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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Heiress of Wyvern Court, by Emilie
+Searchfield
+
+
+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: The Heiress of Wyvern Court
+
+
+Author: Emilie Searchfield
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 25, 2007  [eBook #22398]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Wilson, Chuck Greif, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 22398-h.htm or 22398-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/3/9/22398/22398-h/22398-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/3/9/22398/22398-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT
+
+by
+
+E. SEARCHFIELD
+
+Author of "Claimed at Last"
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'GOOD MORNING, MADAME GICHE'" (p. 65).]
+
+
+
+Cassell and Company, Limited
+London, Paris, New York & Melbourne
+1900
+
+All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+  CHAPTER I.--In the Railway Carriage--New Friends                       9
+
+    "    II.--Willett's Farm--Tea in the Dining-room                    21
+
+    "   III.--Dr. Willett--The Nutting Expedition--The Fire             35
+
+    "    IV.--Oscar's Burnt Arm--Black Hole                             47
+
+    "     V.--Inna at the Owl's Nest--More Wrong Steps                  61
+
+    "    VI.--Inna's Firstfruits--On the Tor                            73
+
+    "   VII.--Oscar Lost--A Fruitless Search                            86
+
+    "  VIII.--At the Owl's Nest--The Song--The Surprise                 96
+
+    "    IX.--Oscar's Return--The Mystery Cleared--On the Tor Again    109
+
+    "     X.--The Expedition to Swallow's Cliff--Caught by the Tide    119
+
+    "    XI.--The Rescue--Cloudy Days--Good News at Last               133
+
+    "   XII.--New Thoughts and Ways--The Heiress of Wyvern Court       146
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  "'Good morning, Madame Giche'"                              Frontispiece
+
+  "A donkey and cart came driving up"                      To face page 40
+
+  "It snapped, and he was gone"                                  "     130
+
+  "Dick shook her by the hand"                                   "     144
+
+
+
+
+THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+IN THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE--NEW FRIENDS.
+
+
+"Well, little friend, and where do you hail from?"
+
+The speaker was a merry-faced, brown-eyed boy of eleven, with curly
+brown hair--just the school-boy all over.
+
+He had leaped into a railway carriage with cricket-bat, fishing-rod, and
+a knowing-looking little hamper, which he deposited on the seat beside
+him; then away went the snorting steam horse, train, people, and all,
+and out came this abrupt question. "Little friend" was a mite of a girl
+of nine, dressed in a homely blue serge frock and jacket, with blue
+velvet hat to match: a shy little midge of a grey-eyed maiden, with
+sunny brown curls twining about her forehead and rippling down upon her
+shoulders, nestling in one corner of the carriage--the sole occupant
+thereof until this merry questioner came to keep her company.
+
+"I don't quite know what you mean," was the little girl's reply--a
+sweet, refined way of speaking had she, and her eyes sparkled with shy
+merriment, although there was a startled look in them too.
+
+"Well, where do you come from, my dear mademoiselle?" and now the merry
+speaker made a courtly bow.
+
+"From London--but I'm not French, you know," was the retort, with the
+demurest of demure smiles.
+
+"No--just so; and where are you going?" One could but answer him, his
+questions came with such winning grace of manner.
+
+"To Cherton--to uncle--to Mr. Jonathan Willett's."
+
+"Cherton! why, that's not far from my happy destination. I get out only
+one station before you."
+
+"Little friend" smiled her demure little smile again, as if she was glad
+to hear it.
+
+"So you're going to Mr. Willett's--Dr. Willett he's generally called,
+being a physician," continued the boy, after glancing from the window a
+second or two, as if to note how fast the landscape was rushing past the
+train, or the train past the landscape.
+
+"Yes; do you know him?" inquired the silvery tongue of the other.
+
+"Oh yes; I know him!"--a short assent, comically spoken.
+
+"I don't," sighed the little girl, as if the thought oppressed her.
+
+"Then you'd like to know what he's like," spoke the boy, using the word
+like twice for want of another.
+
+"Yes--only--only would it be nice to talk about a person--one's uncle,
+one doesn't know, be----" she did not like to say behind his back, but
+the faltering little tongue stuck fast, and the small sensitive face of
+the child looked a little confused.
+
+"Ah! behind his back," spoke the boy readily. "Well, perhaps not; but
+you'll know him soon enough, I'm quite sure, and all about Peggy, too.
+Peggy is the best of the couple," he added.
+
+"Do you mean Mrs. Grant, my uncle's housekeeper?"
+
+"Yes, that very lady--only, you see, I like to call her Peggy."
+
+"Yes," returned the child, supposing she ought to say something.
+
+"'Tis a farm, you know--jolly old place. Do you know that?"
+
+"Yes--that is, I know 'tis a farm; mamma told me that. But I didn't know
+'twas jolly; mamma said 'twas very pretty, and home-like, and nice."
+
+"Ah, yes! just a lady's view of the place," nodded the boy approvingly.
+"The farm is the best part of it all, and so you'll say when----"
+
+"Perhaps we'll not talk about it," broke in "little friend" timidly.
+
+"Well, you are a precise little lady not to talk about a farm, your
+uncle's farm, behind its back," laughed the boy.
+
+"It's mamma's uncle," corrected the little maiden.
+
+"Ah, yes! and your great uncle. Well, I thought he was an old fogey to
+be your uncle--I beg your pardon--old _gentleman_ I mean." He laughed
+and made a low bow, but his cheeks took a rosier tint at that real slip
+of his tongue.
+
+"Well, suppose we talk about ourselves; that wouldn't be behind our own
+backs, would it?"
+
+"Oh no!" came with a pretty jingle of laughter.
+
+"Do you know my name? Dick."
+
+"I thought so," replied the little girl.
+
+"You did!--why?"
+
+"You look like a Dick."
+
+"Well, that's just like a girl's bosh--but still, you're right: I am
+Dick Gregory, son of George Gregory, surgeon, living at Lakely, next
+station to Cherton, where you get out, you know."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"Now, mademoiselle, what may your name be?" he asked, as the train
+carried them into the station with a whiz.
+
+"Inna Weston."
+
+"Inna: is that short for anything?"
+
+"Yes--for Peninnah: papa's mother's name is Peninnah; and so, and
+so----"
+
+"And so your father chose to let you play grandmother to yourself in the
+matter of names?"
+
+"Yes," a little ripple of a word full of laughter--her companion was so
+funny.
+
+"Now guess what's in this hamper?" was Dick's next proposition; "that's
+safe ground, you know, to guess over a hamper when the owner bids you,"
+he added, by way of encouragement.
+
+"A kitten." The train was carrying them on again, without any intruder
+to cut off the thread of their talk, except the guard, who put his head
+in at the window, and beamed a smile on Inna, as her caretaker; then he
+shut the door, and locked them in, and here was the train tearing on
+again.
+
+"Well, now, you are a good guesser for a girl," said Dick.
+
+"I didn't guess: I knew it. I heard her mew," smiled Inna.
+
+"Ah! Miss Inna is a little pitcher, pussy; she has sharp ears," said
+pussy's master, peering and speaking through the hamper.
+
+"Me--e--e--w!" came like a prolonged protest against all the
+hurry-scurry and noise, so confusing to a kitten shut up in a hamper,
+not knowing why nor whither she was travelling.
+
+"Now, who am I taking her to? guess that; and if you guess right, I
+should say you're a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and of gipsy
+origin"--so the merry boy challenged her.
+
+"To your sister."
+
+"Right!" laughed Dick.
+
+"But I'm not a seventh daughter--I'm only daughter to mamma, and so was
+mamma before me; and I'm not a gipsy." Inna's face was brimming over
+with shy merriment.
+
+"Well, you ought to be, for you're a clever guesser of dark secrets,"
+returned the boy. "Yes: I'm taking pussy home to my sister. Her name
+is--now, what is her name?"
+
+Inna shook her head.
+
+"Something pretty I should say, but I don't know what."
+
+"Oh! you're not much of a witch after all," said Dick. "No, it isn't
+anything pretty--it's Jane."
+
+Inna smiled, and looked wise.
+
+"Well, what is it, Miss Inna? Out with it!" cried Dick, watching her
+changeful little face.
+
+"Mamma says, when one has an ugly name one must try to live a life to
+make it beautiful."
+
+"Hum! Well, that isn't bad. And when one has a beautiful name--like
+Dick, for instance," said he waggishly, "what then?"
+
+"Then the name should help the life, and the life the name--so mamma
+said when I asked her."
+
+"Well, your mother must be good," said Dick to this.
+
+"Yes, she is." Wistful lights were stealing into Inna's eyes, and Dick
+had a suspicion that there were tears in them.
+
+"I'm not blest with one," spoke he, carelessly to all seeming.
+
+"With no mother?" inquired his companion gently.
+
+"I'm sort of foster-child to Meggy, our cook and housekeeper--ours is
+Meggy, you know, and yours is Peggy, at Willett's Farm."
+
+"Yes," smiled Inna, "yes." She had tided over that tenderness of spirit
+caused by speaking of her mother.
+
+The train was steaming into a station again, but no passenger intruded;
+only the guard peeped in, as caretaker, to see if she was safe, as Dick
+remarked, when they were moving on again.
+
+"Has he got you under his wing?" asked he.
+
+"The guard has me under his care; ma--mamma asked him to see me safe."
+The wistfulness was coming into her eyes again.
+
+"So she has a mother; I thought perhaps she hadn't," thought Dick. Aloud
+he said bluffly, "'Tis well to be a girl, to have all made smooth for
+one. Now here am I, come all the way from Wenley, turned out of school
+because of the measles, and never a creature as much as to say, 'Have
+you got a ticket, or money to buy one?'"
+
+"Oh, but they'd not let you come without a ticket," smiled Inna.
+
+"I mean our chums at school, and father at home. Of course my father
+knew I was all right about money, because he'd just sent my quarter's
+allowance."
+
+"And have they got the measles at your school?"
+
+"Yes: are you afraid of me? Infection, you know."
+
+"Afraid? oh no!"
+
+"Well, if you caught it you'd be all right, your uncle being a doctor. A
+doctor at a farm--queer, isn't it, now?" So Dick went skimming from
+subject to subject, very like a swallow skimming over the surface of
+water after flies and gnats.
+
+"Yes," Inna could but confess it was--very guardedly, though, lest they
+might verge upon gossip again.
+
+"But Peggy's the farmer; your uncle has enough to do to look after his
+patients. He's a clever fo--man--so clever that some say he's got
+medicine on the brain."
+
+Inna's lips were sealed conscientiously; but out of the brief silence
+that followed she put the safe question--
+
+"What colour's your kitten?"
+
+"White. Wouldn't you like to take a peep at her?" and good-natured Dick
+held the hamper so that she might catch a glimpse of the small
+four-legged traveller.
+
+"She's a beauty!"--such was Inna's opinion of her.
+
+"And, according to you, she ought to have a beautiful name. But what of
+my sister Jane? I call her Jenny, and Jin; and that reminds me of the
+other gin with a g, you know; and that carries me on to trap, and
+trapper. I sometimes call her Trapper. That sounds quite romantic, and
+carries one away into North American Indian story life. Have you ever
+read any North American Indian stories--about Indians, and scalps, and
+all that?"
+
+"No," was the decisive, though smiling, reply.
+
+Ah! they were steaming into a station again.
+
+"Lakely at last, and this is my station!" cried Dick, gathering his
+belongings together, so as to be ready to leap out when the train
+stopped, while a porter went shouting up and down the platform, "Lakely!
+Lakely!"
+
+"Well, good-bye, little friend; mind, Cherton comes next, then 'twill be
+your turn to turn out." He wrung her hand, and was out on the platform
+in a twinkle, loaded like a bee, happy as a boy.
+
+"I say, Miss Inna, I should like you to come over to our place to see
+Jenny, or Trapper. I shall ask the doctor to give you a lift over in his
+gig," he put his head back into the carriage to say.
+
+Now he was scudding away down the platform, and claiming a trunk and
+portmanteau from a medley of luggage, had it set aside by the porter,
+who seemed to know him; this done, he darted back again, smiled in at
+the carriage window, where that sweet girlish face still watched him,
+and then vanished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WILLETT'S FARM--TEA IN THE DINING-ROOM.
+
+
+"Cherton! Cherton! Cherton!"
+
+Inna sprang from the corner of her lonely carriage, and stepped out upon
+the platform, helped by the kindly guard.
+
+"Now, my dear, what's to be done? There's nobody here waiting for you,
+as I see," said the man, looking up and down the small platform, where
+she seemed to be the only arrival--she and her neat little trunk, which
+a porter brought and set down at her feet.
+
+"No, they don't know I'm coming," returned the child, with a sober shake
+of her head.
+
+"Where for, miss?" inquired the porter, as the guard looked at him.
+
+"My--Mr. Willett's, at Willett's Farm," said Inna, in a sort of startled
+importance at having to speak for herself.
+
+"Do you know the way?" asked the man.
+
+"No; but I should if you told me--I mean----"
+
+"Yes, miss; I know what you mean," replied the porter, noting her
+childish confusion. "I'll see to her, and send her safely," he promised
+the busy guard, and took her small gloved hand in his, and led her away
+out into the open road by the station, stretching away among fields, all
+bathed in crimson and golden sunshine.
+
+"Now, miss," said he, pointing with his finger, "you go along this road
+and turn to your right, and along a lane, turn to your right, and along
+another; don't turn to your left at all; then turn to your right again,
+and there you are at Willett's Farm. Do you understand?" he asked
+kindly, bending down to something like her height, so as to get her view
+of the way.
+
+"Yes, thank you; I must keep to the right all the way, and turn three
+times--but I don't think I quite know what a farm is like," confessed
+she bravely.
+
+"Oh, miss, that's easy; there isn't another house before you reach the
+farm--the village is above Willett's Farm."
+
+"Thank you; then I'll think I'll go now."
+
+"You'll not lose yourself? I'd go with you, but I expect another train
+in almost directly, and there isn't a soul about here that I could send.
+And about your box, miss: will you send for it?"
+
+"Yes, I'll send for it; and--and I don't think I shall lose myself."
+
+"Then good evening, miss." The porter touched his hat, and she bade him
+"good evening" in return; then the child went wandering down the road
+from the station--a blue dot in the evening sunshine.
+
+Well, she took her three turnings to the right, and they brought her to
+the farm, lying not far up the last lane; the farm-buildings--barn,
+stable, and a whole clump of outbuildings--lying back from the road a
+little, and all lit up by the last rays of sunset. The house looked out
+upon the lane, where the shadows were gathering fast, under the
+many-tinted elm trees overshadowing it. Three spotlessly white steps led
+up to the front door, a strip of green turf lying each side, enclosed by
+green iron railings, and shut in by a little green gate. A quaint old
+house it was, with many crooks, corners, and gables, and small lattice
+diamond-paned windows, through one of which gleamed the ruddy glow of a
+fire. Ah! the air was crisp, the sun well-nigh gone, the evening
+creeping on. Inna sighed, and, tripping through the little green gate,
+mounted the three white steps, and, by dint of straining, reached up,
+and knocked with the knocker almost as loudly as a timid mouse. But it
+brought an answer, in the shape of a middle-aged woman, in a brown stuff
+gown, white apron and cap, dainty frillings of lace encircling her face.
+A sober face it was, yet kindly, peering down in astonishment at our
+small heroine, standing silent there among the deepening shadows in the
+crisp chilly air.
+
+"Well, dearie, what is it?" she questioned, as the child opened her lips
+to speak, and said nothing.
+
+"I'm Inna: please may I come in and tell you all about it?" asked the
+silvery tongue then.
+
+"Yes, of course--that is, if you have anything to tell;" and with this
+the woman made way for the little girl to pass her, and shut the door.
+
+"This way," she said; and that was to the kitchen.
+
+Such a clean, cheery, comfortable place, with its wood fire filling it
+with ruddy glow and warmth, which was like a silent welcome.
+
+"Now, who's ill and wants a doctor? Sick folks' messengers shouldn't
+lag," said the woman, scanning her visitor as they both stood in the
+firelight glow.
+
+"Oh, nobody is ill; and I only--I mean--I don't know where to begin,"
+was the bewildering answer.
+
+"Well, of course you know what brought you," suggested the other.
+
+"Oh, the train brought me; and I've come to stay here."
+
+"You have?" asked the woman.
+
+"Yes; because Uncle Jonathan gave mamma a home once, when she was a
+little girl; and she said he would me, if she sent me."
+
+"And who are you? and who's your mamma?"
+
+"I'm Inna; and mamma is Uncle Jonathan's niece."
+
+"You aren't Miss Mercy's daughter?" said the woman.
+
+"Yes, I'm Miss Mercy's daughter; and now, please, may I sit down?"
+asked the little tired voice.
+
+"Yes, poor little unwelcome lamb; I'll not be the one to deny that to
+Miss Mercy's daughter. Come here;" and she set her own cushioned
+rocking-chair forward on the hearth. "But where is Miss Mercy? and why
+did she send you here?"
+
+"Mamma is gone abroad with papa. Some people are afraid he's dying;
+and"--Inna's heart was full--"I've a letter in my pocket for Uncle
+Jonathan, to tell him all about it."
+
+"Well, well, this will be news for master--unwelcome news, I'm
+thinking," muttered the woman as to herself, but speaking aloud.
+
+"Do you mean I shan't be welcome?" asked a strained little voice from
+the rocking-chair.
+
+"Well, dearie, welcome or not, here you are, and here you must stay for
+to-night, at any rate. You see, Dr. Willett has one child on his hands
+already, and he's a handful. I doubt if he'll want another. But then, we
+must all have what we don't want sometimes--eh, miss?"
+
+To this Inna sighed a troubled little "Yes."
+
+Then Mrs. Grant--for she it was--bethought her to help her off with her
+jacket and hat, and inquired had she any belongings at the station? Yes,
+she had a trunk there; and an unknown Will--at least, unknown to
+Inna--was despatched for it.
+
+"But maybe you'd like some tea?" suggested the housekeeper.
+
+"Yes, I should, please," the little lady assured her, folding her jacket
+neatly, as she had been taught.
+
+"Well, they're just having tea in the dining-room. Come along."
+
+No use for Inna to shrink or shiver, for Mrs. Grant was leading the way
+to those unknown tea-drinkers of whom she was to form one; the
+fire-light from the kitchen showing them the way along a passage. Then a
+door was opened, and the small shiverer thrust in, not unkindly, with
+the words--
+
+"A little lady come for a bit and a sup with you, sir."
+
+Then the door closed, and she was in another fire-lit room. A lamp, too,
+burnt on a table in front of a wood fire, on which was laid a quaint
+old-fashioned tea equipage, with a hissing urn, and all complete. On
+the hearth knelt a lad, making toast; and by his side, leaning against
+the mantelpiece, was a tall man--red-haired, with streaks of grey in
+that of both head and closely-clipped beard. He had keen grey eyes,
+which seemed to scan Inna through; a small mouse-like figure by the
+door, afraid to advance.
+
+"Oscar, where are your manners?" asked the gentleman, "to treat a lady
+in this way, when she's thrust upon you?"
+
+Thrust: here was another word which seemed to say she was not welcome.
+
+"I beg your pardon," lisped the child, thinking she ought to speak.
+
+"No, no; a lady is very like a king--she never does wrong or needs
+pardon; 'tis this great lout of a boy here that is the aggressor."
+
+Whereupon the somewhat awkward, shy lad on the hearth laid down knife
+and toasting-fork, and came towards her.
+
+"Well, whoever you are, will you please sit here?" said he, setting her
+a chair by the table, and taking another himself behind the urn.
+
+"With a lady in the room, you'll never do that," said the gentleman,
+spying comically at him from where he still stood on the hearth, as the
+boy began to brew the tea.
+
+"Oh no, thank you; I couldn't manage the urn," said Inna.
+
+"I thought not," growled Oscar, a big, handsome, fair-haired boy of
+eleven, with grey-blue eyes. "And now, here I am without a cup for you."
+
+Inna had not taken the seat he offered her by the table, but had glided
+round to the gentleman on the hearth. Oscar made a bolt from the room to
+fetch a cup and saucer.
+
+"Won't you say you will like to have me here, Uncle--Uncle Jonathan?"
+she asked hesitatingly. Such a mite she was, glancing up at the tall
+red-haired gentleman turning grey, such blushes coming and going in her
+cheeks.
+
+"My dear little lady, I think you're just the one element wanting in our
+male community: a little girl in our midst will save us from settling
+down into the savages we're fast becoming," replied the gentleman,
+glancing down in an amused way at her from his superior height.
+
+"Well, isn't that welcome enough?" he asked, still with that comical
+smile, as Inna gave a puzzled glance at him, as if not quite
+comprehending his high talk, and fumbling in her dress pocket.
+
+"I have a letter that will tell you all about me--why I've come, you
+know," said she.
+
+"Ah yes, Dr. Willett's letter," he remarked, taking the missive from her
+and balancing it between his finger and thumb. Just then Oscar came back
+with a rush.
+
+"I know all about you, and who you are," said he, putting down the cup
+and saucer he had brought with a clatter. "You're a sort of half-cousin
+of mine, and a great-niece of Uncle Jonathan's," he blurted out.
+
+"Well, since you know so much, suppose you come here and enlighten your
+new half-cousin as to who I am. She has mistaken me for her uncle--and
+naturally too, since you, as host for the time being, were rude enough
+not to introduce us."
+
+At this reproach Oscar left his tea-making, and approached the two: Inna
+with burning cheeks, at her mistake about this unknown gentleman, not
+her uncle.
+
+"Well, this is Mr. Barlow--Dr. Barlow, some people call him, but he's
+no such thing; he's a surgeon, and the one who plays David to Uncle
+Jonathan--you understand?" questioned the boy, with humour sparkling in
+his blue-grey eyes.
+
+"Yes," nodded Inna shyly; "his very dear friend, you mean."
+
+"Yes, that's about the figure," was the response, while the two bowed
+with ceremony.
+
+"And now, I am--tell Mr. Barlow who I am, please," pleaded the small
+maiden.
+
+"Well, this is Miss Inna Weston, the daughter of a certain Mercy
+Willett, niece of Jonathan Willett, Doctor, who lived here years ago,
+before my time. Now, old man, come to tea." With this, the boy slapped
+the other on the arm with pleasant familiarity, and went back to his
+tea-making.
+
+Mr. Barlow led Inna to her seat, and saw her comfortable there, taking
+his own chair beside her, while Oscar sat with his back to the
+fire--like a cat on a frosty night, Mr. Barlow told him. Inna wondered
+where her uncle was, but asked no questions as yet--only munched away at
+her toast in her dainty way, and sipped her tea, trying hard to feel
+that she was at home. As for Oscar, he made such sloppy work with the
+urn, that Mr. Barlow had to say presently--
+
+"Don't make a sea of the table, boy. You see what incapable creatures
+we are, Miss Inna. I never could make tea, and your own eyes tell you
+what Oscar can do."
+
+"I suppose Uncle Jonathan makes tea when he is here," was Inna's reply.
+
+At which the two gentlemen looked comically at each other.
+
+"Well, I can't say I ever saw the doctor come down from the clouds
+enough for that," observed Mr. Barlow dryly; "but I hope his little
+great-niece--am I right in the pedigree, Oscar?--will set us to rights,
+and bring in the age of civilisation for us."
+
+Inna could but laugh a tinkling laugh at this, and asked timidly, "Do
+you live here, Mr. Barlow?"
+
+"No, dear; but I'm here morning, noon, and night. My head-quarters are
+at Mrs. Tussell's, whose name ought to be, now, guess what?"
+
+People must suppose she had an aptitude for guessing, Inna thought, and
+asked with rosy cheeks was it "Fussy"?
+
+"Just the word; only you mustn't tell her so," was the reply; at which
+Inna shook her head, and said she could not be so rude. Then came the
+sound of the doctor's gig outside the house, a step and a voice in the
+passage.
+
+"He'll not come in here, dear," Mr. Barlow told Inna, seeing her start
+and change colour; "he'll have a cup of tea in his den, as we call it,"
+at which Oscar nodded, and said, "And a good name too!"
+
+Tea over, Mr. Barlow rose, and said "Good-bye for to-night, Miss Inna;
+David is going to Jonathan," patted her head, and was gone.
+
+"Is his real name David?" she asked shyly of this cousin she had no idea
+of finding at Uncle Jonathan's; nor had her mamma either, she decided in
+her own mind.
+
+"No; William--Billy Barlow they call him in the village, only I didn't
+say so just now," returned Oscar drily.
+
+"Mind your lessons, Master Oscar," said Mrs. Grant, when she came in to
+fetch the tea equipage.
+
+"Fudge!" was the boy's response, he and Inna established on the hearth,
+roasting chestnuts; and they were still there when Dr. Willett surprised
+them by a footfall close behind them.
+
+Up sprang Inna, like a startled daisy.
+
+"So you're Mercy's little daughter?" said he, by way of greeting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+DR. WILLETT--THE NUTTING EXPEDITION--THE FIRE.
+
+
+"So you're Mercy's little daughter?" said the doctor, by way of
+greeting.
+
+"Yes," faltered Inna; but she put her hand in his; this Uncle Jonathan,
+with whom she had come to live, was all she had in England now, except
+Oscar and Mr. Barlow, who was nobody as yet. The doctor pressed her
+small hand in his big strong one. Tall--taller than his friend
+David--was he, with dark hair and beard--at least, they had been dark,
+but were fast turning grey; his eyes were dark, piercing, and observant,
+full of fire; still, a kindly face, a kindly manner had he.
+
+"Well, little woman, I've read your mother's letter. I never intended to
+be troubled with any more children after Oscar fell to my lot; but for
+your mother's sake, and her mother's before her, I can't shut my door
+against you. So now stay, and see if you can't open another door on your
+own account." This is what he said, still holding her hand in his.
+
+"Do you know what door I mean?" he asked, as the child darted an upward
+glance at him.
+
+"Yes," she nodded, "yes." She could not say more, her heart was thumping
+so, but her small twining fingers in the doctor's palm told him a great
+deal.
+
+He patted her on the head, and let her go; he did not kiss her. Inna
+wished he had when, later on, she was in bed, thinking of the many
+to-morrows she was to spend in this new uncle's house. Her chamber was
+up in one of the gables of the quaint old house; the windows overlooked
+the garden and the home orchard, where, in the former, Michaelmas
+daisies and sunflowers flaunted in the sunshine when she looked out the
+next morning, and apples, rosy and golden, were waiting to be gathered
+in the latter. Birds were twittering and peeping at her through the
+ivy-wreathed window; away in the stubble fields, under the hills, sheep
+were straying, all in a glory of golden light; while rooks cawed and
+clamoured in the many-coloured elms by the house and garden, and all
+sweet morning freshness was everywhere. You may be sure she soon
+dressed, and tripped down the old-fashioned staircase--a dainty midge,
+in blue serge frock and white-bibbed apron. Below, she found Mary, the
+servant under the housekeeper, laying breakfast in the dining-room; and
+while the child stood shyly aloof by a window, in came Mrs. Grant with
+the urn, and her master behind her. Inna stepped forward, but her uncle
+took no notice of her; he only passed on to his seat at the table, took
+up his letters and newspaper, and, as it were, thus stepped into a world
+of his own. Oscar stole in like a thief, and began his usual
+tea-making--placing a cup by his uncle's plate, upon which he laid
+slices of ham, carved as best he could; Inna, at a nod from him, cutting
+a piece of bread to keep company with the ham; while Mrs. Grant gave
+sundry nods, which the boy understood and returned, then she retired
+from the scene. Not a word was spoken during breakfast-time. Oscar
+helped himself and Inna to what the table afforded--ham, eggs, rolls,
+honey, golden butter--all so sweet and clean and homely.
+
+Before the young people had finished, the doctor rose and went tramping
+out.
+
+"Good morning," said he at the door, breaking the spell of silence.
+Inna, rising, wished to spring toward him, but he was gone.
+
+"There, he's safe till two o'clock," sighed Oscar.
+
+"Safe?" said Inna.
+
+"Yes; booked with his patients, you know. Some say he has patients on
+the brain. I wish them joy of him."
+
+"Don't--don't you like him?" she inquired falteringly.
+
+"Do you?" asked the other, helping himself to an egg.
+
+"I ought."
+
+"Ought! I can't bear that word ought: 'tis dinned into my ears morning,
+noon, and night. Now, I tell you what we'll do: we'll fling 'ought' to
+the winds, and go a nutting expedition this morning."
+
+In came Mrs. Grant.
+
+"Well, Master Oscar, I should hope you'd go down to Mr. Fane's for
+lessons to-day," said she.
+
+"I can't; I've a prior engagement," said he, as loftily as a mouth full
+of bread and butter and egg could utter it.
+
+"And what's that, may I ask?"
+
+"I've made a promise to a lady to go elsewhere."
+
+"Oh, Oscar! never mind me; you ought to do your lessons, you know."
+
+"I thought we flung that horrid word to the winds just now. There's no
+ought in the case; I had a holiday yesterday, and I mean to to-day. I
+mean to take Inna to Black Hole, and round through the woods, on a
+nutting expedition--so there!"
+
+This last to Mrs. Grant.
+
+"Very well, Master Oscar; I shall have to set the doctor on to you
+again. I hope, Miss Inna, you'll be a good little influence with him and
+teach him to obey his uncle."
+
+Oscar laughed, pushed back his plate, and left the table. "Now, Inna,
+run and put on your hat and jacket, and we'll be off," said he to the
+little girl.
+
+"Go, dear," said the housekeeper, as the child hesitated. "I suppose he
+means all right for this once, but he must take the consequence;" and
+away went Inna for hat and jacket, wondering if it was right to go.
+
+When she came down, Oscar showed her a packet of sandwiches in the
+nutting basket, which Mrs. Grant had cut for them to eat if they were
+hungry.
+
+"She isn't a bad sort; her bark is worse than her bite," said Oscar of
+her, when the two were well on their way.
+
+On and on--over stubble fields they went, till by-and-by they were
+taking a short cut through a carriage drive in Owl's Nest Park, as Oscar
+informed Inna. It was a pretty bowery walk, overarched with beeches and
+elms in all their autumn glory, and full of the clamour of rooks. Here
+they met an old lady in a wheel-chair, pushed by a page-boy--such a
+sweet sad-faced old lady was the occupant of the chair, with shining
+grey curls peeping out from beneath her black satin hood. She was
+wrapped in some sort of fur-lined cloak; and by her side walked two
+little dark-faced, shy-looking girls of seven, quaintly dressed in rich
+black velvet, very like two wee maidens stepped out of some old
+picture, and each wearing a hood similar to that worn by their aged
+companion.
+
+[Illustration: "A DONKEY AND CART CAME DRIVING UP."]
+
+"This is Madame Giche--spelt G-i-c-h-e--and her two grand-nieces; a
+queer party, all of them," said Oscar, still leading on. "This isn't her
+place: she can't live at her own place, they say, all about some trouble
+she's had; and so she took the Owl's Nest of Sir Hubert Larch, who never
+lives there, on lease."
+
+"Are we intruding here?" inquired Inna.
+
+"Oh, no; there is a right of way: that is, madame gives it, and people
+take it. Come on."
+
+He had the grace to raise his hat to the party as they passed them by,
+and anon they were out of the park, and on a well-worn road. Here the
+sound of wheels greeted them, and a donkey and cart came driving
+up--Dick Gregory charioteer, and a girl of about Inna's age seated in
+the bed of the cart behind him.
+
+"Why, little friend," cried the boy, recognising Inna, "this is a happy
+meeting!" and down he sprang, and seized her hand with a boyish grip.
+
+"How d'ye do, Willett?" this to Oscar, who returned the salutation.
+
+"Now you must be introduced to Trapper. Here, Trapper," said Dick,
+turning to the donkey-cart.
+
+"Don't be silly, Dick," cried the pretty little maiden. "You know I'm
+not Trapper: at least, only to you, who call me Gin and then Trap and
+Trapper. My name is Jenny;" and down she sprang to Inna's side.
+
+"And I am Inna."
+
+"Yes; Dick has told me your name."
+
+"And how is your kitten?" Inna liked the pretty, free, fair-haired,
+fair-faced girl.
+
+"Oh, first-rate, thank you, isn't she, Dick?" said she, appealing to her
+brother, who was just settling with Oscar.
+
+"Oh yes! We'll just manage a morning of it in the woods; you can show
+your cousin Black Hole another time. Isn't what?" he questioned of his
+sister.
+
+"Isn't Snowdrop first-rate?"
+
+"Rather," returned he, with a nod at Inna, which made her blush and
+laugh.
+
+"I'm glad she's well. And so you call her Snowdrop?"
+
+"Yes; and what do you think of our donkey? We call him Rameses: that's
+Dick's choice of a name."
+
+"He's a beautiful creature," returned Inna, stroking the animal's wise
+old head.
+
+"Yes," replied Dick, "I'm a lover of old names, so I thought I'd go back
+to the Pharaohs. Not a bad idea, was it? though no compliment, I
+daresay, to the old fogies."
+
+"No," laughed Oscar; "but never mind about compliments for dead and gone
+fogies."
+
+"And what of the fogies of this generation?" inquired ready Dick.
+
+"The same--never mind."
+
+"But come, we must make hay while the sun shines. In with you, you two
+girls, into the cart," said Dick, which they did, Jenny helping Inna.
+Then up sprang the charioteer, Oscar beside him; crack went the whip,
+and off they drove like the wind.
+
+That nutting expedition was like a fairy dream to London-reared Inna;
+the lads showed her a squirrel or two, a dormouse not yet gone to its
+winter snooze, in its mossy bed-chamber. A snake wriggled past them,
+which made her shudder; frogs and toads leaped here and there in dark
+places. Then, oh, the whir and whisper of the autumn wind among the
+trees! the lights and shadows! Oh, for the magic hand of her artist
+father to make them hers for ever in a picture for her bedroom! But the
+delight of a morning's nutting must come to an end--so did theirs; the
+sandwiches demolished--share and share, as Oscar put it--they bethought
+themselves of dinner and the road leading thereto, so once more they
+were on their backward way, and parting company.
+
+"Good-bye, mademoiselle!" cried Dick, as Inna stood at Oscar's side,
+after she had kissed Jenny, and the two had vowed a girls' eternal
+friendship. Then away went the donkey and cart, and our young people
+hastened home, just in time for dinner. A meal silent as breakfast was
+dinner, so far as they were concerned, for Mr. Barlow and the doctor
+kept a learned conversation high above their heads all the time--so
+Oscar said; and after it was over the boy vanished, nobody knew where.
+As for Inna, she roamed in the orchard all the afternoon in a dream of
+beauty, eating rosy apples, followed by tea--she and Mr. Barlow
+alone--she making the toast and managing the urn: a living proof of
+what can be done by trying, so the surgeon told her. Then he and the
+doctor went out, and Inna crept out to the kitchen, to wonder with Mrs.
+Grant where Oscar was, and what was keeping him.
+
+"No good, Miss Inna; that boy'll go to the dogs if somebody don't take
+him in hand. You try, dearie, what you can do with him," said the
+housekeeper.
+
+"I!" cried astonished Inna. She try what she could do with a big boy
+like Oscar!
+
+"But hark! that's the fire-bell; there must be a fire somewhere," said
+Mrs. Grant, and out she went, with her apron over her head, to listen at
+the back gates.
+
+Inna, with no apron over her head, stole out to keep her company.
+
+"Oh my!" said Mrs. Grant to shivering Inna. "I wish Master Oscar was at
+home. I'm thinking he's a finger in the pie."
+
+Ah! there was the fire, sure enough; it was a flare and a flame against
+the darkening sky.
+
+"What's alight?" inquired Mrs. Grant of a man who went hurrying by.
+
+"Poor Jackson's little farm; they say 'tis going like tinder, and he's
+half crazed," came back to them as the man ran on.
+
+"Oh dear! that boy, what he'll have to answer for!" cried the
+housekeeper.
+
+"But we're not sure 'tis his work," said sensible Inna.
+
+"No, dear; but there's seldom any mischief going that he don't help in
+the brewing of."
+
+Inna was silent, watching the red glare of the fire mounting
+heavenwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+OSCAR'S BURNT ARM--BLACK HOLE.
+
+
+"You see, dearie," went on the housekeeper, "he's playing truant these
+two days, and I don't like to bother the doctor, and get him into
+trouble. I hide what I can, in pity for his friendlessness."
+
+"Hasn't he anybody but Uncle Jonathan?" inquired Inna.
+
+"No, dearie; father and mother both dead, leaving him not a penny.
+'Twould have been a sad life but for master, as I tell him; but I think
+that sets him more against the right than ever."
+
+"Suppose you weren't to tell him, but ask him to do his studies,
+and--and right things, for love of duty and love of pleasing you?"
+suggested Inna.
+
+"That's where it is. I think if he had a sister--now, if you were to get
+him to love you, you'd be able to do anything with him. Love for
+anybody is a mighty power, though 'tis said to be like a silk
+thread--something not seen, but felt--you see, 'tis stronger than it
+seems."
+
+"Yes," sighed Inna; "mamma says a loving heart will find work to do
+anywhere. Yes, mamma, I will try," said she inwardly, thinking of her
+last talk with her dear mother, and that only on the evening before
+yesterday, so short, and yet so long a time ago.
+
+Well, Oscar did not come, so the two went in, leaving the fire to flare
+itself out. Neither did Dr. Willett and Mr. Barlow return. It was quiet
+anxious work, sitting there by the log-fire, hearkening to the ticking
+of the old clock, waiting for someone who did not come--someone up to
+mischief, as Mrs. Grant said. Out she went again, with her apron over
+her head.
+
+"Burnt to the ground, dearie--burnt to a tinder, is the farm: so Sam,
+our carter, says; and 'twas done by some idle boys lighting a bonfire of
+dry furze near." This was her report when she returned to the kitchen.
+
+Then they heard the master and Mr. Barlow come in, and the housekeeper
+went to carry them in supper. Ten o'clock, and they were going out
+again, Inna heard them say. The little girl now stole out herself to the
+back gates; there, in the shadow of the wall, she saw a moving shadow.
+
+"Oscar!" She spoke his name; and Oscar stepped out into the moonlight
+beside her.
+
+"Where have you been?" she ventured.
+
+"Where I like."
+
+"Yes; but have you seen the fire?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose I have."
+
+"Did you--did you have----"
+
+"Did I have a hand in setting it alight? Ah yes! there you go--you're
+all alike."
+
+"No, Oscar; no, but----" her small hands were clinging to his arm.
+
+"Hands off!" cried he, shaking her off, as if he could not bear her even
+to touch him.
+
+His sleeve was in tatters, she felt, before he shook himself free.
+
+"I want you to do something for me," said he, gloomily enough.
+
+A startled "Yes," was the reply.
+
+"Go and get some oil and some flour, and come up to my room--you know
+your way in the dark, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I think----"
+
+"Think! be sure, and be quick!" With this grumpy injunction he swung
+himself away, hugging the shadows, and so into the house and upstairs.
+
+Tap! tap! Gentle little Samaritan--she had the oil, if not the wine; and
+when he bade her enter, she saw that she had indeed to bind up his
+wounds. He stood with his arm bare to the elbow--a poor scorched arm,
+from which charred skin was hanging.
+
+"Now, see here: mix some flour and oil into a paste in this pomatum-pot,
+and spread it on this handkerchief; then bind it on to my arm, and hold
+your tongue. Can you do it, do you think?"
+
+"Yes;" and the small girlish hands soon had the plaster ready.
+
+"Poor arm!" said she, as the boy winced at her kindly but bungling
+dressing.
+
+"Fudge!" scoffed he.
+
+"Oh, I wish you hadn't had anything to do with it!" tearing a
+handkerchief into strips to bind it on with.
+
+"Yes, that's all you know about it. What has Mother Peggy been saying
+about me? I'm the dog with a bad name; I suppose she's hanged me."
+
+"No; she said only kind words of you--at least, what she thought were
+kind."
+
+"Oh, ay! everybody is kind after that fashion, I suppose. Now, about
+holding your tongue?"
+
+"Do you mean I mustn't say anything about your burnt arm?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I won't, if I can help it."
+
+"We know you can help it. Good night."
+
+He let her go out, and she stole down to the kitchen, there to tell Mrs.
+Grant, when she came in from the dining-room, that Oscar was in, and
+gone to bed, without saying anything of what she had done.
+
+"I say, come up here, and help me on with my jacket," called Oscar, the
+next morning, from above stairs, to Inna below in the hall.
+
+Up she ran, like a willing little friend in need, to the needy boy.
+
+"This is my best jacket," said he, when the injured arm was safe in its
+sleeve. "Now you hear what Mother Peggy will say when she sees me
+adorned with it."
+
+"Yes," returned Inna; "has it pained you to-night?"
+
+"Well, yes; I never slept a wink till 'twas almost get-up time."
+
+She looked at him; his face was worn, his eyes wild.
+
+"Tell Uncle Jonathan, and let him see to it, or let me tell him."
+
+"At your peril, if you do!" said he, like a very despot. "And besides,
+'tis more like Billy Barlow's job than the doctor's."
+
+"Let me tell Mr. Barlow, then," she pleaded.
+
+"I tell you, you shan't. That's the worst of having a girl in a
+mess--she won't hold her tongue."
+
+"Yes, I will, if they don't ask me about it," said the child.
+
+To which Oscar returned "Hum!" and ran downstairs, challenging her to
+catch him. Well-nigh over Mrs. Grant he went, she carrying in the urn,
+Inna like a dancing tom-tit behind.
+
+"Have a care, Master Oscar," said the housekeeper, coming to a full
+stop to let him pass. "And what's that best jacket on for?"
+
+"Because the one I wore yesterday is in holes," was the moody reply; and
+he slipped away into the dining-room, to end the discussion.
+
+There must be silence there, for the doctor was in his place at the
+table, buried in his papers, waiting for someone to minister to his
+wants.
+
+"I can't," whispered Oscar, after a vain attempt to wield the
+carving-knife; and he and Inna changed places like two shadows. Well,
+trying generally brings some sort of success: it did to Inna. Carved
+very creditably were the slices of meat she laid on her uncle's plate;
+and, fearing more of a deluge than usual at the urn, she took her seat
+at that, and presided over the meal with dainty dignity.
+
+"I hope you're going to lessons to-day," said Mrs. Grant, as, the doctor
+gone, Oscar sauntered out into the passage.
+
+"Yes, I am," was the curt reply.
+
+"And bring me that torn jacket to mend."
+
+"'Tis past mending," was the reply, and, shouldering his book bag, the
+boy was gone.
+
+"Do you think you could find your way down to the village, dearie, and
+inquire for Mrs. Jackson?" said the housekeeper to Inna. "I've known her
+from a girl, poor dear. Since she's married she's had losses, and now
+'tis said she's lost all by the fire."
+
+"I could find her by asking," returned Inna.
+
+"True, dearie; you have a tongue in your head."
+
+So a few minutes found Inna down in the heart of Cherton, asking for
+Mrs. Jackson. She found her in a neat cottage, and helping the mistress
+of the same to cook a monster dinner for two families. She looked pale
+and sad, but brightened at Inna's kindly message, and the baskets of
+comforts she told her Mrs. Grant sent with her and the doctor's
+compliments.
+
+"Thank you, dear; and my compliments in return; and my heart's best
+thanks to that brave boy, your--your--what is he to you, miss? I suppose
+he's something?" said Mrs. Jackson.
+
+"Do you mean Oscar?"
+
+"Yes--he who saved my boy at the risk of his own young life."
+
+Inna's cheeks flushed, and sweet lights stole into her eyes.
+
+"Do you mean----?" she faltered.
+
+"I mean he rushed up the burning staircase, and brought down this little
+chap," returned Mrs. Jackson, drawing a sunbeam of a boy of two to her
+side, "when strong men hesitated and stood back. Didn't you know?"
+
+"No; I know he burnt his arm."
+
+"Burnt, miss! 'Twas a wonder he wasn't burnt to a cinder. Give him my
+blessing--a mother's blessing--and tell him he ought to make a noble
+man." This was Mrs. Jackson's message to Oscar as she stood at the door,
+and watched the little girl away.
+
+"Well, dear, that shows 'tisn't wise to condemn people before they're
+tried," was Mrs. Grant's comment when Inna told her of Oscar's brave
+deed.
+
+Dr. Willett and Mr. Barlow would dine late, and would be away all day.
+Oscar also failed to put in an appearance at dinner-time, so Inna dined
+in solitary state in the great dining-room, and had a pleasant afternoon
+in the orchard, where a man or two were gathering in apples. Still, she
+wished she knew why Oscar did not come to dinner, and where he was, for
+her heart was beginning to yearn already over the wilful, noble,
+undisciplined boy. It had always been her dream to have a brother--a big
+strong brother to lean upon, and here was one whom she would like to
+gather to her.
+
+"I didn't want any dinner, so saw no use in coming home," was the
+account Oscar gave of himself that evening, when, at sundown, he came
+sauntering in. But he took his revenge by doing wonders at tea-time,
+sitting by the kitchen fire on a low stool, and eating his dinner, kept
+hot for him. Inna was in the dining-room, presiding at her uncle's meal,
+like a small queen.
+
+"Does it hurt, dear lad?" inquired Mrs. Grant of the boy.
+
+"No; what good is it to make a fuss about a scratch like that?" returned
+he, wielding knife and fork as best he could, now one, now the other in
+his left hand.
+
+But lo! to the astonishment of all, out came Dr. Willett and Mr. Barlow
+into the kitchen--who so seldom came there--followed by Inna.
+
+"Oscar, let me see your arm," said the doctor.
+
+Ah! well the thing was out--so much for a girl.
+
+"I hardly know that I can, 'tis such a tight fit of a sleeve," returned
+the boy, with a reproachful look at Inna.
+
+"Well, it went in, I suppose, and it must come out," said Mr. Barlow,
+coming to his side.
+
+"Oh, don't, sir!" It was pitiful to hear the boy plead thus at the very
+thought.
+
+"Cut the sleeve," spoke the decisive doctor.
+
+"Oh don't, sir, do that!"--it was Mrs. Grant's turn to plead now--"'tis
+his best jacket."
+
+"Yes, and his best arm, being the right; better sacrifice a jacket than
+an arm"; and Mr. Barlow's scissors did the work, and laid bare Inna's
+surgical dressing.
+
+A nasty burn, but not unskilfully dressed for such young hands, they
+said; then they dressed it their own way, prescribed a sling for the
+arm, and a good night's rest for the boy.
+
+"And, my boy," said the doctor impressively, "I've heard two reports of
+you in the village, both bad and good; and I will let the good plead
+with me against the bad this once, and prevail. But remember, one noble
+deed doesn't make a life work: there's the boy's plodding on, learning,
+and doing as you're bid, and a hundred other things--the very foundation
+of a good useful life."
+
+"'Tis such humdrum work," grumbled Oscar.
+
+"And so is ours--noble art of healing, as it's sometimes called--eh, Mr.
+Barlow?"
+
+"Yes, it would be, if we weren't applying a salve to somebody's sore;
+and I suppose that's what almost all work amounts to--salving somebody's
+sore, easing the wheels of life somewhere," was that gentleman's reply.
+"And the humdrum drudging of a schoolboy, in learning and unlearning, is
+but the easing the wheels of his ignorant brain."
+
+Well, whether Oscar laid this new thought to heart or not, certain it is
+that he kept zealously to lessons and Mr. Fane, took kindly to Inna, and
+called her "a little brick," and all the many flattering names found in
+a boy's vocabulary. But his wound would not heal, for which the weather
+was blamed, and the constant friction he gave it, until his two doctors
+advised he should not race about so much; and so it came about that
+November was well on its way before the arm was well, and Inna saw that
+abyss of mystery, the Black Hole. Very like a lake, with an
+unfathomable hole in the centre--or said to be unfathomable, because it
+had been sounded by the villagers and no bottom found--over-spanned by a
+bridge, its water having some hidden outlet, and lying on the north side
+of Owl's Nest Park, among tangled bushes and faded herbage: such was
+Black Hole. It was on a sunless hazy afternoon when they paid their
+visit to the gloomy place. Oscar betook himself with boy-like zest to
+testing the depth of the so-called unfathomable hole with a long pole he
+used for leaping with, Inna watching him, and wondering the while
+whether the hole, with its darkly swirling waters, were bottomless, as
+it was said to be.
+
+"Have a care," her companion had warned her. "Don't lean against the
+rails of the bridge; the old thing is as crazy as crazy."
+
+But, like a girl, as he said afterwards, she must needs forget; and lo!
+as he poked and fathomed as he had often done before and made no new
+discovery, a scream rang out, and he looked up to find Inna and the rail
+had both vanished.
+
+"I told you so," said he, like a lad in a nightmare, his hair standing
+on end; and then in he sprang, with the forlorn hope of bringing her
+out. Ah! there was a dark story told of the victim once sucked in by
+that yawning mouth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+INNA AT THE OWL'S NEST--MORE WRONG STEPS.
+
+
+But that strong unseen Hand, so often stretched out in our great
+extremities, was stretched out now, although only for the saving of one
+little girl. It guided the boy to the spot where the poor little
+floundering bundle rose to the surface, helped him to play the hero, and
+to snatch her from those yawning watery jaws, that would fain have
+swallowed her--she was shudderingly near to her end, but after a time he
+grasped her tightly, and drew her to him.
+
+At last he was landing after such a brief long struggle, his burden in
+his arms, on the dreary bank, little dreaming that any spectator was
+watching him play the man. Yet there were four--Madame Giche, her
+nieces, and Phil, her page; and all four came bearing down upon him,
+chair and all, as he laid Inna down among the rough grass a moment, to
+just take breath, shake himself, and then home, or the poor mite would
+die of cold. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very death-like, as it
+was.
+
+"Take her to the house, to the Owl's Nest," came the command, with the
+tone of authority, from the depths of Madame Giche's black hood.
+
+"I thought of taking her home," returned Oscar without ceremony.
+
+"Yes, young people think a great many wrong thoughts; but if you take
+her to the house, you'll be glad in an hour's time you did an old
+woman's bidding," was the decisive reply.
+
+Oscar caught up the insensible girl in his arms in moody silence; truth
+to tell, he would be glad to get her into something dry and warm; she
+certainly did look death-like.
+
+"Do you know the short cut to the house?" inquired Madame Giche.
+
+"Yes, thank you; I know."
+
+"Can you carry her, or shall Phil help you?"
+
+At this, he might have been the giant-killer in the old nursery tale,
+carrying poor little Jack, by the way he took up his burden, and struck
+away for the boundary of the park; a curt "No, thank you," ringing back
+over his shoulder in scant courtesy as he went.
+
+Then Madame Giche's party turned and went homeward by a less direct
+road, because of her chair, and Black Hole was again deserted. Madame
+Giche, however, despatched Phil to run forward with her message to the
+servants, that the child was to be taken in and attended to; her nieces
+propelling her along at a brisk canter, because she wished to be herself
+early on the spot. So Phil and Oscar mounted the north terrace together.
+Phil gave the alarm, the servants flocked out, and Long, Madame's own
+maid, took possession of Inna, and bore her away to her own little room,
+next to her mistress's bedchamber, on the first floor. Of course, Oscar
+loitered about outside, on the terrace, like a lad in a book, to wait
+for tidings; he was there when Madame arrived, and assisted her up the
+steps, he on one side, Phil on the other, because a trembling fit,
+brought on by the shock, was upon her. A frail little mite of a
+gentlewoman was she between the two sturdy lads, her nieces, like meek
+little handmaids, following behind them.
+
+"Now, boy, if you're mad, I'm not. Come in and take off those wet
+garments, and put on some of Phil's." So she half commanded half
+persuaded him, still grasping his arm with her clinging fingers.
+
+And for once the boy obeyed, and submitted to be so equipped, Phil
+taking him under his especial care and leading the way to his bedroom.
+Anon, when he descended the stairs, longing for tidings of Inna, Phil
+grinning slily behind him at his second self, out stepped Long from
+somewhere, and told him the little lady had come out of her swoon, and
+they had given her something comforting, and tucked her up in bed.
+"Madame Giche's compliments to Dr. Willett, and they would take good
+care of her till to-morrow." Then Phil appeared with a cup of steaming
+coffee, which Long made him drink before he left; then he set forth
+homeward.
+
+Willett's Farm was more dreary that evening than ever before, with
+little cheery Inna away, if she had only known it. But she was sweetly
+sleeping all the evening, in a bed hastily wheeled in to keep company
+with Long's; and when, at midnight, she awoke to find herself there,
+Long bending over her, the fire-light rosy on the hearth, a shaded lamp
+somewhere behind her, you may be sure she felt like a story-book
+heroine, not herself. Still she was herself, and when she had taken some
+soup, been told that Oscar had gone home, and she was at the Owl's Nest,
+she fell asleep, and woke the next morning to breakfast in bed. After
+this she dressed herself, and went down to form the acquaintance of
+Madame Giche and her grand-nieces.
+
+"And so you're none the worse for your wetting, my dear?" said her
+hostess, drawing her to her, and kissing her, after the little girl had
+gone up to her, as she sat by the log fire, and timidly said--
+
+"Good morning, Madame Giche. Thank you for being so good to me."
+
+The child assured her that she was none the worse, her rosy face
+testifying to the same.
+
+"Then, dear, don't think about thanks. You are quite a pleasant surprise
+visitor to us--lonely people; to me and my two little shy nieces, who
+will be the better for having a little girl friend. Let me introduce
+you; they're on the very tip-toe of waiting."
+
+Then the two wee maidens came round from behind their aged relative's
+chair, and were introduced as Olive and Sybil. Two dark-haired,
+brown-skinned damsels were they, in quaintly cut velvet frocks, with
+frillings of lace at throat and wrists.
+
+"Now see, dear, it's pouring with rain. Do you think you could be happy
+as our guest to-day, or must I send you home in the carriage?"
+questioned Madame Giche.
+
+They were in what was called the tapestried chamber, a room lined with
+needlework, done by dead fingers of long ago: those of some of the
+ladies whose portraits Inna was to see by-and-by in the grand staircase,
+and the gallery running round the hall.
+
+"I should like--what would you like me to do, ma'am?" faltered Inna.
+
+"We should much like you to stay, dear," returned Madame Giche, still
+holding her hand.
+
+"Then, thank you, I should like to stay."
+
+So it was decided, and Olive and Sybil, the twin sisters, drew away
+their guest to look at pretty foreign ornaments, in profusion all about
+the room.
+
+"All grand-auntie's own," as they told her, "which we brought from
+abroad. You see, this isn't our own home, but grand-auntie took it on
+lease from a gentleman we met abroad. Grand-auntie has lived abroad for
+years and years, ever since her heart was broken." So they chatted, and
+enlightened Inna.
+
+This was in the afternoon, after they had lunched with Madame Giche in
+the tapestried room, and had wandered away up into the picture-gallery,
+to look at some of the pictures.
+
+"There, that is grand-auntie; isn't it like? That was done abroad," said
+Sybil, who was the talker. Olive was sedate and somewhat silent.
+
+There was no mistaking the sweet aged face peering down at them from the
+canvas, and Inna said so.
+
+"And that is grand-auntie's son--he who broke her heart, you know. He
+disappointed her, went abroad, married, and died," whispered the child.
+"Ah! whisper it," so she expressed it, "because it is all so sad.
+Grand-auntie was never reconciled to him, you see, and so can never make
+it up in this world. He had a wife and a little boy, and grand-auntie
+has searched Europe over, she says, and can't find them."
+
+A dark, handsome, wilful young face had Madame Giche's son, as seen in
+his portrait--a young man just on the threshold of manhood. Inna stood
+to gaze at it, wondering what it was stirring the depths of her
+sensitive little heart, and filling it with a lingering pain.
+
+"Grand-auntie says these two pictures have no right here, and calls them
+alien pictures among aliens, because the house isn't ours and the
+pictures don't rightly belong here; but she took her son's portrait with
+her in all her travels, and her own was done abroad, and of course she
+brought them here."
+
+"His wife wrote the letter telling of his death, and that he asked
+grand-auntie to forgive him--and that was all. She has never been able
+to find the wife nor the son."
+
+"'Tis sad," sighed Inna; "because she might have been so fond of the
+son."
+
+"Papa's portrait is at Wyvern Court--that's grand-auntie's own place,
+you know. Grand-auntie says we shall be twin heiresses by-and-by."
+
+"And your papa is--" here Inna flushed at her inquisitive question.
+
+"Dead; and mamma too," said grave-browed Olive.
+
+"Do you like living at the farm with your uncle?" inquired sprightly
+Sybil.
+
+"Yes; only I haven't been there long--and--and a grand-uncle isn't like
+a grand-auntie," said Inna.
+
+"And Dr. Willett hasn't got a broken heart," returned Sybil; "I suppose
+doctors don't have broken hearts."
+
+Well, the three dined in state at six with Madame Giche; the children
+were having a rather free-and-easy time of it, for their governess, Miss
+Gordon, was away nursing somebody ill, and so they did very much as they
+listed, so long as they did not weary their aged relative.
+
+What a charmed life was that into which Inna took her one day's peep,
+and the outcome of it all was that when Miss Gordon returned she was to
+go up to the Owl's Nest, and have lessons with the twins. Meantime, she
+often spent a day there, and was brought home of an evening in the
+carriage; then Sybil and Olive came for tea at the farm, and, after a
+delightful evening spent in roasting chestnuts and the like, went back
+in their turn in the carriage, the happiest girls, perhaps, alive. Thus
+for a time all went merrily as Christmas bells; but one morning Oscar
+broke the pleasant spell by announcing, "I'm not going down to Mr.
+Fane's to-day," as Inna waited for him at the door to walk as far as the
+Rectory gates with him, on her way to the Owl's Nest, her seat of
+learning.
+
+"Oh! I wish you were," said Inna.
+
+"Why?" gruffly.
+
+"Because you ought; because 'tis right."
+
+"Oh, bother right! I'm not going; in fact, I can't. Dick Gregory's
+coming over; there's to be steam threshing in the yard, no end of fun,
+and I can't disappoint him. Besides, it can't be far wrong; doing it
+under uncle's very nose;" and away went the boy, out of sight of his
+cousin's reproachful eyes.
+
+When Inna came home from the Owl's Nest in the evening, a drizzling rain
+had come on. Oscar was absent somewhere with Dick Gregory, the two
+gentlemen still out; so after tea the little girl sat down with her
+knitting somewhat drearily by Mrs. Grant's side, with tears not far
+from her eyes, because her cousin would persist in taking these sudden
+and backward steps.
+
+"I know he's to be a farmer, but there, even farmers mustn't be
+blockheads of dunces, as Oscar'll be if he don't alter," said Mrs.
+Grant.
+
+"To be a farmer?" inquired Inna.
+
+"Yes, dearie, that's why his uncle is keeping on the farm. He talked of
+selling or letting it years ago, when it fell to him by heirship, but he
+didn't, but kept it on and on; and when his brother's orphan came to
+him, he said he'd keep it for him, if I didn't mind seeing to it a few
+years longer; and I said I didn't, being a farmer's daughter. I think
+I've made a better farmer than--than your uncle," laughed the good
+woman. "So the farm is for Master Oscar."
+
+"So Oscar is to be a farmer," mused the little girl, hearkening for his
+coming, as she sat by the wood fire, while Mrs. Grant went presently to
+attend to the two hard-working doctors, just come in.
+
+In he came at last.
+
+"Well, Master Oscar, I hope you've had your swing," said the
+housekeeper, meeting him in the passage.
+
+"Yes, I have; and now I am going at once to make it straight with the
+doctor," he peeped into the kitchen to say to Inna. "That's a step in
+the right direction, you must confess;" and was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+INNA'S FIRSTFRUITS--ON THE TOR.
+
+
+The going in to make confession of his neglect of his lessons by Oscar,
+that night, was like a very firstfruits to loving little Inna, in her
+endeavour to influence this big, strong, wilful cousin for good. Nay,
+she shamed him into industry and painstaking by her own application to
+studies, going to and from the Owl's Nest, "like clockwork, you little
+grinder!" as the boy expressed it, making his awkward admission to her
+on Christmas Eve, the two wreathing the house with holly and evergreens.
+This was something which Carlo and Smut the black cat thought it their
+duty to look into, to judge from the way they pryingly inspected the
+monster heap of greenery in the wide passage, where the boy and girl
+worked, making Inna laugh and laugh again, till her uncle peeped out of
+his study door to inquire what was the matter.
+
+"I'm only laughing at Carlo and Smut, uncle," was her shamefaced reply.
+
+"Ah! laugh and grow fat." With this, he went in and shut the door.
+
+"Not at all a speech to address to a lady," remarked Mr. Barlow,
+crossing the hall at the moment. "But Christmas is the time for
+liberties of all sorts and unheard-of requests--have you any of the
+latter, fair lady?" and the surgeon halted behind her.
+
+"I have one little wish, and 'tis about uncle and his den," ventured
+Inna, blushing a little.
+
+"Well, suppose you tell me, and let me be the go-between--no enviable
+part to play, remember, to put a finger in anybody's pie, much more in
+that of a doctor and a young lady combined."
+
+"May I put a bit of holly in uncle's den?"
+
+"Make Christmas in the lion's den, eh, Oscar! Well, I'm off; but let me
+make sure of my errand. I go to prefer a petition from the lamb to the
+lion for permission to enter his den with a flag of truce." In he went
+into the study.
+
+"In the name of the lion, I say go in, little lamb, and at once," he
+came out almost immediately to say, and he stood by Oscar and the holly
+heap, while Fairy Inna went on her magic mission.
+
+After that evening the doctor's study doors were open to Inna once and
+again; she tapped timidly for permission to go in and make up his fire
+on the cold evenings which came in with the new year, when snow lay upon
+the ground, and Mrs. Grant told her that most likely her studious,
+absorbed uncle was sitting with his fire gone out, and she herself dared
+not intrude to replenish it.
+
+"Come in, dear," he would say at such times. "You'll not disturb me."
+And before the winter was over he named her his "Little Salamander;" and
+once or twice peeped out and called for her when she did not come.
+
+Well, winter was over at last, and March on its blustering way; the
+lambs in the fields, the colts in their paddock, and young exultant life
+everywhere. It was holiday time with Inna, for Miss Gordon was away with
+that invalid somebody again. Dick Gregory was still running wild in his
+happy banishment from school; Jenny, _alias_ Trapper, was running wild
+with him whenever she could persuade the dear old lady who played the
+part of governess to her to forego her tales of ill-learnt lessons. A
+sad dunce was busy Mr. Gregory allowing his merry little daughter to
+grow up to be.
+
+Well, with so many holiday keepers, Oscar dared to join hands, and to
+take French leave, as he called it, in plotting and planning an
+expedition to the Tor without asking permission of his uncle. Not that
+he anticipated a refusal, but just because young people will persist in
+thinking stolen waters are sweet--sweeter than any other waters. Ah,
+well! we know what the wise man says about the bread of deceit; it
+points out much the same moral.
+
+But about the Tor. This was a high elevation--almost a mountain compared
+with the surrounding hills for miles--whence the sea could be descried,
+a misty mystery, not so far away; and around which sudden fogs wreathed
+themselves, shutting in those unfortunate enough to be on its heights in
+a rare tangle of perplexity when it thus chose to wrap itself up in this
+sullen mood. For there were ugly holes, pitfalls, and crevices in its
+ragged sides, making its descent a serious thing, except for adepts in
+climbing and scrambling down, even in the fair light of day. Moreover,
+there was on one side a disused flint-quarry, called by the ominous name
+of the Ugly Leap, because, once in the remote past, a shepherd boy,
+seeking a wandering lamb, had lost his way in the fog, having doubled
+and turned in his course unknowingly, and finally had fallen over the
+quarry side. Ah, well! he lost his life; and so his sad tale was told,
+and the Ugly Leap, with its suggestive name, bore witness to the same.
+
+There were sea-fogs which swept up, and made the Tor so dangerous, Mrs.
+Grant affirmed; but Oscar always said "Fudge!" to this--a pet word of
+his, as he did on that fair March morning, when not a cloud or an atom
+of fog was to be seen anywhere, but all was cold and brilliant, as some
+March mornings are.
+
+"Just the morning for the old Tor," the lad said decisively: "the views
+splendid, sea and all."
+
+"But how about school and your uncle?" inquired Mrs. Grant.
+
+"Oh, they'll do very well, if you don't split upon me. I mean to go, and
+Inna won't be mean enough to go with me and play tell-tale-tit
+afterwards; and besides, uncle wouldn't refuse me this one day, just to
+show Inna the Tor."
+
+"But suppose we were to wait and ask him?" suggested Inna.
+
+"I can't wait. Dick Gregory and his sister are coming over. We shall
+make such a jolly party, and there'll be more fun to steal a march upon
+someone:" this was Oscar's reasoning.
+
+Perhaps Inna ought to have stood out against this stealing a march, as
+it was for her the expedition was said to be planned, but she said
+nothing; she had set her heart upon seeing the Tor, and realising
+somewhat of the thrilling sensation of an Alpine climber; and she was
+but nine--no great age for unerring wisdom. "Young people's heads are
+renowned for folly." Mrs. Grant said something like this when Dick and
+Jenny mustered at the gates, and the four set off, fortified with a good
+supply of sandwiches and other nice things in a satchel, which Oscar
+swung over his shoulder, traveller fashion; and so they started. The two
+little dwellers at the Owl's Nest looked out at them longingly at the
+park gates, as they passed that way; not far from the Black Hole, with
+its thrilling memories, did their road lead them. Then away on through
+young corn, and other crops that dared put forth their greenness in the
+cold health-giving March air; and anon they had reached the Tor.
+
+Up, up, still mounting up, they went, putting their best foot before, as
+their two guides admonished the girls, giving them many a tug and many a
+pull; and when they were half-way up, down they sat in the sunshine, and
+ate a lunch picnic, taking sundry sips of cold water from a bottle Oscar
+insisted on bringing, because he said climbing was such thirsty work in
+the clear cold air of the old Tor. Well, after this they went mounting
+up again, sometimes, like spiders, on all fours.
+
+"It does take the breath out of one," said Dick, tugging at Trapper,
+who, girl-like, kept slipping back, Oscar doing the same with Inna.
+
+Inna, the Londoner, was a very poor climber; but once on the summit,
+what exultant delight was there!--the blue heavens above their heads;
+the sunny landscape, in its dainty spring dress, at their feet; the
+Owl's Nest in the distance not nearly so imposing to look upon seen from
+that elevation; the sea--they could even discern somewhat of its
+shimmering upheaving, in this clearest of clear March mornings.
+
+Dick, who was gifted with far-reaching sight, affirmed he could see the
+sails of the fishing-smacks, but none of the others could; still they
+all clapped their hands, and sang in a wild chorus:
+
+   "The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+    The blue, the fresh, the ever-free!"
+
+"I mean to be a sailor," said Oscar, when the singing ended. Silence
+reigned on the old Tor, save for the blustering wind, which played havoc
+with the girls' hair, and clutched at all their hats.
+
+"Oh, Oscar! and uncle intends you to be a farmer!" cried Inna, her
+tongue running away with her better judgment, which would have whispered
+her to think twice before she spoke once. But her heart was stirred with
+pity for Oscar, and for her uncle, knowing what Mrs. Grant had said
+about the boy's future.
+
+"And so Mother Peggy has been whispering that into your ear," was the
+scoffing reply.
+
+"Mrs. Grant told me so; but I don't know that there was any whispering
+about it," returned the little girl.
+
+"Well, she told you what'll never be. I mean to be a sailor, so there!"
+
+"To be a farmer is no bad berth," said sensible Dick.
+
+"Oh yes, for them who take to it; but that's not I. I mean to be a
+sailor, like my father before me."
+
+"Oh! but, Oscar, what will uncle say?" cried Inna.
+
+"Oh, he'll get over it. Every boy has a right to choose his own
+profession, and he knows it."
+
+"Yes; but 'tisn't a right every boy goes in for. I meant to be a farmer,
+and my father set his heel upon that notion, and said I must be a
+doctor," said Dick.
+
+"Well?" and Oscar waited to hear more.
+
+"I shall be a doctor; no good comes of a boy going on trying to go
+against his father's way or will."
+
+"No," said the other, somewhat taken aback; "a father is different from
+an uncle."
+
+"Yes," was Dick's retort. "I suppose an uncle would expect a little more
+yielding of number one to number two."
+
+"Why?" growled Oscar, not liking Dick's views of the case.
+
+"Because of gratitude. I suppose gratitude ought to have a voice with a
+fellow about his father's wishes; but it ought to have two voices with
+those of an uncle playing a father's part."
+
+"Well, an uncle's wish ought not to make one wreck one's life; and
+that's what I shall do if I am a farmer."
+
+"Phew! you'd be more likely to be wrecked as a sailor now," replied Dick
+loftily.
+
+"Well, I mean to stand up for my rights," contended Oscar.
+
+"Better not, if you value your peace of mind. Since I've given up
+youth's charming dream of farming--ha! how the words rhyme!--I've been
+as happy as a peg-top," answered Dick.
+
+The girls smiled.
+
+"Oh yes," grumbled Oscar, "well enough for you to laugh. You girls never
+have to choose or wish--you always have all you want."
+
+"Oh, come, Willett; little friend there could contradict that, I know,"
+said Dick. "But we didn't come up here to discuss our wants and wishes.
+Suppose we look about a bit, and see the sights. Look, Miss Inna, that
+jutting rock yonder, by the sea, is Swallow's Cliff, and behind it is a
+little bay;" and then he drew her away to look down the Ugly Leap. A
+dizzy height it was to gaze down from above, with a deep gorge at its
+foot, in which a stream of water gurgled, said by some to have a
+connection with Black Hole, the lad told her; over which Inna shuddered
+and turned away.
+
+Then they all sat down, and lunched in earnest--a late lunch, for the
+afternoon was fast slipping away--and took more sips from Oscar's
+water-bottle. And while they chatted, laughed, and loitered on foot, for
+it was becoming bitterly cold to sit down any longer, up came the enemy,
+from the sea it may be, behind their backs; at any rate, it was there
+with them--ere they realised it the mist was come. Surely the old Tor
+wasn't going to turn nasty and ill-natured to-day, of all days! they
+said, in startled dismay; and Oscar affirmed he had seen the fog settle
+and rise, settle and rise, as fickle as any girl's temper. "'Twas
+nothing," he said; "it would lift."
+
+But it was something, and it did not lift; instead, it shut them in so
+that they could not see one another's faces; and oh! the girls' teeth
+chattered with cold. Worse, snow began to fall--blinding snow, which
+enveloped them quite. Well for them that they had put on fur-lined
+cloaks and overcoats, but----
+
+"I say, we're in for it!" cried Dick; that was when they stood deep in
+snow, and the cold was chilling them to the very bone.
+
+"Don't you think you could steer us down out of this, Willett? You know
+the old villain better than I do. We shall freeze!"
+
+And Oscar said, "No; better freeze than lose one's way, and----" They
+knew he was thinking of the shepherd lad and the Ugly Leap.
+
+"Still, something must be done," urged Dick; then the two lads made the
+shivering girls move and spring up and down, and hoped that the storm
+would clear. But it did not.
+
+Would anyone come to find them? they wondered.
+
+"Well, I'll make the attempt to go down and get a lantern, and bring
+back someone," volunteered Oscar at last. "I don't mind for myself, but
+I can't play guide for----"
+
+"Ay, I know," agreed Dick; "to be hampered with other people's lives is
+a great responsibility. Well, take your own life in your hands and go,
+and I'd take mine and go with you; but----"
+
+"You stay there with the girls," growled Oscar, and gripped their hands,
+as in parting, all the way round.
+
+They let him go a few steps away, and his shadowy form was lost. The
+girls clung to Dick, too cold, too scared, too much as in a dreadful
+dream, to cry--ay, too much benumbed. The boy shouted, Oscar responded;
+once and again shouts were exchanged, then came a scream--a scream so
+shrill that it seemed to cleave their poor failing hearts in two--and
+then silence, blank silence, save for the howl of the wind as it whirled
+the snow. Dick shouted himself hoarse, but there came no answer.
+Something terrible must have happened to Oscar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OSCAR LOST--A FRUITLESS SEARCH.
+
+
+The dead silence that followed, save for the hooting of the storm, was
+more terrible, if that could be, than Oscar's scream, for it told of
+what? They did not say, but their hearts throbbed out what they feared.
+
+"Oh, Dick! what shall we do?" cried the little girls, clinging to him.
+
+He was a boy so strong, so brave--surely he could think of something.
+Well, he did think of something, but that was after they had shouted
+"Oscar! Oscar!" till the storm itself seemed the name. This is what he
+thought of.
+
+"There is nothing to be done but for me to go and look for him."
+
+It sounded like a miserably forlorn hope, and the girls thought so; for
+they clung to him, crying, "Oh, Dick, Dick!" and almost unnerved him.
+
+"Well, I can do no good up here, and it seems heartless to hear that
+cry, and not to go a step to see what can be done. You know he ventured
+his life for us."
+
+"Yes; but throwing away your life wouldn't save his if--if it isn't
+lost," faltered fond little Jenny.
+
+"No," returned her brother; "and, God willing, I don't mean to throw
+away my life."
+
+They were silent for a moment, while the storm raved on. I think they
+all breathed a sort of wordless prayer, then Dick spoke.
+
+"Now, you girls must stand by each other, and comfort each other; and,
+whatever you do, don't sit down and give in to sleep. Good-bye."
+
+There was no wringing of hands; the three could not bear it with that
+scream of Oscar ringing in their ears.
+
+He went away, his shadowy figure vanishing in the obscurity almost
+immediately, as Oscar's had done. Then the two girls were alone. Shout
+after shout rang reassuringly back to them, and they screamed back
+theirs in reply. True, Dick's shouts were farther away each time, but no
+screams followed; then there came a break, and they heard nothing.
+Very, very much alone they were now.
+
+Well, down in the village people were shutting doors, closing shutters,
+and heaping up fires, and saying what a cold snowy ending it was to such
+a fair day, as they made themselves cosy, little dreaming there were two
+small wanderers up on the old Tor in the storm. The two children could
+picture it all, and wondered what was doing at the farm: whether they
+were in a great fright about them--Mrs. Grant, Dr. Willett, and Mr.
+Barlow. Jenny thought too of what they were saying and doing at her
+home, but oh! where was Dick, where was Oscar? How the minutes
+lengthened into hours in the cold, the weariness, ay, even drowsiness.
+But they must not yield to sleep--Dick had warned them of this; they
+knew that sleep up there in that extreme cold meant death. What should
+they do?
+
+Oh! what was that? An ugly shadow of some monster beast looming upon
+them from out that vast whirling waste of snow. This was when hope was
+very low in their hearts; it seemed that it was an hour or two since
+Dick had left them, and no help had come--nothing; and they had
+pictured themselves two little maidens, stiff, stark, dead, and cold,
+found by someone, at some time, up there all alone. Now here was this
+apparition bearing down upon them. They shrieked and clung to each
+other; they could not move; they had no boy to fight for them. Fight!
+Why, it was dear old Carlo from the farm. How he barked, and whined, and
+caressed them! They could but laugh and cry in the same breath at his
+funny antics. And this laughter and crying, and the efforts they made to
+keep on their feet under his wild hugs and leaps, stirred their blood;
+and with this, hope leaped up within them again.
+
+"Oh, Carlo! where are they all? are they coming?" cried Inna, her arms
+about his neck.
+
+At which he licked her face, barked, and seemed to hearken, as if he too
+wanted someone. Why, surely the storm was clearing: they could see the
+glimmer of a lantern bobbing, now here, now there, as if someone was
+seeking and searching; and when Carlo barked a shout followed, and the
+dog bounded away, with his back covered with snow, like a very Father
+Christmas of a dog. They did not think of what they were like, with
+help coming--an assurance, as they took it, that Dick's life had not
+been thrown away. Back came Carlo, and with him Dr. Willett, Mr. Barlow,
+and Sam the carter from the farm, and--and that was all. Where was Dick?
+Both children rushed into the arms of the rescuers.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" said Dr. Willett, pressing his snowy little niece close
+to him.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" muttered Mr. Barlow over Jenny, just such another
+snowball.
+
+"But where is Dick--where is Oscar?"
+
+"Lost, both lost!" sobbed the two poor little troubled hearts, as they
+poured out their story.
+
+"No, no; boys are not so easily lost," said Mr. Barlow, he and the
+doctor shaking the snow from the cloaks of their two small charges, and
+preparing to bid "Good night" to the old Tor. "'Tis true we've seen
+nothing of them, but that proves nothing--they may be at the farm and in
+bed by this time." But in an aside he whispered to the doctor, "I don't
+like Oscar's scream, though;" and the doctor shook his head, as over an
+obstinate patient, when he scarcely knew what to do with him.
+
+"Do you take the lantern, Sam," went on the surgeon to the carter, "and
+search about for them. Of course, even give the Ugly Leap a call, and
+make inquiry for them; and when I've played the polite man, and seen the
+doctor well on his way with these young ladies, I'll join you--two heads
+are better than one even in the matter of looking up two boys that we're
+not sure are lost on a snowy night."
+
+With this, Sam marched off with the lantern, and Carlo with him, as if
+he understood the plan of operation, and that the lads were missing, and
+he must play his part in finding them.
+
+"Better walk, dears; 'twill stir your blood," said Dr. Willett at
+starting; and so they did for a time, but before they reached the farm
+they were glad to be carried, like two small over-done children as they
+were.
+
+By the time they had reached the foot of the Tor the snow clouds had
+quite cleared, and the moon shone. Ah! upon what were those pale beams
+falling on those snowy heights? Not upon Dick, for when the party
+reached the farm they found that he was there, safe in bed, after being
+held almost a prisoner by Mrs. Grant. "You see, sir, he was that mad to
+be off again, when he heard you and Mr. Barlow had started for the Tor,
+that I had to shake some sense into him, and put him to bed--the best
+place for him, too, for he was ready to drop," so the housekeeper told
+her master. Mr. Gregory, too, had just arrived to make inquiries for his
+two missing ones, so the three doctors turned into the snowy night
+again, to follow in Sam's and Carlo's wake, and hear of what success
+they had met with in their search.
+
+None; nothing; nobody: this was Sam's three-worded account of his
+failure--for it was failure--while Carlo hung his head, dropped his tail
+forlornly, and whined like a dog baffled.
+
+He, Sam, had been to the Ugly Leap, and beat about everywhere he could
+think of, but could find no trace of the boy. All the dreary round he
+and the two doctors went again; all the long night they were out in the
+snow; but it was a fruitless quest--they were fain to return home in the
+grey light of the morning, with only this bare certainty, that Oscar was
+lost--to them at least. Dr. Willett was very sore at heart, as he and
+Carlo walked a little apart from the others of the returning party, the
+dog abject and depressed in attitude as he trotted by his side, as if
+conscious of what his master was feeling.
+
+Mr. Gregory looked upon his sleeping children and returned home; the
+others retired for an hour's rest before going out to their sick
+patients. Besides, there were new search parties to be organised. To the
+Ugly Leap went the doctor again as the day wore on; the dark waters of
+the gorge were searched, so far as such a mysterious stream could be
+searched, emerging from the heart of the earth, and only flowing a few
+yards, it may be, in the light of day, ere it dived away into the
+darkness and secrecy from which it had come. Ah! there was neither sign
+nor token of the missing boy, there or elsewhere. Nothing,
+nowhere--these were the words that went the round of Cherton, with their
+dreary hopelessness, as the days flowed on, and tidings went here and
+there of the lost boy, while his description was sent to the police
+authorities, far and wide.
+
+But there came no answer as day succeeded day, and March blustered
+itself away, and sweet fickle April took its place; all was silence, as
+if the lad had indeed vanished from the earth. Had he?
+
+Inna went daily for lessons to the Owl's Nest. It was well to get away
+from the house, Mrs. Grant said, for the child moped and grew pale under
+the suspense and mystery of what had befallen this strong, wilful,
+good-natured cousin of hers, whom she had been gathering to her as the
+brother she had long sighed for. True, Jenny came over to see her, for
+she too was lonely, with Dick gone back to school; but what could Jenny
+understand about her heartache?--she with her brother safe at school,
+while Oscar, Inna's all but brother, was nobody knew where.
+
+"I wish he hadn't played truant that day, and I wish I hadn't let him:"
+this was the burdened little plaint, making her heart so heavy, and
+which she ventured to pour out to Mr. Barlow one day.
+
+"Oh, my dear little lady, don't think that what happened came of his
+playing truant. I know it isn't a pleasant thought that there was that
+little hitch of underhand doings; and if he'd only mentioned the going
+to the Tor, we could have told you all snow was coming, thanks to the
+glass. But, mind me, we don't get our deserts in that way, or we should
+be always having a whipping. And I never give up hope with a patient
+till the last remedy has been tried and fails; and, remember, there is
+no last remedy with a wise unfailing Providence." This was the surgeon's
+reply.
+
+"Oh, yes. But suppose he is dead, was killed, washed under the Tor by
+the dark waters of the brook at the Ugly Leap," sighed the child.
+
+"Oh, well," was the answer, "we can suppose almost anything--at least, a
+little imaginative girl can; but suppose he is dead--which I do
+not--dead or alive, he is in God's good keeping," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AT THE OWL'S NEST--THE SONG--THE SURPRISE.
+
+
+Inna now had two new thoughts to ponder over. "Remember, there is no
+last remedy with a wise unfailing Providence;" "Oscar in God's good
+keeping." They came to her with thrilling freshness one day in the
+gallery at Owl's Nest, as she wandered from picture to picture, musing
+and dreaming.
+
+She was often at the Owl's Nest. Besides going to and fro to lessons,
+Madame Giche invited her to stay there for days together; it was good
+for her little nieces to have a child companion, and it was good for the
+little girl herself, for, as has been said, she moped and grew pale over
+Oscar's disappearance. So, although they missed her at the farm, they
+were glad to send her there. Jenny Gregory was invited also: quite a
+bevy of young people did the four make, wandering through the old house,
+not intruding upon its aged mistress, save at stated times and seasons,
+but making a pleasant holiday of it; notwithstanding lessons with Miss
+Gordon again, and the strumming through of many scales and exercises on
+the piano. They never tired of roaming the terraces, where the peacocks
+eyed them askance, and spread out their beautiful tails at them as in
+proud disdain--those walking flowers of girls, who seemed to vie with
+them and their plumage in their pretty bright spring dresses.
+
+Glorious weather had followed Oscar's disappearance. It was May now, and
+the other little girls were out in the park, gathering daisies, and
+having a romp with Carlo, who would often come self-invited when Inna
+was there. But, Inna had stolen away from them, for the rare treat of
+being alone in the gallery, to admire and think about the pictures. That
+of Madame Giche's son had a strange interest for her, a stranger picture
+in a strange house, save for that of his mother keeping it company, like
+loving hearts that could not be separated. Those dark, smiling,
+beautiful eyes of his thrilled her through; she could not say why they
+always made her think of her father and mother; but then, perhaps, it
+was because they were strangers in the land of beautiful pictures. At
+any rate, the eyes seemed to belong to her, to follow her, as picture
+eyes will, with a strange wistfulness; she could but wonder that the
+possessor of such beautiful eyes could ever give his mother pain, part
+from her in anger, and break her heart. Of this last he never knew; he
+sent her a loving message at the end, begging her forgiveness; and she
+gave it to him, so far as it can be accorded to the absent and the
+dead--but it broke her heart. Then followed her search for his little
+son, whom she had never found. If life had no losses, no mistakes, she
+wondered where this missing little one was, in that indistinct shadowy
+uncertainty where Oscar was. Would either ever be found?
+
+Outside lay the park, bathed in afternoon sunshine; she could see it all
+from the side window, and her young companion idling by the moat, where
+the marsh marigolds were blooming bright and yellow in the sunshine.
+There came a rustle as of a garment, and Madame Giche, leaning on her
+gold-headed cane, appeared, travelling towards her.
+
+"You here, my dear?" said she, in her gentle way, laying her hand on the
+little girl's bright head.
+
+"Yes, Madame Giche."
+
+"Wouldn't you be better out in the sunshine with the rest, rather than
+up here moping?"
+
+"I wasn't moping, dear Madame Giche. I was looking at the pictures, and
+thinking about them;" and the child gave a little forced laugh over her
+confession.
+
+"Well, what do you think of them all? Now, which do you think is the
+handsomest face here?" And Madame Giche gave a sweeping glance round, as
+she stood leaning on her stick.
+
+"This is the face I like best," was the child's reply, glancing up at
+that stranger face, "save for that of his mother."
+
+"This is the face I like best, my dear, but he broke my heart. Do you
+know who it is?" inquired the mother, a thrill in her voice.
+
+"Yes, dear Madame Giche--your son," returned Inna, with a child's
+sensitive shame at having listened to so much from Sybil.
+
+"Then--then, you know his story?"
+
+"Yes; Sybil told me. Forgive me, dear Madame Giche, if I ought not to
+have heard it. Sybil said I might; it was no secret, when we were
+talking of it." Inna's small fingers grasped Madame Giche's thin ones.
+
+"Yes, dear; it is no secret."
+
+The child stroked the hand she held, wondering what she ought to say
+next, a tear trickling down her cheek; and Madame Giche saw it.
+
+"Are those tears for me, little Inna?" she asked gently.
+
+"Yes." A shy "Yes" it was.
+
+"My dear, that will never do--young people's sunshine should not be
+overshadowed by old people's clouds. Now, do you know what I want you to
+do?"
+
+"No, dear Madame Giche."
+
+"To come down and sing to me."
+
+The beautiful mellow-toned piano from the drawing-room had been removed
+to the tapestried chamber, and a new one sent from London to fill its
+place. Quite little musical parties did the aged lady have, now and
+then, of an evening, in the gloaming, the four children, with lights at
+the piano, trilling in their bird-like voices some little snatch of a
+juvenile song, duet, trio, and sometimes a quartette, their nimble
+fingers wandering among the keys the while in a tangle of melody. But of
+all the four, their aged listener loved best to hear Inna sing: her
+voice was so plaintive, so expressive. The charm lay in this: that she
+was always thinking of her mother at such times, and her heart seemed to
+speak in her voice. It did to-night, when she sat down to the piano, her
+gentle old friend on the hearth by the smouldering log fire.
+
+"Sing that little thing I heard you practising so nicely yesterday,"
+came to her across the room. So, with a tinkling little prelude, she
+began--
+
+   "A daisy wept in the moonlight pale,
+      And bowed her beautiful head,
+    And a little white moth came dancing by--
+     'Why weep, sweet daisy?' it said.
+
+  "'I weep for that which can never be,
+      I sigh for a wider sphere--
+    Would, little moth, I had wings like thine!
+      Instead, I am rooted here.'
+
+  "'A moth, my life is a sweet content,
+      But no worthy life for thee.'
+   'Change!' cried the daisy; 'take my place;
+      A little white moth I'd be.'
+
+   "And lo! the daisy took silver wings,
+      And forth from the meadow flew;
+    The little white moth became a flower,
+      A daisy-cup dash'd with dew.
+
+   "The wide earth blessed the changeling flower,
+      The heavens smil'd down above;
+    A boundless life was the daisy's life,
+      Her mission, a lowly love.
+
+   "A little white moth, with broken wings,
+      Came home, when nights were drear,
+    To breathe her last on the daisy's breast.
+      She had missed her rightful sphere."
+
+"Yes, dear; it's not so much what we are, or where we are, but what
+we're doing, that makes a life of usefulness and fulness," said Madame
+Giche, when the ditty came to an end.
+
+"Yes; in filling others' lives we fill our own. Is that what you mean,
+Madame Giche?" inquired Inna, leaving the piano, and coming to kneel on
+the hearth.
+
+"Yes. The daisy wasn't thinking of what she was doing, but rather of
+herself; seeking great things for herself, not seeing--poor little
+thing!--that in just blooming where she was placed she was in a way
+blessing heaven and earth, and making her own crown; and missing that,
+her life was a failure."
+
+Just then in came the three little girls from the park, Miss Gordon with
+them.
+
+"Oh, grand-auntie, we've brought such a lovely bunch of marsh
+marigolds," cried Sybil. "Jenny has them;" and Jenny came forward,
+dropping on one knee to present them, and tossing her hat on the floor.
+
+The kindly old lady patted the yellow-haired fluffy head, taking the
+flowers from her, and touching their petals as in fond reverence.
+
+"Children, at the sight of these flowers I always see myself a child
+again," said she, a sweet far-away light in her dark eyes.
+
+"And what do you see, grand-auntie--what were you like?" inquired
+nimble-tongued Sybil.
+
+"Yes, dear Madame Giche, what were you like?" echoed Jenny.
+
+"My dear, I was just what Sybil is now. I half fancy, sometimes, that it
+must be myself, when I see her running about on the terraces."
+
+"But your home wasn't here, grand-auntie," said Olive, surprised out of
+her silence.
+
+"No, dear; 'tis the house recalls me to myself. Wyvern Court was very
+different from this."
+
+"Was that the name of your home, Madame Giche?" inquired matter-of-fact
+Jenny, out of the silence that followed.
+
+"The dearest spot on earth to you--wasn't it, grand-auntie?" prattled
+Sybil.
+
+"Yes; our childhood's home is that, I suppose, be it a cottage or a
+castle, revisited in imagination at life's close," sighed the old lady.
+
+"And that was your--your womanhood's home--as well," replied Sybil,
+hesitating a little to find a suitable word.
+
+"Yes, dear; there I had all my joys and sorrows."
+
+"And now?" whispered Inna, who was kneeling by her side, stroking one of
+her soft wrinkled hands.
+
+"It is life's sweet after-glow with me; peace after pain and sorrow,
+like the light in the sky after sunset."
+
+"Oh, grand-auntie, how beautiful that must be to you if it is at all
+like that!" cried Sybil, pointing at a distant window. Outside lay the
+park, the copse, and surrounding landscape, all aglow with the changeful
+tints which follow a fair sun-setting.
+
+"Yes, dear; and life's after-glow is even more beautiful than that; for
+instead of being the blending of day and night together, it is the
+blending of day with day."
+
+"Day with day?" lisped thoughtful Olive.
+
+"Yes; life's beautiful days here with life's long beautiful day
+hereafter," returned Madame Giche, her eyes glistening with her own
+sweet thoughts. "But come, dears, the present time is the day with which
+you have to do, with all its hopes and opportunities. I want you young
+larks to sing me the quartette we were talking of the other day. Where
+is Miss Gordon?"
+
+"I am here, Madame Giche," came from a distant window. "Do you require
+my services?"
+
+"Do you play the accompaniment, and let me fancy myself--where shall I
+say, Sybil?"
+
+"Sailing down the river in the park by moonlight, the same as we and
+Miss Gordon did last summer," was the ready answer.
+
+Madame Giche laughed.
+
+"But that would be too romantic. Fancy what it would be to come back
+from such fairyland doings to find myself an old woman, sitting on her
+hearth, with four magpies chattering around her, asking her to make
+herself ridiculous."
+
+"I don't think you could be that," said flattering Jenny.
+
+Then the four swept away to the piano, like a breath of a sweet spring
+breeze, where Miss Gordon played, and the quartette was rendered fairly
+well, Madame Giche sitting, a listening shadow, on the hearth.
+
+"Thank you, dears," said she, when it came to an end, and a servant
+announced, "Mary from the farm is come for the two young ladies,
+Madame."
+
+"Was it anything like sailing down the river?" asked Sybil, as they all
+clustered round her.
+
+"It was very sweet and beautiful," said the old lady kindly; then she
+kissed her two guests "good night," and said, "No; not so late," to her
+two nieces, when they pleaded to accompany them as far as the
+five-barred gate.
+
+Jenny was really a guest at the farm for a few days, sleeping with Inna,
+but spending most of her time at the Owl's Nest.
+
+It was just what Inna needed, with her pale cheeks and troubled heart.
+
+"If I only knew _where_ Oscar was, I think I could bear it better," was
+her cry. But Dr. Willett had to bear his ifs and regrets in silence, as
+best he could, without change or comfort from anything or anybody, save
+the going out among his patients. His fine face grew very grave and
+sorrowful, his hair was whitening too, as the days glided on into weeks,
+and no tidings came of the missing boy.
+
+Down the quiet shadowy drive from the Owl's Nest went the two little
+girls and their attendant. Inna little knew to what she was going,
+tripping along and talking to Jenny. Clear of the drive, their path home
+lay in the moonlight, and not far had they gone when a little wailing
+mew came to them from behind a hedge, and then a small white and black
+kitten emerged therefrom, and came and rubbed herself round Inna's feet.
+She caught it up and fondled it, the knowing little pleader mewing such
+a pleased mew then, that you may be sure it went straight to the little
+girl's heart.
+
+"Oh, if I might keep it as my very own!" she cried; "but I'm afraid that
+Smut wouldn't like it."
+
+"I'm afraid Mrs. Grant wouldn't like it," said Mary, as a stronger
+objection.
+
+"Take the kitten home and ask her," advised Jenny; "and if she says
+'No,' you could but ask your uncle, and if he says 'Yes,' she wouldn't
+dare to say 'No.'"
+
+"I don't think she would wish to say 'No' to anything that she thought
+would make uncle or me happy," mused Inna aloud, and in this happy
+confidence she hugged the foundling to her, and went on her way through
+the moonlight, just as if she was not going home to the unlooked-for,
+that which would stir her poor little heart to its centre.
+
+How would she bear it?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+OSCAR'S RETURN--THE MYSTERY CLEARED--ON THE TOR AGAIN.
+
+
+How did Inna bear it?
+
+As she bounded into the fire-lit kitchen, to prefer her request to Mrs.
+Grant about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial
+chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save
+for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that
+his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his
+own--those in which he had vanished.
+
+"Oscar!" she cried, and sat down and wept over her joy as if it were a
+sorrow, like a very excited little maiden--that is how she bore her
+surprise. Mary knew nothing of his arrival; he had come after she had
+left to bring the little girls home. The poor kitten went flying
+somewhere, anywhere to be out of the way of such sobs and tears.
+
+"Master--Dr. Willett," called the housekeeper from out of the open
+kitchen door, wondering what effect the sight of Oscar would have upon
+the two doctors, who had to bear the sight of so much.
+
+"Yes--what is it?" came wandering back up the passage. The speaker
+followed close behind, Mr. Barlow behind him. Oscar come back, Inna
+crying over it. Well, with the coming of the two doctors she soon dried
+her eyes and inquired for her kitten.
+
+"Kitten, dear?" Mrs. Grant thought there was something a little wrong
+with her head still, just a cobweb not cleared away, because of her
+crying so, you know. Not so the doctor, for there came a piteous
+prolonged mew, and up scrambled the kitten, inside one of the legs of
+the doctor's trousers. She had missed her way, you see, but had chosen a
+friend next best to Inna.
+
+"Well, you're no beauty," quoth the doctor, drawing her down from her
+hiding-place, and holding her on his arm to stroke her; "and you're
+nothing to cry over, lost or found."
+
+Dr. Willett put her into Inna's arms, where the little thing nestled,
+as if she knew her rightful place already.
+
+"I didn't cry over the kitten, uncle; I cried over Oscar," said the
+little girl.
+
+Mr. Barlow had drawn Oscar from the room and himself stayed with him, to
+keep him there.
+
+"Where is Oscar?--it isn't a dream, is it?" and Inna's eyes swept the
+room.
+
+"Dream? no, my dear; he was here just now. Isn't it his rightful place?"
+spoke the doctor drily.
+
+"Yes, only--only----"
+
+"Ah! yes, only you want to know where he has been, what he has been
+doing, and what right he had to come back in this matter-of-fact way,
+when you had been imagining all sorts of unlikely things about him; and
+so you cried over it, to give the whole thing the girl-like touch it
+lacked. Ha--ha!"
+
+This was Mr. Barlow's speech, putting his head in at the kitchen door,
+to see how they were getting on.
+
+"Yes, come in, both of you," said the doctor, that sorrowful gravity
+lifted from his face already.
+
+"Well, my boy, you have taken a heavy weight from my heart and added
+years to my life by coming back," was what he said, drawing the lad to
+him, and laying his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Have you missed me so much, uncle?" asked Oscar.
+
+"Missed!" A look passed over Dr. Willett's face, which Inna, watching,
+thought very like that on her father's face when he kissed her
+"Good-bye," before she came down to the farm.
+
+"Missed you, Master Oscar! yes, we're all missed, even when 'tis a boy
+we're keeping the farm for," was Mrs. Grant's unlooked-for remark.
+
+"Very silly of Mrs. Grant, to bring up that question of the farm on the
+first night of the boy's return," observed the doctor, when he and his
+friend were sipping their coffee together, the young folk gone to bed,
+the budget of Oscar's adventures to be opened on the morrow.
+
+"You see, dear," said that lady to Inna, after Jenny was asleep; and
+Inna's eyes were sadly wakeful. "You see, dear, I wanted Master Oscar to
+see, while his heart was tender, on this first night, that as he had
+been missed and wanted by his uncle, it ought to be 'give and take' with
+him, when I spoke about the farm."
+
+"Give and take?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Inna, give and take; it's that as smooths life's rough
+places. Master Oscar has nothing to give his uncle for all he's doing
+for him, but his will--letting go that foolish nonsense about the sea.
+He ought to give up the sea and take to the farm--that would be his
+giving and taking; and his uncle would give him the farm, and take
+his--his obedience to his wishes, as a sort of harvest of love after all
+the years of sowing."
+
+"Sowing?" said Inna.
+
+"Yes, the doctor has sown a deal of trouble, thought, and anxiety over
+this young brother of his, at last lost at sea--that's Oscar's father,
+you know. I think, in his quiet way, he's set his heart on the boy
+making him some return, in the way of love and gratitude; and besides,
+he says, putting him into the farm is the best thing he can do for him,
+leaving out the love, obedience, and gratitude, and----" But Inna was
+asleep.
+
+Well, the next evening's tea-drinking, over which Inna presided, was a
+sort of state tea-drinking at which Dr. Willett sat down, a thing he had
+scarcely ever been known to do before. But then, Oscar was to tell his
+adventures during tea; a poor, thin, hollow-eyed narrator was he, who
+had been down well-nigh to death's door.
+
+The tea-table was gay with spring flowers, and through the open window
+came a chorus of sweet sounds, the bleating of lambs from the meadows,
+the lowing of the cows being driven home to their milking, the song of
+birds, the hum of insects--bees and gnats--the one toiling, the others
+dancing in idleness: types and shadows of the human race, as Mr. Barlow
+remarked. To which Jenny added, "Yes; and of boys and girls--the girls
+working, the boys idle."
+
+But to this there was no time to make reply, for Inna had supplied them
+all with tea, and Oscar had cleared his throat like a story-teller in a
+book, and was waiting to begin.
+
+"Well, you know when I started, and you shouted, and I shouted back,"
+said he.
+
+"Yes, we know--hurry up!" spoke Jenny, like an unmannerly boy.
+
+"I went on first-rate for a time, then I came to a full stop, for I was
+at the Ugly Leap; and before I knew it I was over."
+
+"Not much of a full stop; I should say a note of exclamation was dashed
+in there," remarked Mr. Barlow.
+
+"I don't think I uttered a sound; I think I was too horrified--that is
+as girlish, I know, as if I'd screamed!"
+
+"Oh! Oscar, you did scream: 'twas that which told us something was
+wrong," put in the interrupting damsel Jenny.
+
+"And no wonder. I'm not sure I shouldn't have screamed myself; and boys
+are but mortal, the same as doctors," remarked Mr. Barlow.
+
+"But not nearly so wise," interrupted Jenny again.
+
+"Nor yet so talkative as young ladies; and if present company will
+excuse me, I should like some of them to be quiet," said Oscar.
+
+"Well, my boy, after the scream----" prompted Mr. Barlow.
+
+"Well, if I _did_ scream, after that there was a silence and the full
+stop, for I fell to the bottom; and when I came to my senses I was
+jolting along in a caravan--such jolting, and I full of pain and
+dizziness. That was a ride to town, and no mistake--Bulverton, the town
+was called, where they took me to a hospital."
+
+"Who?" inquired irrepressible Jenny.
+
+"The gipsies--I was in a gipsy caravan; they were passing the road at
+the bottom of the Leap, hurrying away from justice of some sort, I
+should say, and, hearing me moan, were humane enough to pick me up out
+of my snowy bed, and carry me along with them. By the time they reached
+Bulverton I was unconscious, in a high fever, and I don't know what.
+They made it all right with the hospital people, somehow, that they had
+no hand in bringing me to the state I was in. I was terribly knocked
+about--a blow on my head, besides this on my forehead, a broken arm, and
+a good shaking generally. 'Twas a wonder I escaped with my life, the
+doctors told me, when I came out of my bad turn--you know the dodge, Mr.
+Barlow; you all make a miracle of what you do for sick people." Mr.
+Barlow shook his fist at him.
+
+"I kept who I was a secret, though, and wouldn't tell my name. I didn't
+want to make a fuss here, you know, but on the last morning it all came
+out. One of the doctors saw your description of me, uncle, and the
+police came ferreting me out as well, I believe; and so I'd nothing to
+do but throw off my disguise, and come home like a bad penny. I daresay
+you'll have a bill, uncle, for sticking-plaster and so on."
+
+"Which I shall be happy to pay, Oscar," said the grave doctor.
+
+This was Oscar's story. Well, the bill came from the Bulverton hospital,
+and was duly settled by Dr. Willett, and all things fell into their
+usual train, save that Oscar, being unfit for study, and Dick away at
+school, had rather a dull time of it.
+
+The weather was glorious, and of course he roamed about, and went some
+excursions with Inna, Jenny, and the donkey and cart, the twins from the
+Owl's Nest sometimes swelling the number; but an outing with a pack of
+girls, as he said, was but a very tame affair, and often he sighed for
+midsummer and Dick.
+
+Both came at last, as all good things are said to do to the waiting
+ones, and the meeting on the Lakely platform was almost overwhelming as
+Dick sprang out among them all; Oscar and the four girls clustering
+round him like bees, while Rameses, with the cart at a respectful
+distance, stretched out his neck, and brayed such a note of welcome,
+that the attendant porter laughed till he held his sides. With Dick's
+coming, the state of affairs looked up--here, there, and everywhere went
+the two boys, not always with a string of girls after them, as Dick
+slightingly expressed it.
+
+Once, according to their own words, they took revenge upon the old Tor,
+and had picnics upon its wind-swept heights in a body; but where the
+revenge lay they themselves best knew. But the girls looked down the
+Ugly Leap with awe, Oscar, with his scarred forehead, looking down with
+the rest. A wonderfully clear view they had of the sea and the Swallow's
+Cliff.
+
+"I say," cried Dick, the happy thought striking him as he gazed,
+"couldn't we take the girls over as far as the cliffs and the sea?
+They've never been there, you know, Willett, and 'twouldn't be too far,
+if we took old Rameses and the cart."
+
+"Just a nice little outing," agreed Oscar; and down they all sat in
+council to sketch out the programme, to use their own words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE EXPEDITION TO SWALLOW'S CLIFF--CAUGHT BY THE TIDE.
+
+
+"How far is it?" was Inna's leading question.
+
+"Three miles as the crow flies," returned Dick.
+
+"It would be delightful," smiled she.
+
+"It would be jolly," said Jenny, using a word of Dick's.
+
+"And I hope grand-auntie will let us go," sighed Sybil.
+
+"Oh, she'll be sure to if I stand surety for your safety, like a good
+old grandfather," Dick assured them. "And, I say, it ought to be
+to-morrow, Willett," he suggested.
+
+"Short notice."
+
+"Yes; but it can be done. I'll see Madame Giche on our way home."
+
+So when the gold was intermingling with the grey under the park trees,
+and it was hard upon sundown, the whole party went bounding up the
+avenue at the Owl's Nest, the rooks over their heads cawing a noisy
+"good night" to them and the world in general. They found Madame Giche
+pacing to and fro on the terrace with the peacocks.
+
+At first the aged lady was hard to manage: if her nieces were of the
+party, they must take Rance, their nurse, she said; but, as Dick assured
+her, there was no need.
+
+"They'll be as safe as safe, dear Madame Giche," were his words, spoken
+with the persuasive grace of a courtier, smiling his boyish smile into
+her face. "With two such safeguards as Willett and me, they can't come
+to any harm--in fact, there's nothing they can come to harm in--'tis a
+safe shore, even if they took into their heads to bathe, which none of
+the young ladies will, I daresay."
+
+"No, grand-auntie; we don't want to bathe or do anything dangerous,"
+pleaded Sybil.
+
+"And we don't want to be babies, and take our nurse," objected Olive.
+
+"Well, dears, you shall have your way," promised over-persuaded
+grand-auntie; and so "the midges," to use Dick's words, "won the day."
+Oh, the joy of waking with a whole long summer's day of pleasure in
+store! An excursion to the beautiful sea--she had scarcely seen it in
+her short life.
+
+Inna was up, and dressed and looking out of her chamber window, when
+Oscar came into the paddock below to attend to some lambs.
+
+"Hurry up, old lady! 'tis a glorious morning," cried he, looking up and
+catching sight of her at the window.
+
+She waved her hand and was gone. She had to fill the vases with flowers;
+one she always placed in her uncle's study. Since Christmas Eve, when
+she carried in her holly spray, she always contrived some sort of a
+nosegay for him.
+
+It was pleasant to hear her tripping feet, and her young voice singing
+little snatches of ditties, through the house; to see her stand and feed
+the chickens in the morning sunshine. A willing little handmaid was she
+anywhere, and to anybody who needed her.
+
+"I know she begins to save me a deal," Mrs. Grant said of her.
+
+"Well, Sunbeam, what do I read in your eyes this morning?" said Mr.
+Barlow, meeting her in the passage.
+
+"An excursion to the sea--to Swallow's Cliff."
+
+"'Tis well to be a young lady of leisure. Are you going to foot it?"
+
+"No; we're going in Dick Gregory's donkey-cart."
+
+"Ah! and 'tis well to be young to bear such jolting." He passed on.
+
+The two young people waited for the doctor at the breakfast-table, but
+Mr. Barlow did not keep him long; then passed the usually silent meal to
+its close, but not before Dick peeped in at the rose-wreathed window,
+and intimated by sundry nods that Jenny and the donkey and cart were
+waiting outside in the lane. Away went the busy doctor into the passage,
+just as Inna was saying--
+
+"Oscar, you haven't told uncle--you ought, you know."
+
+So Oscar, in the spirit of obedience for once, followed him.
+
+"Uncle, may I and Inna go with Dick Gregory and his sister to Swallow's
+Cliff to-day?" he asked.
+
+"Swallow's Cliff--that's rather a long walk for a young lady."
+
+"Only three miles, sir, as the crow flies," put in Dick, appearing from
+somewhere.
+
+"Yes; but as you're not crows, and can't fly, into the bargain, 'twould
+mean more than that to you--or rather, 'tis Inna I'm thinking of," still
+objected the doctor.
+
+"You forget the donkey-cart, Dr. Willett; the young ladies will
+ride--all of them," observed Dick.
+
+"All?" the doctor stood ready to start.
+
+"Yes, sir; there are four of them: the mid----, Madame Giche's nieces,
+Miss Inna, and my sister Jenny."
+
+"Well, I suppose I mustn't be a bear, and say no." Dr. Willett wheeled
+round upon Oscar. "Yes, I've no objection; only take good care of the
+little girls. A pleasant day to you." The busy physician was gone.
+
+Now a tempest of preparation swept through the house for a few minutes;
+then Mrs. Grant stood on the steps at the front door to watch them off.
+Dick touched up old Rameses, and drove along the lane with a flourish.
+Picking up the midges at the Owl's Nest gates, with many injunctions
+from Rance to take good care of her charges, they made the best of their
+way onward, not exactly as the crow flies, but taking all the short
+cuts adventurous wheels could roll over: the more jolts and bumps the
+more the merriment; Jenny driving, the boys on foot. So, without hitch
+or hindrance, the sea was reached.
+
+A glorious sight it was: not smooth, calm, and still, but with a
+beautiful ripple breaking over it, with glad little waves running here
+and there--just the mood to please the children. They all kept to the
+boundary-line of shore; there was to be no boating, no bathing: the boys
+had bound themselves by promise to Mrs. Grant that there were to be no
+seaside pranks or dangerous doings.
+
+"No; no one shall come to a watery grave or an untimely end, if I can
+help it--I promise that:" these were Dick's last words to the
+housekeeper, giving Rameses the touch which set him off with a bolt. So
+now he bade the little girls to pick up shells, look out for mermaids,
+and disport themselves in harmless lady-like fashion, while he and Oscar
+went here and there, scaled heights, and took a glance seaward from the
+height of the Swallow's Cliff.
+
+"But first we'll consult the luncheon hamper," suggested he: which they
+did; and a very neat spread it was which the girls laid out for them on
+the unfrequented beach. This over, with a lifting of the hat, and
+"Good-bye for the present," from Dick, and "Mind, Inna, the midges don't
+get into mischief," from Oscar, the two went straying away; and the
+girls, having cleared away luncheon, began to enjoy themselves. Such
+pretty shells they picked, such beautiful sprays of seaweed, and, oh,
+how the waves curled and ran races together! Once and again they saw a
+distant ship sail past, and Inna thought of the happy days when her
+father and mother would come sailing home in a ship like that. Then they
+all ran races and sat in the sun, while Jenny sang one of Dick's songs,
+with the refrain--
+
+   "Three cheers for the briny-ho!"
+
+and Inna sang one of Mrs. Grant's, with this chorus--
+
+   "Ho-ho! for the fisherman's child to-night,
+      Ho-ho! for the fisherman's wife;
+    Ho-ho! for the fisherman's bark to-night,
+      Ho-ho! for the fisherman's life."
+
+By-and-by the boys came back to consult the hamper again--nothing like
+the sea to make people hungry, and nothing like the sea to steal away
+the time. So down they sat to the delights of pork-pie, sandwiches,
+tarts, and the like; and, at last, all had vanished, save a little
+lemonade, reserved for fear they should be thirsty at starting. As for
+Rameses, he munched his hay and drank his one jar of water, poured into
+a bucket which Dick had hung on under the cart.
+
+"The old chap won't be able to drink of the briny," he had said in the
+morning, drawing attention to his forethought for the animal's comfort.
+
+"Now, just a whisk round, and we shall have to be moving homeward," said
+Dick, consulting his watch as they sat together. "I promised Madame
+Giche not to be after sunset, and we're keeping company hours with a
+vengeance with our late dinner. Why, 'tis between six and seven
+o'clock!"
+
+"There'll be a moon," remarked Oscar.
+
+"Yes; but that's not a sun," returned Dick, with a laugh. Then they all
+laughed--they were so happy, so light-hearted and gay.
+
+"Now, you girls, make the most of the next half-hour or so, and then
+'twill be, 'Britons, strike home!'"
+
+So Dick admonished them; and then he and Oscar went strolling away for
+their last bout, as they called it.
+
+Who does not know how swiftly the last half-hour of a very enjoyable
+time whirls away? The four girls sat down in the glory of it all to sort
+their shells, arrange their seaweed, and just rest and, as it were,
+digest the day's pleasure.
+
+"And there has been no coming to grief, and no anything," remarked
+Sybil: a speech which doubtless would have shocked Madame Giche, had she
+heard it.
+
+No, so they thought--still, they must have been blind not to see that
+foe of foes, which will not be repulsed nor stayed, stealing up and up,
+and hemming them in. They must have been blind, as Dick said, shouting
+out to them from above their heads.
+
+What had happened? The tide--a high one to-night--had shut them in; the
+waters were already beat-beating against a jutting rock, which made a
+bend in the shore on their one side; on their other the sea lay a wide
+waste of water; there was no retreating or fleeing, for the tide had
+shut them in.
+
+Up the rocks they must go, or----the boys held their breath at this
+point, talking together above, where the sunlight still glinted about
+them, though the grey evening shadows were upon the little band of
+terrified maidens, wringing their hands, pale-faced and with startled
+eyes, looking this way and that, and seeing no way of escape.
+
+"Oh, Dick! what can we do? You surely know some way to get us away?"
+cried Jenny.
+
+But Dick shook his head.
+
+"There is but one way: and that is, you must come up the rocks, and in
+pretty quick time too--see that!" A defiant wave broke not far from
+them, and dashed its spray over them. "As for old Rameses, he's safe
+round the corner, where you ought to be; but if we were to go down and
+try to wade in to you on his back, he'd never do it. He's game for
+anything a donkey can do, but not for that." So that forlorn hope had to
+be given up.
+
+"They must come up here: that's their only chance," said Oscar.
+
+"But how?" was Dick's answer.
+
+"I must try to go down and fetch them up," was the other's reply, with
+paling cheeks but resolute eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Dick, peering down; "and if we could land them on that ledge
+of rock down there, 'twould be something; the tide may not reach
+that--at least, not yet." There was a friendly ledge of rock, not so far
+above where the girls stood. "But why should you go down? Let me,"
+volunteered ready Dick.
+
+"No," objected Oscar; "let me go. I ought to be game for that." And he
+laughed.
+
+"Well, yes, half sailor and all, you ought to know best." How lightly
+those boys could speak, though their hearts were throbbing quickly with
+the thought of what might happen. "If I had a rope, I'd let you down;
+then if you'd land them on the ledge, I'd run for help, for we should
+never tug them up here by ourselves."
+
+"No," mused Oscar. "And there is a rope in the donkey-cart--a strongish
+one, I think."
+
+Away went Dick as with winged feet, while the other stood crowned with
+red sunbeams, and viewed their position. Back came Dick.
+
+"'Twould never bear my weight," observed Oscar, tossing off his jacket
+and tightening his belt for action.
+
+"No, but it would steady you, if you'll scramble down; or let me go
+down, and you hold the rope--I'm your man for either."
+
+"No, no, I must go down. See there, I can't resist that," whispered
+Oscar, pointing below. It was poor little Inna's pale pleading face
+upturned to him in silence.
+
+The boys had been talking and doing; the rope was fast round Oscar's
+waist: a strong-looking rope, but weak, when one considered that it was
+in a sense to hold a life in its keeping.
+
+"Oh, Dick!" cried Jenny from below, "the water is dashing up to our
+feet!"
+
+Yes, the boys could see it was so--the twins were clinging together, and
+Inna stood with her arms thrown about them both.
+
+"I'm coming!" cried Oscar reassuringly, and stepped over.
+
+"Steady, old man, and the thing is done," whispered Dick, gripping the
+rope with his strong young hands.
+
+[Illustration: "IT SNAPPED AND HE WAS GONE."]
+
+It was an heroic feat, yet no more than bold venturesome lads of their
+age have done before and since. There were ledges here and there for
+strongly planted feet to rest upon, and to which young grasping hands
+could cling, although steep as the walls of a house. A giddy descent,
+but one to be accomplished with a steady head--that of a half sailor, to
+use Dick's words. The girls below were silent; even Jenny held her
+breath, although the water now was washing all their feet. Dick held the
+rope and his breath also.
+
+But not far had the deliverer gone down his adventurous way when he
+stumbled, reeled, his hands forgot to cling, and poor panic-stricken
+Dick, who was clinging to that broken reed of a rope, knew it could not
+sustain the strain of Oscar's weight; it snapped, and he was gone,
+falling down, to be caught by that very ledge of rock upon which he was
+to land the girls. He would never do it now; he moaned as he fell, then
+he lay, face downward, terribly motionless and still. And the girls were
+not rescued.
+
+"Oh, Dick! the water is lifting us off our feet," wailed Jenny.
+
+"Do you think he's dead?" cried Inna, still holding the affrighted twins
+in her embrace.
+
+"Jenny, you know how to climb almost like a boy; help Inna to land on
+the ledge: there's room," cried Dick in desperation, peering down in awe
+at Oscar, lying so still on his narrow resting-place. "Then between you
+tug up the twins, and I'll go down to the shore yonder and get help and
+a rope, and come down to you."
+
+Thus instructed and admonished, Jenny took heart, and, thanks to the
+knowledge of climbing trees which Dick had taught her, she scrambled up
+with Inna, and planted her safe by her cousin's side. Then down she slid
+again, brave little maiden, like a very boy, and tugged and twisted up
+the midges, as they sobbed in their forsaken terror, Inna reaching down
+and lending a helping hand.
+
+They were safe at last, for the time being, from the clutching water,
+rising and still rising below them; then Dick sped away. But what of
+Oscar: was he dead? and what if help should not reach them in time, and
+the tide should overwhelm them, after all?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE RESCUE--CLOUDY DAYS--GOOD NEWS AT LAST.
+
+
+Like the wind sped Dick--it must be now or never. The fear was upon him
+that _high_ tides, at any rate, did reach the ledge of safety where the
+girls were sheltering. He fancied he had seen water-marks above that.
+Then about Oscar: that was a terrible height to fall. What if he was
+dead? what if he should revive, and, not being sensible, fall off the
+shelf of rock?--the girls could not hold him back. He must have struck
+his head fearfully. "I thought, having such a craze for being a sailor,
+he would have had a steadier head and more of sea-legs. I wish _I_'d
+gone down, and he held the rope." Such thoughts came crowding into the
+boy's head as he scudded along.
+
+Away to the right were the fishing-boats coming in, their sails dashed
+with gold and crimson, but not a craft of any kind lay to the left,
+where lives, so to speak, were being weighed in the balance. At last
+Dick was among the fisher-folk, telling his story, and a band of the
+hardy fellows put off in a boat for the scene of peril, a party mounting
+over the cliffs with a strong rope, Dick foremost of all.
+
+"Let me go down: they are more to me than to you," he pleaded, when they
+were on the cliffs, above where the little party crouched on their
+narrow strip of ledge. "I ought to have gone down instead of Willett;
+let me go down now."
+
+But the fishermen set him aside.
+
+"No, sir, not while we men can go down better"; and one, a giant in
+height, strength, and kindliness of heart, tied the rope about himself,
+and, as poor unfortunate Oscar had done, stepped over to the rescue.
+
+"Will the rope bear him?" asked Dick, thinking of the other's failure.
+
+"Yes, sir, bear a house; never you fear!" replied he who took charge of
+the rope.
+
+The sun had set, the sea looked grey and frowning, the wind sighed and
+moaned among the rocks. Oscar lay perfectly still and motionless; the
+girls had turned him over, and Inna sat with his head on her lap, his
+face covered with her handkerchief--it was so terrible to look upon:
+that was all the change since Dick had left. Jenny sat holding a hand of
+each of the twins.
+
+"For Dick's sake; because he promised for them to Madame Giche," she
+kept whispering to herself, trying not to shudder when the spray from
+the rising waters dashed over them. Dick was right; the tide would wash
+the ledge presently, it was doing its best to reach it now.
+
+How boldly the fisherman made the descent! It was as nothing to him,
+Dick thought, peering over. He was standing among the little prisoners.
+
+"These first, please," said Jenny, nodding at her two charges, "because
+they were given into our care, and they are the youngest."
+
+"All right, missie," returned the man, and, taking one of them under his
+arm, went mounting up like a big fly or a spider.
+
+Hurrah! one was safe, and back he went again. His comrades, with their
+boat, were standing off at no great distance, on the grey shadowy
+sea--the whole scene Dick never forgot.
+
+"How is it with Master Willett down there?" he asked of the man, as he
+landed with the first little girl.
+
+While down there he had bent over the lad a moment, and had examined
+him, so was able to report.
+
+"Well, sir, he's senseless, and his face terribly battered, but he's
+alive."
+
+He brought up the other little girl and Jenny, but as for Inna and
+Oscar--
+
+"Better signal to our chaps out yonder to run in with the boat; 'twill
+be easier for the young gentleman to get him off that way," shouted the
+man to Dick, watching from above, and made signs to his comrades to row
+in with the boat.
+
+While this was being done Dick hurried away with Jenny and the twins to
+put Rameses into the cart, if the poor brute was to be found, and drive
+home without delay.
+
+"Yes, sir, quick home is the word for them, for they're wet, and cold,
+and frightened, poor dears!" said one of the men, who had children of
+his own.
+
+So they left Oscar and Inna to the boatmen's kindly care, and hurried
+away to look for Rameses. The dear old creature hailed them with such a
+prolonged braying, standing beside the cart, as if he knew they ought to
+be going. Dick put him in and drove home briskly, dropping the twins at
+the Owl's Nest, where no ill tidings had as yet found its way. But they
+met Dr. Willett and Mr. Barlow well on the road, with the gig and some
+sort of stretcher-bed, hastily made, for someone had handed on the news
+to the farm; therefore Dick was thankful to meet the two doctors, as he
+could direct them to the spot where the boat was likely to land.
+
+Poor, poor Oscar! he moaned sadly when the boatmen moved him; he was
+alive to pain, if to naught besides.
+
+"Softly! softly!" so they whispered, handling him as if he had been a
+baby; but Inna's heart ached, hearing him groan and moan, as she stepped
+into the boat, and nestled beside him, and more, taking his head in her
+lap; and so they moved off over the darkening seas.
+
+Oscar had fallen into silent insensibility again when they landed. Then
+followed another moaning time of pain; they laid him on the
+stretcher-bed, and put him and it into the gig, as the doctor had
+arranged beforehand. Inna crept in beside him, the doctor after that,
+with his legs tucked up as best he could; then away they drove, as
+briskly as the state of the poor sufferer allowed, leaving Mr. Barlow to
+come after on foot. Mr. Gregory was at the farm when they arrived there;
+heavy tidings had been reported to him--whether it was Dick or Oscar
+killed, report did not know, but it fancied it was both; and two, if not
+more, of the little girls were drowned--that was the story report had
+told about the little party.
+
+The first thing to be done was to hurry Dick and Jenny off to bed, and
+to put Oscar into his. Such a getting upstairs of sighs and moans was
+it, and of aching hearts, suffering over it all. Inna broke down at
+last, and sobbed as if her heart would break, when there was nothing
+more for her to bear or do, and Mary took charge of her, to see her to
+bed, Mrs. Grant and the doctors taking Oscar into their keeping. Well,
+there was no use in mincing matters--the boy's face was much beaten and
+battered by the fall; it would show the scars for some time to
+come--perhaps for ever: concussion of the brain, a fractured leg; even
+Mrs. Grant's heart grew sick, hearing the doctors enumerate the evils
+that had befallen him.
+
+"Yes, he'll live--at least, I don't see why he shouldn't," said his
+uncle. "Yes, God willing, he'll live;" but he went out to his patients
+the next morning with an anxious brow.
+
+A terrible awakening came to Oscar, after that long death-like
+stillness; weary days of restless insensibility and pain followed. Poor
+suffering boy, it was hard to hear him moan and rave over the fancied
+peril of the girls.
+
+"Inna, Inna!" he would cry. "I believe she cared for me more than
+anybody else in the world, and now I'm leaving her to die. I would save
+her if I could," and he would try to spring out of his bed--only try,
+poor maimed lad; but these fits of restless insensibility wasted his
+strength sadly.
+
+In vain Mrs. Grant tried to soothe him; sometimes his uncle sent to the
+Owl's Nest for Inna, exiled there against her will, because being in the
+house, hearing his moans and wild cries, made her pale and ill,
+following close upon the strain to her childish nerves before.
+
+The doctor's heart misgave him terribly at this time. Would his dear
+dead brother's son die--slip, as it were, away from him, his father's
+brother, who had taken the friendless lad to his heart, in the place of
+the younger brother he had well-nigh idolised? Only in his quiet,
+reserved, absent-minded way he had never thought how much he cared for
+him. He sent for his small niece--the child who had stolen into all
+their hearts with her gentle, unobtrusive love, and would stand aside
+from the bed when she came with a heavy sigh, while she spoke the boy's
+name. She had more power to soothe him than he; she laid her small cool
+hand on Oscar's feverish one, holding it till he seemed to understand
+who it was near him. Then he would sink into long, unrefreshing, heavy
+slumber, to awake to all the wild frenzy again. Thus, to and fro went
+the little maiden from the farm to the Owl's Nest and Madame Giche, who
+chatted to and tried to amuse her when there, and to beguile her from
+her childish anxiety.
+
+"Yes, dear, my husband descended from a French family," she said one
+evening, finding her in the picture-gallery, where she so loved to be,
+as usual passing from picture to picture, and always stopping at that of
+Madame Giche's son, to think over the sad tale, and to wonder where that
+little child was whom Madame Giche had never found. "Yes, dear, he was
+of French family. Some said my son was like him, but I think he was more
+like me;" and the aged lady regarded his portrait fondly, standing
+behind her little guest.
+
+"I think he's very much like you, dear Madame Giche; and, do you know,
+he always reminds me of mamma; 'tis the eyes, I think--they look at me
+so!" There came a quiver into the child's voice.
+
+"Were mamma's eyes dark?" questioned Madame Giche.
+
+"Oh, no! Mamma's eyes are like mine. People say I am very like mamma."
+
+"And papa--what is he like?"
+
+"He is dark, and--and that is all."
+
+"An artist, is he not?"
+
+"Yes; he was painting the portrait of the gentleman with whom he's gone
+abroad when--when he was taken ill"--the child's sweet grey eyes filled
+with tears. "He broke a blood-vessel, and--and 'twas said he would die
+if he spent the winter in England."
+
+"And so the gentleman took him abroad?"
+
+"Yes; it was very kind of him. A Mr. Mortimer--his father was rich once,
+only he lost his estate, so his son was poor, only he married a rich
+lady; and they are so happy, and Mrs. Mortimer is so beautiful," went on
+the child.
+
+"Mortimer! Mortimer!"--the ancient lady shook her head. "No, I don't
+know the name," she sighed, looking at her son's picture again.
+
+"I wonder where the little boy is, Madame Giche?" said Inna, out of the
+silence that followed, noting the aged mother's fond gaze.
+
+"Little boy, dear?" was the dreamy response.
+
+"Yes, Madame Giche, your dear little grandson."
+
+"My dear, he's not a little boy--he's thirty-three years of age--that
+is, if he's living."
+
+"Oh, how strange! why, he is just as old as papa, and I keep fancying
+him a little boy."
+
+"No, dear, no," sighed Madame Giche. "And so papa is thirty-three?" she
+asked.
+
+"Yes, just the age of Mr. Mortimer; they kept their last birthday
+together--you know--in Italy," was the quivering response. She could not
+speak of her absent ones so calmly as her aged friend.
+
+"But papa is better, is he not, my dear?" questioned Madame Giche
+cheerfully, noting the tremor in her voice.
+
+"Oh, yes! and seeing and doing so much, he is almost well--and--and
+having his heart's desire, at last, in seeing Rome."
+
+"Was he never there before?"
+
+"No, not since he was a very little boy. But Mr. Mortimer was; he has
+travelled a great deal; he married his wife abroad--in Switzerland, I
+think."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" and again Madame Giche sighed.
+
+"Yes, I think--I think he was tutor to a young gentleman there. You
+know, he does not mind my telling you; he often talks to people about
+that time--he doesn't mind a bit," said the conscientious little girl.
+
+Just then the twins brought Inna a letter from Italy, and from her
+mamma. Madame Giche saw how the child's hand trembled at taking it, and
+drew the two little girls away, to let her read it in peace.
+
+This she did, sitting down on the topmost stair of the grand staircase,
+among the coloured lights. It brought her good news--her father and
+mother were to come home early next summer, and she had thought when
+parted from them that they would not return for three years.
+
+"Madame Giche," said she, after she had wiped away the happy tears which
+would come, dancing into the tapestried room, almost like one of the
+twins, "papa and mamma are coming home next summer."
+
+"Indeed, dear: that won't be long to wait," returned the kindly old
+lady; and Inna, remembering the long, long years of waiting she had
+known, nestled to her side and kissed her.
+
+Another joy came to Inna that same evening. Oscar was better, was
+conscious at last; he had just awoke from a sweet refreshing sleep, and
+cheered all their hearts at the farm, and his uncle had pronounced him
+out of danger. Dick Gregory brought the news to the Owl's Nest. The
+change for the better in his friend had come at the right time;
+to-morrow he was to go back to school, he told Inna, as she strayed out
+to him on the moonlit terrace.
+
+[Illustration: "DICK SHOOK HER BY THE HAND."]
+
+"And now, hurrah!" cried the happy boy, tossing up his cap, and making
+Inna laugh a tinkling, happy laugh, such as she had not indulged in for
+so many anxious days. Then Dick shook her by the hand as she told him of
+her letter, with its good news, bade her cheer up, and promised to tell
+Jenny, whom he pointed out to her away down the shadowy avenue, standing
+by the donkey and cart--not to shock Madame Giche with the rumbling old
+thing by bringing it nearer, he told her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+NEW THOUGHTS AND WAYS--THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT.
+
+
+Spring again, and Oscar and his uncle had been out round the farm. The
+boy was somewhat spiritless and weary-looking; he could not be
+pronounced to be ill or really weak now, yet there was something wanting
+in him which ought to have been there, making him more atune to
+spring-time.
+
+His face was not much the worse for its battering on the rocks. He was
+still a good-looking youth, as Mr. Barlow told him one day; to which
+Inna responded, as the boy was silent, that she was glad, because nice
+looks were nice. This made Oscar laugh at last, and remark that nice, as
+used in the sense she used it, was only a girl's way of using it. Yet he
+could be grumpy still, though there was certainly a change for the
+better in him in that way.
+
+As for Inna, she had been like a little shadow about him all through the
+winter, sitting by him through the long, cold, snowy days in the
+dining-room, he on a couch by the fire, she on a footstool, reading to
+him, chatting, working out puzzles--she and he together--and heaping up
+the fire till it blazed again. Once they had an earnest talk of that
+which was always making Oscar's heart heavy and his brow gloomy, of the
+time when he would have to take to the farming.
+
+Thus Oscar was, in a way, prepared for what his uncle said to him after
+their walk round the farm that fine spring day.
+
+"Oscar, do you know why I've taken you round the farm to-day?"
+
+The boy had thrown himself listlessly on a couch near the fire.
+
+"Yes, I suppose to remind me of what I'm to be," returned he.
+
+"Well, yes, you have guessed rightly; and, my boy, has it ever struck
+you that you're not fitted for what you want to be?" asked Dr. Willett,
+doctor-like, going to the point at once, and so saving suffering.
+
+"Yes, I know I'm too big a coward for it; and I suppose other people
+know it as well."
+
+"No, not a coward, Oscar--events have proved that not to be correct. For
+instance, no coward would have saved that child at the fire; yet they
+told me you fainted as soon as 'twas done. The doctor at Bulverton
+Hospital wrote me that he thought there was something peculiar in the
+formation of your brain: what happened at Swallow's Cliff proves the
+same thing, and confirms my opinion of you, formed years ago--that your
+head would never do for climbing giddy heights, nor steer you through
+dangers in safety to yourself or to others. So, my boy, your sailor
+dream will have to be set aside."
+
+"It was more than a dream, it was--it was----" the boy broke down and
+sobbed, burying his face among the pillows of the couch.
+
+There was silence for a while, and when Oscar looked up he saw a tear
+trickling down his uncle's cheek, as he stood with his back to the fire.
+
+"Uncle Jonathan, is that tear for me?" he asked, in wistful surprise.
+
+"Yes, my boy; because I know what you are feeling. My life has been a
+silent one--too silent perhaps--but there are things that I, too, have
+missed in that same life. I doubt if there are many lives without the
+miss and the loss."
+
+Something prompted the boy to stretch out his hand toward his uncle, and
+he took it with such a warm grasp.
+
+"Uncle, I'll be a farmer; I've intended to tell you so for
+days--only----"
+
+"Well, never mind, we understand each other now; and let me say this
+much, Oscar: the humdrum farm-life, as I've heard you call it behind my
+back"--Dr. Willett smiled somewhat sadly--"won't be so humdrum as you
+think, if you make of it a life work--a something to be handled nobly,
+and made the most of. A tinker's life could be hardly humdrum with that
+end in view."
+
+   "If I were a tinker, no tinker beside
+      Should mend an old kettle like me;
+    Let who will be second, whatever betide,
+      The first I'm determined to be,"
+
+came jingling through the boy's brain, and made him smile.
+
+"Yes, uncle, I see; thank you for speaking out." He raised his uncle's
+hand to his lips and kissed it, as a girl might have done; the distance
+between him and his uncle was bridged over at last for ever.
+
+"You see, I never thought Uncle Jonathan cared for me before," he said
+to Inna afterward.
+
+And now Inna seemed to walk on air; going here and there about the farm
+with Oscar, who was too weak for study still, but trying with all his
+might to take an interest in what was going on out of doors.
+
+"A good long voyage would cure him of his sea-fever, and quite set him
+up for hard work," remarked Mr. Barlow to the doctor; and both wondered
+if it could be managed.
+
+       *       *       *        *       *
+
+Well, in the midst of all this, home came Mr. and Mrs. Weston one fine
+May day, like swallows, to make Inna's summer complete. They arrived
+suddenly, as travellers often do, the letter that was sent to announce
+them making its appearance the morning after they were at the farm--for
+such things do happen now and then.
+
+Now the days followed on indeed like a happy dream to Inna, she and her
+mother comparing notes together, and joining the threads of their
+divided lives again. Mr. Mortimer spirited her father off to London, for
+they all came in a bunch to the farm; Mrs. Mortimer also accompanied the
+gentlemen; but when the business which took them there was arranged,
+they were to return to keep holiday with Mrs. Weston and Inna.
+
+Meanwhile, the little girl introduced her mother to Madame Giche and her
+nieces, and showed her, at her aged friend's request, the fine old
+house, took her to the picture-gallery, to hear the story of Madame
+Giche's son, who broke her heart; and if Mrs. Weston's very soul was
+stirred within her, hearing the sad tale and looking at its poor dead
+subject's face, nobody knew it--she kept it to herself. Then back came
+the three from London, like happy children, to join the rest.
+
+"With his house full of company, the doctor felt bound to come out of
+his shell to entertain them," as Mr. Barlow remarked to Oscar.
+
+But Dr. Willett was quite equal to playing host, and taking the lead in
+all the clever talk going on at his table, between his old friend, who
+slily looked amused--an artist, a gentleman with a rich wife, and a
+beauty--and two ladies; the younger members hearing, and saying
+nothing, but wondering at Uncle Jonathan's ease and eloquence. But there
+came a break to this; Madame Giche would like Inna to bring her artist
+father and his friend to the Owl's Nest, to be introduced to her, and to
+see the pictures, some of which were supposed to be good.
+
+So one day they all went, Inna feeling the importance of the part she
+had to play, and hoping she should come out of it all gracefully. Ah!
+she need not have disquieted herself. Sweetly gracious was Madame Giche,
+wrapped about with a black lace shawl, sitting by the wood fire in the
+tapestried room, and rising in her stately way when Inna led the
+gentlemen in, holding a hand of each, and saying--
+
+"Madame Giche, this is papa, and this is Mr. Mortimer."
+
+Little dreamt she what would follow, nor they either. Inna fancied she
+heard her aged friend murmur, like an echo, her last word, "Mortimer!"
+as she glided from them, to stand by her side, then----
+
+"Hugh!" they all heard that: 'twas like a musical wail of gladness; and
+Madame Giche sank into her high-backed chair--like a snowflake was her
+face for whiteness--and fainted.
+
+"She is dead! Madame Giche is dead!" sobbed the little girl, but Long,
+whom they hastily summoned, said--
+
+"No, miss; 'tis only a faint," and asked if the gentlemen would carry
+her to her chamber, so that she could be revived in quiet.
+
+This Mr. Weston did, lingering with his little daughter and Mr. Mortimer
+on the terrace outside, to hear tidings of the poor lady's state before
+leaving. Here a servant came to them before many minutes had passed,
+though the time seemed long to them in their perplexity. Madame Giche
+was better, she said, but begged them to excuse her seeing them now, and
+would they come by appointment to-morrow, at ten o'clock?
+
+You may be sure Inna lived in a state of continual excitement and
+curiosity, so mysterious was Madame Giche's fainting fit to her, for the
+remainder of that day and until ten o'clock on the morrow; and when she
+saw the two gentlemen set forth alone for the interview, she not being
+needed now, she felt like a very inquisitive little girl, who did not
+half like being left behind and so not to see and hear what might
+happen next.
+
+In the meantime, the two arrived at the Owl's Nest, and reached the
+tapestried room, where Madame Giche, still like a snowflake for
+paleness, and sweetly weak and trembling, received them, not rising from
+her chair this time. Ah! well, it was no time for ceremony. Question
+followed question from the poor old lady's lips as to who was Mr.
+Weston's father, when born, his real name, and so forth, until the
+artist sat down and told her his story--for he had one.
+
+"My father was a gentleman, and died rather suddenly in Italy, when I
+was three years old; my mother followed him three weeks after, of a
+broken heart, 'twas said, and I was adopted by a friend of my father's,
+an artist, named Welthorp, a great traveller, but kind and good, who
+took me to Australia--in fact, almost all round the world--and finally
+to London, where he and his wife died--both died while I was a mere lad.
+But I had learnt to dabble and paint, and so, making the most of my
+knowledge, have managed by degrees to struggle up to what I am."
+
+This was his meagre story.
+
+"My father? no, I never knew who he was, nor his name--not Weston; Mr.
+Welthorp knew that much--but my father was a reserved man: he never
+mentioned who he was, nor what his position or property, not even to
+him. I've heard he sent a message to his mother when dying, but----"
+
+The interruption came from Madame Giche, who suddenly clasped his hand,
+crying, "That ring, where did you get it--say?"
+
+"It was my father's ring, all he had to show of his former life, so to
+speak;" and Mr. Weston took the ring from his finger like a man in a
+dream--a costly gold ring, studded with diamonds.
+
+"It is my dead husband's ring; I gave it to my son to wear in memory of
+him when he attained his eighteenth birthday," cried Madame Giche. "See
+here"--and her trembling fingers touched a spring--"here are their
+initials, my boy's and his father's." Ah! yes, there they were, there
+was no denying it.
+
+Denying it! sweet-eyed, eager old lady, she led them to the gallery, and
+made them look at that all-convincing portrait of her son, over which
+unconscious Inna had dreamt so often, longing for her mother, she
+scarcely knew why, while it was her father's face spoke to her mystified
+little heart. Ah! it was as clear as the light of day before Mr. Weston
+and Mr. Mortimer left the Owl's Nest that morning. Mr. Weston was the
+rightful master of Wyvern Court, and Inna its heiress to come
+after--Madame Giche's great-granddaughter.
+
+       *       *       *        *       *
+
+There was a right joyful Christmas keeping at Wyvern Court that year: it
+was all joy, peace, and home-coming to Madame Giche; all a fairy dream
+to Inna and the twins, to have Dick and Jenny as their guests, Dr.
+Willett, Mr. Barlow, and Oscar coming up for the Twelfth Night.
+
+"I say, who would have thought you'd prove to be the heiress of Wyvern
+Court that day when I met you in the railway carriage?" said Dick
+Gregory--he, Jenny, Inna, the twins, all out on the terrace, in the
+moonlight, at the old court, listening to the bells on Christmas
+evening.
+
+"I didn't know it myself," returned Inna. "You see, papa's illness and
+all was like the cloud with the silver lining."
+
+"Your cloud was lined with gold, Miss Giche," remarked Dick, "and no
+mistake!"
+
+"It is _our_ cloud as well--mine and Olive's--isn't it, Inna dear?"
+spoke Sybil, clinging to the new little heiress's hand. "We are to be
+co-heiresses, all three, and grand-auntie knows how."
+
+"Oh, ay! share and share, like dividing one apple between the three of
+you; but Inna is _the_ heiress," said Dick.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
+
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+   |                                                                  |
+   | Transcriber's notes:                                             |
+   |                                                                  |
+   |    Obvious spelling/typographical and punctuation errors         |
+   |    have been corrected after careful comparison with other       |
+   |    occurrences within the text and consultation of external      |
+   |    sources.                                                      |
+   |                                                                  |
+   |    Inconsistent hyphenations (school-boy/schoolboy, fire-light/  |
+   |      firelight, bed-chamber/bedchamber) have been retained.      |
+   |                                                                  |
+   +------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
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