a low-necked gown, too,
+though she had flung a white shawl over her shoulders.  Imagine this
+and the flood of blue light around us, and you will hardly wonder
+that, half-way up the ladder, I paused to take breath.  Tubal Cain
+was dressed as usual, and tucking his fiddle under his arm, led me up
+to shake hands with his bride as if she were a queen.  I cannot say
+if she blushed.  Certainly she received me with dignity: and then,
+inverting a bucket that lay on the deck, seated herself; while Tubal
+Cain and I sat down on the deck facing her, with our backs against
+the bulwarks.
+
+"It's just this, sir," explained the bridegroom, laying his fiddle
+across his lap, and speaking as if in answer to a question: "it's
+just this:--by trade you know me for a watchmaker, and for a Plymouth
+Brother by conviction.  All the week I'm bending over a counter, and
+every Sabbath-day I speak in prayer-meeting what I hold, that life's
+a dull pilgrimage to a better world.  If you ask me, sir, to-night, I
+ought to say the same.  But a man may break out for once; and when so
+well as on his honeymoon?  For a week I've been a free heathen: for a
+week I've been hiding here, living with the woman I love in the open
+air; and night after night for a week Annie here has clothed herself
+like a woman of fashion.  Oh, my God! it has been a beautiful time--a
+happy beautiful time that ends to-night!"
+
+
+He set down the fiddle, crooked up a knee and clasped his hands round
+it, looking at Annie.
+
+"Annie, girl, what is it that we believe till to-morrow morning?
+You believe--eh?--that 'tis a rare world, full of delights, and with
+no ugliness in it?"
+
+Annie nodded.
+
+"And you love every soul--the painted woman in the streets no less
+than your own mother?"
+
+Annie nodded again.  "I'd nurse 'em both if they were sick," she
+said.
+
+"One like the other?"
+
+"And there's nothing shames you?"  Here he rose and took her hand.
+"You wouldn't blush to kiss me before master here?"
+
+"Why should I?"  She gave him a sober kiss, and let her hand rest in
+his.
+
+I looked at her.  She was just as quiet as in the old days when she
+used to lay my table.  It was like gazing at a play.
+
+I should be ashamed to repeat the nonsense that Tubal Cain thereupon
+began to talk; for it was mere midsummer madness.  But I smoked four
+pipes contentedly while the sound of his voice continued, and am
+convinced that he never performed so well at prayer-meeting.  Down at
+the town I heard the church-clock striking midnight, and then one
+o'clock; and was only aroused when the youth started up and grasped
+his fiddle.
+
+"And now, sir, if you would consent to one thing, 'twould make us
+very happy.  You can't play the violin, worse luck; but you might
+take a step or two round the deck with Annie, if I strike up a
+waltz-tune for you to move to."
+
+It was ridiculous, but as he began to play I moved up to Annie, put
+my arm around her, and we began to glide round and round on the deck.
+Her face was turned away from mine, and looked over my shoulder; if
+our eyes had met, I am convinced I must have laughed or wept.  It was
+half farce, half deadly earnest, and for me as near to hysterics as a
+sane man can go.  Tubal Cain, that inspired young Plymouth Brother,
+was solemn as a judge.  As for Annie, I would give a considerable
+amount, at this moment, to know what she thought of it.  But she
+stepped very lightly and easily, and I am not sure I ever enjoyed a
+waltz so much.  The blue light--that bewitching, intoxicating blue
+light--paled on us as we danced.  The grey conquered it, and I felt
+that when we looked at each other the whole absurdity would strike
+us, and I should never be able to face these lovers again without a
+furious blush.  As the day crept on, I stole a glance at Tubal Cain.
+He was scraping away desperately--_with his eyes shut_.  For us the
+dance had become weariness, but we went on and on.  We were afraid to
+halt.
+
+Suddenly a string of the violin snapped.  We stopped, and I saw Tubal
+Cain's hand pointing eastward.  A golden ripple came dancing down the
+creek, and, at the head of the combe beyond, the sun's edge was
+mounting.
+
+"Morning!" said the bridegroom.
+
+"It's all done," said Annie, holding out a hand to me, without
+looking up.  "And thank you, sir."
+
+"We danced through the grey," I answered; and that was all I could
+find to say, as I stepped towards the ladder.
+
+Half an hour later as I looked out of the window before getting into bed
+I saw in the sunlight a boat moving down the creek towards the town.
+Tubal Cain was rowing, and Annie sat in the stern.  She had changed
+her gown.
+
+
+They have been just an ordinary couple ever since, and attend their
+chapel regularly.  Sometimes Annie comes over to make me an omelet;
+and, as a matter of fact, she is now in the kitchen.  But not a word
+has ever been spoken between us about her honeymoon.
+
+
+
+II.--THESE-AN'-THAT'S WIFE.
+
+In the matter of These-an'-That himself, public opinion in Troy is
+divided.  To the great majority he appears scandalously careless of
+his honour; while there are just six or seven who fight with a
+suspicion that there dwells something divine in the man.
+
+To reach the town from my cottage I have to cross the Passage Ferry,
+either in the smaller boat which Eli pulls single-handed, or (if a
+market-cart or donkey, or drove of cattle be waiting on the slip)
+I must hang about till Eli summons his boy to help him with the
+horse-boat.  Then the gangway is lowered, the beasts are driven on
+board, the passengers follow at a convenient distance, and the long
+sweeps take us slowly across the tide.  It was on such a voyage, a
+few weeks after I settled in the neighbourhood, that I first met
+These-an'-That.
+
+I was leaning back against the chain, with my cap tilted forward to
+keep off the dazzle of the June sunshine on the water, and lazily
+watching Eli as he pushed his sweep.  Suddenly I grew aware that by
+frequent winks and jerks of the head he wished to direct my attention
+to a passenger on my right--a short, round man in black, with a
+basket of eggs on his arm.
+
+There was quite a remarkable dearth of feature on this passenger's
+face, which was large, soft, and unhealthy in colour: but what
+surprised me was to see, as he blinked in the sunlight, a couple of
+big tears trickle down his cheeks and splash among the eggs in his
+basket.
+
+"There's trouble agen, up at Kit's," remarked Eli, finishing his
+stroke with a jerk, and speaking for the general benefit, though the
+words were particularly addressed to a drover opposite.
+
+"Ho?" said the drover: "that woman agen?"
+
+The passengers, one and all, bent their eyes on the man in black, who
+smeared his face with his cuff, and began weeping afresh, silently.
+
+"Beat en blue las' night, an' turned en to doors--the dirty trollop."
+
+"Eli, don't 'ee--" put in the poor man, in a low, deprecating voice.
+
+"Iss, an' no need to tell what for," exclaimed a red-faced woman who
+stood by the drover, with two baskets of poultry at her feet.
+"She's a low lot; a low trapesin' baggage.  If These-an'-That, there,
+wasn' but a poor, ha'f-baked shammick, he'd ha' killed that wife o'
+his afore this."
+
+"Naybours, I'd as lief you didn't mention it," appealed
+These-an'-That, huskily.
+
+"I'm afeard you'm o' no account, These-an'-That: but sam-sodden, if I
+may say so," the drover observed.
+
+"Put in wi' the bread, an' took out wi' the cakes," suggested Eli.
+
+"Wife!--a pretty loitch, she an' the whole kit, up there!" went on
+the market-woman.  "If you durstn't lay finger 'pon your wedded wife,
+These-an'-That, but let her an' that long-legged gamekeeper turn'ee
+to doors, you must be no better'n a worm,--that's all I say."
+
+I saw the man's face twitch as she spoke of the gamekeeper.  But he
+only answered in the same dull way.
+
+"I'd as lief you didn' mention it, friends,--if 'tis all the same."
+
+
+His real name was Tom Warne, as I learnt from Eli afterwards; and he
+lived at St. Kit's, a small fruit-growing hamlet two miles up the
+river, where his misery was the scandal of the place.  The very
+children knew it, and would follow him in a crowd sometimes, pelting
+him with horrible taunts as he slouched along the road to the kitchen
+garden out of which he made his living.  He never struck one; never
+even answered; but avoided the school-house as he would a plague; and
+if he saw the Parson coming would turn a mile out of his road.
+
+The Parson had called at the cottage a score of times at least: for
+the business was quite intolerable.  Two evenings out of the six, the
+long-legged gamekeeper, who was just a big, drunken bully, would
+swagger easily into These-an'-That's kitchen and sit himself down
+without so much as "by your leave."  "Good evenin', gamekeeper," the
+husband would say in his dull, nerveless voice.  Mostly he only got a
+jeer in reply.  The fellow would sit drinking These-an'-That's cider
+and laughing with These-an'-That's wife, until the pair, very likely,
+took too much, and the woman without any cause broke into a passion,
+flew at the little man, and drove him out of doors, with broomstick
+or talons, while the gamekeeper hammered on the table and roared at
+the sport.  His employer was an absentee who hated the Parson, so the
+Parson groaned in vain over the scandal.
+
+
+Well, one Fair-day I crossed in Eli's boat with the pair.  The
+woman--a dark gipsy creature--was tricked out in violet and yellow,
+with a sham gold watch-chain and great aluminium earrings: and the
+gamekeeper had driven her down in his spring-cart.  As Eli pushed
+off, I saw a small boat coming down the river across our course.
+It was These-an'-That, pulling down with vegetables for the fair.
+I cannot say if the two saw him: but he glanced up for a moment at
+the sound of their laughter, then bent his head and rowed past us a
+trifle more quickly.  The distance was too great to let me see his
+face.
+
+I was the last to step ashore.  As I waited for Eli to change my
+sixpence, he nodded after the couple, who by this time had reached
+the top of the landing-stage, arm in arm.
+
+"A bad day's work for _her_, I reckon."
+
+It struck me at the moment as a moral reflection of Eli's, and no
+more.  Late in the afternoon, however, I was enlightened.
+
+
+In the midst of the Fair, about four o'clock, a din of horns, beaten
+kettles, and hideous yelling, broke out in Troy.  I met the crowd in
+the main street, and for a moment felt afraid of it.  They had seized
+the woman in the taproom of the "Man-o'-War"--where the gamekeeper
+was lying in a drunken sleep--and were hauling her along in a Ram
+Riding.  There is nothing so cruel as a crowd, and I have seen
+nothing in my life like the face of These-an'-That's wife.  It was
+bleeding; it was framed in tangles of black, dishevelled hair; it was
+livid; but, above all, it was possessed with an awful fear--a horror
+it turned a man white to look on.  Now and then she bit and fought
+like a cat: but the men around held her tight, and mostly had to drag
+her, her feet trailing, and the horns and kettles dinning in her
+wake.
+
+There lay a rusty old ducking-cage among the lumber up at the
+town-hall; and some fellows had fetched this down, with the poles and
+chain, and planted it on the edge of the Town Quay, between the
+American Shooting Gallery and the World-Renowned Swing Boats.
+To this they dragged her, and strapped her fast.
+
+There is no heed to describe what followed.  Even the virtuous women
+who stood and applauded would like to forget it, perhaps.  At the
+third souse, the rusty pivot of the ducking-pole broke, and the cage,
+with the woman in it, plunged under water.
+
+They dragged her ashore at the end of the pole in something less than
+a minute.  They unstrapped and laid her gently down, and began to
+feel over her heart, to learn if it were still beating.  And then the
+crowd parted, and These-an'-That came through it.  His face wore no
+more expression than usual, but his lips were working in a queer way.
+
+He went up to his wife, took off his hat, and producing an old red
+handkerchief from the crown, wiped away some froth and green weed
+that hung about her mouth.  Then he lifted her limp hand, and patting
+the back of it gently, turned on the crowd.  His lips were still
+working.  It was evident he was trying to say something.
+
+"Naybours," the words came at last, in the old dull tone; "I'd as
+lief you hadn' thought o' this."
+
+He paused for a moment, gulped down something in his throat, and went
+on--
+
+"I wudn' say you didn' mean it for the best, an' thankin' you kindly.
+But you didn' know her.  Roughness, if I may say, was never no good
+wi' her.  It must ha' been very hard for her to die like this, axin
+your parden, for she wasn' one to bear pain."
+
+Another long pause.
+
+"No, she cudn' bear pain.  P'raps _he_ might ha' stood it better--
+though o' course you acted for the best, an' thankin' you kindly.
+I'd as lief take her home now, naybours, if 'tis all the same."
+
+He lifted the body in his arms, and carried it pretty steadily down
+the quay steps to his market-boat, that was moored below.
+Two minutes later he had pushed off and was rowing it quietly
+homewards.
+
+There is no more to say, except that the woman recovered.  She had
+fainted, I suppose, as they pulled her out.  Anyhow, These-an'-That
+restored her to life--and she ran away the very next week with the
+gamekeeper.
+
+
+
+III--"DOUBLES" AND QUITS.
+
+Here is a story from Troy, containing two ghosts and a moral.
+I found it, only last week, in front of a hump-backed cottage that
+the masons are pulling down to make room for the new Bank.
+Simon Hancock, the outgoing tenant, had fetched an empty cider-cask,
+and set it down on the opposite side of the road; and from this
+Spartan seat watched the work of demolition for three days, without
+exhaustion and without emotion.  In the interval between two
+avalanches of dusty masonry, he spoke to this effect:--
+
+
+Once upon a time the cottage was inhabited by a man and his wife.
+The man was noticeable for the extreme length of his upper lip and
+gloom of his religious opinions.  He had been a mate in the coasting
+trade, but settled down, soon after his marriage, and earned his
+living as one of the four pilots in the port.  The woman was
+unlovely, with a hard eye and a temper as stubborn as one of St.
+Nicholas's horns.  How she had picked up with a man was a mystery,
+until you looked at _him_.
+
+After six years of wedlock they quarrelled one day, about nothing at
+all: at least, Simon Hancock, though unable to state the exact cause
+of strife, felt himself ready to swear it was nothing more serious
+than the cooking of the day's dinner.  From that date, however, the
+pair lived in the house together and never spoke.  The man happened
+to be of the home-keeping sort--possessed no friends and never put
+foot inside a public-house.   Through the long evenings he would sit
+beside his own fender, with his wife facing him, and never a word
+flung across the space between them, only now and then a look of cold
+hate.  The few that saw them thus said it was like looking on a pair
+of ugly statues.   And this lasted for four years.
+
+Of course the matter came to their minister's ears--he was a
+"Brianite"--and the minister spoke to them after prayer-meeting, one
+Wednesday night, and called at the cottage early next morning, to
+reconcile them.  He stayed fifteen minutes and came away, down the
+street, with a look on his face such as Moses might have worn on his
+way down from Mount Sinai, if only Moses had seen the devil there,
+instead of God.
+
+
+At the end of four years, the neighbours remarked that for two days
+no smoke had issued from the chimney of this cottage, nor had anyone
+seen the front door opened.  There grew a surmise that the quarrel
+had flared out at last, and the wedded pair were lying within, in
+their blood.  The anticipated excitement of finding the bodies was
+qualified, however, by a very present sense of the manner in which
+the bodies had resented intrusion during life.  It was not until
+sunset on the second day that the constable took heart to break in
+the door.
+
+There were no corpses.  The kitchen was tidy, the hearth swept, and
+the house empty.  On the table lay a folded note, addressed, in the
+man's handwriting, to the minister.
+
+     "Dear Friend in Grace," it began, "we have been married ten
+      years, and neither has broken the other; until which happens,
+      it must be hell between us.  We see no way out but to part for
+      ten years more, going our paths without news of each other.
+      When that time's up, we promise to meet here, by our door, on
+      the morning of the first Monday in October month, and try
+      again.  And to this we set our names."--here the two names
+      followed.
+
+They must have set out by night; for an extinguished candle stood by
+the letter, with ink-pot and pen.   Probably they had parted just
+outside the house, the one going inland up the hill, the other down
+the street towards the harbour.  Nothing more was heard of them.
+Their furniture went to pay the quarter's rent due to the Squire, and
+the cottage, six months later, passed into the occupation of Simon
+Hancock, waterman.
+
+
+At this point Simon shall take up the narrative:--
+
+"I'd been tenant over there"--with a nod towards the ruin--"nine year
+an' goin' on for the tenth, when, on a Monday mornin', about this
+time o' year, I gets out o' bed at five o'clock an' down to the quay
+to have a look at my boat; for 'twas the fag-end of the Equinox, and
+ther'd been a 'nation gale blowin' all Sunday and all Sunday night,
+an' I thought she might have broke loose from her moorin's.
+
+"The street was dark as your hat and the wind comin' up it like gas
+in a pipe, with a brave deal o' rain.  But down 'pon the quay day was
+breakin'--a sort of blind man's holiday, but enough to see the boat
+by; and there she held all right.  You know there's two posts 'pon
+the town-quay, and another slap opposite the door o' the 'Fifteen
+Balls'?  Well, just as I turned back home-long, I see a man leanin'
+against thicky post like as if he was thinkin', wi' his back to me
+and his front to the 'Fifteen Balls' (that was shut, o' course, at
+that hour).  I must ha' passed within a yard of en, an' couldn'
+figure it up how I'd a-missed seein' en.  Hows'ever, 'Good-mornin'!'
+I calls out, in my well-known hearty manner.  But he didn' speak nor
+turn.  'Mornin'!' I says again.  'Can 'ee tell me what time 'tis? for
+my watch is stopped'--which was a lie; but you must lie now and then,
+to be properly sociable.
+
+"Well, he didn' answer; so I went on to say that the 'Fifteen Balls'
+wudn' be open for another dree hour; and then I walked slap up to en,
+and says what the Wicked Man said to the black pig.  'You'm a queer
+Christian,' I says, 'not to speak.  What's your name at all?
+And let's see your ugly face.'
+
+"With that he turned his face; an' by the man! I wished mysel'
+further.  'Twas a great white face, all parboiled, like a woman's
+hands on washin' day.  An' there was bits o' sticks an' chips o'
+sea-weed stuck in his whiskers, and a crust o' salt i' the chinks of
+his mouth; an' his eyes, too, glarin' abroad from great rims o' salt.
+
+"Off I sheered, not azackly runnin', but walkin' pretty much like a
+Torpointer; an' sure 'nough the fellow stood up straight and began to
+follow close behind me.  I heard the water go squish-squash in his
+shoon, every step he took.  By this, I was fairly leakin' wi' sweat.
+After a bit, hows'ever, at the corner o' Higman's store, he dropped
+off; an' lookin' back after twenty yards more, I saw him standin'
+there in the dismal grey light like a dog that can't make up his mind
+whether to follow or no.  For 'twas near day now, an' his face plain
+at that distance.  Fearin' he'd come on again, I pulled hot foot the
+few steps between me an' home.  But when I came to the door, I went
+cold as a flounder.
+
+"The fellow had got there afore me.  There he was, standin' 'pon my
+door-step--wi' the same gashly stare on his face, and his lips a
+lead-colour in the light.
+
+"The sweat boiled out o' me now.  I quavered like a leaf, and my hat
+rose 'pon my head.  'For the Lord's sake, stand o' one side,' I
+prayed en; 'do'ee now, that's a dear!'  But he wudn' budge; no, not
+though I said several holy words out of the Mornin' Service.
+
+"'Drabbet it!' says I, 'let's try the back door.  Why didn' I think
+'pon that afore?' And around I runs.
+
+"There 'pon the back door-step was a woman!--an' pretty well as
+gashly as the man.  She was just a 'natomy of a woman, wi' the lines
+of her ribs showin' under the gown, an' a hot red spot 'pon either
+cheek-bone, where the skin was stretched tight as a drum.  She looked
+not to ha' fed for a year; an', if you please, she'd a needle and
+strip o' calico in her hands, sewin' away all the while her eyes were
+glarin' down into mine.
+
+"But there was a trick I minded in the way she worked her mouth, an'
+says I, 'Missus Polwarne, your husband's a-waitin' for 'ee, round by
+the front door.'
+
+"'Aw, is he indeed?' she answers, holdin' her needle for a moment--
+an' her voice was all hollow, like as if she pumped it up from a
+fathom or two.  'Then, if he knows what's due to his wife, I'll
+trouble en to come round,' she says; 'for this here's the door _I_
+mean to go in by.'"
+
+But at this point Simon asserts very plausibly that he swooned off;
+so it is not known how they settled it.
+
+[This story is true, as anyone who cares may assure himself by
+referring to Robert Hunt's "Drolls of the West of England," p. 357.]
+
+
+
+IV.--THE BOY BY THE BEACH.
+
+There are in this small history some gaps that can never be filled
+up; but as much as I know I will tell you.
+
+The cottage where Kit lived until he was five years old stands at the
+head of a little beach of white shingle, just inside the harbour's
+mouth, so that all day long Kit could see the merchant-ships trailing
+in from sea, and passing up to the little town, or dropping down to
+the music of the capstan-song, and the calls and the creaking, as
+their crews hauled up the sails.  Some came and went under bare poles
+in the wake of panting tugs; but those that carried canvas pleased
+Kit more.  For a narrow coombe wound up behind the cottage, and down
+this coombe came not only the brook that splashed by the garden gate,
+but a small breeze, always blowing, so that you might count on seeing
+the white sails take it, and curve out majestically as soon as ever
+they came opposite the cottage, and hold it until under the lee of
+the Battery Point.
+
+Besides these delights, the cottage had a plantation of ash and hazel
+above it, that climbed straight to the smooth turf and the four guns
+of the Battery; and a garden with a tamarisk hedge, and a bed of
+white violets, the earliest for miles around, and a fuchsia tree
+three times as tall as Kit, and a pink climbing rose that looked in
+at Kit's window and blossomed till late in November.  Here the child
+lived alone with his mother.  For there was a vagueness of popular
+opinion respecting Kit's father; while about his mother, unhappily,
+there was no vagueness at all.  She was a handsome, low-browed woman,
+with a loud laugh, a defiant manner, and a dress of violent hues.
+Decent wives clutched their skirts in passing her: but, as a set-off,
+she was on excellent terms with every sea-captain and mate that put
+into the port.
+
+All these captains and mates knew Kit and made a pet of him: and
+indeed there was a curious charm in the great serious eyes and
+reddish curls of this child whom other children shunned.  No one can
+tell if he felt his isolation; but of course it drove him to return
+the men's friendship, and to wear a man's solemnity and habit of
+speech.  The woman dressed him carefully, in glaring colours, out of
+her means: and as for his manners, they would no doubt have become
+false and absurd, as time went and knowledge came; but at the age of
+four they were those of a prince.
+
+"My father was a ship's captain, too," he would tell a new
+acquaintance, "but he was drowned at sea--oh, a long while ago; years
+and years before I was born."
+
+The beginning of this speech he had learned from his mother; and the
+misty antiquity of the loss his own childish imagination suggested.
+The captains, hearing it, would wink at each other, swallow down
+their grins, and gravely inform him of the sights he would see and
+the lands he would visit when the time came for him, too, to be a
+ship's captain.  Often and often I have seen him perched, with his
+small legs dangling, on one of the green posts on the quay, and
+drinking in their talk of green icebergs, and flaming parrots, and
+pig-tailed Chinamen; of coral reefs of all marvellous colours, and
+suns that burnt men black, and monkeys that hung by their tails to
+the branches and pelted the passers-by with coco-nuts; and the rest
+of it.  And the child would go back to the cottage in a waking dream,
+treading bright clouds of fancy, with perhaps a little carved box or
+knick-knack in his hand, the gift of some bearded, tender-hearted
+ruffian.  It was pitiful.
+
+Of course he picked up their talk, and very soon could swear with
+equal and appalling freedom in English, French, Swedish, German, and
+Italian.  But the words were words to him and no more, as he had no
+morals.  Nice distinctions between good and evil never entered the
+little room where he slept to the sound only of the waves that curved
+round Battery Point and tumbled on the beach below.  And I know that,
+one summer evening, when the scandalised townsmen and their wedded
+wives assembled, and marched down to the cottage with intent to lead
+the woman in a "Ramriding," the sight of Kit playing in the garden,
+and his look of innocent delight as he ran in to call his mother out,
+took the courage out of them and sent them home, up the hill, like
+sheep.
+
+Of course the truth must have come to him soon.  But it never did:
+for when he was just five, the woman took a chill and died in a week.
+She had left a little money; and the Vicar, rather than let Kit go to
+the workhouse, spent it to buy the child admission to an Orphanage in
+the Midlands, a hundred miles away.
+
+So Kit hung the rose-tree with little scraps of crape, and was put,
+dazed and white, into a train and whisked a hundred miles off.  And
+everybody forgot him.
+
+
+Kit spent two years at the Orphanage in an antique, preposterous
+suit--snuff-coloured coat with lappels, canary waistcoat, and
+corduroy small-clothes.  And they gave him his meals regularly.
+There were ninety-nine other boys who all throve on the food: but Kit
+pined. And the ninety-nine, being full of food, made a racket at
+times; but Kit found it quiet--deathly quiet; and his eyes wore a
+listening look.
+
+For the truth was, he missed the noise of the beach, and was
+listening for it.  And deep down in his small heart the sea was
+piping and calling to him.  And the world had grown dumb; and he
+yearned always: until they had to get him a new canary waistcoat, for
+the old one had grown too big.
+
+At night, from his dormitory window, he could see a rosy light in the
+sky.  At first he thought this must be a pillar of fire put there to
+guide him home; but it was only the glare of furnaces in a
+manufacturing town, not far away.  When he found this out his heart
+came near to break; and afterwards he pined still faster.
+
+
+One evening a lecture was given in the dining-room of the Orphanage.
+The subject was "The Holy Land," and the lecturer illustrated it with
+views from the magic-lantern.
+
+Kit, who sat in one of the back rows, was moderately excited at
+first.  But the views of barren hills, and sands, and ruins, and
+palm-trees, and cedars, wearied him after a while.  He had closed his
+eyes, and the lecturer's voice became a sing-song in which his heart
+searched, as it always searched, for the music of the beach; when, by
+way of variety--for it had little to do with the subject--the
+lecturer slipped in a slide that was supposed to depict an incident
+on the homeward voyage--a squall in the Mediterranean.
+
+It was a stirring picture, with an inky sky, and the squall bursting
+from it, and driving a small ship heeling over white crested waves.
+Of course the boys drew their breath.
+
+And then something like a strangling sob broke out on the stillness,
+frightening the lecturer; and a shrill cry--
+
+"Don't go--oh, _damn it all!_ don't go! Take me--take me home!"
+
+And there at the back of the room a small boy stood up on his form,
+and stretched out both hands to the painted ship, and shrieked and
+panted.
+
+There was a blank silence, and then the matron hurried up, took him
+firmly in her arms, and carried him out.
+
+"Don't go--oh, for the Lord A'mighty's sake, don't go!"
+
+And as he was borne down the passages his cry sounded among the
+audience like the wail of a little lost soul.
+
+The matron carried Kit to the sick-room and put him to bed.
+After quieting the child a bit she left him, taking away the candle.
+Now the sick-room was on the ground floor, and Kit lay still a very
+short while.  Then he got out of bed, groped for his clothes, managed
+to dress himself, and, opening the window, escaped on to the quiet
+lawn.  Then he turned his face south-west, towards home and the sea--
+and ran.
+
+How could he tell where they lay?  God knows.  Ask the swallow how
+she can tell, when in autumn the warm south is a fire in her brain.
+I believe that the sea's breath was in the face of this child of
+seven, and its scent in his nostrils, and its voice in his ears,
+calling, summoning all the way.  I only know that he ran straight
+towards his home, a hundred miles off, and that next morning they
+found his canary waistcoat and snuff-coloured coat in a ditch, two
+miles from the Orphanage, due south-west.
+
+
+Of his adventures on the road the story is equally silent, as I
+warned you.  But the small figure comes into view again, a week
+later, on the hillside of the coombe above his home.  And when he saw
+the sea and the white beach glittering beneath him, he did not stop,
+even for a moment, but reeled down the hill.  The child was just a
+living skeleton; he had neither hat, coat, nor waistcoat; one foot
+only was shod, the other had worn through the stocking, and ugly red
+blisters showed on the sole as he ran.  His face was far whiter than
+his shirt, save for a blue welt or two and some ugly red scratches;
+and his gaunt eyes were full of hunger and yearning, and his lips
+happily babbling the curses that the ships' captains had taught him.
+
+He reeled down the hill to the cottage.  The tenant was a newcomer to
+the town, and had lately been appointed musketry-instructor to the
+battery above.  He was in the garden pruning the rose-tree, but did
+not particularly notice the boy.  And the boy passed without turning
+his head.
+
+The tide on the beach was far out and just beginning to flow.
+There was the same dull plash on the pebbles, the same twinkle as the
+sun struck across the ripples.  The sun was sinking; in ten minutes
+it would be behind the hill.
+
+No one knows what the waves said to Kit.  But he flung himself among
+them with a choking cry, and drank the brine and tossed it over his
+head, and shoulders and chest, and lay down and let the small waves
+play over him, and cried and laughed aloud till the sun went down.
+
+Then he clambered on to a rock, some way above them, and lay down to
+watch the water rise; and watching it, fell asleep; and sleeping, had
+his wish, and went out to the wide seas.
+
+
+
+OLD AESON.
+
+Judge between me and my guest, the stranger within my gates, the man
+whom in his extremity I clothed and fed.
+
+
+I remember well the time of his coming, for it happened at the end of
+five days and nights during which the year passed from strength to
+age; in the interval between the swallow's departure and the
+redwing's coming; when the tortoise in my garden crept into his
+winter quarters, and the equinox was on us, with an east wind that
+parched the blood in the trees, so that their leaves for once knew no
+gradations of red and yellow, but turned at a stroke to brown, and
+crackled like tin-foil.
+
+At five o'clock in the morning of the sixth day I looked out.
+The wind still whistled across the sky, but now without the
+obstruction of any cloud.  Full in front of my window Sirius flashed
+with a whiteness that pierced the eye.  A little to the right, the
+whole constellation of Orion was suspended clear over a wedge-like
+gap in the coast, wherein the sea could be guessed rather than seen.
+And, travelling yet further, the eye fell on two brilliant lights,
+the one set high above the other--the one steady and a fiery red, the
+other yellow and blazing intermittently--the one Aldebaran, the other
+revolving on the lighthouse top, fifteen miles away.
+
+Half-way up the east, the moon, now in her last quarter and decrepit,
+climbed with the dawn close at her heels.  And at this hour they
+brought in the Stranger, asking if my pleasure were to give him
+clothing and hospitality.
+
+
+Nobody knew whence he came--except that it was from the wind and the
+night--seeing that he spoke in a strange tongue, moaning and making a
+sound like the twittering of birds in a chimney.  But his journey
+must have been long and painful; for his legs bent under him, and he
+could not stand when they lifted him.  So, finding it useless to
+question him for the time, I learnt from the servants all they had to
+tell--namely, that they had come upon him, but a few minutes before,
+lying on his face within my grounds, without staff or scrip,
+bareheaded, spent, and crying feebly for succour in his foreign
+tongue; and that in pity they had carried him in and brought him to
+me.
+
+Now for the look of this man, he seemed a century old, being bald,
+extremely wrinkled, with wide hollows where the teeth should be, and
+the flesh hanging loose and flaccid on his cheek-bones; and what
+colour he had could have come only from exposure to that bitter
+night.  But his eyes chiefly spoke of his extreme age.  They were
+blue and deep, and filled with the wisdom of years; and when he
+turned them in my direction they appeared to look through me, beyond
+me, and back upon centuries of sorrow and the slow endurance of man,
+as if his immediate misfortune were but an inconsiderable item in a
+long list.  They frightened me.  Perhaps they conveyed a warning of
+that which I was to endure at their owner's hands.  From compassion,
+I ordered the servants to take him to my wife, with word that I
+wished her to set food before him, and see that it passed his lips.
+
+So much I did for this Stranger.  Now learn how he rewarded me.
+
+
+He has taken my youth from me, and the most of my substance, and the
+love of my wife.
+
+From the hour when he tasted food in my house, he sat there without
+hint of going.  Whether from design, or because age and his
+sufferings had really palsied him, he came back tediously to life and
+warmth, nor for many days professed himself able to stand erect.
+Meanwhile he lived on the best of our hospitality.  My wife tended
+him, and my servants ran at his bidding; for he managed early to make
+them understand scraps of his language, though slow in acquiring
+ours--I believe out of calculation, lest someone should inquire his
+business (which was a mystery) or hint at his departure.  I myself
+often visited the room he had appropriated, and would sit for an hour
+watching those fathomless eyes while I tried to make head or tail of
+his discourse.  When we were alone, my wife and I used to speculate
+at times on his probable profession.  Was he a merchant?--an aged
+mariner?--a tinker, tailor, beggarman, thief?  We could never decide,
+and he never disclosed.
+
+Then the awakening came.  I sat one day in the chair beside his,
+wondering as usual.  I had felt heavy of late, with a soreness and
+languor in my bones, as if a dead weight hung continually on my
+shoulders, and another rested on my heart.  A warmer colour in the
+Stranger's cheek caught my attention; and I bent forward, peering
+under the pendulous lids.  His eyes were livelier and less profound.
+The melancholy was passing from them as breath fades off a pane of
+glass.  _He was growing younger_.  Starting up, I ran across the
+room, to the mirror.
+
+There were two white hairs in my fore-lock; and, at the corner of
+either eye, half a dozen radiating lines.  I was an old man.
+
+Turning, I regarded the Stranger.  He sat phlegmatic as an Indian
+idol; and in my fancy I felt the young blood draining from my own
+heart, and saw it mantling in his cheeks.  Minute by minute I watched
+the slow miracle--the old man beautified.  As buds unfold, he put on
+a lovely youthfulness; and, drop by drop, left me winter.
+
+I hurried from the room, and seeking my wife, laid the case before
+her.  "This is a ghoul," I said, "that we harbour: he is sucking my
+best blood, and the household is clean bewitched."  She laid aside
+the book in which she read, and laughed at me.  Now my wife was
+well-looking, and her eyes were the light of my soul.  Consider,
+then, how I felt as she laughed, taking the Stranger's part against
+me.  When I left her, it was with a new suspicion in my heart.
+"How shall it be," I thought, "if after stealing my youth, he go on
+to take the one thing that is better?"
+
+In my room, day by day, I brooded upon this--hating my own
+alteration, and fearing worse.  With the Stranger there was no longer
+any disguise.  His head blossomed in curls; white teeth filled the
+hollows of his mouth; the pits in his cheeks were heaped full with
+roses, glowing under a transparent skin.  It was Aeson renewed and
+thankless; and he sat on, devouring my substance.
+
+Now having probed my weakness, and being satisfied that I no longer
+dared to turn him out, he, who had half-imposed his native tongue
+upon us, constraining the household to a hideous jargon, the bastard
+growth of two languages, condescended to jerk us back rudely into our
+own speech once more, mastering it with a readiness that proved his
+former dissimulation, and using it henceforward as the sole vehicle
+of his wishes.  On his past life he remained silent; but took
+occasion to confide in me that he proposed embracing a military
+career, as soon as he should tire of the shelter of my roof.
+
+And I groaned in my chamber; for that which I feared had come to
+pass.  He was making open love to my wife.  And the eyes with which
+he looked at her, and the lips with which he coaxed her, had been
+mine; and I was an old man.  Judge now between me and this guest.
+
+One morning I went to my wife; for the burden was past bearing, and I
+must satisfy myself.  I found her tending the plants on her
+window-ledge; and when she turned, I saw that years had not taken
+from her comeliness one jot.  And I was old.
+
+So I taxed her on the matter of this Stranger, saying this and that,
+and how I had cause to believe he loved her.
+
+"That is beyond doubt," she answered, and smiled.
+
+"By my head, I believe his fancy is returned!" I blurted out.
+
+And her smile grew radiant, as, looking me in the face, she answered,
+"By my soul, husband, it is."
+
+Then I went from her, down into my garden, where the day grew hot and
+the flowers were beginning to droop.  I stared upon them and could
+find no solution to the problem that worked in my heart.  And then I
+glanced up, eastward, to the sun above the privet-hedge, and saw
+_him_ coming across the flower beds, treading them down in
+wantonness.  He came with a light step and a smile, and I waited for
+him, leaning heavily on my stick.
+
+"Give me your watch!" he called out, as he drew near.
+
+"Why should I give you my watch?" I asked, while something worked in
+my throat.
+
+"Because I wish it; because it is gold; because you are too old, and
+won't want it much longer."
+
+"Take it," I cried, pulling the watch out and thrusting it into his
+hand.  "Take it--you who have taken all that is better!  Strip me,
+spoil me--"
+
+A soft laugh sounded above, and I turned.  My wife was looking down
+on us from the window, and her eyes were both moist and glad.
+
+"Pardon me," she said, "it is you who are spoiling the child."
+
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF BLEAKIRK.
+
+
+
+I.--THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS.
+
+[_The events, which took place on November 23, 186-, are narrated by
+Reuben Cartwright, Esq., of Bleakirk Hall, Bleakirk-on-Sands, in the
+North Riding of Yorkshire_.]
+
+A rough, unfrequented bridle-road rising and dipping towards the
+coast, with here and there a glimpse of sea beyond the sad-coloured
+moors: straight overhead, a red and wintry sun just struggling to
+assert itself: to right and left, a stretch of barren down still
+coated white with hoar-frost.
+
+I had flung the reins upon my horse's neck, and was ambling
+homewards.  Between me and Bleakirk lay seven good miles, and we had
+come far enough already on the chance of the sun's breaking through;
+but as the morning wore on, so our prospect of hunting that day faded
+further from us.  It was now high noon, and I had left the hunt half
+an hour ago, turned my face towards the coast, and lit a cigar to
+beguile the way.  When a man is twenty-seven he begins to miss the
+fun of shivering beside a frozen cover.
+
+The road took a sudden plunge among the spurs of two converging
+hills.  As I began to descend, the first gleam of sunshine burst from
+the dull heaven and played over the hoar-frost.  I looked up, and
+saw, on the slope of the hill to the right, a horseman also
+descending.
+
+At first glance I took him for a brother sportsman who, too, had
+abandoned hope of a fox.  But the second assured me of my mistake.
+The stranger wore a black suit of antique, clerical cut, a shovel
+hat, and gaiters; his nag was the sorriest of ponies, with a shaggy
+coat of flaring yellow, and so low in the legs that the broad flaps
+of its rider's coat all but trailed on the ground.  A queerer turnout
+I shall never see again, though I live to be a hundred.
+
+He appeared not to notice me, but pricked leisurably down the slope,
+and I soon saw that, as our paths ran and at the pace we were going,
+we should meet at the foot of the descent: which we presently did.
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said the stranger, reining in his pony as though now
+for the first time aware of me: "I wish you a very good day, sir.
+We are well met."
+
+He pulled off his hat with a fantastic politeness.  For me, my
+astonishment grew as I regarded him more closely.  A mass of lanky,
+white hair drooped on either side of a face pale, pinched, and
+extraordinarily wrinkled; the clothes that wrapped his diminutive
+body were threadbare, greasy, and patched in all directions.
+Fifty years' wear could not have worsened them; and, indeed, from the
+whole aspect of the man, you might guess him a century old, were it
+not for the nimbleness of his gestures and his eyes, which were grey,
+alert, and keen as needles.
+
+I acknowledged his salutation as he ranged up beside me.
+
+"Will my company, sir, offend you?  By your coat I suspect your
+trade: _venatorem sapit_--hey?"
+
+His voice exactly fitted his eyes.  Both were sharp and charged with
+expression; yet both carried also a hint that their owner had lived
+long in privacy.  Somehow they lacked touch.
+
+"I am riding homewards," I answered.
+
+"Hey?  Where is that?"
+
+The familiarity lay rather in the words than the manner; and I did
+not resent it.
+
+"At Bleakirk."
+
+His eyes had wandered for a moment to the road ahead; but now he
+turned abruptly, and looked at me, as I thought, with some suspicion.
+He seemed about to speak, but restrained himself, fumbled in his
+waistcoat pocket, and producing a massive snuff-box, offered me a
+pinch.  On my declining, he helped himself copiously; and then,
+letting the reins hang loose upon his arm, fell to tapping the box.
+
+"To me this form of the herb _nicotiana_ commends itself by its
+cheapness: the sense is tickled, the purse consenting--like the
+complaisant husband in Juvenal: you take me?  I am well acquainted
+with Bleakirk-_super-sabulum_.  By the way, how is Squire Cartwright
+of the Hall?"
+
+"If," said I, "you mean my father, Angus Cartwright, he is dead these
+twelve years."
+
+"Hey?" cried the old gentleman, and added after a moment, "Ah, to be
+sure, time flies--_quo dives Tullus et_--Angus, eh?  And yet a hearty
+man, to all seeming.  So you are his son."  He took another pinch.
+"It is very sustaining," he said.
+
+"The snuff?"
+
+"You have construed me, sir.  Since I set out, just thirteen hours
+since, it has been my sole viaticum." As he spoke he put his hand
+nervously to his forehead, and withdrew it.
+
+"Then," thought I, "you must have started in the middle of the
+night," for it was now little past noon.  But looking at his face, I
+saw clearly that it was drawn and pinched with fasting.  Whereupon I
+remembered my flask and sandwich-box, and pulling them out, assured
+him, with some apology for the offer, that they were at his service.
+His joy was childish.  Again he whipped off his hat, and clapping it
+to his heart, swore my conduct did honour to my dead father; "and
+with Angus Cartwright," said he, "kindness was intuitive.  Being a
+habit, it outran reflection; and his whisky, sir, was undeniable.
+Come, I have a fancy.  Let us dismount, and, in heroic fashion,
+spread our feast upon the turf; or, if the hoar-frost deter you, see,
+here are boulders, and a running brook to dilute our cups; and, by my
+life, a foot-bridge, to the rail of which we may tether our steeds."
+
+Indeed, we had come to a hollow in the road, across which a tiny
+beck, now swollen with the rains, was chattering bravely.  Falling in
+with my companion's humour, I dismounted, and, after his example,
+hitched my mare's rein over the rail.  There was a raciness about the
+adventure that took my fancy.  We chose two boulders from a heap of
+lesser stones close beside the beck, and divided the sandwiches, for
+though I protested I was not hungry, the old gentleman insisted on
+our sharing alike.  And now, as the liquor warmed his heart and the
+sunshine smote upon his back, his eyes sparkled, and he launched on a
+flood of the gayest talk--yet always of a world that I felt was
+before my time.  Indeed, as he rattled on, the feeling that this must
+be some Rip Van Winkle restored from a thirty years' sleep grew
+stronger and stronger upon me.  He spoke of Bleakirk, and displayed a
+knowledge of it sufficiently thorough--intimate even--yet of the old
+friends for whom he inquired many names were unknown to me, many
+familiar only through their epitaphs in the windy cemetery above the
+cliff.  Of the rest, the pretty girls he named were now grandmothers,
+the young men long since bent and rheumatic; the youngest well over
+fifty.  This, however, seemed to depress him little.  His eyes would
+sadden for a moment, then laugh again.  "Well, well," he said,
+"wrinkles, bald heads, and the deafness of the tomb--we have our day
+notwithstanding.  Pluck the bloom of it--hey? a commonplace of the
+poets."
+
+"But, sir," I put in as politely as I might, "you have not yet told
+me with whom I have the pleasure of lunching."
+
+"Gently, young sir." He waved his hand towards the encircling moors.
+"We have feasted _more Homerico_, and in Homer, you remember the host
+allowed his guest fourteen days before asking that question.
+Permit me to delay the answer only till I have poured libation on the
+turf here.  Ah! I perceive the whisky is exhausted: but water shall
+suffice.  May I trouble you--my joints are stiff--to fill your
+drinking-cup from the brook at your feet?"
+
+I took the cup from his hands and stooped over the water.  As I did
+so, he leapt on me like a cat from behind.  I felt a hideous blow on
+the nape of the neck: a jagged flame leapt up: the sunshine turned to
+blood--then to darkness.  With hands spread out, I stumbled blindly
+forward and fell at full length into the beck.
+
+
+When my senses returned, I became aware, first that I was lying,
+bound hand and foot and securely gagged, upon the turf; secondly,
+that the horses were still tethered, and standing quietly at the
+foot-bridge; and, thirdly, that my companion had resumed his position
+on the boulder, and there sat watching my recovery.
+
+Seeing my eyes open, he raised his hat and addressed me in tones of
+grave punctilio.
+
+"Believe me, sir, I am earnest in my regret for this state of things.
+Nothing but the severest necessity could have persuaded me to knock
+the son of my late esteemed friend over the skull and gag his
+utterance with a stone--to pass over the fact that it fairly lays my
+sense of your hospitality under suspicion.  Upon my word, sir, it
+places me in a cursedly equivocal position!"
+
+He took a pinch of snuff, absorbed it slowly, and pursued.
+
+"It was necessary, however.  You will partly grasp the situation when
+I tell you that my name is Teague--the Reverend William Teague,
+Doctor of Divinity, and formerly incumbent of Bleakirk-on-Sands."
+
+His words explained much, though not everything.  The circumstances
+which led to the Reverend William's departure from Bleakirk had
+happened some two years before my birth: but they were startling
+enough to supply talk in that dull fishing village for many a long
+day.  In my nursery I had heard the tale that my companion's name
+recalled: and if till now I had felt humiliation, henceforth I felt
+absolute fear, for I knew that I had to deal with a madman.
+
+"I perceive by your eyes, sir," he went on, "that with a part of my
+story you are already familiar: the rest I am about to tell you.
+It will be within your knowledge that late on a Sunday night, just
+twenty-nine years ago, my wife left the Vicarage-house, Bleakirk, and
+never returned; that subsequent inquiry yielded no trace of her
+flight, beyond the fact that she went provided with a small hand-bag
+containing a change of clothing; that, as we had lived together for
+twenty years in the entirest harmony, no reason could then, or
+afterwards, be given for her astonishing conduct.  Moreover, you will
+be aware that its effect upon me was tragical; that my lively
+emotions underneath the shock deepened into a settled gloom; that my
+faculties (notoriously eminent) in a short time became clouded, nay,
+eclipsed--necessitating my removal (I will not refine) to a madhouse.
+Hey, is it not so?"
+
+I nodded assent as well as I could.  He paused, with a pinch between
+finger and thumb, to nod back to me.  Though his eyes were now
+blazing with madness, his demeanour was formally, even affectedly,
+polite.
+
+"My wife never came back: naturally, sir--for she was dead."
+
+He shifted a little on the boulders, slipped the snuff-box back into
+his waistcoat pocket, then crossing his legs and clasping his hands
+over one knee, bent forward and regarded me fixedly.
+
+"I murdered her," he said slowly, and nodded.
+
+A pause followed that seemed to last an hour.  The stone which he had
+strapped in my mouth with his bandanna was giving me acute pain; it
+obstructed, too, what little breathing my emotion left me; and I
+dared not take my eyes off his.  The strain on my nerves grew so
+tense that I felt myself fainting when his voice recalled me.
+
+"I wonder now," he asked, as if it were a riddle--"I wonder if you
+can guess why the body was never found?"
+
+Again there was an intolerable silence before he went on.
+
+"Lydia was a dear creature: in many respects she made me an admirable
+wife.  Her affection for me was canine--positively.  But she was fat,
+sir; her face a jelly, her shoulders mountainous.  Moreover, her
+voice!--it was my cruciation--monotonously, regularly, desperately
+voluble.  If she talked of archangels, they became insignificant--and
+her themes, in ordinary, were of the pettiest.  Her waist, sir, and
+my arm had once been commensurate: now not three of Homer's heroes
+could embrace her.  Her voice could once touch my heart-strings into
+music; it brayed them now, between the millstones of the commonplace.
+Figure to yourself a man of my sensibility condemned to live on these
+terms!"
+
+He paused, tightened his grasp on his knee, and pursued.
+
+"You remember, sir, the story of the baker in Langius?  He narrates
+that a certain woman conceived a violent desire to bite the naked
+shoulders of a baker who used to pass underneath her window with his
+wares.  So imperative did this longing become, that at length the
+woman appealed to her husband, who (being a good-natured man, and
+unwilling to disoblige her) hired the baker, for a certain price, to
+come and be bitten.  The man allowed her two bites, but denied a
+third, being unable to contain himself for pain.  The author goes on
+to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child,
+and two living.  My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was
+somewhat similar.  Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk,
+and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her.
+I longed to see her quiver.  I fought against the feeling, stifled
+it, trod it down: it awoke again.  It filled my thoughts, my dreams;
+it gnawed me like a vulture.  A hundred times while she sat
+complacently turning her inane periods, I had to hug my fist to my
+breast, lest it should leap out and strike her senseless.  Do I weary
+you?  Let me proceed:--
+
+"That Sunday evening we sat, one on each side of the hearth, in the
+Vicarage drawing-room.  She was talking--talking; and I sat tapping
+my foot and whispering to myself, 'You are too fat, Lydia, you are
+too fat.'  Her talk ran on the two sermons I had preached that day,
+the dresses of the congregation, the expense of living, the parish
+ailments--inexhaustible, trivial, relentless.  Suddenly she looked up
+and our eyes met.  Her voice trailed off and dropped like a bird
+wounded in full flight.  She stood up and took a step towards me.
+'Is anything the matter, William?' she asked solicitously.  'You are
+too fat, my dear,' I answered, laughing, and struck her full in the
+face with my fist.
+
+"She did not quiver much--not half enough--but dropped like a
+half-full sack on to the carpet.  I caught up a candle and examined
+her.  Her neck was dislocated.  She was quite dead."
+
+The madman skipped up from his boulder, and looked at me with
+indescribable cunning.
+
+"I am so glad, sir," he said, "that you did not bleed when I struck
+you; it was a great mercy.  The sight of blood affects me--ah!" he
+broke off with a subtle quiver and drew a long breath.  "Do you know
+the sands by Woeful Ness--the Twin Brothers?" he asked.
+
+I knew that dreary headland well.  For half a mile beyond the grey
+Church and Vicarage of Bleakirk it extends, forming the northern arm
+of the small fishing-bay, and protecting it from the full set of the
+tides.  Towards its end it breaks away sharply, and terminates in a
+dorsal ridge of slate-coloured rock that runs out for some two
+hundred feet between the sands we call the Twin Brothers.  Of these,
+that to the south, and inside the bay, is motionless, and bears the
+name of the 'Dead-Boy;' but the 'Quick-Boy,' to the north, shifts
+continually.  It is a quicksand, in short; and will swallow a man in
+three minutes.
+
+"My mind," resumed my companion, "was soon made up.  There is no
+murder, thought I, where there is no corpse.  So I propped Lydia in
+the armchair, where she seemed as if napping, and went quietly
+upstairs.  I packed a small hand-bag carefully with such clothes as
+she would need for a journey, descended with it, opened the front
+door, went out to be sure the servants had blown out their lights,
+returned, and hoisting my wife on my shoulder, with the bag in my
+left hand, softly closed the door and stepped out into the night.
+In the shed beside the garden-gate the gardener had left his
+wheelbarrow.  I fetched it out, set Lydia on the top of it, and
+wheeled her off towards Woeful Ness.  There was just the rim of a
+waning moon to light me, but I knew every inch of the way.
+
+"For the greater part of it I had turf underfoot; but where this
+ended and the rock began, I had to leave the barrow behind.  It was
+ticklish work, climbing down; for footing had to be found, and Lydia
+was a monstrous weight.  Pah! how fat she was and clumsy--lolling
+this way and that!  Besides, the bag hampered me.  But I reached the
+foot at last, and after a short rest clambered out along the ridge as
+fast as I could.  I was sick and tired of the business.
+
+"Well, the rest was easy.  Arrived at the furthest spit of rock, I
+tossed the bag from me far into the northern sand.  Then I turned to
+Lydia, whom I had set down for the moment.  In the moonlight her lips
+were parted as though she were still chattering; so I kissed her
+once, because I had loved her, and dropped her body over into the
+Quick-Boy Sand.  In three minutes or so I had seen the last of her.
+
+"I trundled home the barrow, mixed myself a glass of whisky, sat
+beside it for half an hour, and then aroused the servants.  I was
+cunning, sir; and no one could trace my footprints on the turf and
+rock of Woeful Ness.  The missing hand-bag, and the disarray I had
+been careful to make in the bed-room, provided them at once with a
+clue--but it did not lead them to the Quick-Boy.  For two days they
+searched; at the end of that time it grew clear to them that grief
+was turning my brain.  Your father, sir, was instant with his
+sympathy--at least ten times a day I had much ado to keep from
+laughing in his face.  Finally two doctors visited me, and I was
+taken to a madhouse.
+
+"I have remained within its walls twenty-nine years; but no--I have
+never been thoroughly at home there.  Two days ago I discovered that
+the place was _boring_ me.  So I determined to escape; and this to a
+man of my resources presented few difficulties.  I borrowed this pony
+from a stable not many yards from the madhouse wall; he belongs, I
+think, to a chimney-sweep, and I trust that, after serving my
+purpose, he may find a way back to his master."
+
+I suppose at this point he must have detected the question in my
+eyes, for he cried sharply.
+
+"You wish to know my purpose?  It is simple."  He passed a thin hand
+over his forehead.  "I have been shut up, as I say, for twenty-nine
+years, and I now discover that the madhouse bores me.  If they
+re-take me--and the hue and cry must be out long before this--I shall
+be dragged back.  What, then, is my proposal?  I ride to Bleakirk and
+out along the summit of Woeful Ness.  There I dismount, turn my pony
+loose, and, descending along the ridge, step into the sand that
+swallowed Lydia.  Simple, is it not?  _Excessi, evasi, evanui_.
+I shall be there before sunset--which reminds me," he added, pulling
+out his watch, "that my time is nearly up.  I regret to leave you in
+this plight, but you see how I am placed.  I felt, when I saw you, a
+sudden desire to unbosom myself of a secret which, until the past
+half-hour, I have shared with no man.  I see by your eyes again that
+if set at liberty you would interfere with my purpose.  It is
+unfortunate that scarcely a soul ever rides this way--I know the road
+of old.  But to-morrow is Sunday: I will scribble a line and fix it
+on the church-door at Bleakirk, so that the parish may at least know
+your predicament before twenty-four hours are out.  I must now be
+going.  The bandanna about your mouth I entreat you to accept as a
+memento.  With renewed apologies, sir, I wish you good-day; and count
+it extremely fortunate that you did not bleed."
+
+He nodded in the friendliest manner, turned on his heel, and walked
+quietly towards the bridge.  As he untethered his pony, mounted, and
+ambled quietly off in the direction of the coast, I lay stupidly
+watching him.  His black coat for some time lay, a diminishing blot,
+on the brown of the moors, stood for a brief moment on the sky-line,
+and vanished.
+
+
+I must have lain above an hour in this absurd and painful position,
+wrestling with my bonds, and speculating on my chances of passing the
+night by the beck-side.  My ankles were tied with my own
+handkerchief, my wrists with the thong of my own whip, and this
+especially cut me.  It was knotted immovably; but by rolling over and
+rubbing my face into the turf, I contrived at length to slip the gag
+down below my chin.  This done, I sat up and shouted lustily.
+
+For a long time there was no reply but the whinnying of my mare, who
+seemed to guess something was wrong, and pulled at her tether until I
+thought she would break away.  I think I called a score of times
+before I heard an answering "Whoo-oop!" far back on the road, and a
+scarlet coat, then another, and finally a dozen or more appeared on
+the crest of the hill.  It was the hunt returning.
+
+They saw me at once, and galloped up, speechless from sheer
+amazement.  I believe my hands were loosened before a word was
+spoken.  The situation was painfully ridiculous; but my story was
+partly out before they had time to laugh, and the rest of it was
+gasped to the accompaniment of pounding hoofs and cracking whips.
+
+Never did the Netherkirk Hunt ride after fox as it rode after the
+Rev. William Teague that afternoon.  We streamed over the moor, a
+thin red wave, like a rank of charging cavalry, the whip even
+forgetting his tired hounds that straggled aimlessly in our wake.
+On the hill above Bleakirk we saw that the tide was out, and our
+company divided without drawing rein, some four horsemen descending
+to the beach, to ride along the sands out under Woeful Ness, and
+across the Dead-Boy, hoping to gain the ridge before the madman and
+cut him off.  The rest, whom I led by a few yards, breasted the
+height above and thundered past the grey churchyard wall.  Inside it
+I caught a flying glimpse of the yellow pony quietly cropping among
+the tombs.   We had our prey, then, enclosed in that peninsula as in
+a trap; but there was one outlet.
+
+I remember looking down towards the village as we tore along, and
+seeing the fisher-folk run out at their doors and stand staring at
+the two bodies of horsemen thus rushing to the sea.  The riders on
+the beach had a slight lead of us at first; but this they quickly
+lost as their horses began to be distressed in the heavy sand.
+I looked back for an instant.  The others were close at my heels;
+and, behind again, the bewildered hounds followed, yelping
+mournfully.  But neither man nor hound could see him whom they
+hunted, for the cliff's edge hid the quicksand in front.
+
+Presently the turf ceased.  Dismounting, I ran to the edge and
+plunged down the rocky face.  I had descended about twenty feet, when
+I came to the spot where, by craning forward, I could catch sight of
+the spit of rock, and the Quick-Boy Sand to the right of it.
+
+The sun--a blazing ball of red--was just now setting behind us, and
+its level rays fell full upon the man we were chasing. He stood on
+the very edge of the rocks, a black spot against the luminous yellow
+of sea and sand.  He seemed to be meditating.  His back was towards
+us, and he perceived neither his pursuers above nor the heads that at
+this moment appeared over the ridge behind him, and not fifteen yards
+away.  The party on the beach had dismounted and were clambering up
+stealthily.  Five seconds more and they could spring upon him.
+
+But they under-estimated a madman's instinct.  As if for no reason,
+he gave a quick start, turned, and at the same instant was aware of
+both attacking parties.  A last gleam of sunlight fell on the
+snuff-box in his left hand; his right thumb and fore-finger hung
+arrested, grasping the pinch.  For fully half a minute nothing
+happened; hunters and hunted eyed each other and waited.
+Then carrying the snuff to his nose, and doffing his hat, with a
+satirical sweep of the hand and a low bow, he turned again and
+tripped off the ledge into the jaws of the Quick-Boy.
+
+There was no help now.  At his third step the sand had him by the
+ankles.  For a moment he fought it, then, throwing up his arms, sank
+forward, slowly and as if bowing yet, upon his face.  Second by
+second we stood and watched him disappear.  Within five minutes the
+ripples of the Quick-Boy Sand met once more above him.
+
+
+In the course of the next afternoon the Vicar of Bleakirk called at
+the Hall with a paper which he had found pinned to the church door.
+It was evidently a scrap torn from an old letter, and bore, scribbled
+in pencil by a clerkly hand, these words: "The young Squire
+Cartwright in straits by the foot-bridge, six miles toward
+Netherkirk.  _Orate pro anima Guliemli Teague_."
+
+
+
+II.--THE CONSTANT POST-BOY.
+
+It was a stifling August afternoon.  Not a breath of wind came over
+the downs, and the sky was just a great flaming oven inverted over
+them.  I sat down under a dusty gorse-bush (no tree could be seen)
+beside the high-road, and tugging off a boot, searched for a prickle
+that somehow had got into it.  Then, finding myself too hot to pull
+the boot on again, I turned out some crumbs of tobacco from a
+waistcoat pocket, lit my pipe, and unbuckled my pack.
+
+I "travel" in Tracts, edifying magazines, and books on the Holy Land;
+but in Tracts especially.  As Watteau painted the ladies and
+cavaliers of Versailles so admirably, because he despised them, so I
+will sell a Tract against any man alive.  Also, if there be one kind
+of Tract that I loathe more than another, it is the Pink Tract.
+Paper of that colour is sacred to the Loves--to stolen kisses and
+assignations--and to see it with a comminatory text tacked on at the
+foot of the page turns my stomach.  I have served in my time many
+different masters, and mistresses; and it still pleases me, after
+quitting their service, to recognise the distinction between their
+dues.  So it must have been the heat that made me select a Pink
+Tract.  I leant back with my head in the shadow to digest its crude
+absurdity.
+
+It was entitled, "_How infernally Hot!_"  I doubt not the words were
+put in the mouth of some sinner, and the moral dwelt on their literal
+significance.  But half-way down the first page sleep must have
+descended on me: and I woke up to the sound of light footsteps.
+
+_Pit-a-pat--pit-a-pat-a-pit-pat_.  I lifted my head.
+
+Two small children were coming along the road towards me,
+hand-in-hand, through the heat--a boy and a girl; who, drawing near
+and spying my long legs sprawling out into the dust, came to a stand,
+finger in mouth.
+
+"Hullo, my dears!" I called out, "what are you doing out in this
+weather?"
+
+The children stared at one another, and were silent.  The girl was
+about eight years old, wore a smart pink frock and sash, a big pink
+sun-bonnet, and carried an apple with a piece bitten out.  She seemed
+a little lady; whereas the boy wore corduroys and a battered straw
+hat, and was a clod.  Both children were exceedingly dusty and hot in
+the cheeks.
+
+Finally, the girl disengaged her hand and stepped forward--
+
+"If you please, sir, are you a clergyman?"
+
+Now this confused me a good deal; for, to tell the truth, I had worn
+a white tie in my younger days, before. . . So I sat up and asked why
+she wished to know.
+
+"Because we want to be married."
+
+I drew a long breath, looked from her to the boy, and asked--
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+"She's wishful," answered he, nodding sulkily.
+
+"Oho!" I thought; "Adam and Eve and the apple, complete.  Do you love
+each other?" I asked.
+
+"I adore Billy," cried the little maid  "he's the stable-boy at the
+'Woolpack' in Blea-kirk--"
+
+"So I am beginning to smell," I put in.
+
+--"and we put up there last night--father and I.  We travel in a
+chaise.  And this morning in the stable I saw Billy for the first
+time, and to see him is to love.  He is far below me in station,
+--ain't you, Billy dear?  But he rides beautifully, and is ever so
+strong, and not so badly ed--educated as you would fancy: he can say
+all his 'five-times.' And he worships me,--don't you, Billy?"
+
+"Washups," said Billy, stolidly.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you have trotted in this sun all the way from
+Bleakirk?" I inquired.
+
+The girl nodded.  She was a splendid child--dark-haired, proud of
+chin, and thoroughbred down to her very toes.  And the looks of
+fondness she threw at that stable-urchin were as good as a play.
+
+"And what will you do," I asked, "when you are married?"
+
+"Go home and ask my father's forgiveness.  He is proud; but very,
+very kind."
+
+I told them I was a clergyman, and began to cast round in my mind
+what to do next; for the marriage service of the Church isn't exactly
+the thing to repeat to two babes, and the girl was quick enough to
+detect and resent any attempt at fooling.  So at last I persuaded
+them to sit together under the gorse-bush, and told them that
+matrimony was a serious matter, and that a long exhortation was
+necessary.  They settled themselves to listen.
+
+
+Having been twice married, I did not lack materials for a discourse.
+Indeed, when I talk of married life, it is a familiar experience with
+me to be carried away by my subject.  Nor was I altogether surprised,
+on looking up after half an hour's oratory, to find the little ones
+curled in each other's arms, fast asleep.
+
+So I spread my coat over them, and next (because the fancy took me,
+and not a breath of air was stirring) I treated them much as the
+robins treated the Babes in the Wood, strewing all my Tracts, pink
+and white, over them, till all but their faces was covered.  And then
+I set off for the "Woolpack."
+
+
+One spring morning, ten years later, I was standing outside the
+"Woolpack," drinking my mug of beer with a tall recruiting sergeant,
+and discussing the similarity of our professions, when a post-chaise
+appeared at the head of the street, and a bobbing red postillion's
+jacket, and a pair of greys that came down the hill with a rattle,
+and drew up at the inn-door.
+
+A young lady and a young gentleman sat in the chaise, and the first
+glance told they were newly married.  They sat in the chaise, and
+held each other by the hand, while the horses were changing.
+And because I had a bundle of tracts that fitted their condition, and
+because the newly married often pay for a thing beyond its worth, I
+approached the chaise-door.
+
+The fresh horses were in as I began my apologies; and the post-boy
+was settling himself in the saddle.  Judge of my astonishment when he
+leant back, cut me sharply across the calves with his long whip, and
+before I could yell had started his horses up the opposite hill at a
+gallop.  The hind wheel missed my toes by an inch.  In three minutes
+the carriage and red coat were but a speck on the road that led up to
+the downs.
+
+I returned to my mug, emptied it moodily, broke a fine repartee on
+the sergeant's dull head (he was consumed with mirth), and followed
+the same road at a slow pace; for my business took me along it.
+
+
+I was on the downs, and had walked, perhaps, six miles, when again I
+saw the red speck ahead of me.  It was the post-boy--a post-boy
+returning on foot, of all miracles.  He came straight up to meet me,
+and then stood in the road, barring my path, and tapping his
+riding-boot with the butt of his whip--a handsome young fellow, well
+proportioned and well set up.
+
+"I want you," he said, "to walk back with me to Bleakirk."
+
+"Upon my word!" I cried out.  "Considering that Bleakirk is six miles
+away, that I am walking in the other direction, and that, two hours
+back, you gave me a cursed cut over the legs with that whip, I fancy
+I see myself obliging you!"
+
+He regarded me moodily for about a minute, but did not shift his
+position.
+
+"Why are you on foot?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, my God!" he cried out quickly, as a man might that was stabbed;
+"I couldn't trust myself to ride; I _couldn't_."  He shuddered, and
+put a hand over his eyes.  "Look here," he said, "you _must_ walk
+home with me, or at least see me past the Chalk-pit."
+
+Now the Chalk-pit, when spelt with a capital letter, is an especially
+deep and ugly one on the very edge of the Bleakirk road, about two
+miles out of the village.  A weak fence only separates its lip from
+the macadam.  It is a nasty place to pass by night with a carriage;
+but here it was broad day, and the fellow was walking.  So I didn't
+take him at all.
+
+"Listen to me," he went on in a dull voice; "do you remember sitting
+beside this road, close on ten years back?   And a boy and girl who
+came along this road together and asked you to marry them?"
+
+"Bless my soul!  Were you that boy?"
+
+He nodded.  "Yes: and the young lady in the chaise to-day was that
+girl.  Old man, I know you reckon yourself clever,--I've heard you
+talk: but that when I met her to-day, three hours married, and she
+didn't know me, I had a hell in my heart as I drove past the
+Chalk-pit, is a thing that passes your understanding, perhaps.
+They were laughing together, mark you, and yet they weren't a hair's
+breadth from death.  And, by the Lord, you must help me past that
+pit!"
+
+"Young man," I said, musing, "when first I met you, you were ten
+years old, and I thought you a fool.  To-day you have grown into an
+unmitigated ass.  But you are dangerous; and therefore I respect you,
+and will see you home."
+
+I turned back with him.  When we came to the Chalk-pit, I kept him on
+the farther side of the road, though it cost me some terror to walk
+between him and the edge; for I have too much imagination to be a
+thoroughly brave man.
+
+
+The sun was sinking as we walked down to Bleakirk; and the recruiting
+sergeant sat asleep outside the "Woolpack," with his head on the
+window-sill.  I woke him up; and within half an hour my post-boy wore
+a bunch of ribbons on his cap--red, white, and blue.
+
+I believe he has seen some fighting since then; and has risen in the
+ranks.
+
+
+
+A DARK MIRROR.
+
+In the room of one of my friends hangs a mirror.  It is an oblong
+sheet of glass, set in a frame of dark, highly varnished wood, carved
+in the worst taste of the Regency period, and relieved with faded
+gilt.  Glancing at it from a distance, you would guess the thing a
+relic from some "genteel" drawing-room of Miss Austen's time.  But go
+nearer and look into the glass itself.  By some malformation or mere
+freak of make, all the images it throws back are livid.  Flood the
+room with sunshine; stand before this glass with youth and hot blood
+tingling on your cheeks; and the glass will give back neither sun nor
+colour; but your own face, blue and dead, and behind it a horror of
+inscrutable shadow.
+
+Since I heard this mirror's history, I have stood more than once and
+twice before it, and peered into this shadow.  And these are the
+simulacra I seem to have seen there darkly.
+
+I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, hemmed in on two sides by a
+grave-yard; and behind for many miles nothing but sombre moors
+climbing and stretching away.  I have heard the winds moaning and
+wuthering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the
+angles of the house; and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct
+that this mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the bare room to
+the left.  I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will
+belong that greet me while yet my hand is on the latch.
+Four children are within--three girls and a boy--and they are
+disputing over a box of wooden soldiers.  The eldest girl, a plain
+child with reddish-brown eyes, and the most wonderfully small hands,
+snatches up one of the wooden soldiers, crying, "This is the Duke of
+Wellington!  This shall be the Duke!" and her soldier is the gayest
+of all, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part.
+The second girl makes her choice, and they call him "Gravey" because
+of the solemnity of his painted features.  And then all laugh at the
+youngest girl, for she has chosen a queer little warrior, much like
+herself; but she smiles at their laughter, and smiles again when they
+christen him "Waiting Boy."  Lastly the boy chooses.  He is handsomer
+than his sisters, and is their hope and pride; and has a massive brow
+and a mouth well formed though a trifle loose.  His soldier shall be
+called Bonaparte.
+
+Though the door is closed between us, I can see these motherless
+children under this same blue mirror--the glass that had helped to
+pale the blood on their mother's face after she left the warm Cornish
+sea that was her home, and came to settle and die in this bleak
+exile.  Some of her books are in the little bookcase here.  They were
+sent round from the West by sea, and met with shipwreck.  For the
+most part they are Methodist Magazines--for, like most Cornish folk,
+her parents were followers of Wesley--and the stains of the salt
+water are still on their pages.
+
+I know also that the father will be sitting in the room to my right--
+sitting at his solitary meal, for his digestion is queer, and he
+prefers to dine alone: a strange, small, purblind man, full of sorrow
+and strong will.  He is a clergyman, but carries a revolver always in
+his pocket by day, and by night sleeps with it under his pillow.
+He has done so ever since some one told him that the moors above were
+unsafe for a person with his opinions.
+
+All this the glass shows me, and more.  I see the children growing
+up.  I see the girls droop and pine in this dreary parsonage, where
+the winds nip, and the miasma from the churchyard chokes them.
+I see the handsome promising boy going to the devil--slowly at first,
+then by strides.  As their hope fades from his sisters' faces, he
+drinks and takes to opium-eating--and worse.  He comes home from a
+short absence, wrecked in body and soul.  After this there is no rest
+in the house.  He sleeps in the room with that small, persistent
+father of his, and often there are sounds of horrible strugglings
+within it.  And the girls lie awake, sick with fear, listening, till
+their ears grow heavy and dull, for the report of their father's
+pistol.  At morning, the drunkard will stagger out, and look perhaps
+into this glass, that gives him back more than all his despair.
+"The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it," he
+stammers; "he does his best--the poor old man! but it's all over with
+me."
+
+I see him go headlong at last and meet his end in the room above
+after twenty minutes' struggle, with a curious desire at the last to
+play the man and face his death standing.  I see the second sister
+fight with a swiftly wasting disease; and, because she is a solitary
+Titanic spirit, refuse all help and solace.  She gets up one morning,
+insists on dressing herself, and dies; and the youngest sister
+follows her but more slowly and tranquilly, as beseems her gentler
+nature.
+
+Two only are left now--the queer father and the eldest of the four
+children, the reddish-eyed girl with the small hands, the girl who
+"never talked hopefully."  Fame has come to her and to her dead
+sisters.  For looking from childhood into this livid glass that
+reflected their world, they have peopled it with strange spirits.
+Men and women in the real world recognise the awful power of these
+spirits, without understanding them, not having been brought up
+themselves in front of this mirror.  But the survivor knows the
+mirror too well.
+
+"_Mademoiselle, vous etes triste_."
+
+"_Monsieur, j'en ai bien le droit_."
+
+With a last look I see into the small, commonplace church that lies
+just below the parsonage: and on a tablet by the altar I read a list
+of many names. . .
+
+
+And the last is that of Charlotte Bronte.
+
+
+
+THE SMALL PEOPLE.
+
+_To a Lady who had asked for a Fairy Tale_.
+
+You thought it natural, my dear lady, to lay this command on me at
+the dance last night.  We had parted, two months ago, in London, and
+we met, unexpectedly and to music, in this corner of the land where
+(they say) the piskies still keep.  And certainly, when I led you out
+upon the balcony (that you might not see the new moon through glass
+and lose a lucky month), it was not hard to picture the Small People
+at their play on the turf and among the dim flower-beds below us.
+But, as a matter of fact, they are dead, these Small People.
+They were the long-lived but not immortal spirits of the folk who
+inhabited Cornwall many thousands of years back--far beyond Christ's
+birth.  They were "poor innocents," not good enough for heaven yet
+too good for the eternal fires; and when they first came, were of
+ordinary stature.  But after Christ's birth they began to grow
+smaller and smaller, and at length turned into emmets and vanished
+from the earth.
+
+The last I heard of them was a sad and serious little history, very
+different from the old legends.  Part of it I was told by a hospital
+surgeon, of all people in the world.  Part I learnt by looking at
+your beautiful gown last night, as you leant on the balcony-rail.
+You remember how heavy the dew was, and that I fetched a shawl for
+your shoulders.  You did not wrap it so tightly round but that four
+marguerites in gold embroidery showed on the front of your bodice;
+and these come into the tale, the remainder of which I was taught
+this morning before breakfast, down among the cairns by the sea where
+the Small People's Gardens still remain--sheltered spots of green,
+with here and there some ferns and cliff-pinks left.  For me they are
+libraries where sometimes I read for a whole summer's day; and with
+the help of the hospital surgeon, I bring you from them a story about
+your ball-gown which is perfectly true.
+
+Twenty years ago--before the fairies had dwindled into ants, and when
+wayfarers were still used to turn their coats inside out, after
+nightfall, for fear of being "pisky-led"--there lived, down at the
+village, a girl who knew all the secrets of the Small People's
+Gardens.  Where you and I discover sea-pinks only, and hear only the
+wash of the waves, she would go on midsummer nights and find flowers
+of every colour spread, and hundreds of little lights moving among
+them, and fountains and waterfalls and swarms of small ladies and
+gentlemen, dressed in green and gold, walking and sporting among
+them, or reposing on the turf and telling stories to the most
+ravishing soft music.  This was as much as she would relate; but it
+is certain that the piskies were friends of hers.  For, in spite of
+her nightly wanderings, her housework was always well and cleanly
+done before other girls were dressed--the morning milk fresh in the
+dairy, the step sanded, the fire lit and the scalding-pans warming
+over it.  And as for her needlework, it was a wonder.
+
+Some said she was a changeling; others that she had found the
+four-leaved clover or the fairy ointment, and rubbed her eyes with
+it.  But it was her own secret; for whenever the people tried to
+follow her to the "Gardens," _whir! whir! whir!_ buzzed in their
+ears, as if a flight of bees were passing, and every limb would feel
+as if stuck full of pins and pinched with tweezers, and they were
+rolled over and over, their tongues tied as if with cords, and at
+last, as soon as they could manage, they would pick themselves up,
+and hobble home for their lives.
+
+Well, the history--which, I must remind you, is a true one--goes on
+to say that in time the girl grew ambitious, or fell in love
+(I cannot remember which), and went to London.  In any case it must
+have been a strong call that took her: for there are no fairies in
+London.  I regret that my researches do not allow me to tell you how
+the Small People at home took her departure; but we will suppose that
+it grieved them deeply.  Nor can I say precisely how the girl fared
+for many years.  I think her fortune contained both joy and sorrow
+for a while; and I suspect that many passages of her life would be
+sadly out of place in this story, even if they could be hunted out.
+Indeed, fairy-tales have to omit so much nowadays, and therefore seem
+so antiquated, that one marvels how they could ever have been in
+fashion.
+
+But you may take it as sure that in the end this girl met with more
+sorrow than joy; for when next she comes into sight it is in London
+streets and she is in rags.  Moreover, though she wears a flush on
+her cheeks, above the wrinkles it does not come of health or high
+spirits, but perhaps from the fact that in the twenty years' interval
+she has seen millions of men and women, but not one single fairy.
+
+In those latter days I met her many times.  She passed under your
+windows shortly before dawn on the night that you gave your dance,
+early in the season.  You saw her, I think?--a woman who staggered a
+little, and had some words with the policeman at the corner: but,
+after all, a staggering woman in London is no such memorable sight.
+All day long she was seeking work, work, work; and after dark she
+sought forgetfulness.  She found the one, in small quantities, and
+out of it she managed to buy the other, now and then, over the
+counter.  But she had long given up looking for the fairies.
+The lights along the Embankment had ceased to remind her of those in
+the Small People's Gardens; nor did the noise bursting from
+music-hall doors as she passed, recall the old sounds; and as for the
+scents, there were plenty in London, but none resembling that of the
+garden which you might smell a mile out at sea.
+
+I told you that her needlework had been a marvel when she lived down
+at the village.  Curiously enough, this was the one gift of the
+fairies that stayed by her, and it remained as wonderful as ever.
+Her most frequent employer was a flat-footed Jew with a large, fleshy
+face; and because she had a name for honesty, she was not seldom
+entrusted with costly pieces of stuff, and allowed to carry them home
+to turn into ball-dresses under the roof through the gaps of which,
+as she stitched, she could see the night pass from purple to black,
+and from black to the lilac of daybreak.  There, with a hundred
+pounds' worth of silk and lace on her knee, she would sit and work a
+dozen hours to earn as many pence.  With fingers weary and--But you
+know Hood's song, and no doubt have taken it to heart a dozen times.
+
+It came to this, however, that one evening, when she had not eaten
+for forty hours, her employer gave her a piece of embroidery to work
+against time.  The fact is, my dear lady, that you are very
+particular about having your commissions executed to the hour, and
+your dressmakers are anxious to oblige, knowing that you never
+squabble over the price.  To be sure, you have never heard of the
+flat-footed Jew man--how should you?  And we may believe that your
+dressmakers knew just as little of the poor woman who had used to be
+the friend of the Small People.  But the truth remains that, in the
+press of your many pleasures, you were pardonably twenty-four hours
+late in ordering the gown in which you were to appear an angel.
+
+Ah, madam! will it comfort you to hear that _you_ were the one to
+reconcile the Small People with that poor sister of yours who had
+left them, twenty years before, and wanted them so sorely?
+The hospital doctor gave her complaint a long name, and I gather that
+it has a place by itself in books of pathology.  But the woman's tale
+was that, after she had been stitching through the long night, the
+dawn came through the roof and found her with four marguerites still
+left to be embroidered in gold on the pieces of satin that lay in her
+lap.  She threaded her needle afresh, rubbed her weary eyes, and
+began--when, lo! a miracle.
+
+Instead of one hand, there were four at work--four hands, four
+needles, four lines of thread.  _The four marguerites were all being
+embroidered at the same time!_  The piskies had forgiven, had
+remembered her at last, after these many years, and were coming to
+her help, as of old.  Ah, madam, the tears of thankfulness that ran
+from her hot eyes and fell upon those golden marguerites of yours!
+
+
+Of course her eyes were disordered.  There was only one flower,
+really.  There was only one embroidered in the morning, when they
+found her sobbing, with your bodice still in her lap, and took her to
+the hospital; and that is why the dressmakers failed to keep faith
+with you for once, and made you so angry.
+
+Dear lady, the piskies are not easily summoned, in these days.
+
+
+
+THE MAYOR OF GANTICK.
+
+One of these days I hope to write a treatise on the Mayors of
+Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, remembered
+only in some neat by-word or saying of the country people.  Thus you
+may hear, now and again, of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God
+when the town gaol was enlarged," "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting
+in his own light," or "the Mayor of Calenich, who walked two miles to
+ride one."  But the one whose history perplexed me most, till I heard
+the truth from an eye-witness, was "the mad Mayor of Gantick, who was
+wise for a long day, and then died of it."
+
+It was an old tin-streamer who told me--a thin fellow with a
+shrivelled mouth, and a back bent two-double.  And I heard it on the
+very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and
+smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue
+sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and rank
+grass.
+
+
+It seems that the village of Gantick, half a mile away, was used once
+in every year to purge itself of evil.  To this end the villagers
+prepared a huge dragon of pasteboard and marched out with it to a
+sandy common, since cut up by tin-works, but still known as Dragon's
+Moor.  Here they would choose one of their number to be Mayor, and
+submit to him all questions of conscience, and such cases of
+notorious evil living as the law failed to provide for.
+Summary justice waited on all his decisions; and as the village wag
+was usually chosen for the post, you may guess that the horse-play
+was rough at times.  When this was over, and the public conscience
+purified, the company fell on the pasteboard dragon with sticks and
+whacked him into small pieces, which they buried in a small hollow
+called Dragon Pit; and so returned gladly to their homes to start on
+another twelve months of sin.
+
+This feast of purification fell always on the 12th of July; and in
+the heyday of its celebration there lived in this cottage a
+widow-woman and her only son, a demented man about forty years old.
+There was no harm in the poor creature, who worked at the Lanihorne
+slate-quarries, six miles off, as a "hollibubber"--that is to say, in
+carting away the refuse slate.  Every morning he walked to his work,
+mumbling to himself as he went; and though the children followed him
+at times, hooting and flinging stones, they grew tired at last,
+finding that he never resented it.  His mother--a tall, silent woman
+with an inscrutable face--had supper ready for him when he returned,
+and often was forced to feed him, while he unlocked his tongue and
+babbled over the small adventures of the day.  He was not one of
+those gifted idiots who hear voices in the wind and know the language
+of the wild birds.  His talk was merely imbecile; and, for the rest,
+he had large grey eyes, features of that regularity which we call
+Greek, and stood six foot two in his shoes.
+
+One hot morning--it was the 12th of July--he was starting for his
+work when an indescribable hubbub sounded up the road, and presently
+came by the whole rabble of Gantick with cow-horns and instruments of
+percussion, and in their midst the famous dragon--all green, with
+fiery, painted eyes, and a long tongue of red flannel.  Behind it the
+prisoners were escorted--a pale woman or two with dazed, terrified
+eyes, an old man suspected of egg-stealing, a cow addicted to
+trespass, and so on.
+
+The Mayor was not chosen yet, this ceremony being deferred by rule
+till the crowd reached Dragon's Moor.  But drawing near the cottage
+door and catching sight of the half-witted man with his foot on the
+threshold, a village wit called out and proposed that they should
+take "the Mounster" (as he was called) along with them for Mayor.
+
+It hit the mob's humour, and they cheered.  The Mounster's mother,
+standing in the doorway, went white as if painted.
+
+"Man in the lump's a hateful animal," she said to herself, hoarsely.
+"Come indoors, Jonathan, an' let 'em go by."
+
+"Come an' rule over us," the crowd invited him, and a gleam of proud
+delight woke in his silly face.
+
+"The heat--his head won't stand it."  The woman looked up at the
+cloudless sky.  "For God's sake take your fun elsewhere!" she cried.
+
+The women who were led to judgment looked at her stupidly.  They too
+suffered, without understanding, the heavy sport of men.  At last one
+said--
+
+"Old woman, let him come.  We'll have more mercy from a mazed man."
+
+"Sister, you've been loose, they tell me," answered the old woman,
+"an' must eat the bitter fruit o't.  But my son's an innocent.
+Jonathan, they'll look for you at the works."
+
+"There's prouder work for me 'pon Dragon's Moor," the Mounster
+decided, with smiling eyes.  "Come along, mother, an' see me
+exalted."
+
+The crowd bore him off at their head, and the din broke out again.
+The new Mayor strutted among them with lifted chin and a radiant
+face.  He thought it glorious.  His mother ran into the cottage,
+fetched a bottle and followed after the dusty tail of the procession.
+Once, as they were passing a running stream, she halted and filled
+the bottle carefully, emptying it again and again until the film
+outside the glass was to her liking.  Then she followed again, and
+came to Dragon's Moor.
+
+They sat the Mayor on a mound, took off his hat, placed a crown on
+his head and a broomstick in his hand, and brought him the cases to
+try.
+
+The first was a grey mare, possessed (they alleged) with a devil.
+Her skin hung like a sack on her bones.
+
+"'Tis Eli Thoms' mare.  What's to be done to cure her?" they asked.
+
+"Let Eli Thoms buy a comb, an' comb his mare's tail while she eats
+her feed.  So Eli'll know if 'tis the devil or no that steals oats
+from his manger."
+
+They applauded his wisdom and brought forward the woman who had
+pleaded just now with his mother.
+
+"Who made her?" he asked, having listened to the charge.
+
+"God, 'tis to be supposed."
+
+"God makes no evil."
+
+"The Devil, then."
+
+"Then whack the Devil."
+
+They fell on the pasteboard dragon and belaboured him.  The sun
+poured down on the Mayor's throne; and his mother, who sat by his
+right hand wondering at his sense, gave him water to drink from the
+bottle.  They brought a third case--a boy who had been caught
+torturing a cow.  He had taken a saw, and tried to saw off one of her
+horns while she was tethered in her stall.
+
+The Mayor leapt up from his seat.
+
+"Kill him!" he shouted, "take him off and kill him!"  His face was
+twisted with passion, and he lifted his stick.  The crowd fell back
+for a second, but the old woman leant forward and touched her son
+softly on the leg.  He stopped short: the anger died out of his face,
+and he shivered.
+
+"No," he said, "I was wrong, naybours.  The boy is mad, I think; an'
+'tis a terrible lot, to be mad.  This is the Devil's doing, out o'
+doubt.  Beat the Devil."
+
+"Simme," said one in the crowd, "the sins o' Gantick be wearin' out
+the smoky man at a terrible rate."
+
+"Ay," answered another, "His Naughtiness bain't ekal to Gantick."
+And this observation was the original of a proverb, still repeated--
+"As naughty as Gantick, where the Devil struck for shorter hours."
+
+There was no cruelty that day on Dragon's Moor.  All the afternoon
+the mad Mayor sat in the sun's eye and gave judgment, while his
+mother from time to time wiped away the froth that gathered on his
+lips, and moistened them with water from her bottle.  From first to
+last she never spoke a word, but sat with a horror in her eyes, and
+watched the flushed cheeks of this grown-up, bearded son.  And all
+the afternoon the men of Gantick brayed the Devil into shreds.
+
+
+I said there was no cruelty on Dragon's Moor that day.  But at
+sundown the Mayor turned to his mother and said--
+
+"We've been over-hasty, mother.  We ought to ha' found out who made
+the Devil what he is." At last the sun dropped; a shadow fell on the
+brown moors and crept up the mound where the mother and son sat.
+The brightness died out of the Mayor's face.
+
+Three minutes after, he flung up his hands and cried, "Mother--my
+head, my head!"
+
+She rose, still without a word, pulled down his arms, slipped one
+within her own, and led him away to the road.  The crowd did not
+interfere; they were burying the broken dragon, with shouts and rough
+play.
+
+A woman followed them to the road, and tried to clasp the Mayor's
+knees as he staggered.  His mother beat her away.  "Off wi' you!" she
+cried; "'tis your reproach he's bearin'."
+
+She helped him slowly home.  In the shadow of the cottage the
+inspired look that he had worn all day returned for a moment.  Then
+a convulsion took him, casting him on the floor.
+
+At nine o'clock he died, with his head on her lap.
+
+She closed his eyes, smoothed the wrinkles on his tired face, and sat
+watching him for some time.  At length she lifted and laid him on the
+deal table at full length, bolted the door, put the heavy shutter on
+the low window, and began to light the fire.
+
+For fuel she had a heap of peat-turves and some sticks.  Having lit
+it, she set a crock of water to warm, and undressed the man slowly.
+Then, the water being ready, she washed and laid him out, chafing his
+limbs and talking to herself all the while.
+
+"Fair, straight legs," she said; "beautiful body that leapt in my
+side, forty years back, and thrilled me!  How proud I was!  Why did
+God make you beautiful?"
+
+
+All night she sat caressing him.  And the smoke of the peat-turves,
+finding no exit and no draught to carry them up the chimney, crept
+around and killed her quietly beside her son.
+
+
+
+THE DOCTOR'S FOUNDLING.
+
+There are said to be many vipers on the Downs above the sea; but it
+was so pleasant to find a breeze up there allaying the fervid
+afternoon, that I risked the consequences and stretched myself at
+full length, tilting my straw hat well over my nose.
+
+Presently, above the _tic-a-tic-tick_ of the grasshoppers, and the
+wail of a passing gull, a human sound seemed to start abruptly out of
+the solitude--the voice of a man singing.  I rose on my elbow, and
+pushed the straw hat up a bit.  Under its brim through the quivering
+atmosphere, I saw the fellow, two hundred yards away, a dark
+obtrusive blot on the bronze landscape.  He was coming along the
+track that would lead him down-hill to the port; and his voice fell
+louder on the still air--
+
+      "Ho! the prickly briar,
+       It prickles my throat so sore--
+       If I get out o' the prickly briar,
+       I'll never get in any more."
+
+      "Ho! just loosen the rope"--
+
+At this point I must have come within his view, for he halted a
+moment, and then turned abruptly out of the track towards me,--
+a scare-crow of a figure, powdered white with dust.  In spite of the
+weather, he wore his tattered coat buttoned at the throat, with the
+collar turned up.  Probably he possessed no shirt; certainly no
+socks, for his toes protruded from the broken boots.  He was quite
+young.
+
+Without salutation he dropped on the turf two paces off and
+remarked--
+
+"It's bleedin' 'ot."
+
+There was just a pause while he cast his eyes back on the country he
+had travelled; then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the
+direction of the port, he inquired--
+
+"'Ow's the old lot?"
+
+Said I, "Look here; you're Dick Jago.  How far have you walked
+to-day?"
+
+He had turned on me as if ready with a sharp question, but changed
+his mind and answered doggedly--
+
+"All the way from Drakeport."
+
+"Very well; then it's right-about-face with you and back to Drakeport
+before I let you go.  Do you see this stick?  If you attempt to walk
+a step more towards the port, I'll crack your head with it."
+
+He gulped down something in his throat.  "Is the old man ill?" he
+asked.
+
+"He's dead," said I, simply.
+
+The fellow turned his eyes to the horizon, and began whistling the
+air of "The Prickly Briar" softly to himself.  And while he whistled,
+my memory ran back to the day when he first came to trouble us, and
+play the fiend's mischief with a couple of dear honest hearts.
+
+
+The day I travelled back to was one in the prime of May, when the
+lilacs were out by Dr. Jago's green gate, and the General from
+Drakeport Barracks, with the red and white feathers in his
+cocked-hat, had just cantered up the street, followed by a dozen
+shouting urchins, on his way to the Downs.  For it was the end of the
+militia-training, when the review was always held; and all the
+morning the bugles had been sounding at the head of every street and
+lane where the men were billeted.
+
+When the gold-laced General disappeared, he left the streets all but
+empty; for the townspeople by this time had flocked to the Downs.
+Only by Dr. Jago's gate there stood a small group in the sunshine.
+Kitty, the doctor's mare that had pulled his gig for ten years, was
+standing saddled in the roadway, with a stable-boy at her head; just
+outside the gate, the little doctor himself in regimentals and black
+cocked-hat with black feathers, regarding her; behind, the pleasant
+old face of his wife, regarding _him_; and, behind again, the two
+maid-servants regarding the group generally from behind their
+mistress's shoulder.
+
+"Maria, I shall never do it," said the doctor, measuring with his eye
+the distance between the ground and the stirrup.
+
+"Indeed, John, I don't think you will."
+
+"There was a time when I'd have vaulted it.  I'm abominably late as
+it is, Maria."
+
+"Shall I give master a leg up?" suggested one of the maids.
+
+"No, Susan, you will do nothing of the kind." Mrs. Jago paused, her
+brow wrinkled beneath her white lace cap.  Then an inspiration came--
+"The chair--a kitchen chair, Susan!"
+
+The maid flew; the chair was brought; and that is how the good old
+doctor mounted for the review.  Three minutes later he was trotting
+soberly up the street, pausing twice to kiss his hand to his wife,
+who watched him proudly from the green gate, and took off her
+spectacles and wiped them, the better to see him out of sight.
+
+By the time Dr. Jago reached the Downs, the review was in full swing.
+The colonel shouted, the captains shouted, the regiment formed,
+re-formed, marched, charged at the double, and fired volleys of blank
+cartridges.  The General and orderlies galloped from spot to spot
+without apparent object; and all was very martial.  At last the
+doctor grew tired of trotting up and down without being wanted.
+He thought with longing of some pools, half a mile away, in a hollow
+of the Downs, that contained certain freshwater shells about which he
+held a theory.  The afternoon was hot.  He glanced round--no one
+seemed to want him: so he turned Kitty into a grassy defile that led
+to the pools, and walked her leisurely away.
+
+Half an hour later he stood, ankle-deep in water, groping for his
+shells and oblivious of the review, the firing that echoed far away,
+the flight of time--everything.  Kitty, with one fore-leg through the
+bridle, was cropping on the brink.  Minutes passed, and the doctor
+raised his head, for the blood was running into it.  At that moment
+his eye was caught by a scarlet object under a gorse-bush on the
+opposite bank.  He gave a second look, then waded across towards it.
+
+It was a baby: a baby not a week old, wrapped only in a red
+handkerchief.
+
+The doctor bent over it.  The infant opened its eyes and began to
+wail.  At this instant an orderly appeared on the ridge above,
+scanning the country.  He caught sight of the doctor and descended to
+the opposite shore of the pool, where he saluted and yelled his
+message.  It appeared that some awkward militiaman had blown his
+thumb off in the blank cartridge practice and surgical help was
+wanted at once.
+
+Doctor Jago dropped the corner of the handkerchief, returned across
+the pool, was helped on to Kitty's back and cantered away, the
+orderly after him.
+
+In an hour's time, having put on a tourniquet and bandaged the hand,
+he was back again by the pool.  The baby was still there.  He lifted
+it and found a scrap of paper underneath. . . .
+
+
+The doctor returned by devious ways to his home, a full hour before
+he was expected.  He rode in at the back gate, where to his secret
+satisfaction he found no stable-boy.  So he stabled Kitty himself,
+and crept into his own house like a thief.  Nor was it like his
+habits to pay, as he did, a visit to the little cupboard (where the
+brandy-bottle was kept) underneath the stairs, before entering the
+drawing-room, with his face full of guilt and diplomacy.
+
+"Gracious, John!" cried out Mrs. Jago, dropping her knitting.
+"Is the review over already?"
+
+"No, I don't think it is--at least, I don't know," stammered the
+doctor.
+
+"John, you have had another attack of that vertigo."
+
+"Upon my honour I have not, Maria."  The doctor was vehement; for the
+vertigo necessitated brandy, and a visit to the little cupboard below
+the stairs meant hideous detection.
+
+So he sat up and tried to describe the review to his wife, and made
+such an abject mess of it, that after twenty minutes she made up her
+mind that he _must_ have a headache, and, leaving the room quietly,
+went to the little cupboard below the stairs.  She found the door
+ajar. . . .
+
+When, after a long absence, she reappeared in the drawing-room, she
+had forgotten to bring the brandy, and wore a look as guilty as her
+husband's.  So they sat together and talked in the twilight on
+trivial matters; and each had a heart insufferably burdened, and each
+was waiting desperately for an opportunity to lighten it.
+
+"John," said Mrs. Jago at last, "we are getting poor company for each
+other.
+
+"Maria!"
+
+The doctor leapt to his feet: and these old souls, who knew each
+other so passing well, looked into each other's eyes, half in terror.
+
+
+At that instant a feeble wail smote on their ears.  It came from the
+cupboard underneath the stairs.
+
+"Maria! I put it there myself, two hours ago.  I picked it up on the
+downs. I've been--"
+
+"_You!_  I thought it was some beggar-woman's doing.  John, John--why
+didn't you say so before!"
+
+And she rushed out of the room.
+
+This seedy scamp who reclined beside me was the child that she
+brought back with her from the little cupboard.  They had adopted
+him, fed him, educated him, wrapped him round with love; and he had
+lived to break their hearts.  Possibly there was some gipsy blood in
+him that defied their nurture.  But the speculation is not worth
+going into.  I only know that I felt the better that afternoon as I
+watched his figure diminishing on the road back to Drakeport.  He had
+a crown of mine in his pocket, and was still singing--
+
+     "Ho! just loosen the rope,
+      If it's only just for a while;
+      I fancy I see my father coming
+      Across from yonder stile."
+
+I had lied in telling him that the old doctor was dead.  As a matter
+of fact he lay dying that afternoon.  Half-way down the hill I saw
+the small figure of Jacobs, the sexton, turn in at the church-gate.
+He was going to toll the passing-bell.
+
+
+
+THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMKOFF.
+
+It is just six years ago that I first travelled the coast from
+Gorrans Haven to Zoze Point.
+
+Since then I have visited it in fair weather and foul; and in time,
+perhaps, shall rival the coastguardsmen, who can walk it blindfold.
+But to this day it remains in my recollection the coast I trod,
+without companion, during four dark days in December.  It was a rude
+introduction.  The wind blew in my face, with scuds of cold rain; a
+leaden mist hung low on the left, and rolled slowly up Channel.
+Now and then it thinned enough to reveal a white zigzag of breakers
+in front, and a blur of land; or, far below, a cluster of dripping
+rocks, with the sea crawling between and lifting their weed.  But for
+the most part I saw only the furze-bushes beside the path, each
+powdered with fine raindrops, that in the aggregate resembled a coat
+of grey frieze, and the puffs of spray that shot up over the cliff's
+lip and drenched me.
+
+Just beyond the Nare Head, where the path dipped steeply, a bright
+square disengaged itself from the mist as I passed, and, around it,
+the looming outline of a cottage, between the footpath and the sea.
+A habitation more desolate than this odd angle of the coast could
+hardly have been chosen; on the other hand, the glow of firelight
+within the kitchen window was almost an invitation.  It seemed worth
+my while to ask for a drink of milk there, and find out what manner
+of folk were the inmates.
+
+An old woman answered my knock.  She was tall, with a slight stoop,
+and a tinge of yellow pervading her face, as if some of the
+complexion had run into her teeth and the whites of her eyes.
+A clean white cap, tied under the chin with tape, concealed all but
+the edge of her grey locks.  She wore a violet turnover, a large
+wrapper, a brown stuff gown that hardly reached her ankles, and thick
+worsted stockings, but no shoes.
+
+"A drink o' milk?  Why not a dish o' tea?"
+
+"That will be troubling you," said I, a bit ashamed for feeling so
+little in want of sustenance.
+
+"Few they be that troubles us, my dear.  Too few by land, an' too
+many by sea, rest their dear souls!  Step inside by the fire.
+There's only my old man here, an' you needn't stand 'pon ceremony wi'
+_he_: for he's stone-deaf an' totelin'.  Isaac, you poor deaf
+haddock, here's a strange body for 'ee to look at; tho' you'm past
+all pomp but buryin', I reckon."  She sighed as I stepped past into
+the warmth.
+
+The man she called Isaac was huddled and nodding in a chair, before
+the bluish blaze of a wreck-wood fire.  He met me with an incurious
+stare, and began to doze again.  He was clearly in the last decline
+of manhood, the stage of utter childishness and mere oblivion; and
+sat there with his faculties collapsed, waiting for release.
+
+My mired boots played havoc with the neatly sanded floor; but the old
+woman dusted a chair for me as carefully as if I had worn robes of
+state, and set it on the other side of the hearth.  Then she put the
+kettle to boil, and unhitching a cup from the dresser, took a key
+from it, and opened a small cupboard between the fireplace and the
+wall.  That which she sought stood on the top shelf and she had to
+climb on a chair to reach it.  I offered my help: but no--she would
+get it herself.  It proved to be a small green canister.
+
+The tea that came from this canister I wish I could describe.
+No sooner did the boiling water touch it than the room was filled
+with fragrance.  The dotard in the chair drew a long breath through
+his nostrils, as though the aroma touched some quick centre in his
+moribund brain.  The woman poured out a cup, and I sipped it.
+
+"Smuggled," I thought to myself; for indeed you cannot get such tea
+in London if you pay fifty shillings a pound.
+
+"You like it?" she asked.  Before I could answer, a small table stood
+at my elbow, and she was loading it with delicacies from the
+cupboard.  The contents of that cupboard!  Caviare came from it, and
+a small ambrosial cheese; dried figs and guava jelly; olives,
+cherries in brandy, wonderful filberts glazed with sugar; biscuits
+and all manner of queer Russian sweets.  I leant back with wide eyes.
+
+"Feodor sends us these," said the old woman, bringing a dish of
+Cornish cream and a home-made loaf to give the feast a basis.
+
+"Who's Feodor?"
+
+"Feodor Himkoff."  She paused a moment, and added, "He's mate on a
+Russian vessel."
+
+"A friend?"
+
+The question went unnoticed.  "Is there any you fancy?" she asked.
+"Some o't may be outlandish eatin'."
+
+"Do _you_ like these things?" I looked from her to the caviare.
+
+"I don't know.  I never tried.  We keeps 'em, my man an' I, for all
+poor come-by-chance folks that knocks."
+
+"But these are dainties for rich men's tables."
+
+"May be.  I've never tasted--they'd stick in our ozels if we tried."
+
+I wanted to ask a dozen questions, but thought it politer to accept
+this strange hospitality in silence.  Glancing up presently, however,
+I saw her eyes still fixed on me, and laid down my knife.
+
+"I can't help it," I said, "I want to know about Feodor Himkoff."
+
+"There's no secret," she answered.  "Leastways, there _was_ one, but
+either God has condemned or forgiven afore now.  Look at my man
+there; he's done all the repentin' he's likely to do."
+
+After a few seconds' hesitation she went on--
+
+"I had a boy, you must know--oh! a straight young man--that went for
+a soldier, an' was killed at Inkerman by the Rooshians.  Take another
+look at his father here; you think 'en a bundle o' frailties, I
+dessay.  Well, when the news was brought us, this poor old worm lifts
+his fist up to the sun an' says, 'God do so to me an' more also,' he
+says, 'if ever I falls across a Rooshian!' An' 'God send me a
+Rooshian--just one!' he says, meanin' that Rooshians don't grow on
+brambles hereabouts.  Now the boy was our only flesh.
+
+"Well, sir, nigh sixteen year' went by, an' we two were sittin', one
+quakin' night, beside this very fire, hearkenin' to the bedlam
+outside: for 'twas the big storm in 'Seventy, an' even indoors we
+must shout to make ourselves heard.  About ten, as we was thinkin' to
+alley-couchey, there comes a bangin' on the door, an' Isaac gets up
+an' lets the bar down, singin' out, 'Who is it?'
+
+"There was a big young man 'twixt the doorposts, drippin' wet, wi'
+smears o' blood on his face, an' white teeth showin' when he talked.
+'Twas a half-furrin talk, an' he spoke a bit faint too, but fairly
+grinned for joy to see our warm fire,--an' his teeth were white as
+pearl.
+
+"'Ah, sir,' he cried, 'you will help?  Our barque is ashore below--
+fifteen poor brothers!  You will send for help?--you will aid?'
+
+"Then Isaac stepped back, and spoke very slow--'What nation?' he
+asked.  'She is Russ--we are all Russ; sixteen poor brothers from
+Archangel,' said the young man, as soon as he took in the question.
+My man slewed round on his heel, and walked to the hearth here; but
+the sailor stretched out his hands, an' I saw the middle finger of
+his right hand was gone.  'You will aid, eh?  Ah, yes, you will aid.
+They are clingin'--_so_--fifteen poor brothers, and many have wives.'
+But Isaac said, 'Thank Thee, God,' and picked up a log from the
+hearth here.  'Take 'em this message,' said he, facin' round; an',
+runnin' on the sailor, who was faint and swayin', beat him forth wi'
+the burnin' stick, and bolted the door upon him.
+
+"After that we sat quiet, he an' I, all the night through, never
+takin' our clothes off.  An' at daybreak Isaac walked down to the
+shore.  There was nothin' to see but two bodies, an' he buried them
+an' waited for more.  That evenin' another came in, an' next day,
+two; an' so on for a se'nnight.  Ten bodies in all he picked up and
+buried i' the meadow below.  An' on the fourth day he picked up a
+body wi' one finger missin', under the Nare Head.  'Twas the young
+man he had driven forth, who had wandered there an' broke his neck.
+Isaac buried him too.  An' that was all, except two that the
+coastguard found an' held an inquest over an' carr'd off to
+churchyard.
+
+"So it befell; an' for five year' neither Isaac nor me opened mouth
+'pon it, not to each other even.  An' then, one noonday, a sailor
+knocks at the door; an' goin' out, I seed he was a furriner, wi'
+great white teeth showin' dro' his beard.  'I be come to see Mister
+Isaac Lenine,' he says, in his outlandish English.  So I called Isaac
+out; an' the stranger grips 'en by the hand an' kisses 'en, sayin',
+'Little father, take me to their graves.  My name is Feodor Himkoff,
+an' my brother Dmitry was among the crew of the _Viatka_.  You would
+know his body, if you buried it, for the second finger was gone from
+his right hand.  I myself--wretched one!--chopped it by bad luck when
+we were boys, an' played at wood cuttin' wi' our father's axe.
+I have heard how they perished, far from aid, and how you gave 'em
+burial in your own field: and I pray to all the saints for you,' he
+says.
+
+"So Isaac led 'en to the field and showed 'en the grave that was
+staked off 'long wi' the rest.  God help my poor man! he was too big
+a coward to speak.  So the man stayed wi' us till sundown, an' kissed
+us 'pon both cheeks, an' went his way, blessin' us.  God forgi'e us--
+God forgi'e us!
+
+"An' ever since he's been breaking our heads dro' the post-office wi'
+such-like precious balms as these here."  She broke off to settle
+Isaac more comfortably in his chair.  "'Tis all we can do to get rid
+of 'em on poor trampin' fellows same as yourself."
+
+
+
+YORKSHIRE DICK.
+
+"See here, you'd best _lose_ the bitch--till tomorrow, anyway.
+She ain't the sight to please a strict man, like your dad, on the
+Sabbath day.  What's more, she won't heal for a fortni't, not to
+deceive a Croolty-to-Animals Inspector at fifty yards; an' with any
+man but me she'll take a month."
+
+My friend Yorkshire Dick said this, with that curious gypsy
+intonation that turns English into a foreign tongue if you forget the
+words and listen only to the voice.  He was squatting in the
+sunshine, with his back against an oak sapling, a black cutty under
+his nose, and Meg, my small fox-terrier, between his thighs.
+In those days, being just fifteen, I had taken a sketch-book and put
+myself to school under Dick to learn the lore of Things As They Are:
+and, as part of the course, we had been the death of a badger that
+morning--Sunday morning.
+
+It was one of those days in autumn when the dews linger in the shade
+till noon and the blackberry grows too watery for the _connoisseur_.
+On the ridge where we loafed, the short turf was dry enough, and the
+sun strong between the sparse saplings; but the paths that zigzagged
+down the thick coppice to right and left were soft to the foot, and
+streaked with the slimy tracks of snails.  A fine blue mist filled
+the gulf on either hand, and beneath it mingled the voices of streams
+and of birds busy beside them.  At the mouth of each valley a thicker
+column of blue smoke curled up like a feather--that to the left
+rising from the kitchen chimney of my father's cottage, that to the
+right from the encampment where Dick's _bouillon_ was simmering above
+a wood fire.
+
+Looking over Dick's shoulder along the ridge I could see, at a point
+where the two valleys climbed to the upland, a white-washed building,
+set alone, and backed by an undulating moorland dotted with
+clay-works.  This was Ebenezer Chapel; and my father was its deacon.
+Its one bell had sounded down the ridge and tinkled in my ear from
+half-past ten to eleven that morning.  Its pastor would walk back and
+eat roast duck and drink three-star brandy under my father's roof
+after service.  Bell and pastor had spoken in vain, as far as I was
+concerned; but I knew that all they had to say would be rubbed in
+with my father's stirrup-leather before nightfall.
+
+"'Tis pretty sport," said Dick, "but it leaves traces."
+
+Between us the thin red soil of the ridge was heaped in mounds, and
+its stain streaked our clothes and faces.  On one of these mounds lay
+a spade and two picks, a pair of tongs, an old sack, dyed in its
+original service of holding sheep's reddle, and, on the sack, the
+carcase of our badger, its grey hairs messed with blood about the
+snout.  This carcase was a matter of study not only to me, who had my
+sketch-book out, but to a couple of Dick's terriers tied up to a
+sapling close by--an ugly mongrel, half fox-half bull-terrier, and a
+Dandie Dinmont--who were straining to get at it.  As for Dick, he
+never lifted his eyes, but went on handling Meg.
+
+He had the gypsy's secret with animals, and the poor little bitch
+hardly winced under his touch, though her under-lip was torn away,
+and hung, like a red rag, by half an inch of flesh.
+
+
+We had dug and listened and dug again for our badger, all the
+morning.  Then Dick sent his mongrel in at the hole, and the mongrel
+had come forth like a projectile and sat down at a distance,
+bewailing his lot.  After him the Dandie went in and sneaked out
+again with a fore-paw bitten to the bone.  And at last Meg stepped in
+grimly, and stayed.  For a time there was dead silence, and then as
+we pressed our ears against the turf and the violets, that were just
+beginning their autumnal flowering, we heard a scuffling underground
+and began to dig down to it, till the sweat streamed into our eyes.
+Now Dick's wife had helped us to bring up the tools, and hung around
+to watch the sport--an ugly, apathetic woman, with hair like a
+horse's tail bound in a yellow rag, a man's hips, and a skirt of old
+sacking.  I think there was no love lost between her and Dick,
+because she had borne him no children.  Anyway, while Dick and I were
+busy, digging like niggers and listening like Indians--for Meg didn't
+bark, not being trained to the work, and all we could hear was a
+_thud, thud_ now and then, and the hard breathing of the grapple--all
+of a sudden the old hag spoke, for the first time that day--
+
+"S'trewth, but I've gripped!"
+
+Looking up, I saw her stretched along the side of the turf, with her
+head resting on the lip of the badger's hole and her right arm
+inside, up to the arm-pit.  Without speaking again, she began to work
+her body back, like a snake, the muscles swelling and sinking from
+shoulder to flank in small waves.  She had the strength of a horse.
+Inch by inch she pulled back, while we dug around the mouth of the
+hole, filling her mouth and eyes with dirt, until her arm came to
+light, then the tongs she held; and then Dick spat out a mighty
+oath--
+
+"It's the _dog_ she's got!"
+
+So it was.  The woman had hold of Meg all the time, and the game
+little brute had held on to the badger.  Also the badger had held
+_her_, and when at last his hold slipped, she was a gruesome sight.
+She looked round, reproachfully, shook the earth out of her eyes and
+went in again without a sound.  And Dick picked up a clod and threw
+it in his wife's face, between the eyes.  She cursed him, in a
+perfunctory way, and walked off, down the wood, to look after her
+stew.
+
+But now, Meg having pinned her enemy again, we soon dug them out: and
+I held the sack while Dick took the badger by the tail and dropped
+him in.  His teeth snapped, a bare two inches from my left hand, as
+he fell.  After a short rest, he was despatched.  The method need not
+be described.  It was somewhat crude, and in fact turned me not a
+little sick.
+
+
+"One o'clock," Dick observed, glancing up at the sun, and resuming
+his care of Meg.  "What're ye trying to do, youngster?"
+
+"Trying to put on paper what a badger's like when he's dead.  If only
+I had colours--"
+
+"My son, there's a kind of man afflicted with an itch to put all he
+sees on paper.  What's the use?  Fifty men might sit down and write
+what the grey of a badger's like; and they can't, because there's no
+words for it.  All they can say is that 'tis badger's-grey--which
+means nought to a man that hasn't seen one; and a man that _has_
+don't want to be told.  Same with your pencils and paints.  Cast your
+head back and look up--how deep can you see into the sky?"
+
+"Miles."
+
+"Ay, and every mile shining to the eye.  I've seen pictures in my
+time, but never one that made a dab of paint look a mile deep.
+Besides, why draw a thing when you can lie on your back and look up
+at it?"
+
+I was about to answer when Dick raised his head, with a queer
+alertness in his eyes.  Then he vented a long, low whistle, and went
+on binding up Meg's jaw.
+
+Immediately after, there was a crackling of boughs to the left and my
+father's head appeared above the slope, with the red face of the
+pastor behind it.  We were caught.
+
+On the harangue that followed I have no wish to dwell.  My father and
+the pastor pitched it in by turns, while Dick went on with his
+surgery, his mouth pursed up for a soundless whistle.  The
+prosecution had it all its own way, and I felt uncomfortably sure
+about the sentence.
+
+But at last, to our amazement, Dick, having finished the bandaging,
+let Meg go and advanced.  He picked up my sketch-book.
+
+"Gentlemen both," said he, "I've been listening respectful to your
+talk about God and his wrath, and as a poor heathen I'd like to know
+your idea of him.  Here's a pencil and paper.  Will you be kind
+enough to draw God? that I may see what he's like."
+
+The pastor's jaw dropped.  My father went grey with rage.  Dick stood
+a pace back, smiling; and the sun glanced on the gold rings in his
+ears.
+
+"No, sirs.  It ain't blasphemy.  But I know you can't give me a
+notion that won't make him out to be a sort of man, pretty much like
+yourselves--two eyes, a nose, mouth, and beard perhaps.  Now my wife
+says there's points about a woman that you don't reckon into your
+notion; and my dog says there's more in a tail than most men
+estimate--"
+
+"You foul-tongued poacher--" broke out my father.
+
+"Now you're mixing matters up," Dick interrupted, blandly; "I poach,
+and that's a crime.  I've shown your boy to-day how men kill badgers,
+and maybe that's wrong.  But look here, sir--I've taught him some
+things besides; the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; how to
+tell the hour by sun and stars; how to know an ash from a beech, of a
+pitch-dark night, by the sound of the wind in their tops; what herbs
+will cure disease and where to seek them; why some birds hop and
+others run.  Sirs, I come of an old race that has outlived books and
+pictures and meeting-houses: you belong to a new one and a cock-sure,
+and maybe you're right.  Anyhow, you know precious little of this
+world, whatever you may of another."
+
+He stopped, pushed a hand through his coarse black hair, and, as if
+suddenly tired, resumed the old, sidelong gypsy look that he had been
+straightening with an effort.
+
+"Your boy'll believe what you tell him: he's got the strength in his
+blood.  Take him home and don't beat him too hard."
+
+He glanced at me with a light nod, untied his dogs, shouldered his
+tools, and slouched away down the path, to sleep under his accustomed
+tree that night and be off again, next day, travelling amongst men
+and watching them with his weary ironical smile.
+
+
+
+THE CAROL.
+
+I was fourteen that Christmas:--all Veryan parish knows the date of
+the famous "Black Winter," when the _Johann_ brig came ashore on
+Kibberick beach, with a dozen foreigners frozen stiff and staring on
+her fore-top, and Lawyer Job, up at Ruan, lost all his lambs but two.
+There was neither rhyme nor wit in the season; and up to St. Thomas's
+eve, when it first started to freeze, the folk were thinking that
+summer meant to run straight into spring.  I mind the ash being in
+leaf on Advent Sunday, and a crowd of martins skimming round the
+church windows during sermon-time.  Each morning brought blue sky,
+warm mists, and a dew that hung on the brambles till ten o'clock.
+The frogs were spawning in the pools; primroses were out by scores,
+and monthly roses blooming still; and Master shot a goat-sucker on
+the last day in November.  All this puzzled the sheep, I suppose, and
+gave them a notion that their time, too, was at hand.  At any rate
+the lambs fell early; and when they fell, it had turned to perishing
+cold.
+
+That Christmas-eve, while the singers were up at the house and the
+fiddles going like mad, it was a dismal time for two of us.  Laban
+Pascoe, the hind, spent his night in the upper field where the sheep
+lay, while I spent mine in the chall[1] looking after Dinah, our
+Alderney, that had slipped her calf in the afternoon--being promised
+the castling's skin for a Sunday waistcoat, if I took care of the
+mother.  Bating the cold air that came under the door, I kept pretty
+cosy, what with the straw-bands round my legs and the warm breath of
+the cows: for we kept five.  There was no wind outside, but moonlight
+and a still, frozen sky, like a sounding board: so that every note of
+the music reached me, with the bleat of Laban's sheep far up the
+hill, and the waves' wash on the beaches below.  Inside the chall the
+only sounds were the slow chewing of the cows, the rattle of a
+tethering-block, now and then, or a moan from Dinah.  Twice the
+uproar from the house coaxed me to the door to have a look at Laban's
+scarlet lantern moving above, and make sure that he was worse off
+than I.  But mostly I lay still on my straw in the one empty stall
+staring into the foggy face of my own lantern, thinking of the
+waistcoat, and listening.
+
+I was dozing, belike, when a light tap on the door made me start up,
+rubbing my eyes.
+
+"Merry Christmas, Dick!"
+
+A little head, bright with tumbled curls, was thrust in, and a pair
+of round eyes stared round the chall, then back to me, and rested on
+my face.
+
+"Merry Christmas, little mistress."
+
+"Dick--if you tell, I'll never speak to you again.  I only wanted to
+see if 'twas true."
+
+She stepped inside the chall, shutting the door behind her.
+Under one arm she hugged a big boy-doll, dressed like a sailor--from
+the Christmas-tree, I guessed--and a bright tinsel star was pinned on
+the shoulder of her bodice.  She had come across the cold town-place
+in her muslin frock, with no covering for her shoulders; and the
+manner in which that frock was hitched upon her made me stare.
+
+"I got out of bed again and dressed myself," she explained.  "Nurse
+is in the kitchen, dancing with the young man from Penare, who can't
+afford to marry her for _ever_ so long, father says.  I saw them
+twirling, as I slipped out--"
+
+"You have done a wrong thing,"  said I: "you might catch your death."
+
+Her lip fell:--she was but five.  "Dick, I only wanted to see if
+'twas true."
+
+"What?"  I asked, covering her shoulders with the empty sack that had
+been my pillow.
+
+"Why, that the cows pray on Christmas-eve.  Nurse says that at twelve
+o'clock to-night all the cows in their stalls will be on their knees,
+if only somebody is there to see.  So, as it's near twelve by the
+tall clock indoors, I've come to see," she wound up.
+
+"It's quig-nogs, I expect.  I never heard of it."
+
+"Nurse says they kneel and make a cruel moan, like any Christian
+folk.  It's because Christ was born in a stable, and so the cows know
+all about it.  Listen to Dinah!  Dick, she's going to begin!"
+
+But Dinah, having heaved her moan, merely shuddered and was still
+again.
+
+"Just fancy, Dick," the little one went on, "it happened in a chall
+like ours!"  She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the glossy
+rumps of the cows.  Then, turning quickly--"I know about it, and I'll
+show you.  Dick, you must be Saint Joseph, and I'll be the Virgin
+Mary.  Wait a bit--"
+
+Her quick fingers began to undress the sailor-doll and fold his
+clothes carefully.  "I _meant_ to christen him Robinson Crusoe," she
+explained, as she laid the small garments, one by one, on the straw;
+"but he can't be Robinson Crusoe till I've dressed him up again."
+The doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and shoulders, and
+bulging bags of sawdust for body and legs.
+
+"Dick," she said, folding the doll in her arms and kissing it--
+"St. Joseph, I mean--the first thing we've got to do is to let people
+know he's born.  Sing that carol I heard you trying over last week--
+the one that says 'Far and far I carry it.'"
+
+So I sang, while she rocked the babe:--
+
+      'Naked boy, brown boy,
+        In the snow deep,
+       Piping, carolling
+        Folks out of sleep;
+       Little shoes, thin shoes,
+        Shoes so wet and worn'--
+      'But I bring the merry news
+        --Christ is born!
+
+       Rise, pretty mistress,
+        In your smock of silk;
+       Give me for my good news
+        Bread and new milk.
+       Joy, joy in Jewry,
+        This very morn!
+       Far and far I carry it
+        --Christ is born!'
+
+She heard me with a grave face to the end; then pulling a handful of
+straw, spread it in the empty manger and laid the doll there.  No, I
+forget; one moment she held it close to her breast and looked down on
+it.  The God who fashions children can tell where she learnt that
+look, and why I remembered it ten years later, when they let me look
+into the room where she lay with another babe in her clay-cold arms.
+
+"Count forty," she went on, using the very words of Pretty Tommy, our
+parish clerk: "count forty, and let fly with 'Now draw around--'"
+
+     "Now draw around, good Christian men,
+      And rest you worship-ping--"
+
+We sang the carol softly together, she resting one hand on the edge
+of the manger.
+
+"Dick, ain't you proud of him?  I don't see the spiders beginning,
+though."
+
+"The spiders?"
+
+"Dick, you're very ig-norant.  _Everybody_ knows that, when Christ
+was laid in a manger, the spiders came and spun their webs over Him
+and hid Him.  That's why King Herod couldn't find Him."
+
+"There, now!  We live and learn," said I.
+
+"Well, now there's nothing to do but sit down and wait for the wise
+men and the shepherds."
+
+It was a little while that she watched, being long over-tired.
+The warm air of the chall weighed on her eyelids; and, as they
+closed, her head sank on my shoulder.  For ten minutes I sat,
+listening to her breathing.  Dinah rose heavily from her bed and lay
+down again, with a long sigh; another cow woke up and rattled her
+rope a dozen times through its ring; up at the house the fiddling
+grew more furious; but the little maid slept on.  At last I wrapped
+the sack closely round her, and lifting her in my arms, carried her
+out into the night.  She was my master's daughter, and I had not the
+courage to kiss so much as her hair.  Yet I had no envy for the
+dancers, then.
+
+As we passed into the cold air she stirred.  "Did they come?  And
+where are you carrying me?"    Then, when I told her, "Dick, I will
+never speak to you again, if you don't carry me first to the gate of
+the upper field."
+
+So I carried her to the gate, and sitting up in my arms she called
+twice:
+
+"Laban--Laban!"
+
+"What cheer--O?" the hind called back.  His lantern was a spark on
+the hill-side, and he could not tell the voice at that distance.
+
+"Have you seen him?"
+
+"Wha-a-a-t?"
+
+"The angel of the Lo-o-ord!"
+
+"Wha-a-a-t?"
+
+"I'm afraid we can't make him understand," she whispered.
+"Hush; don't shout!"  For a moment, she seemed to consider; and then
+her shrill treble quavered out on the frosty air, my own deeper voice
+taking up the second line--
+
+     "The first' Nowell' the angel did say
+      Was to certain poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
+      --In fields as they lay, a-tending their sheep,
+      On a cold winters night that was so deep--
+                                Nowell!  Nowell!
+      Christ is born in Israel!"
+
+Our voices followed our shadows across the gate and far up the field,
+where Laban's sheep lay dotted.  What Laban thought of it I cannot
+tell: but to me it seemed, for the moment, that the shepherd among
+his ewes, the dancers within the house, the sea beneath us, and the
+stars in their courses overhead moved all to one tune,--the carol of
+two children on the hill-side.
+
+[1] Cow-house.
+
+
+
+THE PARADISE OF CHOICE.
+
+It was not as in certain toy houses that foretell the weather by
+means of a man-doll and a woman-doll--the man going in as the woman
+comes out, and _vice versa_.  In this case both man and woman stepped
+out, the man half a minute behind; so that the woman was almost at
+the street-corner while he hesitated just outside the door, blinking
+up at the sky, and then dropping his gaze along the pavement.
+
+The sky was flattened by a fog that shut down on the roofs and
+chimneys like a tent-cloth, white and opaque.  Now and then a
+yellowish wave rolled across it from eastward, and the cloth would be
+shaken.  When this happened, the street was always filled with gloom,
+and the receding figure of the woman lost in it for a while.
+
+The man thrust a hand into his trousers pocket, pulled out a penny,
+and after considering for a couple of seconds, spun it carelessly.
+It fell in his palm, tail up; and he regarded it as a sailor might a
+compass.  The trident in Britannia's hand pointed westward, down the
+street.
+
+"West it is," he decided with a shrug, implying that all the four
+quarters were equally to his mind.  He was pocketing the coin, when
+footsteps approached, and he lifted his head.  It was the woman
+returning.  She halted close to him with an undecided manner, and the
+pair eyed each other.
+
+We may know them as Adam and Eve, for both were beginning a world
+that contained neither friends nor kin.  Both had very white hands
+and very short hair.  The man was tall and meagre, with a receding
+forehead and a sandy complexion that should have been freckled, but
+was not.  He had a trick of half-closing his eyes when he looked at
+anything, not screwing them up as seamen do, but appearing rather to
+drop a film over them like the inner eyelid of a bird.  The woman's
+eyes resembled a hare's, being brown and big, and set far back, so
+that she seemed at times to be looking right behind her.  She wore a
+faded look, from her dust-coloured hair to her boots, which wanted
+blacking.
+
+"It all seems so wide," she began; "so wide--"
+
+"I'm going west," said the man, and started at a slow walk.
+Eve followed, a pace behind his heels, treading almost in his tracks.
+He went on, taking no notice of her.
+
+"How long were you in there?" she asked, after a while.
+
+"Ten year'."  Adam spoke without looking back.  "'Cumulated jobs, you
+know."
+
+"I was only two.  Blankets it was with me.  They recommended me to
+mercy."
+
+"You got it," Adam commented, with his eyes fastened ahead.
+
+The fog followed them as they turned into a street full of traffic.
+Its frayed edge rose and sank, was parted and joined again--now
+descending to the first-storey windows and blotting out the cabmen
+and passengers on omnibus tops, now rolling up and over the parapets
+of the houses and the sky-signs.  It was noticeable that in the crowd
+that hustled along the pavement Adam moved like a puppy not yet
+waywise, but with lifted face, while Eve followed with her head bent,
+seeing nothing but his heels.  She observed that his boots were
+hardly worn at all.
+
+Three or four times, as they went along, Adam would eye a shop window
+and turn in at the door, while Eve waited.  He returned from
+different excursions with a twopenny loaf, a red sausage, a pipe, box
+of lights and screw of tobacco, and a noggin or so of gin in an old
+soda-water bottle.  Once they turned aside into a public, and had a
+drink of gin together.  Adam paid.
+
+Thus for two hours they plodded westward, and the fog and crowd were
+with them all the way--strangers jostling them by the shoulder on the
+greasy pavement, hansoms splashing the brown mud over them--the same
+din for miles.  Many shops were lighting up, and from these a yellow
+flare streamed into the fog; or a white when it came from the
+electric light; or separate beams of orange, green, and violet, when
+the shop was a druggist's.
+
+Then they came to the railings of Hyde Park, and trudged down the
+hill alongside them to Kensington Gardens.  It was yet early in the
+afternoon.  Adam pulled up.
+
+"Come and look," he said.  "It's autumn in there," and he went in at
+the Victoria gate, with Eve at his heels.
+
+"Mister, how old might you be?" she asked, encouraged by the sound of
+his voice.
+
+"Thirty."
+
+"And you've passed ten years in--in there."  She jerked her head back
+and shivered a little.
+
+He had stooped to pick up a leaf.  It was a yellow leaf from a
+chestnut that reached into the fog above them.  He picked it slowly
+to pieces, drawing full draughts of air into his lungs.  "Fifteen,"
+he jerked out, "one time and another.  'Cumulated, you know."
+Pausing, he added, in a matter-of-fact voice, "What I've took would
+come to less'n a pound's worth, altogether."
+
+The Gardens were deserted, and the pair roamed towards the centre,
+gazing curiously at so much of sodden vegetation as the fog allowed
+them to see.  Their eyes were not jaded; to them a blade of grass was
+not a little thing.
+
+They were down on the south side, amid the heterogeneous plants there
+collected, examining each leaf, spelling the Latin labels and
+comparing them, when the hour came for closing.  In the dense
+atmosphere the park-keeper missed them.  The gates were shut; and the
+fog settled down thicker with the darkness.
+
+Then the man and the woman were aware, and grew afraid.  They saw
+only a limitless plain of grey about them, and heard a murmur as of
+the sea rolling around it.
+
+"This gaol is too big," whispered Eve, and they took hands.  The man
+trembled.  Together they moved into the fog, seeking an outlet.
+
+
+At the end of an hour or so they stumbled on a seat, and sat down for
+awhile to share the bread and sausage, and drink the gin.  Eve was
+tired out and would have slept, but the man shook her by the
+shoulder.
+
+"For God's sake don't leave me to face this alone.  Can you sing?"
+
+She began "_When other lips_ . . ." in a whisper which gradually
+developed into a reedy soprano.  She had forgotten half the words,
+but Adam lit a pipe and listened appreciatively.
+
+"Tell you what," he said at the close; "you'll be able to pick up a
+little on the road with your singing.  We'll tramp west to-morrow,
+and pass ourselves off for man and wife.  Likely we'll get some farm
+work, down in the country.  Let's get out of this."
+
+They joined hands and started off again, unable to see a foot before
+them in the blackness.  So it happened next morning that the
+park-keeper, coming at his usual hour to unlock the gates, found a
+man and a woman inside with their white faces pressed against the
+railings, through which they glared like caged beasts.  He set them
+free, and they ran out, for his paradise was too big.
+
+
+Now, facing west, they tramped for two days on the Bath road, leaving
+the fog behind them, and drew near Reading.  It was a clear night as
+they approached it, and the sky studded with stars that twinkled
+frostily.  Eleven o'clock sounded from a tower ahead.  On the
+outskirts of the town they were passing an ugly modern villa with a
+large garden before it, when an old gentleman came briskly up the
+road and turned in at the gate.
+
+Adam swung round on his heel and followed him up the path, begging.
+Eve hung by the gate.
+
+"No," said the old gentleman, fitting his latchkey into the door,
+"I have no work to offer.  Eh?--Is that your wife by the gate?
+Hungry?"
+
+Adam whispered a lie in his ear.
+
+"Poor woman, and to be on the road, in such a state, at this hour!
+Well, you shall share my supper before you search for a lodging.
+Come inside," he called out to Eve, "and be careful of the step.
+It's a high one."
+
+He led them in, past the ground-floor rooms and up a flight of
+stairs.  After pausing on the landing and waiting a long time for Eve
+to take breath, he began to ascend another flight.
+
+"Are we going to have supper on the leads?" Adam wondered.
+
+They followed the old gentleman up to the attics and into a kind of
+tower, where was a small room with two tables spread, the one with a
+supper, the other with papers, charts, and mathematical instruments.
+
+"Here," said their guide, "is bread, a cold chicken, and a bottle of
+whisky.  I beg you to excuse me while you eat.  The fact is, I dabble
+in astronomy.  My telescope is on the roof above, and to-night every
+moment is precious."
+
+There was a ladder fixed in the room, leading to a trap-door in the
+ceiling.  Up this ladder the old gentleman trotted, and in half a
+minute had disappeared, shutting the trap behind him.
+
+It was half an hour or more before Adam climbed after him, with Eve,
+as usual, at his heels.
+
+"My dear madam!" cried the astronomer, "and in your state!"
+
+"I told you a lie," Adam said.  "I've come to beg your pardon.
+May we look at the stars before we go?"
+
+In two minutes the old gentleman was pointing out the
+constellations--the Great Bear hanging low in the north-east,
+pointing to the Pole star, and across it to Cassiopeia's bright
+zigzag high in the heavens; the barren square of Pegasus, with its
+long tail stretching to the Milky Way, and the points that cluster
+round Perseus; Arcturus, white Vega and yellow Capella; the Twins,
+and beyond them the Little Dog twinkling through a coppice of naked
+trees to eastward; yet further round the Pleiads climbing, with red
+Aldebaran after them; below them Orion's belt, and last of all,
+Sirius flashing like a diamond, white and red, and resting on the
+horizon where the dark pasture lands met the sky.
+
+Then, growing flushed with his subject, he began to descant on these
+stars, their distances and velocities; how that each was a sun,
+careering in measureless space, each trailing a company of worlds
+that spun and hurtled round it; that the Dog-star's light shone into
+their eyes across a hundred trillion miles; that the star itself
+swept along a thousand miles in a minute.  He hurled figures at them,
+heaping millions on millions.  "See here"--and, turning the telescope
+on its pivot, he sighted it carefully. "Look at that small star in
+the Great Bear: that's Groombridge Eighteen-thirty.  _He's_ two
+hundred billions of miles away.  _He_ travels two hundred miles a
+second, does Groombridge Eighteen-thirty.  In one minute Groombridge
+Eighteen-thirty could go from here to Hong-Kong."
+
+"Then damn Groombridge Eighteen-thirty!"
+
+It was uttered in the bated tone that night enforces: but it came
+with a groan.  The old gentleman faced round in amazement.
+
+"He means, sir," explained the woman, who had grown to understand
+Adam passing well, "my man means that it's all too big for us.
+We've strayed out of prison, sir, and shall feel safer back again,
+looking at all this behind bars."
+
+
+She reached out a hand to Adam: and this time it was he that
+followed, as one blinded and afraid.  In three months they were back
+again at the gates of the paradise they had wandered from.
+There stood a warder before it, clad in blue: but he carried no
+flaming sword, and the door opened and let them in.
+
+
+
+BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES.
+
+On the outskirts of the village of Gantick stand two small
+semi-detached cottages, coloured with the same pale yellow wash,
+their front gardens descending to the high-road in parallel lines,
+their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a little
+wood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of a
+mighty forest.  The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen of
+white-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took up
+my lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of May by my diary);
+and at the end of it are two small arbours, set back to back, their
+dilapidated sides and roofs bound together by clematis.
+
+The night of my arrival, my landlady asked me to make the least
+possible noise in unpacking my portmanteau, because there was trouble
+next door, and the partitions were thin.  Our neighbour's wife was
+down with inflammation, she explained--inflammation of the lungs, as
+I learnt by a question or two.  It was a bad case.  She was a wisht,
+ailing soul to begin with.  Also the owls in the wood above had been
+hooting loudly, for nights past: and yesterday a hedge-sparrow lit on
+the sill of the sick-room window, two sure tokens of approaching
+death.  The sick woman was being nursed by her elder sister, who had
+lived in the house for two years, and practically taken charge of it.
+"Better the man had married _she_" my landlady added, somewhat
+unfeelingly.
+
+I saw the man in his garden early next morning: a tall
+fellow, hardly yet on the wrong side of thirty, dressed in
+loose-fitting tweed coat and corduroys.  A row of bee-hives stood
+along his side of the party wall, and he had taken the farthest one,
+which was empty, off its stand, and was rubbing it on the inside with
+a handful of elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a new
+swarm.  Even from my bed-room window I remarked, as he turned his
+head occasionally, that he was singularly handsome.  His movements
+were those of a lazy man in a hurry, though there seemed no reason
+for hurry in his task.  But when it was done, and the hive replaced,
+his behaviour began to be so eccentric that I paused in the midst of
+my shaving, to watch.
+
+He passed slowly down the line of bee-hives, halting beside each in
+turn, and bending his head down close to the orifice with the exact
+action of a man whispering a secret into another's ear.  I believe he
+kept this attitude for a couple of minutes beside each hive--there
+were eight, besides the empty one.  At the end of the row he lifted
+his head, straightened his shoulders, and cast a glance up at my
+window, where I kept well out of sight.  A minute after, he entered
+his house by the back door, and did not reappear.
+
+At breakfast I asked my landlady if our neighbour were wrong in his
+head at all.  She looked astonished, and answered, "No: he was a
+do-nothing fellow--unless you counted it hard work to drive a
+carrier's van thrice a week into Tregarrick, and home the same night.
+But he kept very steady, and had a name for good nature."
+
+Next day the man was in his garden at the same hour, and repeated the
+performance.  Throughout the following night I was kept awake by a
+series of monotonous groans that reached me through the partition,
+and the murmur of voices speaking at intervals.  It was horrible to
+lie within a few inches of the sick woman's head, to listen to her
+agony and be unable to help, unable even to see.  Towards six in the
+morning, in bright daylight, I dropped off to sleep at last.
+
+Two hours later the sound of voices came in at the open window and
+awoke me.  I looked out into my neighbour's garden.  He was standing,
+half-way up the path, in the sunshine, and engaged in a suppressed
+but furious altercation with a thin woman, somewhat above middle
+height.  Both wore thick green veils over their faces and thick
+gloves on their hands.  The woman carried a rusty tea-tray.
+
+The man stood against her, motioning her back towards the house.
+I caught a sentence--"It'll be the death of her;" and the woman
+glanced back over her shoulder towards the window of the sick-room.
+She seemed about to reply, but shrugged her shoulders instead and
+went back into the house, carrying her tray.  The man turned on his
+heel, walked hurriedly up the garden, and scrambled over its hedge
+into the wood.  His veil and thick gloves were explained a couple of
+hours later, when I looked into the garden again and saw him hiving a
+swarm of bees that he had captured, the first of the season.
+
+That same afternoon, about four o'clock, I observed that every window
+in the next house stood wide open.  My landlady was out in the
+garden, "picking in" her week's washing from the thorn hedge where it
+had been suspended to dry; and I called her attention to this new
+freak of our neighbours.
+
+"Ah, then, the poor soul must be nigh to her end," said she.
+"That's done to give her an easy death."
+
+The woman died at half-past seven.  And next morning her husband hung
+a scrap of black crape to each of the bee-hives.
+
+She was buried on Sunday afternoon.  From behind the drawn blinds of
+my sitting-room window I saw the funeral leave the house and move
+down the front garden to the high-road--the heads of the mourners,
+each with a white handkerchief pressed to its nose, appearing above
+the wall like the top of a procession in some Assyrian sculpture.
+The husband wore a ridiculously tall hat, and a hat-band with long
+tails.  The whole affair had the appearance of an hysterical outrage
+on the afternoon sunshine.  At the foot of the garden they struck up
+a "burying tune," and passed down the road, shouting it with all
+their lungs.
+
+I caught up a book and rushed out into the back garden for fresh air.
+Even out of doors it was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myself
+down on the bench within the arbour and set myself to read.  A plank
+behind me had started, and after a while the edge of it began to gall
+my shoulders as I leant back.  I tried once or twice to push it into
+its place, without success, and then, in a moment of irritation, gave
+it a tug.  It came away in my hand, and something rolled out on the
+bench before me, and broke in two.
+
+I picked it up.  It was a lump of dough, rudely moulded to the shape
+of a woman, with a rusty brass-headed nail stuck through the breast.
+Around the body was tied a lock of fine light-brown hair--a woman's,
+by its length.
+
+After a careful examination, I untied the lock of hair, put the doll
+back in its place behind the plank, and returned to the house: for I
+had a question or two to put to my landlady.
+
+"Was the dead woman at all like her elder sister?" I asked.  "Was she
+black-haired, for instance?"
+
+"No," answered my landlady; "she was shorter and much fairer.
+You might almost call her a light-haired woman."
+
+I hoped she would pardon me for changing the subject abruptly and
+asking an apparently ridiculous question, but would she call a man
+mad if she found him whispering secrets into a bee-hive?
+
+My landlady promptly replied that, on the contrary, she would think
+him extremely sensible; for that, unless bees were told of all that
+was happening in the household to which they belonged, they might
+consider themselves neglected, and leave the place in wrath.
+She asserted this to be a notorious fact.
+
+"I have one more question," I said.  "Suppose that you found in your
+garden a lock of hair--a lock such as this, for instance--what would
+you do with it?"
+
+She looked at it, and caught her breath sharply.
+
+"I'm no meddler," she said at last; "I should burn it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because if 'twas left about, the birds might use it for their nests,
+and weave it in so tight that the owner couldn't rise on Judgment
+day."
+
+So I burnt the lock of hair in her presence; because I wanted its
+owner to rise on Judgment day and state a case which, after all, was
+no affair of mine.
+
+
+
+THE MAGIC SHADOW.
+
+Once upon a time there was born a man-child with a magic shadow.
+
+His case was so rare that a number of doctors have been disputing
+over it ever since and picking his parents' histories and genealogies
+to bits, to find the cause.  Their inquiries do not help us much.
+The father drove a cab; the mother was a charwoman and came of a
+consumptive family.  But these facts will not quite account for a
+magic shadow.  The birth took place on the night of a new moon, down
+a narrow alley into which neither moon nor sun ever penetrated beyond
+the third-storey windows--and that is why the parents were so long in
+discovering their child's miraculous gift.  The hospital-student who
+attended merely remarked that the babe was small and sickly, and
+advised the mother to drink sound port-wine while nursing him,--which
+she could not afford.
+
+Nevertheless, the boy struggled somehow through five years of life,
+and was put into smallclothes.  Two weeks after this promotion his
+mother started off to scrub out a big house in the fashionable
+quarter, and took him with her: for the house possessed a wide
+garden, laid with turf and lined with espaliers, sunflowers, and
+hollyhocks, and as the month was August, and the family away in
+Scotland, there seemed no harm in letting the child run about in this
+paradise while she worked.  A flight of steps descended from the
+drawing-room to the garden, and as she knelt on her mat in the cool
+room it was easy to keep an eye on him.  Now and then she gazed out
+into the sunshine and called; and the boy stopped running about and
+nodded back, or shouted the report of some fresh discovery.
+
+By-and-by a sulphur butterfly excited him so that he must run up the
+broad stone steps with the news.  The woman laughed, looking at his
+flushed face, then down at his shoe-strings, which were untied: and
+then she jumped up, crying out sharply--"Stand still, child--stand
+still a moment!"
+
+She might well stare.  Her boy stood and smiled in the sun, and his
+shadow lay on the whitened steps.  Only the silhouette was not that
+of a little breeched boy at all, but of a little girl in petticoats;
+and it wore long curls, whereas the charwoman's son was
+close-cropped.
+
+The woman stepped out on the terrace to look closer.  She twirled her
+son round and walked him down into the garden, and backwards and
+forwards, and stood him in all manner of positions and attitudes, and
+rubbed her eyes.  But there was no mistake: the shadow was that of a
+little girl.
+
+She hurried over her charing, and took the boy home for his father to
+see before sunset.  As the matter seemed important, and she did not
+wish people in the street to notice anything strange, they rode back
+in an omnibus.  They might have spared their haste, however, as the
+cab-driver did not reach home till supper-time, and then it was found
+that in the light of a candle, even when stuck inside a
+carriage-lamp, their son cast just an ordinary shadow.  But next
+morning at sunrise they woke him up and carried him to the house-top,
+where the sunlight slanted between the chimney-stacks: and the shadow
+was that of a little girl.
+
+The father scratched his head.  "There's money in this, wife.  We'll
+keep the thing close; and in a year or two he'll be fit to go round
+in a show and earn money to support our declining years."
+
+
+With that the poor little one's misfortunes began.  For they shut him
+in his room, nor allowed him to play with the other children in the
+alley--there was no knowing what harm might come to his precious
+shadow.  On dark nights his father walked him out along the streets;
+and the boy saw many curious things under the gas-lamps, but never
+the little girl who inhabited his shadow.  So that by degrees he
+forgot all about her.  And his father kept silence.
+
+Yet all the while she grew side by side with him, keeping pace with
+his years.  And on his fifteenth birthday, when his parents took him
+out into the country and, in the sunshine there, revealed his secret,
+she was indeed a companion to be proud of--neat of figure, trim of
+ankle, with masses of waving hair; but whether blonde or brunette
+could not be told; and, alas! she had no eyes to look into.
+
+"My son," said they, "the world lies before you.  Only do not forget
+your parents, who conferred on you this remarkable shadow."
+
+The youth promised, and went off to a showman.  The showman gladly
+hired him; for, of course, a magic shadow was a rarity, though not so
+well paying as the Strong Man or the Fat Woman, for these were worth
+seeing every day, whereas for weeks at a time, in dull weather or
+foggy, our hero had no shadow at all.  But he earned enough to keep
+himself and help the parents at home; and was considered a success.
+
+
+One day, after five years of this, he sought the Strong Man, and
+sighed.  For they had become close friends.
+
+"I am in love," he confessed.
+
+"With your shadow?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not with the Fat Woman!" the Strong Man exclaimed, with a start of
+jealousy.
+
+"No.  I have seen her that I mean these three days in the Square, on
+her way to music lesson.  She has dark brown eyes and wears yellow
+ribbons.  I love her."
+
+"You don't say so!  She has never come to our performance, I hope."
+
+"It has been foggy ever since we came to this town."
+
+"Ah, to be sure.  Then there's a chance: for, you see, she would
+never look at you if she knew of--of that other.  Take my advice--go
+into society, always at night, when there is no danger; get
+introduced; dance with her; sing serenades under her window; then
+marry her.  Afterwards--well, that's your affair."
+
+So the youth went into society and met the girl he loved, and danced
+with her so vivaciously and sang serenades with such feeling beneath
+her window, that at last she felt he was all in all to her.  Then the
+youth asked to be allowed to see her father, who was a Retired
+Colonel; and professed himself a man of Substance.  He said nothing
+of the Shadow: but it is true he had saved a certain amount.
+"Then to all intents and purposes you are a gentleman," said the
+Retired Colonel; and the wedding-day was fixed.
+
+They were married in dull weather, and spent a delightful honeymoon.
+But when spring came and brighter days, the young wife began to feel
+lonely; for her husband locked himself, all the day long, in his
+study--to work, as he said.  He seemed to be always at work; and
+whenever he consented to a holiday, it was sure to fall on the
+bleakest and dismallest day in the week.
+
+"You are never so gay now as you were last Autumn.  I am jealous of
+that work of yours.  At least," she pleaded, "let me sit with you and
+share your affection with it."
+
+But he laughed and denied her: and next day she peered in through the
+keyhole of his study.
+
+That same evening she ran away from him: having seen the shadow of
+another woman by his side.
+
+Then the poor man--for he had loved his wife--cursed the day of his
+birth and led an evil life.  This lasted for ten years, and his wife
+died in her father's house, unforgiving.
+
+
+On the day of her funeral, the man said to his shadow--"I see it all.
+We were made for each other, so let us marry.  You have wrecked my
+life and now must save it.  Only it is rather hard to marry a wife
+whom one can only see by sunlight and moonlight."
+
+So they were married; and spent all their life in the open air,
+looking on the naked world and learning its secrets.  And his shadow
+bore him children, in stony ways and on the bare mountain-side.
+And for every child that was born the man felt the pangs of it.
+
+And at last he died and was judged: and being interrogated concerning
+his good deeds, began--
+
+"We two--"--and looked around for his shadow.  A great light shone
+all about; but she was nowhere to be seen.  In fact, she had passed
+before him, and his children remained on earth, where men already
+were heaping them with flowers and calling them divine.
+
+Then the man folded his arms and lifted his chin.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, "I am simply a sinner."
+
+
+There are in this world certain men who create.  The children of such
+are poems, and the half of their soul is female.  For it is written
+that without woman no new thing shall come into the world.
+
+
+
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