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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle
+Barfield, by David Christie Murray
+
+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: Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield
+       From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
+
+Author: David Christie Murray
+
+Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22274]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JULIA AND HER ROMEO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JULIA AND HER ROMEO: A CHRONICLE OF CASTLE BARFIELD
+
+By David Christie Murray
+
+Author Of 'Aunt Rachel,' 'The Weaker Vessel,' Etc.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+In the year eighteen hundred and twenty, and for many years before and
+after, Abel Reddy farmed his own land at Perry Hall End, on the western
+boundaries of Castle Barfield. He lived at Perry Hall, a ripe-coloured
+old tenement of Elizabethan design, which crowned a gentle eminence
+and looked out picturesquely on all sides from amongst its neighbouring
+trees. It had a sturdier aspect in its age than it could have worn when
+younger, for its strength had the sign-manual of time upon it, and even
+its hoary lichens looked as much like a prophecy as a record.
+
+A mile away, but also within the boundaries of Castle Barfield parish,
+there stood another house upon another eminence: a house of older date
+than Perry Hall, though of less pleasing and picturesque an air. The
+long low building was of a darkish stone, and had been altered and added
+to so often that it had at last arrived at a complex ugliness which was
+not altogether displeasing. The materials for its structure had all been
+drawn at different periods from the same stone quarry, and the chequered
+look of new bits and old bits had a hint of the chess-board. Here Samson
+Mountain dwelt on his own land in the midst of his own people.
+
+The Mountain Farm, as it was called, and had been called time out of
+mind, was separated from the Perry Hall Farm by a very shallow and
+narrow brook. The two houses were built as far apart from each other
+as they could be, whilst remaining in their own boundaries, as if the
+builder of the later one had determined to set as great a distance as
+he could between his neighbour and himself. And as a matter of fact the
+Reddys and the Mountains were a sort of Capulets and Montagues, and had
+hated each other for generations. Samson and Abel kept up the ancient
+grudge in all its ancient force. They were of the same age within a week
+or two, had studied at the same school, and had fought there; had at one
+time courted the same girl, had sat within sight of each other Sunday
+after Sunday and year after year in the parish church, had each buried
+father and mother in the parish churchyard, and in the mind of each the
+thought of the other rankled like a sore.
+
+The manner of their surrendering their common courtship was
+characteristic of their common hatred. Somewhere about the beginning
+of this century a certain Miss Jenny Rusker, of Castle Barfield,
+was surrounded by quite a swarm of lovers. She was pretty, she was
+well-to-do, for her time and station, she was accomplished--playing the
+harp (execrably), working samplers in silk and wool with great diligence
+and exactitude, and having read a prodigious number of plays, poems, and
+romances. What this lady's heart forged that her mouth did vent, but no
+pretty young woman ever looked or sounded foolish to the eyes or ears of
+her lovers. Mountain and Eeddy were among her solicitors. She liked them
+both, and had not quite made up her mind as to which, if either of them,
+she would choose, when suddenly the knowledge of the other's occasional
+presence in her sitting-room made the house odious to each, and they
+surrendered the chase almost at the same hour. Miss Jenny satisfied
+herself with a cousin of her own, married without changing her name,
+had children, was passably happy, as the world goes, and lived to be a
+profoundly sentimental but inveterate widow. Mountain and Eeddy married
+girls they would not otherwise have chosen, and were passably happy
+also, except when the sore of ancient hatred was inflamed by a chance
+meeting on the corn exchange or an accidental passage of the eyes at
+church. They had no better authority for hating each other than that
+their fathers had hated each other before them. The fathers had the
+authority of the grandfathers, and they, that of the greatgrandfathers.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon. There was a bleak frost abroad, and even the
+waters of the brook which divided the two farms were hard frozen. The
+sun hung low in the western sky, lustreless as a wafer, but ruddy. The
+fields were powdered with thin snow, and the earth was black by contrast
+with it. Now and then a shot sounded far away, but clear and sharp, from
+where the guests of my lord of Barfield were killing time in the warren.
+
+A labouring man, smock-frocked, billy-cocked, gaitered, and hob-nailed,
+was clamping down the frozen lane, the earth ringing like iron under
+iron as he walked. By his side was a fair-haired lad of nine or ten
+years of age, a boy of frank and engaging countenance, carefully and
+even daintily dressed, and holding up his head as if he were a lord of
+the soil and knew it. The boy and the labourer were talking, and on the
+frosty silence of the fields the clear treble of the boy's speech rang
+out clearly and carried far. A burly man, with a surly red face, who had
+stooped to button a gaiter, in a meadow just beyond the brook, and
+had laid down his gun beside him the while, heard both voice and words
+whilst the speaker was a hundred yards away.
+
+'But don't you think it's very wicked, Ichabod?'
+
+The labourer's voice only reached the listener in the meadow. He spoke
+with the Barfield drawl, and his features, which were stiffened by the
+frozen wind, were twisted into a look of habitual waggery.
+
+'Well,' said he, in answer to his young companion, 'maybe, Master
+Richard, it might be wicked, but it's main like natur.'
+
+'I shan't hate Joe Mountain when I'm a man,' said the boy.
+
+The surly man in the field, hearing these words, looked on a sudden
+surlier still, and throwing up his head with a listening air, and
+holding his ankle with both hands, crouched and craned his neck to
+listen.
+
+'May'st have to change thy mind, Master Richard,' said the labourer.
+
+'Why should I change my mind, Ichabod?' asked the boy, looking up at
+him.
+
+'Why?' answered Ichabod, 'thee'lt niver have it said as thee wast afraid
+of any o' the Mountain lot.'
+
+'I'm not afraid of him,' piped the engaging young cockerel 'We had a
+fight in the coppice last holidays, and I beat him. The squire caught
+us, and we were going to stop, but he made us go on, and he saw fair.
+Then he made us shake hands after. Joe Mountain wouldn't say he'd had
+enough, but the squire threw up the sponge for him. And he gave us two
+half-crowns apiece, and said we were both good plucked uns.'
+
+'Ah! 'said Ichabod, with warmth, 'he's the right sort is the squire.
+And there's no sort or kind o' sport as comes amiss to him. A gentleman
+after my own heart.'
+
+'He made us shake hands and promise we'd be friends,' said Master
+Richard, 'and we're going to be.'
+
+'Make him turn the brook back first, Master Richard,' said Ichabod. The
+two were almost at the bridge by this time, and the listener could hear
+distinctly.
+
+'Turn the brook back?' the boy asked. 'What do you mean, Ichabod?'
+
+'Ax thy feyther, when thee gettest home,' answered Ichabod. 'He'll tell
+thee all the rights on it. So fur as I can make out--and it was the talk
+o' the country i' my grandfeyther's daysen--it amounts to this. Look
+here! 'He and the boy arrested their steps on the bridge, and Ichabod
+pointed along the frozen track of the brook. 'Seest that hollow ten rods
+off? It was in the time o' Cromwell Hast heard tell o' Cromwell, I mek
+no doubt?'
+
+'Oliver Cromwell,' said Master Richard. 'He was Lord Protector of
+England. He fought King Charles.'
+
+'Like enough,' said Ichabod. 'In his daysen, many 'ears ago, there was
+the Reddys here and the Mountains there'--indicating either house in
+turn by pointing with his thumb--'just as they be now. The Reddy o' that
+day--he was thy grandfeyther's grand-feyther as like as not--maybe
+he was _his_ grandfeyther for aught as I can tell, for it's a
+deadly-dreadful heap o' time long past--the Reddy o' that day went to
+the wars, and fowt for Cromwell. The Mountain o' that time stopped at
+hum. Up to then they'd niver been misfriended as fur as I know. That's
+how it's put about, anyway. But whilst the Reddy was away what's the
+Mountain do?'
+
+The boy was looking at Ichabod, and Ichabod, stooping a little to be the
+more impressive, was looking at him. The surly-faced man with the gun
+had hitherto been concealed by the hedge beside which he had knelt to
+fasten his gaiter, and neither of the two had suspected his presence. It
+was natural, therefore, that both of them should start a little when his
+voice reached them.
+
+'Well?' The voice was sour and surly, like the face, and the word was
+rapped out sharp and clear. Master Richard and Ichabod turned with one
+accord. 'Well?' says the surly man, 'what does the Mountain do?'
+
+Ichabod, less discomfited by the suddenness of the interruption than
+might have been expected of him, rubbed the frozen base of his nose with
+a cold forefinger and grinned. Master Richard looked from one to the
+other with a frank and fearless interest and inquiry which became him
+very prettily. The surly man bestowed a passing scowl upon him, and
+turned his angry regard again upon Ichabod.
+
+'Come, now,' he said, 'you backbiting, scandal-mongering old liar! What
+does the Mountain do? Out with it!'
+
+'Why, nayther thee nor me was there at the time, gaffer,' responded
+Ichabod, his frosty features still creased with a grin. 'So nayther thee
+nor me can talk for certain. Can us?'
+
+'I suppose,' said the surly, burly man, 'you're going to stuff that
+young monkey with the old lie about the stream being turned?'
+
+Ichabod made no verbal response, but continued to rub his nose with his
+forefinger, and to grin with an aspect of uncertain humour. The surly
+man stooped for his gun, threw it over his arm, and stared at Ichabod
+and his young companion with eyes of hatred and disdain. Then, having
+somewhat relieved his feelings by a curse or two, he turned his back and
+went off with a long, heavy, dogged-looking stride, his feet crunching
+noisily through the frosty grasses.
+
+'It eeat for me to talk about my betters, and them as the Lord has put
+in authority over us,' said Ichabod, with an expression which belied
+these words of humility; 'but I put it to thee, Master Richard. Dost
+think that old Mountain theer looks like a likeable un? No, no. Might as
+well expect cat an' dog t' agree as Reddy and Mountain.'
+
+This speech was made in a carefully modulated tone, when he and the boy
+were at some distance from the surly man, who was still visible, three
+or four fields away.
+
+'What was it about the brook, Ichabod?' asked Master Richard.
+
+'Why,' said Ichabod, 'when that old longaway grandfeyther o' thine was
+away a-fighting for Cromwell, 'tis said his neighbour turned the brook
+so as to bring in four-score acres o' land as ud niver have been his by
+right. The Reddy o' that day died in the wars, and his widder could mek
+no head again the Mountain lot; but her taught her son to hate 'em and
+look down upon 'em, and hated an' looked down upon is the name on 'em
+from that day to this.'
+
+'But Joe Mountain didn't do it,' said Master Richard.
+
+'No, no,' assented Ichabod. 'But it's i' this way. It's i' the blood.
+What's bred i' the bone will come out i' the flesh. Afore thee makest
+friends with young Joe Mountain, Master Richard, thee ax thy feyther.'
+
+Master Richard, lapsing into silence, thought things over.
+
+'Ichabod,' he said at last, 'is a boy _bound_ to be bad if he has a bad
+grandfather?'
+
+'Sure!' said Ichabod, who was not going to be worsted in argument for
+want of corroborative fact if he could help it.
+
+Master Richard thought things over a little while longer, and returned
+to the charge.
+
+'Suppose the boy with the bad grandfather had a good grandmother,
+Ichabod?'
+
+'None of the Mountain lot ever had,' Ichabod replied. There was no item
+in Ichabod's creed more fixed than this--the Mountains of Mountain
+Farm were hateful and contemptible. He had imbibed the belief with his
+mother's milk and his father's counsel. His grandfather had known it for
+the one cardinal certainty of nature.
+
+Just as the serving-men of Capulet hated the serving-men of Montague,
+so the oldest servants of the Mountains hated the older servants of the
+Reddys. The men made the masters' quarrel their own. There was a feudal
+spirit in the matter, and half the fights of this outlying district of
+the parish were provoked by that ancient history of the brook. At this
+time of day it mattered very little indeed if the history was true
+or false, for neither proof nor disproof was possible, and the real
+mischief was done past remedy in any case.
+
+'Are you sure our side fought for Cromwell, Ichabod?' Master Richard.
+asked, after another long and thoughtful silence.
+
+'To be sure,' said Ichabod.
+
+'I don't think it can be true, then, about the brook,' said the boy,
+'because Cromwell won, and everybody who was on his side had their own
+way. Mr. Greenfell teaches history at school, and he says so.'
+
+This was nothing to Ichabod, whose intellect was not constructed for the
+reception of historical evidences.
+
+'Then ax thy feyther, Master Richard,' he answered; 'he'll tell thee the
+rights on it.'
+
+The boy walked on pondering, as children of his age will do. The seniors
+would be surprised pretty often if they could guess how deep and far the
+young thoughts go, but, then, the seniors have forgotten their own young
+days, or were never of a thinking habit. Ichabod clamped along with
+his mind on beer. The boy thought his own thoughts, and each was
+indifferent for a while to outer signs and sounds. But suddenly a
+little girl ran round a corner of the devious lane with a brace of
+young savages in pursuit. The youthful savages had each an armful of
+snowballs, and they were pelting the child with more animus than seemed
+befitting. The very tightness with which the balls were pressed seemed
+to say that they were bent less on sport than mischief, and they came
+whooping and dancing round the corner with such rejoicing cruelty as
+only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing,
+half in distress, and half because of the haste she had made, and Master
+Richard's juvenile soul burnt within him at the sight like that of a
+knight-errant. He had read a great deal about knights-errant for the
+time which had been as yet allowed him for the pursuit of literature,
+and he was by nature a boy of much fire and gentleness, and a very
+sympathetic imagination. So the big heart in the small body swelled
+with pity and grew hot with valour, and, without parley, he smote
+the foremost boy, who happened to be the bigger of the two, and went
+headlong into fight with him.
+
+Ichabod followed the young master's lead without knowing, or in the
+smallest degree caring, why, and tried to seize the smaller savage, who
+skilfully evaded him and ran. The little maiden stood and trembled
+with clasped hands as she looked upon the fray. Ichabod lifted his
+smock-frock to get his hands into the pockets of his corduroys, and
+watched with the air of an old artist standing behind a young one.
+
+'You shouldn't work at it so much, Master Richard,' said Ichabod. 'Tek
+it easier, and wait for him. That's it!'
+
+The combat was brief and decisive. The youthful savage carried the
+heavier metal, but he was slow with it; but suddenly, as if to show that
+he was not altogether without activity, he turned and ran his hardest
+Master Richard, with blue-gray eyes still glistening and hands still
+clenched in the ardour of battle, turned upon the little girl, who was
+some two years younger than himself At the sight of her he turned shy
+and blushed, and the little girl turned shy and blushed also. She looked
+at the ground, and then she looked at Richard, and then she looked at
+the ground again. She was slender and delicate, and had very beautiful
+soft brown eyes, and the hero of a minute back was abashed before her.
+
+'You 'm a Mountain, baint you?' said Ichabod, looking at her with
+disfavour. She looked shyly at him, but did not answer. 'What's your
+name?' he asked, stooping towards her.
+
+'Julia Mountain,' said the child, in a trembling treble.
+
+'Ah!' said Ichabod, 'I thought so. Come along, Master Richard, or else
+we shall niver get hum again afore dark.'
+
+Master Richard walked away with backward glances, shyly directed at the
+little girl, and the little girl stood with her cheek inclining to her
+shoulder, and the shoulder drawn up a little, as if to shelter her, and
+looked after him. This exchange went on until Ichabod and the boy had
+turned the corner of the lane, when Miss Julia Mountain ran home as
+fast as her small legs would take her, and Master Richard Reddy, with a
+vision in his mind, walked alongside his companion.
+
+'You should tek a lesson or two, Master Richard,' said Ichabod, 'and
+then thee'dst do a heap better. I'm rusty nowadaysen, but I used to love
+it when I was a young un.'
+
+Master Eichard heard nothing of this or of the advice which followed it.
+He enacted many times over the small adventure of the last five minutes,
+and at the end of every mental history he traced, the little figure
+stood in the lane looking shyly at him over one shoulder as he turned
+the corner.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Samson Mountain went home in an ill-temper, and, as was usual with him
+when in that condition, did everything he had to do with a sulky and
+noisy emphasis, bursting open doors with unnecessary violence, slamming
+them with needless force behind him, and clamping heavily from room to
+room. His wife, who was submissive at the surface, but unconquerable at
+bottom, knew these signs, and accepted them with outer show of meekness.
+Samson tramped into the sitting-room, and there found his wife alone.
+He flung to the door behind him with a crash which would have been
+startling if it had been unexpected, and fell heavily into a roomy
+arm-chair by the fireside. Mrs. Mountain took no notice of this, but
+went on placidly with her sewing. Samson threw his heavily-booted feet
+noisily into the fender, and still Mrs. Mountain went on placidly,
+without so much as looking at him. Stung by this disregard of his
+obvious ill-humour, Samson made a lunge with his foot at the fire-irons,
+and brought them down with a bang.
+
+'Lawk a daisy me, Samson,' said his wife mildly. 'What's the matter with
+the man?'
+
+'Matter!' growled Samson. 'It's a thing as ud get a saint to set his
+back up. I was down i' the bridge leasowe bare an hour ago, and who
+should I see but that young imp of a Reddy along wi' that old viper of a
+Bubb. Thee know'st the chap--that Ichabod.'
+
+'I know him, Samson,' answered Mrs. Mountain. 'He's the most impudent of
+all of 'em.'
+
+'They stood atop o' the bridge,' pursued Samson, 'and I could hear 'em
+talkin'. Th' ode rip was tellin' the young un that outworn lie about the
+brook. I'd got a shot i' the barrel, and I'd more than half a mind to
+ha' peppered him. I'd ha' done it if it had been worth while.'
+
+'There's no end to their malice and oncharitable-ness,' said Mrs.
+Mountain.
+
+'I heard the young imp say he'd fowt our Joe and licked him,' pursued
+Samson. 'If ever it should come to my knowledge as a truth I'd put
+Master Joe in such fettle he wouldn't sit down for the best side a month
+o' Sundays.'
+
+'They 'm giving the child such airs,' said his wife, 'it's enough to
+turn the bread o' life which nourishes.'
+
+Mrs. Mountain had an object in view, and, after her own fashion, had
+held it long in view in silence. The moment seemed to her propitious,
+and she determined to approach it.
+
+'Young toad!' said Samson, rising to kick at the coals with his
+heavy-heeled boot, and plunging backward into the chair again.
+
+'To hear him talk--that fine an' mincin'--you'd think he was one o'
+my lord's grandchildren or a son o' the squire's at least,' said Mrs.
+Mountain, approaching her theme with circuitous caution.
+
+'Ay!' Samson assented 'It's enough to turn your stomach to listen to
+him.'
+
+'If they go on as they're goings pursued his wife, circling a little
+nearer, 'we shall live to see fine things.'
+
+'We shall, indeed,' said Samson, a little mollified to find his wife so
+unusually warm in the quarrel. 'There's no such a thing as contentment
+to be found amongst 'em. They settle up to be looked upon as
+gentlefolks.'
+
+'Yes; fine things we shall live to see, no doubt, if we don't tek care.
+But thanks be, Samson, it's left in our own hands.'
+
+'What be'st hoverin' at?' demanded Samson, turning upon her with his
+surly red face.
+
+'Things ain't what they used to be when you an' me was younger,' said
+Mrs. Mountain. 'The plain ode-fashioned Barfield talk as you and me
+was bred up to, Samson, ain't good enough nowadays for the very
+kitchen wenches and the labourers on the farm. Everybody's gettin' that
+new-fangled!'
+
+'Barfield's good enough for me, and good enough for mine,' said Samson,
+with sulky wrath.
+
+'It's good enough for we, to be sure, but whether it's good enough for
+ourn is another churnin' o' butter altogether,' his wife answered. 'It
+ud seem as if ivery generation talked different from one another. My
+mother, as was a very well-spoken woman for her day, used to call a cup
+o' tay a dish o' tay, and that's a thing as only the very ignorant ud
+stoop to nowadays.' Samson growled, and wallowed discontentedly in
+the big arm-chair. 'A mother's got her natural feelings, Samson,' Mrs.
+Mountain continued, with an air and tone of mildest resignation. 'I
+don't scruple to allow as it'll hurt me if I should live to see our Joe
+looked down upon by a Reddy.'
+
+'Looked down upon!' cried Samson. 'Where's the Reddy as can count acre
+for acre agen us, or guinea for guinea?'
+
+'The Reddy's is fairly well-to-do, Samson,' said Mrs. Mountain; 'very
+nigh as well-to-do as we be.'
+
+'Pooh!' returned Samson.
+
+'Oh, but they be, though,' his wife insisted. 'Pretty near. There's
+nothing so much between us as'd prevent 'em from taking airs with us if
+they could find out anything to do it for.'
+
+'If they could!' Samson assented. 'Abel Eeddy was a bragger and a
+boaster from his cradle days.'
+
+'That's where it is,' cried Mrs. Mountain, in a tone which implied
+that Samson had made a discovery of the first importance, and that this
+discovery unexpectedly confirmed her own argument. 'Let 'em have the
+least little bit of a chance for a brag, and where be you?'
+
+'You might trust 'em to tek advantage on it if they had it,' said her
+husband.
+
+'Of course you might,' said she, with warmth, 'and that's why I'm
+fearful on it.'
+
+'Fearful o' what?' demanded Samson.
+
+'O' these here scornful fine-gentleman ways as'll be a thorn in our
+Joe's side as long as he lives, poor little chap, unless we put him in
+the way to combat again 'em.'
+
+'Ah!' Samson growled, suddenly enlightened. 'I see now what thee beest
+drivin' at. Now, you take a straight sayin' from me, Mary Ann. I'll have
+no fine-mouthed, false-natur'd corruption i' my household. If the Reddys
+choose to breed up that young imp of theirn to drawl fine and to talk
+smooth above his station--let 'em.'
+
+'Well, Samson,' returned Mrs. Mountain, who knew by long experience when
+her husband was malleable, 'you know best, and you're the master here,
+as it's on'y fit and becomin' an' in the rightful nature o' things as
+you should be.'
+
+The first effect of the oil of flattery seemed to be to harden him.
+
+'I be, and I mean to be,' he answered, with added surliness. 'If the
+speech and the clothes and the vittles as have been good enough for me
+ain't good enough for any young upstart as may follow after me, it _is_
+a pity.'
+
+Mary Ann kept silence and looked meek. Samson growled and bullied a
+little, and wore the airs of a dictator. By and by a serving-maid came
+in and began to arrange the table for tea, and a little later a boy and
+a girl stole noiselessly into the room.
+
+'Joe,' said Samson sternly, 'come here!' The boy approached him with
+evident dread. 'What's this I hear about thee and that young villin of a
+Reddy?'
+
+'I don't know, father,' the boy answered.
+
+'I heard him makin' a boast this afternoon,' said Samson, rolling
+bullyingly in his arm-chair, 'as you and him had fowt last holidays, and
+as he gi'en you a hiding.'
+
+Joe said nothing, but looked as if he expected the experience to be
+repeated.
+
+'Now, what ha' you got to say to that?' demanded his father.
+
+'Why,' began Joe, edging back a little, 'he's bigger nor I be, an' six
+months o'der.'
+
+'Do you mean to tell me,' cried Samson, reaching out a hand and seizing
+the little fellow by the jacket, 'do you mean to tell me as you allowed
+to have enough to that young villin?'
+
+'No,' Joe protested. 'That I niver did. It was the squire as parted us.'
+
+'You remember this,' said his father, shaking him to emphasise the
+promise. 'If ever you agree to tek a hiding from a Reddy you've got one
+to follow on from me. D'ye hear?'
+
+'Yes, father.'
+
+'Tek heed as well as hear. D'ye hear?'
+
+'Yes, father.'
+
+'And here's another thing, mind you. It's brought to me as you and him
+shook hands and took on to be friends with one another. Is that trew?'
+Joe looked guilty, but made no answer. 'Is it trew?' Still Joe returned
+no answer, and his father changing the hand with which he held him, for
+his own greater convenience, knocked him off his feet, restored him
+to his balance, knocked him off his feet again, and again settled him.
+'Now,' said Samson, 'is it trew?'
+
+The boy tried to recoil from the uplifted threatening hand, and cried
+out 'No!'
+
+'Now,' said Samson, rising with a grim satisfaction, 'that's a lie.
+There's nothin' i' the world as I abhor from like a lie I'll teach thee
+to tell me lies. Goo into the brewus and tek thy shirt off; March!'
+
+The little girl clung to her mother's skirts crying and trembling. The
+mother herself was trembling, and had turned pale.
+
+'Hush, hush, my pretty,' she said, caressing the child, and averting her
+eyes from Joe.
+
+'March!' said Samson, and Joe slunk out of the room, hardening his heart
+as well as might be for endurance. But when he was once out of sight of
+the huge bullying figure and threatening eye and hand, the sight of his
+cap lying upon a chair in the hall supplied him with an inspiration. He
+seized the cap, slipped out at the front door, and ran.
+
+The early winter night was falling fast by this time. Half a dozen stars
+twinkled intermittently in the black-blue waste of sky, and when the lad
+paused to listen for possible sounds of pursuit the hollow moaning of
+the wind and the clang of bare wintry poles mingled with the noise of
+his own suppressed breathing.
+
+The runaway fancied himself bound (as all British runaway boys seem
+bound) for sea, and he set out without delay to walk to Liverpool. He
+got as far as the brook which formed the limit to his father's farm, and
+lingering before he set foot upon the bridge, began to cry a little, and
+to bemoan his chances and the dear ones left behind. His father came in
+for none of Joe's regrets. It was in the nature of things to the boy's
+mind that his father should administer to him periodical thrashings,
+whether he had earned them or not. It was the one social relationship
+which existed between them. It was only quite of late that Joe had begun
+to discern injustice in his father's bullyings. Children take things
+as they come, and to the mind of a child--in a modified sense, of
+course--whatever is, is right. That a thing exists is its own best
+justification. There is no reason to seek reasons for it. But Joe
+Mountain, having nearly outgrown this state of juvenile acquiescence,
+had begun to make inquiry of himself, and, as a result, had familiarised
+himself with many mental pictures in which he figured as an adventurer
+rich in adventures. In his day the youth of England were less instructed
+than they are now, but the immortal Defoe existed, and Lemuel Gulliver
+was as real as he is to-day. Perhaps the Board schools may have made
+that great mariner a little less real than he used to be. Joe believed
+in him with all his heart, had never had the shadow of a doubt about
+him, and meant to sail straight from Liverpool to Lilliput. He would
+defer his voyage to Brobdingnagia until he had grown bigger, and should
+be something of a match for its inhabitants.
+
+But it was cold, it was darkening fast, it was past his ordinary
+tea-time. Liverpool and Lilliput were far away, pretty nearly
+equidistant to the juvenile mind, and but for Samson's shadow the
+tea-table would have looked alluring. To be sure of tea, and a bed to
+sleep in afterwards, it seemed almost worth while to go back to the
+brewhouse and obey the paternal command to take his shirt off. To do the
+child justice, it was less the fear of the thrashing than the hot sense
+of rebellion at unfairness which kept him from returning. His father had
+beaten him into that untrue cry of 'No,' and had meant to force him to
+it, and then to beat him anew for it. Joe knew that better than Samson,
+for Samson, like the rest of us, liked to stand well with himself, and
+kept self-opinion in blinkers.
+
+Joe set foot on the bridge. He had crossed the boundary brook hundreds
+of times in his brief life, and it had generally come into his mind,
+with a boyish sense of adventure, that when he did so he was putting
+foot into the enemy's country. But the feeling had never been so strong
+as now. The Mountain Farm was home, and beyond it lay the wide, wide
+world, looking wide indeed, and bleak and cold. What with hot rebellion
+at injustice and cold fear of the vast and friendless expanse, Joe's
+tears multiplied, and leaning his arms upon the low coping of the
+bridge, with his head between them and his nose touching the frozen
+stone, he began to cry unrestrainedly.
+
+Suddenly he heard a footstep, and it struck a new terror into his soul.
+Freebooters, footpads, kidnappers, _et hoc genus omne_, roamed those
+fields by night, in course of nature. To the snug security of the home
+fireside and bed their images came with a delightful thrill of fear, but
+to be here alone and in the midst of them was altogether another thing.
+He crept crouching across the bridge, and stowed himself into the
+smallest possible compass between the end of the stonework and the
+neighbouring hedgerow, and there waited trembling. His pulses beat so
+fast and made such a noise in his ears that he was ready to take the
+sound of footsteps for the tread of a whole ogreish army, when he heard
+a voice.
+
+'Hode on a minute, while I shift the sack.'
+
+The sack? It was easy--it was inevitable--to know that the sack
+contained a goblin supper.
+
+'I shall be late for tea, Ichabod,' said another voice, 'and then I
+shall get a blowing-up for coming.'
+
+     Let him who sighs in sadness here,
+     Rejoice, and know a friend is near.
+
+Joe sprang from his hiding-place, and startled Master Richard and
+Ichabod more than a little.
+
+'That thee, Dick?'
+
+He knew it well enough, but it was quite delightful to be able to ask it
+with certainty.
+
+'Hillo,' said Master Richard, recognising his sworn friend. 'What are
+you doing? Are you trapping anything?'
+
+'No,' the hereditary enemy answered. He had been crying, the poor little
+chap, until he had been frightened into quiet, and now on a sudden he
+was as brave and as glad again as ever he had been in his life. Once
+more adventures loomed ahead for the adventurous, and he shone within
+and grew warm with the sweet reflux of courage as he whispered, 'I'm
+running away from home!'
+
+Once again, the feat was glorious.
+
+'No?' said Master Richard, smitten with envy and admiration. 'Are you?
+Really?'
+
+'Yes,' Joe answered. 'I'm agooin' to Liverpool, to begin wi'.'
+
+This was exquisitely large and vague, and Master Richard began to yearn
+for a share in the high enterprise upon which his friend had entered. He
+had half a mind to run away from home himself, though, to be sure, there
+was nothing else to run away from. In Joe's case there was a difference.
+
+'Where are you going to stay to-night?' asked Master Richard. The
+question sounded practical, but at bottom it was nothing of the sort.
+It was part of the romance of the thing, and yet it threw cold water on
+Joe's newly-lighted courage, and put it out again.
+
+'I don't know,' said Joe, somewhat forlornly.
+
+'I say,' interjected Ichabod, 'is that young Mountain, Master Richard?'
+
+'Yes,' said Master Richard.
+
+'Thee know'st thy feyther is again thy speakin' to him, and his feyther
+is again his speakin' to thee.'
+
+'You mind your own business, Ichabod,' said the young autocrat, who was
+a little spoiled perhaps, and had been accustomed to have his own way in
+quite a princely fashion.
+
+'I'm mindin' it,' returned Ichabod. 'It's a part o' my business to keep
+thee out o' mischief.'
+
+'Ah!' piped Master Richard, 'you needn't mind that part of your business
+to-night.'
+
+'All right,' said Ichabod, reshouldering the sack he had meanwhile
+balanced on the coping of the bridge. 'See as thee beesn't late for
+tay-time.'
+
+With that, having discharged his conscience, he went on again, and the
+two boys stayed behind.
+
+'What are you running away for?' asked Eichard.
+
+'Why, feyther said it was brought to him as you and me had shook hands
+and had took on to be friends with one another, and he told me to go
+into the brewus and take my shirt off.'
+
+'Take your shirt off?' inquired the other. In Joe's lifetime, short
+as it was, he had had opportunity to grow familiar with this fatherly
+formula, but it was strange to Master Richard. 'What for?'
+
+'What for! Why, to get a hidin', to be sure.'
+
+'Look here!' said Richard, having digested this, 'you come and stop in
+one of our barns. Have you had your tea?'
+
+'No,' returned Joe, 'I shouldn't ha' minded so much if I had.'
+
+'I'll bring something out to you,' said the protector.
+
+So the two lads set out together, and to evade Ichabod, struck off at
+a run across the fields, Joe pantingly setting forth, in answer to his
+comrade's questions, how he was going to be a sailor or a pirate, 'or
+summat,' or to have a desert island like Crusoe. Of course, it was all
+admirable to both of them, and, of course, it was all a great deal more
+real than the fields they ran over.
+
+The runaway was safely deposited in a roomy barn, and left there
+alone, when once again a life of adventures began to assume a darkish
+complexion. It was cold, it was anxious, it seemed to drag interminably,
+and it was abominably lonely. If it were to be all like this, even the
+prospect of an occasional taking off of one's shirt in the brewhouse
+looked less oppressive than it had done.
+
+The hidden Joe, bound for piracy on the high seas, or a Crusoe's island
+somewhere, gave a wonderful zest to Master Richard's meal But an hour,
+which seemed like a year to the less fortunate of the two, went by
+before a raid upon the well-furnished larder of Perry Hall could
+be effected. When the opportunity came, Master Richard, with no
+remonstrance from conscience, laid hands upon a loaf and a dish of
+delicious little cakes of fried pork fat, from which the lard had that
+day been 'rendered,' and thus supplied, stole out to his hereditary
+enemy and fed him. The hereditary enemy complained of cold, and his host
+groped the dark place for sacks, and, having found them, brought them to
+him.
+
+'I say,' said Joe, when he had tasted the provender, 'them's
+scratchings. That's gay and fine. I never had as many as I should like
+afore. Mother says they're too rich, but that's all rubbish.'
+
+He made oily feast in the dark, with the sacks heaped about him. With
+Master Richard to help him, he began to swim in adventure, and the
+pair were so fascinated and absorbed that one of the farm-servants went
+bawling 'Master Richard' about the outlying buildings for two or three
+minutes before they heard him. When at last the call reached their ears
+they had to wait until it died away again before the surreptitious host
+dare leave the barn, lest his being seen should draw attention to the
+place.
+
+Then Joe, who had been hunting wild beasts of all sorts with the
+greatest possible gusto, began in turn to be hunted by them. The
+rattlesnake, hitherto unknown to Castle Barfield, became a common
+object; the lion and the polar bear met on common ground in the
+menagerie of Joe's imagination. Whatever poor blessings and hopes he
+had, and whatever schoolboy wealth he owned, he would have surrendered
+all of them to be in the brewhouse of the Mountain Farm, even though he
+were there to take his shirt off But the empty, impassable, awful night
+stood between him and any refuge, and he must need stay where he was,
+and sweat with terror under his sacks, through all the prodigious tracts
+of time which lay between the evening and the morning. He was to have
+been up and afoot for Liverpool before dawn, but tired nature chose the
+time he had fixed for starting to send him to sleep, and when Master
+Richard stole into the barn with intent to disperse the sacks and clear
+away any sign of Joe's occupancy, he found him slumbering soundly, with
+a tear-stained cheek resting on a dirty brown hand.
+
+There had been the wildest sort of hubbub and disorder at the Mountain
+Farm all night. Mrs. Mountain had wept and wrung her hands, and rocking
+herself to and fro, had poured forth doleful prophecy. Samson, who had
+begun with bluster, had fallen into anxiety, and had himself traced the
+course of the brook for a full mile by lanthorn-light. The farm hands
+had been sent abroad, and had tracked every road without result. Of
+course the one place where nobody so much as thought of making inquiry
+was the house of the hereditary foe, but pretty early, in the course of
+the morning, the news of Joe Mountain's disappearance, and something
+of the reasons for it, reached Perry Hall. Everybody at Perry Hall knew
+already what a terrible personage Samson Mountain was, and his behaviour
+on this occasion was the theme of scathing comment.
+
+Master Richard was guilty at heart, but exultant. Being a boy of lively
+imagination, he took to a secrecy so profound, and became so strikingly
+stealthy, as to excite observation and remark. He was watched and
+tracked to the barn, and then the discovery came about as a matter
+of course. The Reddys made much of Joe--they had no quarrel with an
+innocent persecuted child--but their kindness and commiseration were
+simply darts to throw at Samson.
+
+It was noon when Reddy put the trembling adventurer into his trap, and
+with his own hands drove him home. The two enemies met and glowered at
+each other.
+
+'I've found your lad and brought him home,' said Reddy; 'though I doubt
+it's a cruel kindness to him.'
+
+Samson, with all the gall in his nature burning at his heart, lifted Joe
+from the trap and set him on the ground in silence. Reddy, in silence,
+turned his horse's head, touched him with the whip, and drove away. Joe
+was welcomed home by a thrashing, which he remembers in old age.
+
+The episode bore fruit in several ways. To begin with, Master Joe was
+packed off to a distant school, far from that to which young Reddy was
+sent. But the boys found each other out in the holidays, and became
+firm friends on the sly, and Joe was so loyal and admiring that he never
+ceased to talk to his one confidante of the courage, the friendliness,
+the generosity, the agility, and skill of his secret hero. The
+confidante was his sister Julia, to whom the young hereditary enemy
+became a synonym for whatever is lovely and of good report. She used
+to look at him in church--she had little other opportunity of observing
+him--and would think in her childish innocent mind how handsome and
+noble he looked. He did not speak like the Barfield boys, or look like
+them, or walk like them. He was a young prince, heir to vast estates,
+and a royal title in fairyland. If story-books were few and far between,
+the sentimental foolish widow, Jenny Busker, was a mine of narrative,
+and a single fairy tale is enough to open all other fairy lore to a
+child's imagination. If the little girl worshipped the boy, he, in his
+turn, looked kindly down on her. He had fought for her once at odds of
+two to one, and he gave her a smile now and then. It happened that in
+this wise began the curious, half-laughable, and half-pathetic little
+history which buried the hatreds of the Castle Barfield Capulet and
+Montague for ever.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+In this Castle Barfield version of Romeo and Juliet the parody would
+have been impossible without the aid and intervention of some sort of
+Friar Laurence. He was a notability of those parts in those days, and he
+was known as the Dudley Devil. In these enlightened times he would have
+been dealt with as a rogue and vagabond, and, not to bear too hardly
+upon an historical personage, whom there is nobody (even with all our
+wealth of historical charity-mongers) to whitewash, he deserved richly
+in his own day the treatment he would have experienced in ours. He
+discovered stolen property--when his confederates aided him; he put
+the eye on people obnoxious to his clients, for a consideration; he
+overlooked milch cows, and they yielded blood; he went about in
+the guise of a great gray tom-cat. It was historically true in
+my childhood--though, like other things, it may have ceased to be
+historically true since then--that it was in this disguise of the great
+gray tom-cat that he met his death. He was fired at by a farmer, the
+wounded cat crawled into the wizard's cottage, and the demon restored to
+human form was found dying later on with a gun-shot charge in his ribs.
+There were people alive a dozen--nay, half a dozen--years ago, who
+_knew_ these things, to whom it was blasphemous to dispute them.
+
+The demon's earthly name was Rufus Smith, and he lived 'by Dudley Wood
+side, where the wind blows cold,' as the local ballad puts it His mother
+had dealt in the black art before him, and was ducked to death in the
+Severn by the bridge in the ancient town of Bewdley. He was a lean man,
+with a look of surly fear. It is likely enough that he half expected
+some of his invocations to come true one fine day or other, with
+consequences painful to himselt The old notions are dying out fast, but
+it used to be said in that region that when a man talked to himself he
+was talking with the universal enemy. Rufus and his mother were great
+chatterers in solitude, and what possible companion could they have but
+one?
+
+It is not to be supposed that all the ministrations for which the people
+of the country-side relied upon Rufus were mischievous. If he had done
+nothing but overlook cattle and curse crops, and so forth, he would
+have been hunted out. Some passably good people have been said, upon
+occasions, to hold a candle to the devil. With a similar diversion
+from general principle, Rufus was known occasionally to perform acts
+of harmless utility. He charmed away warts and corns, he prepared love
+philtres, and sold lucky stones. He foreran the societies which insure
+against accident, and would guarantee whole bones for a year or a
+lifetime, according to the insurer's purse or fancy. He told fortunes by
+the palm and by the cards, and was the sole proprietor and vendor of a
+noted heal-all salve of magic properties.
+
+He and his mother had gathered together between them a respectable
+handful of ghastly trifles, which were of substantial service alike to
+him and to his clients. A gentleman coming to have his corns or warts
+charmed away would be naturally assisted towards faith by the aspect of
+the polecat's skeleton, the skulls of two or three local criminals,
+and the shrivelled, mummified dead things which hung about the walls or
+depended head downwards from the ceiling. These decorations apart, the
+wizard's home was a little commonplace. It stood by itself in a
+bare hollow, an unpicturesque and barn-like cottage, not altogether
+weather-proof.
+
+It fell upon a day that Mrs. Jenny Rusker drove over from Castle
+Barfield to pay Rufus a visit. She rode in a smart little trap, the kind
+of thing employed by the better sort of rustic tradesmen, and drove a
+smart little pony. She was a motherly, foolish, good creature, who, next
+to the reading of plays and romances, loved to have children about her
+and to make them happy. On this particular day she had Master Richard
+with her. She kept up her acquaintance with both her old lovers, and was
+on terms of rather coolish friendship with them. But she adored their
+children, and would every now and again make a descent on the house of
+one or other of her old admirers and ravish away a child for a day or
+two.
+
+Mrs. Jenny had consoled herself elsewhere for the loss of lovers for
+whom she had never cared a halfpenny, but she had never ceased to hold a
+sort of liking for both her old suitors. Their claims had formerly been
+pretty evenly balanced in her mind, and even now, when the affair was
+ancient enough in all conscience to have been naturally and quietly
+buried long ago, she never met either of her quondam lovers without
+some touch of old-world coquetry in her manner. The faintest and most
+far-away touch of anything she could call romance was precious to
+the old woman, and having a rare good heart of her own under all her
+superannuated follies, she adored the children. Dick was her especial
+favourite, as was only natural, for he was pretty enough and regal
+enough with his childish airs of _petit grand seigneur_ to make him
+beloved of most women who met him. Women admire the frank masterfulness
+of a generous and half-spoiled boy, and Mrs. Jenny saw in the child the
+prophecy of all she had thought well of in his father, refined by the
+grace of childhood and by a better breeding than the father had ever
+had.
+
+So she and Dick were great allies, and there was always cake and
+elderberry wine and an occasional half-crown for him at Laburnum
+Cottage. It was only natural that, so fostered, Dick's affection for the
+old lady should be considerable. She was his counsellor and confidante
+from his earliest years, and the little parlour, with its antiquated
+furniture and works of art-in wool, its haunting odour of pot-pourri
+emanating from the big china jar upon the mantelshelf, and its moist
+warm atmosphere dimly filtered through the drooping green and gold of
+the laburnum tree, whose leaves tapped incessantly against the lozenged
+panes of its barred windows, was almost as familiar in his memory in
+after years as the sitting-room at home at the farm.
+
+Dick conferred upon its kindly and garrulous old tenant the brevet rank
+of 'Aunt' Jenny, and loved her, telling her, in open-hearted childish
+fashion, his thoughts, experiences, and secrets. Naturally, the story of
+the fight with the paynim oppressors of beauty came out in his talk soon
+after its occurrence, and lost nothing in the telling. Mrs. Jenny would
+have found a romance in circumstances much less easily usable to that
+end than those of the scion of one house rescuing the daughter of a
+rival and inimical line, and here was material enough for foolish fancy.
+She cast a prophetic eye into the future, and saw Dick and Julia, man
+and maid, reuniting their severed houses in the bonds of love, or doubly
+embittering their mutual hatred and perishing--young and lovely victims
+to clannish hatred and parental rigour--like Romeo and Juliet.
+
+The boy's account of the fight was given as he sat by her side in her
+little pony-trap in the cheerfully frosty morning. Dick chatted gaily as
+the shaggy-backed pony trotted along the resounding road with a clatter
+of hoofs and a jingle of harness, and an occasional sneeze at the frosty
+air. They passed the field of battle on the road, and Dick pointed it
+out. Then, as was natural, he turned to the family feud, and retailed
+all he had heard from Ichabod, supplemented by information from other
+quarters and such additions of fancy as imaginative children and savages
+are sure to weave about the fabric of any story which comes in their way
+to make tradition generally the trustworthy thing it is.
+
+Mrs. Busker was strong on the family quarrel. A family quarrel was a
+great thing in her estimation, almost as good as a family ghost, and
+she gave Dick the whole history of the incident of the brook and of many
+others which had grown out of it, among them one concerning the death of
+a certain Reddy which had tragically come to pass a year or two before
+his birth. The said Reddy had been found one November evening stark and
+cold at the corner of the parson's spinney, with an empty gun grasped
+in his stiffened hand, and a whole charge of small shot in his breast.
+Crowner's quest had resulted in a verdict of death by misadventure, and
+the generally received explanation was that the young fellow's own gun
+had worked the mischief by careless handling in passing through stiff
+undergrowth. But a certain ne'er-do-well Mountain, a noted striker and
+tosspot of the district, had mysteriously disappeared about that date,
+and had never since come within scope of Castle Barfield knowledge.
+Ugly rumours had got afloat, vague and formless, and soon to die out
+of general memory. Dick listened open-mouthed to all this, and when the
+narrative was concluded, held his peace for at least two minutes.
+
+'_She_ isn't wicked, is she, Aunt Jenny?' he suddenly demanded.
+
+'She? Who? 'asked Mrs. Eusker in return. 'The little girl, Julia.'
+
+'Wicked? Sakes alive, whativer is the boy talking about? Wicked? O'
+course not. She's a dear good little thing as iver lived.'
+
+'Ichabod said that all the Mountains were wicked. But I know Joe
+isn't--at least, not very. He promised me a monkey and a parrot--a green
+parrot, when he came back from running away. But he didn't run away,
+because father found him and took him home. His father gave him an awful
+thrashing. He often thrashes him, Joe says. Father never thrashes me.
+What does his father thrash him for?' 'Mr. Mountain's a harder man than
+your father, my dear. An' I fear as Joe's a bit wild, like his father
+when he was a boy, and obstinit. Theer niver was a obstinater man i'
+this earth than Samson Mountain, I do believe, an' Joe's got a bit on it
+in him.'
+
+'She's pretty,' said Dick, returning with sudden childish inconsequence
+to the subject uppermost in his thoughts. 'Joe isn't Why is it that the
+girls are always prettier than the boys?'
+
+'I used to think it was the other way about when I was a gell,' said
+Aunt Jenny, with perfect simplicity. 'But she is pretty, that's true.
+But then her mother was a likely lass, an' Samson warn't bad lookin',
+if he hadn't ha' been so fierce an' cussid. An' to think as it should be
+you, of all the lads i' Barfield, as should save a Mountain. An' a gell
+too.. I suppose as you'll be a settin' up to fall in love wi' her now,
+like Romeo and Juliet?'
+
+'What was that? 'asked the boy.
+
+'It's a play, my dear, wrote by a clever man as has been dead iver so
+many 'ears, William Shaakespeare.'
+
+'Shakespeare?' said Dick. 'I know. It's a big book on one of the shelves
+at home, full of poetry. But what's Romeo and Juliet?'
+
+'Romeo and Juliet was two lovers, as lived a long time ago in a place
+called Verona. I don't know where it is,' she added quickly, to stave
+off the imminent question already on the boy's lips. 'Somewhere abroad,
+wheer Bonyparty is. Juliet's name was Capulet, an' Romeo's was Montague,
+an' the Capilets and the Montagues hated each other so as they could
+niver meet wi'out havin' a bit of a turn-up one with another. They was
+as bad as the Reddys an' the Mountains, only i' them daysen folks allays
+wore swords an' daggers, so's when they fowt they mostly killed each
+other. Well, one night old Capilet gi'en a party, an' asked all his
+friends, an' everybody wore masks, so's they didn't know half the time
+who they was a-talkin' tew, as was the fashion i' them times, an' Romeo,
+he goes, just for divilment, an' he puts on a mask tew, so as they
+didn't know him, else they'd ha' killed him, sure an' certain. An' theer
+he sees Juliet, an' she was beautiful, an' he falls plump in love wi'
+her, an' she falls in love wi' him, an' they meets o' nights, i' the
+moonlight, on the window-ledge outside her room, but they had to meet
+i' secret, 'cause the two fam'lies was like cat an' dog, an' there'd ha'
+been awful doin's if they'd been found out. Well, old Capilet--that was
+Juliet's feyther--he finds a husband for Juliet, a nice chap enough, a
+count, like Lord Barfield, on'y younger an' likelier. An' Juliet, she
+gets welly mad, because she wants to marry Romeo. And then, to mek
+matters wuss, Romeo meets one o' Juliet's relations, a young man named
+Tybalt, as hates him like pison, an' they fowt, an' Romeo killed him.
+Well, the Capilets was powerful wi' the king as ruled in Verona, like
+Joseph used to be with Pharaoh in the Holy Land, my dear, an' Romeo, he
+has to run away an' hide himself, else p'raps they'd ha' hung him
+for killin' Tybalt, though it was Tybalt as begun the fight, so poor
+Juliet's left all alone. An' her marriage day's a-gettin' near, and old
+Capilet, he's stuck on her marryin' the count, an' the day's been named,
+and everything provided for the weddin'. Well, Romeo takes a thought,
+an' goes to a friar, a kind o' priest, as was a very book-learned man,
+and asks if he can help him. And at first he says no, he can't, an'
+Romeo gets that crazed, he's goin' to kill himself, but by an' by he
+thinks of a plan. He gives Juliet a bottle o' physic stuff to send her
+to sleep, and make her look as if she was dead. Then her relations 'll
+be sure to bury her i' the family vault, an' he'll write to Romeo to
+come back to Verona i' the night-time an' take her out o' the vault, an'
+goo away quiet wi' her till things have blown over, an' they can come
+back again. An' Juliet takes the physic, an' everybody thinks her dead,
+her father, an' her mother, an' her old nuss, an' Paris--that's the
+name of the gentleman as they wanted her to marry--an' there's such a
+hullabaloo an' racket as niver was. An' they buried her i' the vault,
+wi' all her relations, an' the old friar thinks as it's all a-comin'
+straight. But the letter as he'd writ to Romeo niver reaches him, an'
+Romeo hears as how Juliet's really dead, and he buys a bottle o' pison,
+an' comes to Juliet's grave i' the night-time, an' there he meets Paris,
+as has come to put flowers there an' pray for Juliet's soul, knowin'
+no better and lovin' her very dear. An' him an' Romeo fights, and Romeo
+kills him, an' opens the vault, an' go's in, an' theer's Juliet, lyin'
+stiff an' stark, because the physic ain't had time to work itself off
+yit. An' he kisses her, an' cries over her, and then he teks the pison,
+and dies. An' just as he's done it, Juliet wakes up, and finds him dead,
+and she takes his knife, an' kills herself, poor thing, an' that's the
+hend on 'em.'
+
+The old sentimentalist's eyes were moist, and her voice choked, as she
+concluded her legend. It was the first love-story Dick had ever heard,
+and in pity at the beautiful narrative, which no clumsiness of narration
+could altogether rob of its pathos, he was crying too. There is no
+audience like an impressionable child, and the immortal story of love
+and misfortune seemed very pitiful to his small and tender heart.
+
+'Why, theer! theer! Dick! It's only a story, my dear, wrote in a
+book,' said Mrs Jenny. 'It most likely ain't true, an' if it is, it
+all happened sich a time ago as it's no good a-frettin' about it. Why,
+wheeriver did you get all them warts? 'She took one of the hands with
+which Dick was rubbing his eyes. 'You should have 'em looked tew, they
+quite spile your hands. I must get Rufus Smith to have a look at 'em.
+You know who we'm agoin' to see, don't you? You've heard tell o' the
+Dudley Devil, Dick?'
+
+'Yes,' said Dick. 'Ichabod goes to him for his rheumatism.'
+
+'It's on'y a step away. That's his cottage, over there. We'll get him to
+charm the warts away.'
+
+A hundred yards farther on Mrs. Jenny checked the pony, and, dismounting
+from the vehicle, bade Dick tie him to an elder-shoot and follow her.
+They went through a gap in a ruinous hedge, and traversed a furzy field,
+at the farther side of which stood the wizard's hut, a wretched place
+of a single story, with a shuttered window and a thatched roof full of
+holes and overgrown with weeds. As they approached the door a mighty
+clatter was audible within, and Mrs. Jenny held the boy's hand in a
+tightened grasp, fearful of devilry. As they stood irresolute to
+advance or retreat, a big cat dashed out at the doorway with a feline
+imprecation, and the wizard appeared, revengefully waving a stick, and
+swearing furiously.
+
+'Cuss the brute,' he said, 'the divil's in her, sure an' sartin'.'
+
+It seemed not unlikely to the onlookers, the cat being the wizard's
+property, and therefore, by all rule and prescription, his prompter and
+familiar. She was not of the received colour, however, her fur being
+of a rusty red. But as she raised her back, and spat at her master's
+visitors from under her chubbed tail, she looked demoniac enough for
+anything. And from the fashion in which, her anathema once launched, she
+sat down and betook herself to the rearrangement of her ruffled coat, it
+might have been conjectured that it was not purely personal to them, but
+that they were attacked merely as types of the human race, whose society
+she and her master had forsworn.
+
+'Cuss her!' reiterated the wizard. 'Where's her got tew? My soul, what's
+this?'
+
+He peered with a short-sighted terror-stricken scowl on Mrs. Jenny
+and her charge, as if for a moment the fancy had crossed him that his
+refractory familiar had taken their shapes. His gray lips muttered
+something, and his fingers worked oddly as he took a step or two
+forward, clearly outlined in the cold winter sunshine against the black
+void beyond his open door.
+
+'Why, Rufus, what's the matter?' asked Mrs. Jenny. 'Don't look like that
+at a body.'
+
+'It's you, mum?' said the necromancer. A look of relief came into his
+wizened face. 'I didn't know but what it might be----' His voice trailed
+off into an indistinct murmur, and he smeared his hand heavily across
+his face, and looked at it, mistrustfully, as if he rather expected to
+find something else in its place. 'Cuss her!' he said again, looking
+round for the cat.
+
+'What's she done?' demanded Mrs. Jenny.
+
+'Done? Ate up all my brekfus, that's what she's done,' rejoined
+the wizard. The familiar grinned with a relish of the situation so
+fiendishly human that Dick clung closer to Mrs. Rusker's hand, and
+devoutly wished himself back in the trap. To his childish sense the
+incongruity of one gifted with demoniac powers being helpless to prevent
+the depredations of his own domestic animal did not appeal. As for Mrs.
+Jenny, she had piously believed in witchcraft all her life, and was
+quite as insensible to the absurdity as he.
+
+'I want you to look at this young gentleman's hands,' said Mrs. Busker.
+'He's got warts that bad. I suppose you can charm 'em away for him?'
+
+Appealed to on a point of his art, the wizard's air changed altogether.
+He assumed an aspect of wooden majesty.
+
+'Why, yis,' he said. 'I think I'm equal to that Step inside, mum, and
+bring the young gentleman with you.'
+
+'Couldn't you-------' Mrs. Busker hesitatingly began, 'couldn't you do
+it outside?'
+
+'The forms and ceremonies,' said the necromancer, with an increase of
+woodenness in his manner, 'cannot be applied out o' doors. Arter you,
+mum.'
+
+He ushered them into the one room of his hut, and the cat, with her
+tail floating above her like a banner, entered too, evading a kick, and
+sprang upon a rotten deal shelf, which apparently acted as both dresser
+and table.
+
+Rufus closed the ruinous door, thereby intensifying the gloom which
+reigned within the place. The floor was of simple earth, unboarded,
+and the air smelt of it Here and there a fine spear of ghostly sunlight
+pierced a crack in roof or wall. By the time their eyes had become
+accustomed to the gloom they saw that Rufus, on his knees on the floor,
+was scratching a circle about himself with a scrap of a broken pot, and
+the indistinct rhythmic murmur of the spell he muttered reached their
+ears.
+
+The cat, perched upon the dresser, purred as if her internal machinery
+were running down to final collapse, and her contracting and dilating
+eyes borrowed infernal fires from the chance ray of sunshine in which
+she sat. The brute's rusty red head, so lit, fascinated Dick, and the
+mingled rhythms of her purring and the wizard's mounted and mounted,
+until to his bewildered mind the whole world seemed filled with their
+murmur, and the demoniac head seemed to dilate as he gazed at it.
+Suddenly, Rufus paused in his sing-song, and the cat's purr ceased with
+it, as though her share of the charm was done.
+
+'Come into the ring,' said Rufus. His voice was shaky, and if there had
+been light enough to see it, his face was gray with terror of his own
+hocus-pocus. The cat's head had dropped out of the line of sunlight, and
+she had coiled herself up on the dresser among a disorderly litter of
+crockery ware. Dick, relieved from the fascination of her too-visible
+presence, obeyed the summons, and Rufus, seating himself upon a broken
+stool, took his hand in moist and quivering fingers, and touching the
+warts one by one, recommenced his mumble. It had proceeded for a minute
+or so, when a crash, which, following as it did on the dead stillness,
+an earthquake could scarce have equalled, elicited a scream from Mrs.
+Jenny and brought the wizard to his knees with a yell of terror.
+
+'My blessid!' he cried, with clacking jaws, 'I've done it at last! Get
+thee behind me, Satan!'
+
+In terror-stricken earnest he believed that the Great Personage he had
+passed all his life in trying to raise had answered to his call at
+last. So, though it was unquestionably a relief to him to find that the
+appalling clatter had merely been caused by his familiar's pursuit of
+a mouse among the crockery, a shade of disappointment may have followed
+the discovery.
+
+'Cuss her!' he said, for the third time that morning, and with
+additional unction. 'Her'll be the death of me some day, I know her
+will!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A summer sunset filled all the sky above Castle Barfield and its
+encircling fields. The sun had disappeared, leaving behind him a broad
+reflected track of glory where, here and there, a star was faintly
+visible. A light wind was blowing from the hollow which sheltered the
+town towards the higher land whereon the rival houses of Eeddy and
+Mountain faced each other. Below, it was already almost night, and as
+the wind blew the shadow mounted, as if the wind carried it. The rose
+and gold left by the departing sun faded down the sky, and settled at
+the horizon into a broad band of deep-toned fire, which, to one facing
+it in ascending from the lower ground, seemed to bind the two houses
+together. Some such fancy might have been in the head of Mrs. Jenny
+Rusker, as she went in the warm evening air towards the little eminence
+on which stood the long low-built house of Samson Mountain, already
+a-twinkle with occasional lights in the gloom, its own bulk cast against
+the fast-fading band of sunset.
+
+Mrs. Jenny, hale and vigorous yet, and still a widow, was older by
+fifteen years than on the day when she unfolded to Dick Reddy the story
+of Romeo and Juliet. Fifteen years was a good slice out of a lifetime,
+even in Castle Barfield in the first half of the century, when time
+slipped by so quietly and left so little trace to mark his flight.
+
+She passed the gate which opened on the public road, and entered the
+Mountain domain. The air was so still that the bubble of the boundary
+brook was clearly audible a hundred yards away, with nothing to accent
+it but the slow heavy flap of a late crow, winging his reluctant flight
+homewards, and save for him, sky and earth alike seemed empty of life,
+and delivered wholly to the clinging peace of evening. So that when Mrs.
+Jenny came to the only clump of trees in her line of progress between
+the gate and the house the little scream of surprise with which she
+found herself suddenly face to face with an unexpected human figure was
+justified.
+
+'Sh-h-h! 'said the figure's owner. 'Don't you know me, Aunt Jenny?'
+
+'Dick!' said Mrs. Jenny, peering at him. 'So it is. You welly frightened
+the life out o' me. What brings you here, of all places in the world?'
+
+'Can't you guess?' asked Dick. He was tall and broad-shouldered now,
+an admirable fulfilment of the physical promise of his boyhood, and far
+overtopped Mrs. Rusker. 'It isn't for the first time.'
+
+'I feared not,' said the old woman. 'You was allays main venturesome.'
+
+'It will be for the last, for some time, Aunt Jenny. I leave Castle
+Barfield to-morrow.'
+
+'Leave Barfield?' cried the old woman. 'Why, Dick, wheer are ye goin'?
+You ain't agoin' to do nothin' rash, that I do hope.'
+
+'I am going to London,' said Dick, 'and I must see Julia before I go.
+You must help me. You are going to the house now, aren't you?'
+
+'Going to London?' repeated Mrs. Eusker, who had no ears for the last
+words after that announcement. 'What's made you so hot foot to go to
+London all of a minute like?'
+
+'It was decided to-day. My father suspects what is going on. I feel
+sure of it, though he has never said a word about it. You know he always
+meant to make a doctor of me--it was my own choice when I was quite a
+little fellow, and it has always been understood. Last month he asked me
+if I was of the same mind still, and to-day he told me that my seat is
+taken in the coach from Birmingham. You know my father, Aunt Jenny, as
+well as I do. He has been a very good father to me, and I would not give
+him pain or trouble for the world. I could not refuse. Indeed, it is
+my last chance of ever doing anything for myself and making a home for
+Julia.'
+
+'My dear, they'll never hear on it, nayther of 'em. Samson Mountain 'd
+rather see his daughter in her coffin than married to any kin of Abel
+Reddy's. Though he loves her, too, in a kind o' way. An' your father's
+jist as hard; he's on'y quieter with it, that's all They'll niver
+consent Niver, i' this world.'
+
+'Then we must do without their consent, that's all. I must see Julia
+to-night, and you must help me. Tell her that I am here and must see
+her. Oh, Aunt Jenny, you are surely not going to desert us now, after
+helping us so often.'
+
+'I'm dub'ous, my dear. I hope good may come of it, but I'm dub'ous. I'm
+doubtful if I did right in helping you, again your father's will, an'
+Mr. Mountain's, too.'
+
+'You won't refuse to do so little, after doing so much,' pleaded the
+young man. 'Why, it was at your house that I used to meet her, when we
+were children together, and you first christened us Romeo and Juliet.'
+
+'A name o' bad omen, my dear. I wish I hadn't gi'en it to you now.'
+
+'For niver was a story o' more woe, Than this o' Jewliet an' her Romeo.'
+
+'I don't believe much in omens,' said Dick. 'But you will tell Julia
+that I am here, won't you? It's the last time, for ever so long.'
+
+'I'll tell her,' said Mrs. Rusker. 'But don't stay here; goo down to the
+Five Ash. Mr. Mountain's gone to Burmungem, an' he'll come across this
+way when he comes back. You must tek a bit o' care, Dick, for the gell's
+sake.'
+
+'I'll take care, dear. It's good-bye this time, Aunt. You've been very
+good to me always, and I shan't forget your kindness while I'm away. And
+you'll be good to Julia, too, while--while I'm away, won't you?'
+
+Mrs. Rusker's objections had never had any heart in them, and had been
+merely perfunctory, and such as she conceived her age and semi-maternal
+authority compelled her to make. She was wholly given over to Dick and
+Julia, and all her simple craft was for their service. She kissed him,
+and cried over him, and so they parted, he bound for the Five Ash field,
+and she for the farmhouse.
+
+'Why, lacsaday, Jenny, whativer is the matter?' asked Mrs. Mountain,
+when her visitor entered her sitting-room, and gave her tear-stained
+cheek to her old friend's embrace. Julia, a lithe, graceful girl, rose
+at the query from the other side of the little table, and came to Mrs.
+Rusker's side.
+
+'Why, you're cryin',' continued the elder woman. 'What is it, my dear,
+as has upset you i' this wise?'
+
+'Well, my dear,' said Mrs. Rusker, wiping her eyes and smoothing her
+dress, as if her grief was done with and put away, 'it ain't a trouble
+as I expects sympathy from you in.'
+
+Mother and daughter exchanged glances.
+
+'It must be a queer sort o' trouble, then,' said Mrs. Mountain; 'an'
+you might tell me what it is afore you say that, Mrs. Rusker, arter all
+these 'ears as we'n knowed each other.'
+
+'Well, if you must know, I've jist sin young Reddy, i' the road, jist
+outside the Five Ash.' Julia's hand was on her shoulder as she spoke,
+and she felt the soft touch tremble. 'He's a-leavin' Barfield, agoin' to
+London, for a long time.'
+
+'Oh, that's the matter, is it? Well, I don't know anythin' agin the
+young man, barrin' as he is a Reddy. An' for the matter o' that, though
+o' course a woman has no ch'ice but to stand by the kin as her marries
+into, I niver found much harm in 'em, unless it is as they're a bit
+stuck up. I know as you was allays fond on him, an' I hope the young man
+'ll do well. I've often said to Samson as it was all rubbidge, a-keepin'
+up a old quarrel like that, as keeps two dacent fam'lys at daggers
+drawn. Theer, theer, let Julia get you a cup o' tay, an' let's talk o'
+somethin' cheerful.'
+
+'I'll go and send it in to you,' said Julia. She exchanged one quick
+glance of intelligence with the widow as she left the room. The old
+woman had done her errand, and Julia knew where to seek her lover.
+She found her hat in the hall, and slipped out by the back way, after
+directing the servant to take in the required refreshment to Mrs.
+Busker. It was bright moonlight now, and as she ran lightly across the
+Five Ash field in her white summer dress, Dick, waiting in the shelter
+of the hedge, saw her plainly, and advanced to meet her.
+
+'Oh, Dick, is it true?'
+
+He took her in his arms and kissed her before he answered. 'Yes, dear,
+it's true. I am going to London.'
+
+'But why so suddenly, so soon?'
+
+'I must, dear. It is my own choice. I am going to study, to fit myself
+to take my place in the world, and to find a home for you. Be brave,
+dear. It is only for a little time.'
+
+'It is all so sudden.'
+
+'Yes. I had hoped to stay a little longer, to see more of you, to get
+used to my happiness before I lost it. But my father suspects, I am
+sure, if he does not know, and I dared not refuse. It hurts me to go,
+but what can I do? You know the man he is. And there is only one thing
+in the world that your father would help him to do--to separate us. I
+must go away and make a home for you with my own hands; we can expect no
+help from them. If we are true to each other we shall be happy yet. Our
+love may end the ridiculous family squabble which has lasted all these
+generations. But it would be madness to speak yet.'
+
+'It is that which makes me so unhappy, Dick. Why am I not like other
+girls? Why can't you come to the farm and ask my father's leave to court
+me, as other girls' sweethearts do, and as you would like to do? I
+can't help feeling that this is wrong, meeting you in secret, and being
+engaged to you against my father's will, without his knowledge.'
+
+'The quarrel is not of our making, Julia. We only suffer by it. I hope
+we shall bring it to an end, and teach two honest men to live at peace
+together, as they ought. Why, you're crying.'
+
+Her tears had been running quietly for some minutes past, but at this
+she began to sob unrestrainedly. Dick comforted her in the orthodox
+fashion, and in that sweet employment almost succeeded in forgetting
+his own sorrow. He drew bright pictures of the future: youth held the
+palette, and hope laid on the colour. Two or three years of partial
+separation--so little--and he would have a livelihood in his hand, and
+could offer her a safe asylum from parental tyranny, and bid his own
+people either to accept the situation or renounce him, as they might
+choose. He was quite heroic internally about the whole business. He felt
+the promise of the coming struggle brace his nerves, and he was more
+than ready for the test. Young love is selfish at the best, and the
+heroic likeness of himself doing battle with the world of London half
+obliterated the pitiful figure of the poor girl, left at home, with
+nothing to fill her heart but dreams. For him, the delight of battle;
+for her, long months of weary waiting.
+
+It was no doubt of him, but only the rooted longing for assurance of his
+love, that made her ask,
+
+'You won't forget me, Dick, in London?'
+
+Forget her! His repetition of the word, his little laugh of loving
+scorn, were answer enough, though he found others, and arguments
+unanswerable, to clinch them. How could he forget the sweetest, dearest
+girl that ever drew the breath of life, the prettiest and the bravest?
+She spoke treason against herself in asking such a question. He could
+no more forget her in London than Romeo, Juliet in Mantua. She laughed
+a little at his recalling the old story, from which Mrs. Jenny had
+drawn so many illustrations of the course of their love since they were
+children. It recalled the old woman to their minds.
+
+'I shall write to you every week, and send the letters under cover to
+her,' said Dick. 'And you may be sure that I shall find--or make--plenty
+of opportunities to run down here from time to time. There is a coach
+every day to Birmingham.'
+
+They had been walking slowly all this time. It was night now, the last
+gleam of sunset had faded, the stars were lustrous overhead, and a
+yellow moonlight flooded the surrounding country. A long distance off,
+faint but clear in the dead hush of the summer night, they heard, but
+did not mark, the beat of horses' hoofs approaching them.
+
+'I must go, Dick,' said Julia. 'It is late, and they will wonder where I
+am No, let me go now, while I have the strength.'
+
+He took her in his arms again, and her head dropped on his shoulder,
+and the tears began to run afresh. He held her close, but in that last
+moment of parting could find no word of comfort, only dumb caresses. The
+hoof-beats were near at hand now, just beyond the bend of the road.
+They rounded the corner, and broke on the lovers' ears with a loud and
+startling suddenness. The girl broke away, and ran through the gate into
+the field with a stifled sob. Dick turned, and walked down the road in
+the direction of the approaching horseman. The moon was at the full, and
+shone broadly upon his face and figure.
+
+'Hullo!' cried the rider, in gruff challenge, and pulling his horse into
+Dick's path, reined in. The young man looked up and recognised Samson
+Mountain. Flight would have been as useless as ignominious, and it had
+never been Dick's way out of any difficulty.
+
+'Well?' he asked curtly, and stood his ground.
+
+'Is that my daughter?' demanded Mountain, pointing with his heavy whip
+after the white figure glinting across the field. 'Spake the truth for
+once, though you be a Reddy.'
+
+'It's a habit we have,' said Dick quietly. His calm almost surprised
+himself. 'Yes.'
+
+Mountain had always been of a heavy build, and of late years had
+increased enormously in girth and weight. But his wrath at this
+confirmation of his half guess stirred him so, that before the sound of
+the word had well died out on the air he had dismounted, and came at the
+young man with his riding-whip flourished above his head.
+
+'Don't do that, sir.' Dick spoke in a low voice, though quickly; and
+there was something in his tone which brought the weapon harmlessly to
+the farmer's side again. 'It is your daughter. We love each other, and
+she has promised to be my wife.'
+
+Mountain staggered, as if the words had been a pistol bullet or a stab,
+and struck furiously. Quick as was Dick's parry, he only half saved
+himself, his hat spun into the road, and the whip whistled within an
+inch of his ear. He made a step back, and stopped a second furious
+stroke. The whip broke in the old man's hand, and he flung the remaining
+fragment from him with a curse.
+
+'I can't strike you, sir,' said Dick. 'You're her father.' Mountain's
+choking breath filled in the pause, and Dick went on: 'You know well
+enough there's not another man in England I'd take that from.'
+
+'You're a coward, like all your tribe,' said Mountain.
+
+'Not at all, I assure you, sir,' said Dick calmly. 'If you like to send
+anybody else with that message, I'll talk to him. Let us talk sensibly.
+What harm have I ever done you? Or my father either? Why should two
+honest families keep up this ridiculous story, which ought to have been
+buried ages back? Why not let bygones be bygones? I love your daughter.
+I am a young man yet, sir, with my way to make in the world, and I
+am going away to London to study. I met your daughter to-night to say
+goodbye to her, and if you had not come I should have gone away and said
+nothing until I could come and claim her, with a home worthy of her to
+take her to.
+
+But since you know, I speak now. We love each other, and intend to
+marry.'
+
+'Oh!' said Mountain. He had gone all on a sudden as cool as Dick, and
+nothing but his stertorous breathing hinted of the rage which filled
+him. 'That's it, is it? Then, if you're finished, hear me. I ain't got
+the gift o' the gab as free as you, but I can mek plain my meanin',
+p'raps. I'd rather see her a-layin' theer '(he pointed with a trembling
+hand at the ground between them); 'I'd rather lay her there, dead afore
+my eyes, an' screw her in her coffin a'terwards, than you or any o' your
+kin should as much as look at her, wi' my goodwill. And now you've got
+your answer, Mr. Fair an' Fine. Remember it, an' look out for yourself.
+For, by the Lord! 'he went on, with a solemn malignity doubly terrible
+in a man whose passion was ordinarily so violent, 'if iver I ketch you
+round my house again, I'll put a bullet atween thy ribs as sure as my
+naame's Samson Mountain.'
+
+With this, he took his horse by the bridle, and passed through the gate,
+leaving the young man to his own reflections. He took the beast to the
+stable, delivered him into the care of a servant, and made straight
+for the parlour, where his wife and Mrs. Rusker were seated at an early
+supper.
+
+'You're back early, Sam,' said the former, rising to draw an additional
+chair to the table. 'Wilt have some tay, or shall Liza draw you a jug o'
+beer?'
+
+Samson returned no answer, either to this or to Mrs. Rusker's greeting.
+
+'Lawk a mussy, what ails the man? 'asked Mrs. Mountain, as Samson stood
+looking round the room. She had never seen such an expression on her
+husband's face before. The skin was livid under its rude bronze, and his
+lips twitched strangely.
+
+'Wheer's that wench of ourn?' he asked, after a second glance round
+the room, Mrs. Busker's heart jumped, and she held on tight to the
+arm-pieces of her chair.
+
+'Julia?' said Mrs. Mountain. 'Her's about the house, I reckon.'
+
+'Call her here,' said Samson; and his wife wondering, but not daring to
+question, went to the door of the sitting-room and screamed 'Julia!'
+A servant girl came running downstairs at the call, and said that Miss
+Julia did not feel well, and had gone to bed.
+
+'Fatch her down,' said Samson from the sitting-room, and the girl, on
+receipt of a confirmatory nod from Mrs. Mountain, went upstairs again.
+Samson took a chair and sat with his head bent forward and his arms
+folded, staring at the paper ornaments in the grate.
+
+'Samson!' said his wife appealingly, 'don't skeer a body i' thisnin.
+Whativer _is_ the matter?'
+
+'Hold thy chat,' said Samson. 'Thee'st know soon enough,' and the trio
+sat in silence until Julia entered the room. She was pale, and there
+were traces of tears on her cheeks, and Samson, as he glanced at her
+askance from under his heavy eyebrows before he rose, saw that she was
+struggling to repress some strong emotion. She advanced to kiss him, but
+he repelled her--not roughly--with his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
+
+'You wanted to see me, father,' she asked, trembling.
+
+'I sent for you.'
+
+Mrs. Rusker was in a state of pitiable excitement, if anybody had had
+the leisure to notice her.
+
+'Theer's some'at happened to-day as it's fit an' right as yo' should
+know. I met ode Raybould today i' th' Exchange, an' he tode me some'at
+as I'd long suspected, about his son Tom. I reckon you know what it
+was.'
+
+Julia knew well enough. Tom Raybould was a young farmer, a year or two
+older than herself. She had known him all her life, and he had been a
+schoolfellow and chosen chum of her brother's. He had shown unmistakable
+signs of affection for her, but had never spoken. He was a good fellow,
+according to common report, and she had a good deal of liking and
+respect for him, and a little pity, being a good girl, and no coquette.
+
+'I see thee understandest,' said Samson. 'I told th' ode man as he might
+look on it as settled, an' Tom 'll be here to-morrow. He's a likely lad,
+an' he'll have all the Bush Farm when his father goes, as must be afore
+long, i' the course o' nature. The two farms 'll goo very well in a
+ring fence. Theer's no partic'lar hurry, as I know on, an' we'll ha' the
+weddin' next wik, or the wik after.'
+
+The girl's breast was labouring cruelly, in spite of the hand that
+strove to still it.
+
+'Father!' she said. 'You don't mean it!'
+
+'Eh?' said Samson. 'I ginerally mean what I say, my wench. I should ha'
+thout as yo'd ha' known that by this time.'
+
+He stopped there, for Julia, but for her mother's arm, would have
+fallen.
+
+'You great oaf!' cried Mrs. Mountain, irritated for once into open
+rebellion. 'Oh, it's like a man, the stupid hulkin' creeturs as they
+are, to come an' frighten the life out of a poor maid i' that style.'
+
+'Theer, theer!' said Samson, with the same heavy and threatening
+tranquillity he had borne throughout the interview. 'Tek her upstairs.'
+
+He sat down again, and without another word filled and lit his
+churchwarden, and stared through the smoke-wreaths at the grate.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Mrs. Jenny Rusker, who was half dead with fear of an _exposé_ of her
+part in this unlucky love-affair, was additionally prostrated by the
+dire reversal of all her hopes by Samson Mountain's ultimatum. Mrs.
+Mountain, with the aid of a female servant, supported Julia upstairs,
+and Samson smoked on stolidly, taking no note whatever of the visitor's
+presence. Still in doubt of what Samson might or might not know, and
+fearing almost to breathe, lest any reminder of her presence should call
+down his wrath upon her, she listened to the tramping and the muffled
+noises overhead until they ceased, and then, gathering courage from his
+continued apathy, slipped from the room and left the house.
+
+She got home and went to bed and passed an interminable night in tossing
+to and fro, and bewailing the untoward fate of the two children. Dawn
+came at last, though it had seemed as if it never would break again,
+and, for the first time for many a year, the first gleam of sunlight saw
+her dressed and downstairs. She felt feverous and ill, and having brewed
+for herself a huge jorum of tansy tea, sat down over this inspiring
+beverage, and tried to pull her scattered wits together and think out
+some way of untangling the skein of difficulty with which she had to
+deal. The danger was pressing, and if she had been herself the poor
+lovesick girl who lay a mile away, stifling her sobs lest they should
+reach her father's ears, and vainly calling on her lover's name, she
+would scarcely have been more miserable.
+
+One thing was clear. Dick must be warned, and his journey to London
+postponed by some device. He might lie hidden for a day or two in
+Birmingham, and Julia be smuggled there and secretly married. It was no
+time for half measures, and whatever was done should be done quickly and
+decisively. At this idea, at once romantic and practical, Mrs. Jenny's
+spirits revived.
+
+'Samson 'll disown Julia, I know. Her 'll never see a penny o' his
+money. An' I doubt as Abel Reddy 'll do the same wi' Dick. He's just
+as hard and bitter as th' other, on'y quieter wi' it. Well, they shan't
+want while I'm alive, nor after my death neither, and Dick ud make his
+own way with nobody's help. I'll write to him, and find somebody to take
+the letter. I won't go myself, at this hour o' the day.'
+
+She concocted a letter and sealed it, and putting on her bonnet sallied
+out to find a messenger. Fate was so far propitious that scarce
+a hundred yards from her door she met Ichabod Bubb, bound for his
+morning's work at Perry Hall Farm. Ichabod was bent and gnarled and
+twisted now, stiff in all his joints and slow of movement, but his
+quaint visage bore the same look of uncertain and rather wistful humour
+which had marked it in earlier times.
+
+'Morning, mum,' he said, with a stiff-necked nod at Mrs. Jenny.
+
+'Good-mornin', Mr. Bubb,' said the old lady. Ichabod beamed at this
+sudden and unexpected ceremonial of title, and straightened his back.
+
+'You 'm afoot early, mum.'
+
+'Why, yes. But it's such a beautiful morning; it's a shaame to lie abed
+a time like this.'
+
+'So many folks, so many ways o' thinkin',' said the ancient one; 'not
+as it's a sin as I often commits, nayther, 'cos why, I don't get the
+chance.'
+
+'I've got a bit o' business as I want done, Mr. Bubb,' said Mrs. Busker,
+'if ye don't mind earnin' a shillin'.'
+
+'Why,' returned Ichabod, 'I don't know as I've got any, not to say
+rewted, objection to makin' a shillin'.'
+
+'You're goin' to the farm?' Ichabod nodded. 'Then I want you to take
+this note to Mr. Richard. But mind, you must get it to him private.
+Nobody else must know. D'you understand?'
+
+'I'm all theer, missus,' responded Ichabod.
+
+'Then there's the note, an' there's the shillin'. An' if you're back in
+two hours you shall have a pint o' beer.' Ichabod took the note and the
+shilling, and clattered off with a ludicrous show of despatch, and
+the old lady returned to her sitting-room to await the result of his
+message. It came in less than the appointed time, and disappointed her
+terribly. Ichabod had ascertained that Dick had started half an hour
+before his arrival at the farm for Birmingham, and would only return
+to-morrow night to sleep and take away his luggage on the following
+morning.
+
+'And you come to me w' a message like that, y' ode gone-off!' said
+the exasperated old woman. 'You might ha' caught him up i' the time as
+you've wasted comin' back here.'
+
+'Caught him up,' said Ichabod, with a glance at his legs. 'Yis, likely,
+like a cow might ketch a race-hoss. I'm a gay fine figure, missus, to
+ketch up the best walker i' the country-side.'
+
+Mrs. Jenny was a woman, and therefore to offer her reason as an antidote
+to unreasoning anger was merely to heap fuel on flame.
+
+'Ah!' she said, reasonably enraged with the whole masculine half of her
+species,' you're like the rest on 'em.'
+
+'Then I'm sorry for the rest on 'em,' said Ichabod, 'whoever they may
+be.' Here Mrs. Jenny shut the door upon him, leaving him in the street,
+and retired to her sitting-room. But with beer to be gained by boldness,
+Ichabod was leonine in courage. He knocked, and the summons brought
+the old lady to the door again. Ichabod spoke no word, but writhed
+his twisted features into a grin which expressed at once humorous
+deprecation and expectancy, and rabbed the back of his veiny hand across
+his bristly lips.
+
+'Go round to the brewus,' said Mrs. Jenny; 'you'll find the maid there.
+It's all you're fit for, ye guzzlin' old idiot.'
+
+Ichabod retired, elate.
+
+'Her tongue's a stinger; but, Lord bless thee, Ichabod, her bark's a
+long sight worse than her bite. An' her beer's main good.'
+
+Mrs. Jenny, meanwhile, retired to the sitting-room, and there sat
+immersed in gloom. Things looked black for her young protégés, and fate
+was against them. With that curious interest in familiar trifles which
+comes with any fit of hopelessness or despondency, she sat looking at
+the furniture of the room and the pictures which decorated the walls.
+Among these latter was a work of her own hands, her masterpiece, a
+reproduction in coloured wool of a German engraving of the last scene
+of _Romeo and Juliet_. There was a pea-green Capulet paralytically
+embracing a sky-blue Montague in the foreground, with a dissolving view
+of impossibly-constructed servitors of both houses and the County Paris,
+with six strongly accented bridges to his nose and a worsted tear upon
+his cheek, in the background. Under this production was worked in white,
+upon a black ground, the legend which Mrs. Rusker mournfully repeated as
+she gazed on it--
+
+     'For never was a story of more woe,
+     Than this of Juliet and her Romeo';
+
+and as she spoke the words an inspiration flashed into her mind. She had
+her plan.
+
+The new-born idea so possessed her that she could not sit or rest. It
+drove her out, as the gad-fly drove lo, to devious wanderings in the
+neighbouring lanes, and as she walked and walked, finding some little
+ease in the unusual and incessant exercise, she drew nearer and nearer
+to the Mountain Farm. As she paused on a little eminence and looked
+towards it, the distant church bell struck clear across the intervening
+fields, proclaiming nine o'clock.
+
+'Thank the Lord,' said the old woman. 'I can go now. I dussent go too
+early. They might suspect.'
+
+She made straight for the house, and found Mrs. Mountain alone. Samson
+was afield, and in answer to Mrs. Busker's inquiries regarding Julia,
+Mrs. Mountain tearfully informed her that the poor girl was too ill to
+come downstairs, and had not eaten a crumb of the tempting breakfast
+prepared and sent to her room for her. Mrs. Mountain was voluble in
+condemnation of her husband's lack of wit in his announcement of the
+matrimonial scheme he had formed for the girl, and Mrs. Jenny was fluent
+and honest in sympathy. Might she see the girl? Julia was fond of her,
+and her counsels might bring some comfort. Mrs. Mountain yielded a ready
+assent, and the old lady went up to the girl's room, and entering on
+the languid summons which followed her knock, saw Julia seated at the
+window, listless, dejected, and tearful The tears flowed even more
+freely at the sight of her, and the girl sobbed on her old friend's
+breast in full abandonment to the first great grief of her life.
+
+'My dear,' said Mrs. Jenny, when this gush of sorrow was over, 'take a
+bit o' heart. Things is rarely as bad as they seem; an' there's help at
+hand always if we on'y know where to look for it.'
+
+There was more meaning, to Julia's thinking, in the tone in which this
+commonplace condolence was delivered than in the words themselves. Mrs.
+Rusker's manner was big with mystery.
+
+'Now, my darlin', I know you 'm a brave gal, and can act accordin' when
+there's rayson for it. I've got a plan as 'll save you yet, if on'y
+you've got the courage.'
+
+Julia's clasped hands and eager look encouraged her to proceed.
+
+'My dear, you remember _Romeo and Juliet?_ You remember how Juliet got
+the sleepin' draught an' took it? 'Julia's look was one of wonder, pure
+and simple, now. 'That's my plan, my dear, an' the Dudley Divil can do
+it for us, if on'y you'll ha' the courage to tek it. Not as I mean as
+you need be buried afore Dick comes to you. We shouldn't go as far as
+that. But I'll get the stuff, an' it'll send you to sleep, an' they'll
+think as you're dead, an' then I'll tell 'em how you an' Dick loved
+each other so's you couldn't bear to part wi' him, an' the fear of it's
+killed you. That'll soften their hard hearts, my dear. Old Reddy knows
+all about it--that's why he's sendin' Dick away to London an' I'll get
+him fetched back to see the last o' you, an' I'll mek your father an'
+his father shaake hands, an' then you'll come to, an' after that what
+can they do but marry you to Dick, an' forget all that rubbidge about
+the brook, an' live in peace together, as decent folk should do.'
+
+Julia's reception of this brilliant scheme, which Mrs. Rusker developed
+with a volubility which left no opportunity for detailed objection, was
+to fall back in her chair and begin to cry anew at the sheer hopeless
+absurdity of it.
+
+'What's the matter wi' the wench?' demanded Mrs. Rusker, almost sternly.
+'Come, come,' she continued, her brief anger fading at the sight of
+Julia's distress, 'have a bit o' sperrit. Now, will you try it? Spake
+the word, an' I'll goo to the Divil this minute.'
+
+This wholesale self-abandonment in the cause of love produced no effect
+on Julia, except to frighten her. Mrs. Rusker argued and reasoned, but
+finding her fears too obdurate to be moved by any such means, left
+the house in dudgeon, whereat poor Julia only cried the more. But
+Mrs. Rusker's confidence in her plan was unshaken, and her persistency
+unchecked. She would save the silly girl against her will, since it must
+be so, and half an hour after she had crossed the Mountain threshold she
+was in her trap, _en route_ for the dwelling of the wizard.
+
+She found that celebrity alone, and opened fire on him at once.
+
+'Ruffis, I want thy help, an' I'm willin' to pay fur it.' The
+necromancer's fishy eye brightened. Things were going poorly with him,
+the rising generation followed newer lights unevident in his earlier
+days, and his visitors were mostly of Mrs. Rusker's age, and were
+getting fewer day by day.
+
+'My skill's at your service, ma'am, such as it is,' he answered, with
+gravity.
+
+'I want some'at as 'd send a body to sleep--mek 'em sleep for a long
+time, wi'out hurtin' 'em. Can you doit?'
+
+'Why, yis; I could do that much, I think.' His tone and manner intimated
+vaguely how much more he could have done, and his disappointment at the
+facility of his task. 'But,' he added prudently, 'it's a job as ain't s'
+easy as you might fancy.'
+
+Mrs. Busker laid a sovereign on the table.
+
+'Wilt do it for that?' she asked.
+
+The wizard stole a look at her. She was obviously very much in earnest.
+
+'The hingredients,' he said, 'is hard to find, and harder to mix in doo
+perportions.'
+
+'I must have it now, and at once,' said Mrs. Busker.
+
+'That,' said Rufus, 'ain't possible.' Mrs. Jenny laid a second piece of
+gold beside the first 'It's a dangerous bisness, missus,' he went
+on. 'Theer's noofangled laws about. 'Twas only last wik as that young
+upstart, Doctor Hodges, comes an' threatens me with persecution as
+a rogue an' vagabond, a-obtainin' money under false pertences for
+practisin' my lawful an' necessary art. Why, it ain't so long since I
+cured his mother o' the rheumatiz, as is more nor he can dew, wi' all
+his drugs, an' the pestle an' mortar o'er his door.'
+
+'You ought to know as you're safe wi' me, Rufus,' said Mrs. Rusker. 'Who
+should I tell? Why, I should tell o' myself tew, at that raate; an' is
+that likely?'
+
+'It's dangerous, missus,' repeated the wizard.
+
+'Well, if yo' won't, I must try them as wull,' said Mrs. Jenny, rising
+and taking up the coins.
+
+'I didn't say as I wouldn't,' returned Rufus. 'Theer's no call to be so
+uppish But if I tek a chance like that I expect to be paid for it.'
+
+'Two pound ud mek it wuth your while to do more than that.'
+
+'I'll dew it,' said the wizard. 'Give us the money?'
+
+'Wheer's the stuff?'
+
+'Why, it ain't made yet. D'you think as I can percure a precious
+hessence like that all of a minute?'
+
+'Then mek it, an' I'll gie you the money.'
+
+'Gi' me a pound in advance, an' I'll bring it to you.' And on that
+understanding the bargain was made, and the time fixed for the delivery
+of the potion. The intervening time was filled in by the astute wizard
+journeying to a neighbouring town and procuring from a chemist a
+sleeping draught, which he paid for out of Mrs. Busker's sovereign. He
+turned up at Laburnum Cottage at the stipulated hour, handed over the
+draught (having previously washed off the chemist's label), received his
+second sovereign, and departed.
+
+Mrs. Rusker, with the fateful bottle in the bosom of her dress, betook
+herself again to Mountain Farm. Her unfeigned interest in the patient,
+and the intimacy she had so long enjoyed with the whole family, made the
+house almost as free to her as was her own, and when she took possession
+of Julia in the capacity of nurse she was made welcome, and the poor
+girl's other attendants hoped much from her ministration. Julia was
+undoubtedly very ill, so ill that even Samson Mountain forbore to
+force her to descend to the parlour in which Mr. Tom Raybould nervously
+awaited her coming, and where, on Samson's return from his daughter's
+chamber, the pair sat and drank their beer together in miserable
+silence, broken by spasmodic attempts at conversation regarding crops
+and politics. The doctor had been called in, and, knowing nothing of the
+grief which was the poor girl's only ailment, had been too puzzled by
+the symptoms of her malady to be of any great service. She was feverish,
+excited, with a furred tongue and a hot skin. He had prescribed a mild
+tonic and departed. Mrs. Jenny, intent on the execution of her plan,
+gained solitary charge of her patient by telling Mrs. Mountain that her
+attendance on her daughter had already told upon her, and advising a few
+hours' rest.
+
+'I don't feel very well,' Mrs. Mountain confessed. 'Not a wink o' sleep
+have I had iver since Samson came home last night. Nor him nayther, for
+the matter o' that, though he tried to desave me by snorin', whinever
+I spoke to him; an' as for any sympathy--well, you know him aforetime,
+Jenny--I might as well talk to that theer poker.'
+
+Then Jenny was fluent in condolence, and at last got the old lady out of
+the room.
+
+'When did you take your medicine last, my dear?' she asked the patient
+'Ain't it time as you had another drop?'
+
+'It doesn't do me any good,' said the patient fretfully. She knew better
+herself what was wrong with her than anybody else could guess, and only
+longed passionately to be alone and free to think and cry over her lost
+love and broken hopes.
+
+'Why, my dear, you've on'y took one dose yit,' said Machiavel. 'You
+must give it time. I'll pour you out another.' Her back was towards the
+patient as she clattered about among the glasses on the table with a
+shaking hand. She poured out the wizard's potion, the phial clinking
+against the edge of the glass like a castanet, and her heart beating so
+that she almost feared Julia would hear it The girl at first pettishly
+refused the draught, but Mrs. Jenny, in her guilty agitation, made short
+work of her objections, and poured it down her throat almost by main
+force.
+
+'Maids must do as their elders bid 'em,' she said, as she returned the
+glass to its place.
+
+'It doesn't taste the same,' moaned the patient
+
+'You're like all th' other sick folk I iver nursed. As fall o' fancies
+as you can stick,' said Mrs. Jenny. 'Lie quiet, and try an' go to
+sleep.'
+
+The girl lay silent, and Mrs. Jenny, more than half wishing the whole
+business had never been begun, sat and listened to her breathing. She
+stirred and sighed once or twice, but after a while lay so utterly still
+that the old lady ventured to approach the bed. Julia's face was almost
+as white as her pillow, and her breath was so light that it hardly
+stirred the coverlet above her bosom.
+
+'It's a-workin,' said Mrs. Rusker.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Mrs. Jenny's simple faith in the talents of Rufus Smith underwent
+a severe trial during the ensuing night. She had left Julia still
+sleeping, and the memory of the last glance she had bestowed upon the
+white face in the light of the carefully-shaded candle haunted her
+all night, and roused a foreboding too dismal to be expressed, or even
+formulated in definite thought. The matchmaker lay and trembled all
+night at that terrible idea, and again the pale-faced dawn visited a
+sleepless pillow, and found her haggard with anxiety and lack of sleep.
+Juliet's query to the Friar had been, 'What if the potion should not
+work?' but Mrs. Jenny's terrified inquiry of her own soul was, 'What if
+it had worked too well?' What if it had killed Julia in very deed? It
+was too horrible to happen, Mrs. Jenny said to herself. Too horrible to
+think of. But, if it had happened, she would have nothing else to think
+of all her life, and the fancy drove her nearly mad.
+
+She was dressed and afoot even earlier than on the preceding morning.
+She crept out and encircled the Mountain Farm in a radius of a mile
+or thereabouts, looking anxiously towards it at every step, as if its
+silent walls might speak comfort or confirm her fears, even at that
+distance. The house looked peaceful enough amid its surrounding trees
+under the tranquilly broadening light of dawn, but Mrs. Rusker knew how
+ghastly white the face of the poor child she loved as her own might
+look in that roseate glow. Presently a thin line of smoke curled from a
+chimney on the noiseless air. The farm was waking to its daily round
+of life. A burly figure on horseback came towards her as she stood on a
+little eminence. She waited long enough to identify Samson Mountain,
+and hid among the ferns and bushes until the horse's hoof-beats had
+clattered swiftly by on the stony road below her, and faded in the
+distance.
+
+Time crept on, slow but inexorable. She longed, as she had never longed
+before for anything, for the courage to go to the farmhouse and ask
+tidings of Julia. But her fear was greater than her longing, and she
+roamed at random in a circle, never losing sight of the house, but not
+daring to approach it or be seen from its windows. She dreaded what
+might be the news to greet her there. She feared her own face, with its
+haggard lines of sleeplessness and anxious watching. At last, from the
+very depths of her misery, she plucked the heart of despairing hope, and
+made for the farm. The farm labourers and country folk she met stared
+after her. Even their bovine understandings were troubled by her scared
+face. She scarcely saw them, or anything but the farmhouse, which drew
+her now with an influence as strong as its repulsion had been an hour
+ago. She entered the house by the back door, and made straight for the
+sitting-room. Mrs. Mountain was there, arranging a tray, on which were
+tea and jam and other homely luxuries. She wore her ordinary look of
+placid contentment, and at the sight of her quiet face Mrs. Rusker
+dropped panting, with a vague unformulated feeling of relief, into a
+chair.
+
+'Sakes alive! Whativer is the matter?' demanded Mrs. Mountain.
+
+'Julia!' panted the visitor. 'How's Julia?'
+
+'Why,' said Mrs. Mountain, 'how should her be?'
+
+'Is she awake yet?' asked Mrs. Jenny, more calmly.
+
+'No. Her was sleepin' when I seed her, jist for a minute, a hour ago.
+I'm jist goin' upstairs wi' some breakfast for her. Well, I declare, yo'
+look as pale as a ghost. What's the matter with you?'
+
+'Oh, I've passed a miserable night,' said Mrs. Jenny, in unconscious
+quotation from her favourite poet. 'I couldn't sleep a-thinkin' o'
+Julia.'
+
+'Well, then, you do look poorly,' said her hostess, with all her
+motherly heart warmed by this solicitude for her daughter. 'Why, theer's
+no cause to fret i' that way. To be sure, Samson might ha' knowed better
+than to blunder such a thing as that right out, but, then, he's a man,
+and that'd account for a'most anything. Married life might teach 'em
+better, you'd think, and yet after nigh on forty year on it he knows
+no more about women folk than any bachelor i' Barfield. Theer, tek your
+bonnet off, an' I'll gi' ye a cup o' tay, an' then you can goo upstairs
+wi' me and see the wench.'
+
+Mrs. Jenny gratefully accepted the proffered tea, and, having drunk it,
+much to her inward refreshment, accompanied Mrs. Mountain upstairs. As
+the latter had said, the girl was sleeping still, and Mrs. Busker saw
+that her position had not changed by a hair's breadth. She lay like a
+carven statue, her face marble white in the clear morning light.
+
+'I'm a'most doubtful about wakin' her,' said her mother. 'Theer's no
+doubt as Samson gi'en her a shock, an' sleep's good for her. But her's
+had welly fifteen hours of it now, if she's been asleep all the tima
+Julia, my love,' she said softly, almost in the sleeper's ear. 'My
+sakes, how pale her is. Jenny! come here!'
+
+They both bent above her. Mrs. Rusker's heart was beating like a muffled
+drum, and seemed, to her own ears, to fill the house with its pulsation.
+
+'Julia!' said Mrs. Mountain again, in a louder voice, and shook the girl
+with a tremulous hand, 'Julia!'
+
+The white eyelids did not even stir.
+
+'My blessid! Julia! Don't skeer a body i' this way!' She shook the girl
+again. 'Jenny! whativer's come to the silly wench?'
+
+Mrs. Jenny was more frightened, and with better reason, than her
+companion. Julia's marble pallor, and the awful stillness of her
+form--the keenest glance could not detect a quiver in the face or a
+heave of the bosom--almost stilled that exigent pulse within her own
+breast with a sudden anguish of despair.
+
+'Oh, Jenny, she's a-dyin'!'
+
+Mrs. Mountain's scream rang through the house, and startled every soul
+within it, except that marble figure on the bed. Hurried steps came up
+the stairs, the heavy tread of a man, the light patter of women's feet,
+and the room filled as if by magic.
+
+'Fetch a doctor,' screamed Mrs. Jenny; 'Julia's a-dyin'!'
+
+Samson Mountain stood for one moment with his hands aloft and his eyes
+glaring at his daughter. Then he dropped with a sobbing groan into a
+chair, with his head in his hands. There was a general scream from the
+women. One, more serviceable than the rest, called from the window to a
+gaping yokel below in the yard, and bade him ride for help. Her face and
+voice froze him for a moment, but he caught the words 'Miss Julia,' and
+two minutes after he was astride a broad-backed plough-horse, making for
+the distant village.
+
+Samson Mountain sat with his face hidden and spoke no word; at the sight
+of him his wife's face had turned to sudden rage, and she stood over
+him like a ruffled hen, and clacked commination of masculine imbecility,
+intermixed with wild plaints for her child.
+
+Julia slept through the tumult as she had slept through the calm, and
+Mrs. Jenny, kneeling beside her with her face in the bedclothes, moaned
+love and penitent despair. Samson raised his head at last, and looked
+with a dazed stare first at his daughter and then at his wife, and left
+the room without a word, pursued by a hailstorm of reproach. He went
+into the yard and pottered aimlessly about, looking old and broken on
+a sudden. The sound of horses' hoofs roused him; it was the rustic
+messenger returning. 'Where's the doctor?' demanded Samson. 'Gone to
+Heydon Hey. What am I to dew?' 'Follow him an' fetch him back. Hast not
+gumption enough to know that?' asked Samson wearily. The man started
+again, and Samson began once more his purposeless wanderings about the
+yard. He had no sense of time or place, only a leaden weight on heart
+and limb, which in all his life he had never known before. He leaned his
+elbows on the fence of the fold yard, and became conscious of a running
+figure which neared him rapidly. He watched it stupidly, and it was
+within twenty yards of him before he recognised it--Dick Reddy, dust and
+mud to the collar, hatless, and panting.
+
+'Julia!' he gasped. 'Tell me, is it true?' 'Julia's dyin,' said Samson.
+'My God!' he cried, with sudden passion, as if his own voice had
+unlocked the sealed fountain of his grief, 'my little gell's a-dyin'!'
+
+'Mr. Mountain,' said Dick, 'I love her, you know I love her. Let me see
+her.' His voice, broken with fatigue and emotion, his streaming eyes,
+his outstretched hands, all pleaded with his words.
+
+'It's all one who sees her now,' said Samson, and leaned his elbows on
+the fence again. Dick took the despairing speech for a permission,
+and entered the house. At the bottom of the stairs, in the otherwise
+deserted hall, he met Mrs. Jenny, a very moving statue of terror.
+
+'Dick,' she said, clutching the young man by the arm, 'I can't abear it
+any longer. Come in here wi' me.' She pulled him into a side room, and
+sitting down, abandoned herself to weeping, wringing her hands, and
+moaning.
+
+'I can't abear it any longer,' she repeated. 'I must tell somebody, an'
+I'll tell you. It's all my wicked cruel fault.'
+
+The old woman was so crazed with her secret that she would have spoken
+in the shadow of the gibbet. Ramblingly and incoherently, with many
+breaks for tears and protestations and self-accusation, she told her
+story.
+
+'I've killed her, Dick. But it was for your sake and hers as I done it.
+I reckon they'll hang me, an' it'll serve me right.' She besought him
+not to betray her, and, in the same breath, announced her intention to
+surrender herself at once to the parish constable; and, indeed, between
+fear and remorse and sorrow for the hopeless love she had striven to
+befriend, was nearly mad. Dick heard her with such amazement as may be
+best imagined, and suddenly, with a cry that rang in her ears for many a
+long day afterwards, ran from her and scaled the stairs to Julia's
+room, led thither by the sound of Mrs. Mountain's weeping. The old woman
+stared, as well she might, at the intrusion, with a wonder which for a
+moment conquered sorrow. He went straight to the bed, and leaned over
+the stark figure upon it.
+
+'She's not dead yet,' he said, more to himself than to the
+grief-stricken mother. Mrs. Mountain heard the words, and clutched his
+arm. He turned to her. 'Trust me,' he said, 'and I'll save her.' The
+wild hope in the mother's eyes was terrible to see. 'I love her,' said
+Dick. 'You will trust me? Do as I bid you, and you shall have Julia back
+in an hour.'
+
+Samson Mountain meanwhile wandered in the same purposeless fashion
+about the farm, and held dumb converse with himself. He was a rough man,
+something of a brute--a good deal of an animal--but animals have their
+affections, and he loved Julia as well as it was in his nature to love
+anything. It was ingrained in him by nature and by years of unquestioned
+domination to bully and browbeat all defenceless people; but Julia, the
+most defenceless of his surroundings, had been treated always with a
+lighter hand. Childlike, she had taken advantyage of her immunity in
+many little ways, and though Samson had never forborne to bluster at her
+girlish insubordination, he rather liked it than not, and relished his
+daughter's independence and spirit. Julia was the only creature in the
+household who dared to hold her own against him. He was proud of her
+beauty and what he called her 'lurning,' and, more or less grumblingly,
+petted her a good deal, and would have spoiled her had she been of
+spoilable material. But till this heavy blow fell he had never sounded
+the depths of his own affection for her. The suddenness of the blow
+stunned and bewildered him. He remembered his words to Dick during their
+stormy interview in the road, when he had said that he would rather see
+Julia dead than married to him. Had Providence taken him at his word? He
+did not say it, he did not even think it consciously, but he would have
+submitted to almost any conceivable indignity at the hands of Abel Eeddy
+himself, to have felt his daughter's arms about his neck again. Little
+incidents of Julia's past life were fresh and vivid in his memory. He
+had forgotten many of them, years ago, but they sprang up in his mind
+now, like things of yesterday.
+
+He had wandered back to the front of the house, and sat upon the rustic
+bench beside the porch, with his elbows propped upon his knees, and his
+eyes hidden in his shaking hands, when a voice fell on his ear.
+
+'Neighbour!'
+
+He raised his head. Abel Reddy stood before him.
+
+With something of the old instinct of hatred he had believed to be
+unconquerable he rose and straightened himself before the hereditary
+enemy.
+
+'Neighbour,' said Reddy again. The word was pacific, but Mountain's
+blurred eyes, dim with pain and dazzled by the sunlight, could not see
+the pity in his old enemy's face, and he waited doggedly. 'It's come to
+my ears as you're i' sore trouble. So am I. Your trouble's mine, though
+not so great for me as it is for you, I was wi' Dick when he heard o'
+your daughter's danger, an' what I'd suspected a long time I know now to
+be the truth. I did my best to keep 'em apart--it was that as Dick was
+going to London for. It seemed to behove me to come to you and offer you
+my hand i' your affliction. I take shame to myself that I didn't mek
+an effort to end our quarrel long ago. We're gettin' on in life, Mr.
+Mountain, and we've got th' excuse o' hot blood no longer.'
+
+Therewith he held out his hand, and Samson, with hanging head, took it
+with a growl, which might have been anathema or blessing. And as the
+life-long enemies stood so linked, a window was suddenly opened above,
+and Mrs. Mountain's voice screamed to her husband,
+
+'Samson! Her's alive! Her's awake! 'Both men looked up, and beheld an
+unexpected picture framed by the open window, Dick violently embraced
+by Mrs. Mountain, and submitting to the furious assault with obvious
+goodwill.
+
+'When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?' The story of Julia
+and her Romeo, like all other stories, had found its end, and merged a
+little later into the history of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Reddy. The family
+feud was buried, and Samson and Abel made very passable grandfathers and
+dwelt in peace one with another. Dick never told a living soul, not even
+Julia herself, of the stratagem by which Mrs. Jenny had succeeded in
+uniting them, and Mrs. Jenny, by complete reticence on the subject,
+disproved the time-worn calumny which declares woman's inability to keep
+a secret.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of
+Castle Barfield, by David Christie Murray
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